New summoner is unacceptable

[rewd]

I'm not sure if this was intended, but summoner seems to be being treated as a ranged DPS. I'm so on the fence about this job, but this graphic saddens me. We really are the new red mage in this expansion. Red mage I remember being very simple and straightforward, and two expansions later the job is in a really good place. They've built upon the simple base they created. It just saddens me that it's 6.0 we're just getting this base. 7.0 is at least 2 years away.

I know very little about reaper, but this means that they obviously need nerfs right? Reaper has one of the smallest skill gap-floors out of all the jobs and is at the very top of the scale? I'm not sure where they are on the utility-scale, but just looking at their tool tips, they have a raid damage buff.

Thoughts?

Even if it's intended, they need to fix it because SMN is still a magical ranged DPS, so it has to compete with BLM and RDM. As it stands, SMN is a dead job because there is no reason to bring it for speedruns (BLM is better) or prog (RDM is better).

As for Reaper, it's overturned. High personal damage, a raid DPS buff and a party regen which, unlike SMN's, you can time. And it's also on a 30s cooldown assuming you get the shield to break (it's only 10% HP, so it pretty much breaks every time).

[IdowhatIwant]

The vast majority of people who think that SMN had room for crazy optimization likely weren't even passable players to begin with.

The current optimization paradigm for summoner mostly comes from SpS tiering, and that is not what most of the people who argued that SMN will be complex mentioned. Choosing which primal to summon in order to move and hardcast successfully is barely an optimization - that is something you should pick up after literally two or three pulls.

What job really has optimization any more? That died last expansion

[CoffeeBuns]

I actually enjoy the new Summoner. I hated it before and was just levelled because of Scholar. Now, I am having a blast with it!

[Rin_Kuroi]

I don't hate the new summoner. Maybe even like it. However, it doesn't excite me. I think it might be time to find a new main. I just have no idea what since I've been with the summoner for so long.

[Vicrtz]

I had the same issue. I just couldn’t get comfortable with the new summoner, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. I jumped onto scholar mainly because it was the same level. I figured I’d just force myself to play healer until I could think of something better. Weird thing is, it turns out I’m loving scholar now. Something just clicked during a trust, and now I can’t imagine wanting to be anything but a healer! Guess I’m going to have to give sage a try, too.

[zcrash970]

At this point SE should just straight out make SMN a limited job because they clearly have no idea what to do with it otherwise.

I am fine with this. maybe in the next mmo, they can make a good smn

[Navycrow]

At this point SE should just straight out make SMN a limited job because they clearly have no idea what to do with it otherwise.

Just make it like FF 11 SMN.... FF 11 SMN was so much fun

[Vahlnir]

At this point SE should just straight out make SMN a limited job because they clearly have no idea what to do with it otherwise.

This is exactly how you upset more people than necessary.

[aveyond-dreams]

At this point SE should just straight out make SMN a limited job because they clearly have no idea what to do with it otherwise.

Imagine being this deep into Endwalker and still saying things like this. It is time to *move on.*

[Tsukino]

Just make it like FF 11 SMN.... FF 11 SMN was so much fun

There is some ridiculous romanticization of FFXI Summoner going on in this thread. The job was a total disaster for well over a decade.

For at least a few years after it was released, avatar perpetuation cost was so steep and Blood Pact abilities so weak that no one ever even summoned anything. They had everyone playing SMN use a WHM support job and use their big MP pool to heal people. And they didn't have Haste or Refresh, so they were the last possible choice for that role anyway. Oh and you had to be max level in something else first (which could easily take some people a whole year in that game) because obtaining all the summons required endgame fights. Not that you'd be summoning them anyway.

Eventually they gave them some decent buffs and separated Blood Pact into two abilities with separate timers, so you could conceivably give people some buffs and throw out a single damage spell. People like me still waited many hours to get invited to parties like this, because the damage was worse than pretty much anyone else's and the buffs weren't even close to an actual buffer like Bard. You also needed an even more endgame fight to be able to do this than the original summons - Fenrir. Avatars also couldn't magic burst or skillchain for a long time (I forget the exact timing of these additions now) which were important to early parties, and then when this functionality was added it was still hard to time.

After many years, when the third expansion had been out for some time, SMN finally got invited to some specific endgame events for a couple of abilities that were powerful against very high level enemies. Although this did make them more desirable overall than the many jobs in XI that just got ignored by players, the gameplay here wasn't anything all that special. In fact, it was very similar to old-school summoning, because every minute (slightly less because of gear) you'd summon one thing, have it use one ability, release it, and then rest for the remainder of the cooldown.