I love SMN

[godvivec]

A lot of people seem to love it, and seem to have great fun with its simplistic gameplay. That's great that more people are playing it, and having fun.

but, IMO:

It's a shiny turd. It's about as engaging as you would expect a shiny turd to be to. I'm fine with shiny stuff, I like it just about as much as anyone. I don't like using pretty much three buttons, with no room for improvement on a class. You cycle through summons. That's it, that's it's only gimmick now. Guess what? It already had that before the rework, that's nothing new. You are required to use the other two summons now, I suppose, but that's not to much of a positive when they still have problems.

Shitty BLMs can do middling dmg, and that's fine. You can still do all content. Great BLMs? Almost top of the boards every time using the same tools available to everyone else in the class. It's a well designed class. Fun to play, shiny effect, big booms, and plenty of room for improvement all around.

Can't say anything remotely similar about SMN. Without anything requiring management, the class suffers. I can't imagine most people playing it more than a couple patches before they get bored with ruin spam. Let's not even mention it's brother RDM who looks better (subjective), IS better, and is just as easy to play.

Sad times for me, and my favorite class.

[ty_taurus]

As a whole, I'm really happy with SMN's change. Arcanist was my first job back in 2.0, and I've never loved SMN's identity in XIV despite it being one of my favorite Final Fantasy jobs in the series, and that killed me inside. Finally happy so see it embrace its roots as a truer Final Fantasy Summoner now, and I think the rework ultimately did a great job at creating fertile land for the future.

Having said that, I question of the job is too much fertile land and not enough growth. I have no problem with it becoming a simpler job that's easier to play, but as it stands, it feels more like what many jobs feel like at level 50 than it does a fully fleshed out job at level 90. It has plenty of room to develop and thrive in future expansions, but what about these 2 years we're looking at now? It's not bad by any means, but it feels like it's missing something. There are also a few other areas worth nitpicking which some have brought up before.

1. AoE buttons. So many actions on SMN's hotbar are AoE only buttons: Energy Siphon, Painflare, Tri-Disaster, Precious Brilliance, not to mention Astral Flare and Brand of Purgatory are just for AoE spam as well. Shadowbringers streamlined AoE damage to not be a heavy resource-drain which was nice, but I feel like the departmentalization of AoE into buttons exclusively for that purpose isn't that great. Being able to AoE easily when you need to is great, but rendering buttons utterly useless in most situations outside of dungeon trash isn't. I don't really see why SMN couldn't have maintained its 1-2 "rotation" of Fountain of Fire > Brand of Purgatory from Shadowbringers and have made that the gold standard relation between Ruin III & Tri-Disaster, Gemshine & Precious Brilliance, Astral Impulse & Astral Flare, and of course the namesake of this combo. It's not much, but it would've at least added a bit more variance into single target gameplay, (also I feel ridiculous spamming Brand of Purgatory's animation.)

2. I'm actually fine with making Carbuncle exclusively a support pet. By not having auo-attacks, his responsiveness to using his actions is finally feeling snappy, and from a lore perspective, it makes sense as well. That said, I don't know why he needs to be desummoned at this point since he's not attacking. It awkwardly lock you out of his 2 OGCDs either for the entire Bahamut/Phoenix phases, or for a few seconds when summoning your Ifrit/Titan/Garuda(-egi) which seems like a relic of old at this point. There's probably some kind of coding aspect to it, but if they can find a way to just leave him in play when you summon other things, I think that would really smoothen out the small bit of clunk still left in SMN's toolkit.

Also, while I'm fine with him being support only, I would like it if he actually had more than just a 2 minute party buff and a situational self-barrier. Especially if we get a more selfish caster to contest with BLM, we could give SMN a bit more utility to mirror RDM utilizing Carbuncle next expansion. Maybe we can give Carbuncle a raise. Carbuncle has to cast it for 8 seconds, but you as the SMN can continue your rotation, or raise someone else. If it has a cooldown, that might be an interesting way to counteract the value of dualcast raise if you can potentially raise two allies at once on a long cooldown.

