Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

[aveyond-dreams]

Here is an analogy:

McDonald’s is known for serving hamburgers.

However, the only McDonald’s in a particular city for some reason sells sushi instead of hamburgers. Multiple times, they’ve tried combining the two but have failed each time and have difficulty attracting new customers.

Since I like hamburgers, I’m not interested in a McDonald’s that is trying to be unique by selling sushi. Most people in the city also decide to take their business elsewhere, because they want a normal burger.

However, a minority of people like going to this McDonald’s and have railed against anyone who has advocated for making this McDonald’s an actual McDonald’s by coming up with every excuse imaginable.

Finally, the CEO of McDonald’s shuts the failed sushi operation down and they announce the return of hamburgers, and most people in the town are really happy. The restaurant is now successful. However the people who liked eating sushi at this McDonald’s now feel like they’ve been cast out, because that McDonald’s should have never been selling sushi in the first place.

[ssunny2008]

Here is an analogy:

McDonald’s is known for serving hamburgers.

However, the only McDonald’s in a particular city for some reason sells sushi instead of hamburgers. Multiple times, they’ve tried combining the two but have failed each time and have difficulty attracting new customers.

Since I like hamburgers, I’m not interested in a McDonald’s that is trying to be unique by selling sushi. Most people in the city also decide to take their business elsewhere, because they want a normal burger.

However, a minority of people like going to this McDonald’s and have railed against anyone who has advocated for making this McDonald’s an actual McDonald’s by coming up with every excuse imaginable.

Finally, the CEO of McDonald’s shuts the failed sushi operation down and they announce the return of hamburgers, and most people in the town are really happy. The restaurant is now successful. However the people who liked eating sushi at this McDonald’s now feel like they’ve been cast out, because that McDonald’s should have never been selling sushi in the first place.

Because FF14 doesn´t offer more than SMN? Because you know the exact numbers to claim stuff like minority / majority? Common... and imo, the old SMN is the hamburger and the new one will be sushi, since it has never been like this.

[aveyond-dreams]

I do not need to know the exact numbers of anything because the day they released the job action trailer the reception for summoner was overwhelmingly positive except for the affliction warlocks who ruined the class for the past 8 years. It was clear to pretty much everyone. Even so, here's a small-scale survey someone did on reddit where the new summoner came in 3rd place just after sage and reaper where they asked people what they plan to main in EW.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...b_will_you_or/

[Roda]

You still haven't given us any solid reason why things "failed" (hint, it's not the fact that we had damage over time mechanics)
NuSMN is not "successful" because it currently does not exist, and you have not given any solid reason why it's any better.

Now I'm not one who wants to invalidate feelings, but design changes cannot be based on vague feelings.
And once again, just because you don't like (or understand) something, doesn't mean it's not valid. FFXIV is a numbered, main-line final fantasy title. The producer and director since 2.0 (Summoner's introduction to the game) is currently on the board of directors. This game is not a rogue operation to besmirch whatever your idea of a summoner is.

Oh and they haven't fixed smn's breaking point. They are only procrastinating on it.
Do you know why?

I do not need to know the exact numbers of anything because the day they released the job action trailer the reception for summoner was overwhelmingly positive except for the affliction warlocks who ruined the class for the past 8 years. It was clear to pretty much everyone. Even so, here's a small-scale survey someone did on reddit where the new summoner came in 3rd place just after sage and reaper where they asked people what they plan to main in EW.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...b_will_you_or/

Lmao, there's five times as many dps parses for TEA (picking this one, because people often call ultimate raiders such a small portion of the community that SE should ignore because X or Y) than there are dps on that chart. All that data shows is that .3747% of the ffxiv reddit is affected by hype. Which, uh, is pretty well known.

Hype is not reality.

[aveyond-dreams]

I don't need to write an essay to explain my thinking. Poison mage gameplay was bad. The summons which are the core thing about summoner were also bad. There is no need for me to articulate this further. There's nothing vague about it. The class was a broken disjointed mess that was trying to be everything at once, and now they've fixed it by giving it a focus around summon magic. I am thankful that Yoship gave us a summoner that feels like a summoner now.

You can choose to continue debating this issue if you wish, but you will not convince me that 5.0's warlock is better than what I've seen of the summoner we are getting in 6.0.

[Vallhallix]

Players just cry way to much about gameplay, just because they like some aesthetics or the role to be a SMN, MNK, MCH, whatever class is discussed permanently.

