So what's wrong with Summoner?

[Shriex]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, except for that one asshat I told to eat a bag of dicks. The reason I was asking was because I'm looking for a main job to focus on, and wanted to know if there were issues that might start to annoy me if I continued forward with this one. Ultimately I will do my own thing, but a heads up is sometimes useful.

A lot of the info about this game that's floating around out in the Webs is out of date, so it makes research a bit challenging at times.

[HeulGDarian]

I can summarize the issues with a single sentence:

SMN is the only job in the game that sometimes needs to do a triple weave just to avoid one of the many bugs with the pets.

I love the broken mess but the pets haven't been this bad in years.

man i wont lie it is kinda fun to triple weave even if its just for the bugs , but it shouldnt exist and it most definitely makes me forget that thats the only point you have to triple weave , sometimes i forget and try to triple weave on other jobs cause of muscle memory xD

[HeulGDarian]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, except for that one asshat I told to eat a bag of dicks. The reason I was asking was because I'm looking for a main job to focus on, and wanted to know if there were issues that might start to annoy me if I continued forward with this one. Ultimately I will do my own thing, but a heads up is sometimes useful.

A lot of the info about this game that's floating around out in the Webs is out of date, so it makes research a bit challenging at times.

im gonna ask that you cut the guy some slack . His "hate" isnt baseless even though it might be misdirected rn . its just that the subject has been overtalked and it usually ends with fanfics instead of anything with actual substance . If that isnt enough i may not know the guy but i will ask that you forgive him in his stead cause i know the bitterness of smn talks too well .

SMN is a job that is near and dear to my heart from its lore to its class to its book brother sch and its really disheartening what shb did to it and how alot of people did not understand why people prefered older iterations , Its identity at first may look confused but if you look deeper to his lore you will find out quite a fascinating job linked with a lot of stuff from something like the voidspawns to history that i cant really tell you without spoiling the story . to me ACN SMN and SCH are the same job since unlike other classes where they are a strict upgrade over the original this one take the form of specialisations SMN in summons and SCH in healing which is why to me there is no identity crisis in the job it just follows a different logic than the other jobs . Overall you will have an interesting journey with that job , it will have its ups and downs but it will be rewarding to pull off.

[Nemekh]

I can summarize the issues with a single sentence:

SMN is the only job in the game that sometimes needs to do a triple weave just to avoid one of the many bugs with the pets.

I love the broken mess but the pets haven't been this bad in years.

To be fair, the triple weave isn't needed for every case and outright is only recommended for 2.48s or faster. Personally I've been preferring the single weave method as something much more reliable with the timing down at slower/base GCDs. It's all about ensuring enough delay after the FBT activation so that the first GCD registers by the Demi.

Bahamut had this problem too, but they fixed it with him. I've had a very old bug report that's been accepted on Phoenix's behaviour from the end of October 2019. It's 8 months later. If it's still an issue come 5.3 I'm going to be fairly disappointed.

Honestly pet gambits need a big overhaul in general. The Summon Order system is a bug riddled failure just as every iteration of pets has had its storied history of broken bugs and exploits.

[Kabooa]

Honestly pet gambits need a big overhaul in general. The Summon Order system is a bug riddled failure just as every iteration of pets has had its storied history of broken bugs and exploits.

I'll be surprised if Pets aren't just visual indicators by the time 6.0 rolls around. Keeping them as their own entities while effectively removing their presence on the field is a weird middle ground.

[CKNovel]

I'll be surprised if Pets aren't just visual indicators by the time 6.0 rolls around. Keeping them as their own entities while effectively removing their presence on the field is a weird middle ground.

I think it would be for the best.
Apart from Healing the lowest target, the SCH fairy doesn't do much of its own.
Apart from damaging, DRK/MCH pets doesn't do much and MCH's Queen can get stuck on platforms (Hello E4S), on top of that you can't commande them at all to change target and I'm sure they would keep punching for a good 3 seconds before actually switching.
SMN pet is the most interesting, but because its an entity that act on its own, it'll have to wait the end of its own action before executing the command.

Pets are badly designed since ARR and even on auto-mode, they're still bad.

The only """pets""" that is good is Ninja's shadow which is almost a visual indicators.
The only advantage of pets I can see right now is the possibility of placing them where you want.

[Myon88]

Fun fact, but there are actually some advantages to pets being their own thing, if you know how to manipulate their AI correctly.

For example, as a summoner you can command your pet to cast devotion like 5 seconds before you actually pull the boss. Immediately after doing this, give the pet an arbitrary movement command (or just sic it toward the boss and time it so it reaches at the same moment as the pull). This causes the pet to prioritize movement before casting devotion because it can't do both together, but it still remembers that you gave it a devotion command, and it will execute that once it reaches its destination.

What this allows you to do is put devotion on cooldown earlier than normal, since the cooldown begins with the button press, while still having the actual devotion cast happen at the usual time in the opener. This is important in e8s this tier, because phase 1 is timed just so that doing this will give you an extra 2nd devotion cast before it transitions to the adds phase.

So, very real gains that probably would not exist if pets were streamlined to remove all their quirks and clunkiness. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but personally I enjoy little mechanical optimizations like this. They do their part to give the job a little more complexity and depth, and a more satisfying skill ceiling.

[Jonnycbad]

SMN is very meta right now it's just a mess to play right now.

[Jirah]

Common wisdom seems to be that Summoner is a mess and needs work. I like it best of all the jobs I've played so far. I guess it's complex compared to other roles? But to me it seems like it has a lot of options, including the ability to press a lot of buttons and put a large amount of smackdown on a single target, which appeals to me. Everyone has different tastes, I guess.

Admittedly, I'm only level 66; does the job start to go downhill or something?

This is why nobody should take any majority critique heavily. “Healers are bad, Tanks are boring, Ninja was bad, MCH is Fixed and is perfect , Monk is the worst job in the game,Summoner is convoluted and a mess, Bard is stale and needs a rework”

If your having fun that’s all that matters not everyone will agree to those statements

[xxPheNoMeNa]

The biggest issue with the class right now is pet AI, and more specifically the base egis. For years the pet AI design that SE has implemented has been embarrassing to say the least, and the job changes this expansion have really highlighted just how bad it is. At this point, I'd rather the base Egis just be removed entirely, or used only for visuals in game. As much as it may not make sense from a theme perspective (and would probably spark outrage from some players), I just don't think it's appropriate to keep this pet system in place if SE is still refusing to fix the long list of problems it has (some of which can be traced back to the HW era).

Aside from that, the 5.1 changes have mostly fixed the mechanical issues the job had.