My humble take on new SMN

[CKNovel]

Now, show me the proof "their opinions brought the job to the failed state it was".
You make the claim, you show me the proof. Otherwise you are doing (another) witch hunt.

If complaining for several months straight about how one of the more badly received jobs in Shadowbringers got reworked is not immature, then I leave it to the imaginations of others to come up with a word to describe that sort of behaviour. They have been largely unsuccessful in gaining the sympathy of the general population, especially with the behaviour they've displayed.

It was they who were being catered to since ARR when the job first released. It has consequently led to no small amount of problems that piled up so high over the years that the only way forward left was to start completely from scratch. Now that their stranglehold on the job is broken, they react like kids put in timeout. Fortunately they are outnumbered at the end of the day and their reign of terror is over.

Nevertheless it is obvious why Summoner does not need a dot. Because there are far too many cooler attacks it could have in place of one as opposed to tacking on the very same failed concepts that the rework sought to address. You want dots? Go play Necromancer in 7.0. You want pets that were originally described in ARR as "demons" in the official job descriptions from back then? Wait for Necromancer. Because goodness knows us real Summoners had to wait quite a while for a job worthy of the name to actually be added into the game.

You have no proof then.
You are just trying to start a witch hunt to defend your poor arguments with overexagerated facts, water is wet, moving on.

[aveyond-dreams]

Contrariwise, you also have no proof of the affliction warlock Summoner mains representing any sort of majority. They have continuously denounced metrics by which to gauge the situation such as likes, posts, messages, responses to Youtube videos and so on. They believe their collective 10 voices are in some way more important than the voices of the 10,000s raised in opposition to them and the bad gameplay the job used to have.

I don't think a poorer argument exists than ones these individuals have raised in favor of poison mage Summoner...because of Rydia's bio. Please. They got their "complex!" job alright for the past decade and nothing good ultimately came of it, save for bragging rights of having somehow survived the job as it was. The party is over and while you don't have to go home, Summoner is never going back to the state it was in prior to 6.0.

[CKNovel]

Contrariwise, you also have no proof of the affliction warlock Summoner mains representing any sort of majority. They have continuously denounced metrics by which to gauge the situation such as likes, posts, messages, responses to Youtube videos and so on. They believe their collective 10 voices are in some way more important than the voices of the 10,000s raised in opposition to them and the bad gameplay the job used to have.

I don't think a poorer argument exists than ones these individuals have raised in favor of poison mage Summoner...because of Rydia's bio. Please. They got their "complex!" job alright for the past decade and nothing good ultimately came of it, save for bragging rights of having somehow survived the job as it was. The party is over and while you don't have to go home, Summoner is never going back to the state it was in prior to 6.0.

I've seen enough.
This is called an argument from ignorance.
Assuming a claim is true because it hasn't been proven false.

If I tell you unicorn exists, should you believe me because you can't prove they don't exists?
There is people complaining everywhere, they're present and surely not a minority considering the number of posts;

[Tulzscha]

Agree with everything in the OP. The suggested changes are very conservative (as they probably should be at this stage) but would certainly improve the job.

As for re-introducing Bio, I love dots and poisons but I would be loathe to bring it back to SMN. However what if for example Ifrit granted you a damage over time or buff ability (perhaps in place of the charge) with a ~80s duration? Maybe you have to choose between that and a lesser direct dmg attack. It takes about a minute to cycle through your summons so a dot lasting longer would see you summoning Ifrit at a different point each rotation to minimize loss from overlap. While you could simply ignore this and have 100% uptime without thinking those looking to optimize their play would have a little more for which to strive.

What the job really needs are impactful choices. With ShB SMN we often had access to Egi Assaults and Ruin 4s but could choose to use one both or neither depending on the situation. We could choose to summon Titan for defense or Garuda for aoe. EW SMN is extremely cut and dry: Summon a thing, blow your load, repeat. Personally I'd love to see a whole slew of summons with varied niche purposes and shared cds and time/resource management but that's a long ways off if it'll ever happen.

[rewd]

It's not a proper SMN thread without aveyond-dreams and their compelling arguments such as "YouTube likes"!

Anyway, yes, SMN is very shallow and braindead. It's in an awful state and needs serious help. However, I don't think a DoT would do anything for the job. SMN has some fundamental issues now, but a first step would be reverting some unnecessary change. This means restoring Phoenix's combo and Energy Drain's 30s cooldown.

Then, primals need some changes:

Ifrit: More potency, as it is pretty pointless at the moment. I would also like a faster GCD on the Crimson combo, similarly to RDM, as it feels very jarring and weird to use
Titan: 1.5s cast time on Topaz Rite/Catastrophe, so it feels different from Garuda
Garuda: Slipstream either needs to lose its upfront potency or most of it needs to be moved to the DoT, as it is very weak now. This would make the timing of this skill much more important

As for Demis:
Bahamut: 1.5s cast times
Phoenix: Increased potency to match Bahamut's.