SMN main here, i'm not getting screwed over at all, my class finally seems like it has a solid fix and actual rotation. And rid itself of all it's clunky mechanics. I will miss stuff like baning additional targets which wasn't even complex in the first place, neither was refreshing two dots, but I prefer my class plays like an actual one instead of a confused disaster of a class when every other class in the game has all but tightened and smoothed out their gameplay, and it was at it's worst in shb especially with the clunky pet abilities which the MAJORITY of people did not like, with phoenix being the only highlight of an uninspired clunky rotation. People cried, because it was bad, people actually swapped to the other casters because it was that horrible to play, loyalist like me stuck with the class even though I acknowledged it was bad. Stop pretending it's just outsiders MOST of us smn mains are happy with this change and rejoicing, not until I came to this dps section did I find smns complaining about this change, which pretty much happens with every change here to begin with.

This is what most people wanted. More summons that worked in the line of phoenix, we even wanted Bahamut to have skills in the same vain of Phoenix, to make his phase less boring, I was here months ago when people were demanding it. They listened. All while keeping SMN's mobility intact, and fixing other minor issues. They took 3 poorly designed clunky pets, 1 completely useless one, and made them into something that works, something where all 3 are utilized. Now they have a proper base for the class, and should not suffer as much confusion going forward like they've done with every single expansion for the previous SMN. SMN working like a reskinned arcanist, and being bundled in with Scholar was a mistake, they spent too many expansions trying to fix that mistake. The summons changing the SMN abilities with the introduction of Phoenix was the best thing to happen to the class in years, and the logical thing for them to build upon. Now they have a proper direction for SMN as we've seen with the Ifrit charge and melee, this opens the door for them to get creative with future abilities instead of spending each expansion trying to add on new things to an already busted class. No doubt in future content they will add new skills to our existing summon phases.

This will probably also fix how terrible Summoner plays low level compared to every other class in the game.

[Grimoire-M]

Personally I'd rather they had embraced actual pet management instead of these fake Egi avatars. The system wasn't that far from being fixed entirely. And current Summoner was the pet job where it felt the most fluid on too due to how pets were woven into the rotation.

Aesthetics aren't always mechanics. Mechanics are, however, Aesthetics. And when it comes to current Summoner, I wanted its Arcanist sub-theme to remain a core part of the role, with the Summoner theme highlighted in Demis. Thus, these pseudo-bardsongs irritate me, not because I think there's a problem with people who hated the DoTs, but because it could easily have been kept around.

To me, SE gave up, plain and simple. Will people it enjoy it? Sure. Will it have as much depth? No. Even Stormblood Summoner had more, and for the WRONG reasons, imo.

[ChazNatlo]

I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of DoTs. They're not added complexity, they're just busy work. Yup, my DoTs are almost out, time to refresh them. Boring.

That said, they were hardly the problem with the Summoner from a mechanics reason. I wouldn't say they were a flaw from a thematic standpoint, even if I wouldn't say they were precisely on brand. (Yes, Rydia could poison, but all that argument leads to us that we should just delete SMN and tack summons onto other classes. Like, yeah, cool, my Faris could be both a Samurai and a Summoner. Maybe Summoner should have been a Melee unit, cause there is precident.)

I do hope that the bay sayers are wrong and the game ends up fun. I'm in no position to judge, since I'm a filthy casual, but this argument is going nowhere.

Edit: Hmm... That post sortof got away from me. Uh... They probably could have kept the Power fantasy and the pets and the Dots. The DoTs probably would have bored me, but oh well.

[rewd]

This is what most people wanted. [...] No doubt in future content they will add new skills to our existing summon phases.

Lots of things to address here:

- You didn't get more summons that worked like Phoenix. You got avatars that show up and go away after 2 seconds. What you actually got is 3 different phases where you fight as a channeler/geomancer/elementalist, not a summoner

- Let's compare old Bahamut and new Bahamut. Old Bahamut was a burst phase and you could feel the build up to it. In order to maximize DPS you needed to prepare for it and get 4 Ruin IV stacks. Movement was something you had manage, not necessarily because of pet AI (which was only a problem in the last ~5 seconds anyway), but because you would alternate instacasts with hardcasts. You could deal with movement by shuffling around your use of instacasts while still keeping your Wyrmwaves total to 8. You could even have the option to decouple Bahamut from DWT.
New Bahamut: there's no build up, Bahamut is a GCD you use at the start of the fight. It is actually the build up to something minor. Movement? Not an issue, you get to spam the same button over and over again which is of course an instacast, so you could run a marathon if you wanted to. We did get two cool animations in return, though. If you think the new Bahamut is more fun/less boring, then good for you. Sadly, me and other people wouldn't mind to have to use their brain even just a little.

- They kept mobility intact? They took a very mobile caster and made it a phys ranged DPS. SMN was very mobile but its mobility options were tied to DPS, so you still had to manage those (Assaults and Ruin IV). Now, all gone, you are the... Instacast mage, I guess?

- You didn't get functional pets, you get 3 animations. Pretty, but still animations.

[SkyCake]

Edit: Actually, I don't want to get caught up in a conversation on it.