3. It's a bit weird that Phoenix is a direct DPS downgrade from Bahamut since you lose out on Deathflare, a 500 potency AoE with a 60% dropoff in exchange for Enkindle, a relatively weak single target regen not enhanced with Maim and Mend traits. A simple solution could be to drop Revelation's potency to 900, but allow it to be cast twice during Phoenix's summon, that way your total 1800 potency would match Bahamut's 500 + 1300, and the healing (along with Everlasting Flight) would just be a cherry on top.

4. Aetherflow in Shadowbringers felt like a vestigial limb with no connection to the rest of SMN's kit, and here in EW... It's still pretty much the same. The difference here is that with how simple the rest of the kit is, Energy Drain/Syphon, Fester, and Painflare have plenty of room to exist without feeling like bloat, but they're still kinda just feel like the cousins that came to visit and never left.

I think the future of SMN has a lot of potential. If I could've changed anything about it now, I would've just wanted to address at least some of those things a little more.

[Adonan]

You know what, looking back I would have to say I had more fun with the old Summoner. I wasn't a fan of the DoT mage playstyle, and the pets left much to be desired, but it was a more engaging job. I initially liked the new SMN because it felt more like the SMN of the classic Final Fantasy games. However, because it's so simple, the shiny new summons and particles affects only held me over for so long.

I haven't even played it much and the boredom everyone is talking about is already setting in. I like the class fantasy of this new SMN, but the gameplay needs serious work.

[Ferrinus]

2. I'm actually fine with making Carbuncle exclusively a support pet. By not having auo-attacks, his responsiveness to using his actions is finally feeling snappy, and from a lore perspective, it makes sense as well. That said, I don't know why he needs to be desummoned at this point since he's not attacking. It awkwardly lock you out of his 2 OGCDs either for the entire Bahamut/Phoenix phases, or for a few seconds when summoning your Ifrit/Titan/Garuda(-egi) which seems like a relic of old at this point. There's probably some kind of coding aspect to it, but if they can find a way to just leave him in play when you summon other things, I think that would really smoothen out the small bit of clunk still left in SMN's toolkit.

Also, while I'm fine with him being support only, I would like it if he actually had more than just a 2 minute party buff and a situational self-barrier. Especially if we get a more selfish caster to contest with BLM, we could give SMN a bit more utility to mirror RDM utilizing Carbuncle next expansion. Maybe we can give Carbuncle a raise. Carbuncle has to cast it for 8 seconds, but you as the SMN can continue your rotation, or raise someone else. If it has a cooldown, that might be an interesting way to counteract the value of dualcast raise if you can potentially raise two allies at once on a long cooldown.

3. It's a bit weird that Phoenix is a direct DPS downgrade from Bahamut since you lose out on Deathflare, a 500 potency AoE with a 60% dropoff in exchange for Enkindle, a relatively weak single target regen not enhanced with Maim and Mend traits. A simple solution could be to drop Revelation's potency to 900, but allow it to be cast twice during Phoenix's summon, that way your total 1800 potency would match Bahamut's 500 + 1300, and the healing (along with Everlasting Flight) would just be a cherry on top.

I'm leveling Summoner now and these are my two main thoughts as well. I think you should need to have a pet out to use your two group buff/personal shield oGCDs, whether Carbuncle or one of the mini primals, and it feels really bad that you actually lose damage going from level 79 to level 80. Probably both Bahamut and Phoenix should have a Deathflare-equivalent, except that Phoenix's also applies a regen to your party (or you could make it more finnicky, like you target self or a party member, that friendly target gets a regen, and incidentally a Deathflare-equivalent AoE erupts from their location) and the actual Deathflare applies some other defensive or utility buff (maybe it gives you MP back, maybe it gives you a shield, idk).

[Mondschnee]

While I appreciate the SMN rework and think it's a good base to work with, at its current state, that's what it is in my opinion, a base. The Job at level 90 feels like it should have been like that at level 70. Level 90 should have many more layers added to it.

