Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

[rewd]

I understand a lot of the gripe over SMN changes but honestly for the most part, this is how SMN works in almost every other iteration of Final Fantasy, save for FFX. The summoned entity always shows up for a short burst then disappears, leaving the summoner alone on screen for 99% of the time. But FFXIV summoner was never going to be like Yuna summoning the Aeons in FFX. They gave us some pet autonomy, which was nice, and they gave us the ability to tweak our big summon size (bahamut) and egi glams to get cute carby back but it looks like they are finally ripping the bandaid off in Endwalker. Being an old school FF player, I enjoy seeing the full renders for the big attacks, like it used to be. It would have been cool to see egis of some of the other primals but with the way jobs have been handled, I feel like the 5 summons (or summon states now) that summoner has is pretty much all the job can really support, both action and lore wise. In any case, I'll reserve judgement until I get my hands on the job after the expansion goes live. I was good at smn during Stormblood but couldnt quite get the hang of it during Shadowbringers. Hopefully I can reconnect with Endwalker.

How Summoners work in FF is irrelevant because this is a MMO and you can't copy and paste big summons that cast their ultimate and go away and call it a day. Black Mages in FF don't work alternating an ice and a fire phase, yet no one is asking them to rework the job, for example.

This is not the problem, either. The problem is that the job now is completely devoided of depth and complexity. Or anything remotely engaging, really. It looks even easier and boring than 5.X MCH. Almost healers level of complexity, who at least have to worry about health bars.

The bulk of your rotation is composed of four buttons: Ruin III, Tridisaster and the two pet actions. Demi-summons are SMN's inner release with their 11111 spam, primals seems to be different combinations of 1-2. On top of that, you have no DoTs, or debuffs, or buffs to mantain. Movement is braindead because almost everything is instant. There is no resource management.

If this is really how a DPS job will play, I see a panic 6.1 rework to be inevitable. Much like NIN in 5.1 and to a lesser degree SMN itself.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

How Summoners work in FF is irrelevant because this is a MMO and you can't copy and paste big summons that cast their ultimate and go away and call it a day. Black Mages in FF don't work alternating an ice and a fire phase, yet no one is asking them to rework the job, for example.

This is not the problem, either. The problem is that the job now is completely devoided of depth and complexity. Or anything remotely engaging, really. It looks even easier and boring than 5.X MCH. Almost healers level of complexity, who at least have to worry about health bars.

The bulk of your rotation is composed of four buttons: Ruin III, Tridisaster and the two pet actions. Demi-summons are SMN's inner release with their 11111 spam, primals seems to be different combinations of 1-2. On top of that, you have no DoTs, or debuffs, or buffs to mantain. Movement is braindead because almost everything is instant. There is no resource management.

If this is really how a DPS job will play, I see a panic 6.1 rework to be inevitable. Much like NIN in 5.1 and to a lesser degree SMN itself.

It's not irrelevant though, because the devs are finally trying to peel away from the old WoW cookie cutter classes and make something more traditionally FF. This game was built on the Lore and success of its predecessors, and while some people would have picked it up simply because it was the 'new' MMO of the time, a lot of people came over because of franchise itself. I was one of them. And I pretty much HATE how Black Mage works. It's still basically WoW Arcane Mage, and when I first took up the game, I was expecting the Black Mage that I was used to from the many many other FF games I had played. Needless to say, it was not that. I eagerly await the day that Black Mage becomes more like the 'Choose Your Own Adventure Mage' it has been previously--actually, kind of like BLU is now. (Yes, it will suck to 'relearn' my main job but an old school FF player like me still remembers having to learn a completely new battle system each new game--especially if it was a new console).

With all the tearing down and reworking of other jobs, SMN was certainly due. I feel for those who put down the class due to the changes but I'm actually looking forward to it. I've liked what I've seen so far.