Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

[Blackcanary]

I am so happy that they are dropping the DOT system for SMN. I need to level it up to 80 now so I am ready for Endwalker

[AngeliouxRein]

So am I the only one who thinks the rework is fine? A LOT of people have suggested what we saw in the JAT and a lot of responses in this thread amount to "well yes, but actually no". As.a SMN player I don't have any issues with what I saw, except hoping the pet jank has been addressed.

lol

The thing is, SMN is just one of those jobs that even SMN mains couldn’t agree on what we wanted. For a long time, I’ve seen final fantasy die hard fans sell the idea of an “nostalgic” SMN being the SMN we should have. We got that. But we also got the other side of SMN in there that I wanted. Just like rewd mentioned, it’s like they put a piece of every type of SMN people wanted while at the same time taking a lot. People like me got more excited at increased Bahamut skills while others got excited about the new rotation. Both sides are “meh” towards the part of SMN they don’t care for but excited at the same time xD.

It’s an odd time… and I feel for SMN mains that don’t like it all since it looks like the busyness of it isn’t really there with no more DOT management and other things. I’m all kinds of mixed feeling at the moment. Excited, concerned, confused and maybe even a bit annoyed lol.

Just an odd time for SMN .

[rewd]

I just noticed that Bahamut and Phoenix are basically Inner release/Delirium now. Phoenix doesn't have a 1-2 combo anymore and you just spam FoF for ST and BoP for AoE.

No reason to simplify something that was already simple, but here we go.

[Grimoire-M]

Guess we're Bard and Ragnarok Online Sorcerer now. Instead of Ruin it's Psychic Wave, Agni/Tera/Ventus, and their insignias. Props for keeping Aetherflow around I guess, gotta pretend to be Arcanist still. They literally couldn't even give Carby an auto attack, so Tataru's does more than ours does now. Woooo.

I'd be fine with it if healers literally got anything apart from Sage's existence. Give Scholar Bane and DoTs and I'd be happy with both sides of Arcanist growing into their own. This is the aesthetic people wanted so I'm not mad about it (I know damned well it's cool looking as shit, but I'm a mechanics guy, not a graphics guy), but I can already tell the rotation is going to get boring real fast (1-2-3 You-Don't-Fool-Me). I might actually commit to Bard as much as I hate that class still cause at least it actually tried to keep DoTs.

On the plus side, no Tri-Disaster Resets.

[remiff]

It's amazing how people are never happy,
the rework seems to be good, and everyone here knows how badly this job suffered from the pet AI.

don'ts stay from the past, I'm not saying that the new Summoner will be perfect when it comes out, but it's a new job and therefore still in testing and it may still have some fixes before the release of the 'extension, or 6.1
but we must admit one thing, the summoner looks more like what we imagined of a summoner than a ruin / dot mage.

For the moment everything is in the state of speculation so wait until you have it in your hands.

[Roda]

It's amazing how people are never happy,

It's what happens when you promise 2 different class designs with pedigree vs in-practice for two different camps to get attached to.

[Ailuron]

Idk.. If we don't have to manage DoTs or pets skills.. what do we manage now? or is it just pop a primal-themed stance and run around in circles, instant casting that particular primal's flavour of spells, by yourself and not through a summon? Cut out the instant cast and running around, whats left after that? a generic stand and cast caster?

Very mixed feelings about this. But like most say, have to wait and see...

Although safe to assume, the fantasy of a pet class is all but dead, with carby/egis being, technically, nothing more than aesthetics (hey look I have a familiar, I could actually summon something for more than 2 seconds besides demi-bahamut or firebird, still.. right? right...? ahaha..)

[AnotherPerson]

This seems like such a half-assed rework and it's sad.

First of all, the problem of SMN having more identities still persists. What are we now? Channelers? Trance mages? Geomancers? Elementalists? Pokemon trainers?
Why do we summon creatures that leave after a big attack, creatures that stay with us for a while and a creature that stays with us until we tell it to get lost? A creature that can only cast a buff and a shield and mainly looks menacingly at the enemy, while we exercise wind, fire and earth magic?

Aetherflow managed to 1) still be in the game 2) still be bloated for no reason (how did Energy Siphon and Painflare managed to survive?) 3) completely disconnected from everything. Ruin IV is even worse. What was a flexible tool and an important part of SMN's kit, is now just a GCD every minute.