Even though I'm not trying to get my hopes up in terms of another significant rework, I still want to leave my feedback here. I'm making this post es a dedicated SMN main ever since I've started playing back in March. So... yeah, here we go.

1) First and foremost, I'd like to see SMN as a caster again. The short "cast" times are nice, but it's taking away from the job's identity, which should not be equal to physical ranged. I would not mind getting Ruin 2 or an equivalent to that back and in return have more cast times, so I can actually cast something as a caster. I know, sounds wild.
That doesn't mean there shouldn't be phases in which you have a good amount of movement. This is one thing I feel like the previous version of SMN did better. You had an answer to every situation and yet you really felt like a caster.

2) The rotation at level 90 lacks depth and proper build-up. I'm not saying it should be as "complex" as before (even though I personally did not find it complex before), but it should have more layers to it. As it is right now, the rotation doesn't feel rewarding, and that's a shame. You're summoning literal primals as if it's nothing, and while it looks cool, aesthetics alone will get boring at some point.

3) Along with that, I'd like to see potencies adjusted. As SMN is right now, it simply cannot compete with the other casters. RDM brings everything SMN brings and more damage on top of that and therefore it's hard to justify a SMN spot in a raid. Again, we're summoning literal primals and we have nothing to show for it.

Even without adjustments suggested above, some of the primals need their potencies adjusted imho, especially Ifrit's as the long cast times currentely are not worth it. And as it takes longer for Phoenix to be active, it should make more damage than Bahamut, not less.

I have seen several good suggestions on japanese forums when it comes to adjustments, so I really hope they take them to heart. Again, I'm trying really hard not to get my hopes up.
For now, I'll leave it at that.

[Hagen]

I don't mind not being able to use Carbuncle skills while summoning other stuff. It may feel a little odd but at least it is SOMETHING to manage, something to think when it might be best used.

[Hasrat]

Kinda funny how the old complaints were about SMN not actually "summoning" like in games of old. "Give us attacks that are summons that are cool and powerful." And now it sorta seems like they took to that advice, and now it's too boring, "I want to cast stuff."



Anyway, I kinda never got around to touching SMN in ShB, which... I'm guessing doesn't matter much with how completely they overhauled. Just trying to make sure I've got the gist of this, at 70 at least (and doesn't look like it changes much from there..).

Summon Carbuncle, because it's required even if it doesn't do anything itself.
Energy Drain (or aoe) presumably on cooldown, Fester (or aoe) as you please, you get one Ruin 4, use it for movement or whatever I guess.
Summon Bahamut, use Death Flare and Akh Morn before timer is up.
Summon an Egi, burn out the Gemshines (or aoe), summon next, repeat. Presumably movement considerations go into this part. But use them all anyway?

One thing I don't super like is how much they make a distinction of doing elemental damage, even though elemental aspects don't do anything. But I guess that's just part of dressing up spells to make it look like there's more variety.

[Mondschnee]

Kinda funny how the old complaints were about SMN not actually "summoning" like in games of old. "Give us attacks that are summons that are cool and powerful." And now it sorta seems like they took to that advice, and now it's too boring, "I want to cast stuff."

You make it sound like casting =/= summoning. You can cast and still summon, or at least alternate between both. It's always about a good balance of things. The point is that SMN isn't acting like a caster but more like physical ranged class as of now and that's missing the point imo.

[Hasrat]

Ehhh... I might have to play around with the job more to get a good feel. But it's possible I may agree. Unlike AST, I'm not really sure SMN has enough integral weaving going on to need the short cast times.

[Shiroe]

Love the new Smn too! (still keeping one dot would have been nice) .., and pre-90 Smn feels strong too, but at 90 it feels a bit / tick weak

(not a strong caster dps anymore.., sure Blm is and should remain top caster dps .. but feels as if Smn fell behind Rdm & Mnk too, a bit more thsn excepted.., both 2 dps also with slight or (more, Rdm) utility.., Smn feels like it dropped low as ever (normally, new classes or big reworks start off strong or OP, than get lowered after time a bit, .. new Smn is not the case, and somehow doubt it will get a buff)