Letting us choose which Demi to summon would be nice, but raid buffs will always dictate the order as long as one is more powerful than the other. A simple way to fix this would be letting Phoenix deal the same amount of damage as Bahamut, so the oder of Demis would be dictated by mobility/utility instead.

The biggest problem of the rework is Aetherflow and Ruin IV, which serve no real purpose. I can't come up with a fix without reworking the whole job, but I guess I'd like to see Ruin IV linked to summons again. Maybe Ruin IV could be a stackable oGCD with increased damage during Trances. I don't know, but it needs something.

[Hagen]

The rework per se is good and very much needed. The problem is that they "took it easy" and made it a lvl 60 job. Maybe as to not overwhelm some players, idk. BLU had the same issue at release, the lvl 50 BLU was bad but the lvl 60 upgrade made it a "solid job".
Lvl 60 should have been the lvl 90 upgrade. It should have upgrade 3 more gems (Ramuh, Shiva and Levi) at 86 instead and the lvl 90 capstone should have been a big DPS button, maybe a Odin Quick Summon, only avaiable after using the 2 sets of gems. Using some resource the gems gave, like SAM Shoha or RDM new mana thing.

But that is more likely to happen at lvl 100 now. What NEEDS fixed right now is make some stuff oGCD (Ifrit book slam, Ruin IV, the Summon Buttons) and add more oGCD, a third aetherflow maybe. And give us the Phoenix Combo back, there was no need at all to take it.

[Duskane]

Aetherflow is just there
and you burn through it so fast that fester/painflare could just be 30 second ogcd be nice if they just reworked these animation wise into other primal abilities

Job could do with a buff you have to manage just something you cast for damage buff also smooth things out a bit
less ruin press and fill in the time when bahamut and pheonix are 2 seconds off CD

and Slipsteam shouldn't be that long of a cast especially with how SMN shreds Trash packs hardly gets its full potential

Gem ruins could also do with an animation change so its not all ruin

and finally return the pheonix combo just so it feels differet to bahamut

[Lilyth]

snip

I've seen you in so many SMN threads at this point, spreading hate towards the previous iteration of SMN and belittling anyone who would DARE defend it or even claim they were actually have fun with it, that I can't help but wonder what makes you try to sell the idea of loving the new SMN so hard that people aren't even allowed to disagree? Is it fear, that it might actually not be the shiny flawless class you were waiting for? That at any moment, that honeymoon phase might come to an abrubt end and you will inadvertently see behind the curtains the simplistic jejune MESS the class is right now? Beauty doesn't last forever.

Not to mention that so far all your arguments have been what a "mismashed chaos" the class was at its ShB iteration without providing a single piece of decent evidence that is not "but my SMN should not have dots!!1 'cause I think dots are DuMb!", which is ridiculous to say the least. ShB SMN had tons of optimizations, different openers, actually meaningful decisions as to where to use your trances and how to apply your dots/tri-disaster at the most pertinent windows during raid buffs and all that's not even an opinion, there's plenty of available data out there that shows how big of a variance in skill previous SMN players had. If you knew what you were doing its entire rotation would actually flow smoothly like butter, even with the so called horrible pet AI.

And by the way, you are allowed to not like how it used to play, but I just can't stomach how condenscending and snobbish you have been with you points just because the previous SMN visuals didn't align with your own idiosyncratic interpretation of one, even more so because what people have been complaining about so far has nothing to do with its aesthetic but the lack of something to do or even think while you're repeatedly pressing 1 and nothing else.

[ServantNaoya]

I do agree DoT will probably never return. That's why I said it was unnecessary, as that's just a personal preference; I love DoTs in general! But I can do without.

I am glad to see so many constructive takes as well, and to see that others share my view that the class very much feels like a level 60 class. As opposed to what a certain person might think, I just want to see current SMN fulfill its potential to be a really fun class, and not return to what it was (mostly because I know it's never gonna happen.) Constructive criticism goes a long way, and if that helps the dev team see that the class needs more, then all the better. I'm not here to wish the new SMN away from anyone.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Snip

I'm a "new" SMN main and I think the job is the most boring thing in all existence until level 86. I have made this alt a week before early access and have played and leveled SMN from 1 to 67 so far and have done ARR, HW and 80% of StB and so far it has been the exact same rotation since level 10. Press Aethercharge/Trance/Summon Bahamut, spam Ruin/Ruin 2/Ruin 3/Astral Impulse, blow all your cooldowns during the first 3 Ruins/Astral Impulses. Summon Garuda/Titan/Ifrit. Spam 4 fast instant Ruins, 4 regular instant Ruins and then 2 slow Ruins. All until level 86 when you finally get the dash, slipstream and mountain buster ogcd weave and even then that barely changes what you do. I had to level RDM concurrently to get away from the absolute monotony of Ruin spamming.