Where's the problem with its identity that hasn't been shown already in lore? Carbuncle is still the initial egi. Instead, the gems are our trances where we can focus our power of the egi - pretty much like crystals summoning a primal. Unlike a real primal, we just borrow their power - sorta like using Dreadwyrm trance and using Bahamut's Aether to channel Deathflare.

The initial summon is an AoE hit basically when channeling the aether to use the gem. Then, we use the crystal as the focus of our power to use their summoned skills - like in all FF series, but different in the sense that we're only borrowing a portion of their power instead of summoning them outright.

Aetherflow lorewise is initally gathering external aether into a gem/crystal and channeling that with a small portion of your aether to activate a stronger geometric spell (fester/plainflare). If you think about it, that's basically what we're doing with the summons in the new SMN except we're gathering a primal's specific aetheric aspect instead. So we're actually going back to our ACN roots, but expanding on its initial aetherflow mechanic. However, unlike the past ACN, the split is different since they're adopting the traditional FF SMN playstyle too - where you're the one who uses the power.

Our pets are still used for utility it seems - so they're support oriented while we're offense oriented. This follows in-line with the current SCH's pet. Maybe in the future we'll get more pet skills, but we'll have to see how the pet AI handles it, since ShB pet AI is still a bit janky.

I say they handled this very well by allowing pets to co-exist, SMN to have big summons, yet still retain the lore and importance of aetherflow gameplay via mini summon phases.

[Ailuron]

Where's the problem with its identity that hasn't been shown already in lore? Carbuncle is still the initial egi. Instead, the gems are our trances where we can focus our power of the egi - pretty much like crystals summoning a primal. Unlike a real primal, we just borrow their power - sorta like using Dreadwyrm trance and using Bahamut's Aether to channel Deathflare.

The initial summon is an AoE hit basically when channeling the aether to use the gem. Then, we use the crystal as the focus of our power to use their summoned skills - like in all FF series, but different in the sense that we're only borrowing a portion of their power instead of summoning them outright.

Aetherflow lorewise is initally gathering external aether into a gem/crystal and channeling that with a small portion of your aether to activate a stronger geometric spell (fester/plainflare). If you think about it, that's basically what we're doing with the summons in the new SMN except we're gathering a primal's specific aetheric aspect instead. So we're actually going back to our ACN roots, but expanding on its initial aetherflow mechanic. However, unlike the past ACN, the split is different since they're adopting the traditional FF SMN playstyle too - where you're the one who uses the power.

Our pets are still used for utility it seems - so they're support oriented while we're offense oriented. This follows in-line with the current SCH's pet. Maybe in the future we'll get more pet skills, but we'll have to see how the pet AI handles it, since ShB pet AI is still a bit janky.

I say they handled this very well by allowing pets to co-exist, SMN to have big summons, yet still retain the lore and importance of aetherflow gameplay via mini summon phases.

I think my biggest problem with it, is not sharing the same vision of what a summoner should be. In a more traditional FF sense, SMNs aren't actually casters that bring out an entity to fight by their side (a pet class) im guessing but rather a caster that channels the power of these entity.

That to me sounds like, a caster putting on a skin/style on their spells to make it lore appropriate, which many other games have already... Its kinda like flavour-text. It wouldn't make a difference if Ifrit/Titan/Garuda showed up for their glorious 2 whole seconds or not. I guess what im trying to say is, mechanics wise its a downgrade/condensing/dumbing down, its not unique, sure it has 3 mini "summon" phases (more like primal-themed casting modes) but in the end, they are shoved into a more traditional caster mold. Hell, it makes it much simpler to develop without the AI, but the AI is what makes it unique.. wish they could have just improved it.. instead of removing it altogether.

I only hope that the idea of a support-oriented pet is exactly that.. give carby/egi something more for us to do/manage instead of being mostly aesthetics.. or let the current existing egi have an interaction with the primal-themed casting modes. I'd be slightly happier with it that way.

mixed feelings, have to wait to see...

[nalgene]

I like DoTs but also think new SMN looks great. I suppose this makes room for a DoT focussed job in the future?