6.0 Summoner: Thoughts on an Unsuccessful Rework After 1 Month of Gameplay

[Aikaal]

RDM rotation is less complicated for me because you have options to work around while the SMN rotation offers no option. You have a line, follow the line, deal with the line. It by far more complex for someone who wish to optimize and is stuck with papa SE holding your hand and telling you, "No my child, follow the line."

Removing the restrictiveness of the rotation would be a first step. Removing that absurd mobility nobody asked for would be the second step. Adding more firepower would be a third step.

To put it simply, with P2S as an example, on BLM I can set myself to finish with my good damage spells before the 9 seconds invuln and get all my burst ready after the invuln during the burst window. On RDM, I can set myself up so when I can hit again, I do a melee combo, have a second melee combo up so my biggest damage windows hits the buff windows and my Embolden. On Summoner. Well, since you must summon Bahamut before casting your elemental primals, I guess you either go out of sync from buff windows or your Ruin Mage for 12 seconds. None is a good option, there is only a worst dps loss option.

It is incredibly frustration, annoying and difficult to deal with. If you let my gems activate from an unrelated oGCD button that doesn't require Phoenix or Bahamut then I suddenly would have options and it would make the job more engaging.

To sum up;

- People wanted to feel like a real Summoner, good job they did. I do believe the old summoner should never be mentioned as a good Summoner class.
- People never asked restrictive gameplay which does not engage the player to think. That what was good with old Summoner and that people saying "Old Summoner was better" feel
- People never asked for Ranged Phys Mobility. Remove that. Make us feel like real casters and plan our mobility properly instead of having me dance around my white mage.
- Nobody ever asked Summoner to straight out do worst damage than Red Mage who has better support with good mobility toolkit.

The Summoner design has merits but it is fundamentally filled with issues the dev team clearly did not think through. I doubt they have any dev playing as a main Summoner.

I wonder how Yoshida-san would feel about Summoner if he was truly playing it during Pandaemonium and enjoy all the frustrations Summoners currently share. I don,t think the situation was create on purpose but it was create from ignorance of how the class playstyle feels. They didn't playtest it enough. If it was damage only the issue, the solution would be simple but it isn't just damage that I have issue with Summoner.

[Rika007]

To sum up;

- People wanted to feel like a real Summoner, good job they did. I do believe the old summoner should never be mentioned as a good Summoner class.
- People never asked restrictive gameplay which does not engage the player to think. That what was good with old Summoner and that people saying "Old Summoner was better" feel
- People never asked for Ranged Phys Mobility. Remove that. Make us feel like real casters and plan our mobility properly instead of having me dance around my white mage.
- Nobody ever asked Summoner to straight out do worst damage than Red Mage who has better support with good mobility toolkit

Gonna need to call out a few things here:

-Being mobile as hell has always been a trait that most summoner players have felt is core to the class. And the game itself has become more mobile across the board. Melees have less restrictions on positionals and dont lose combos with ranged attacks. Tanks got the same and some of them got even more GCD ranged options. Healers got shorter cast times (and Sage is insanely mobile)/ Black Mages now can unironically go no casts for over half a minute without a single drop in potency. Red Mages have gained even more mobility through the changes to acceleration, charges to their engages and disengages, and another insta cast on their combo, along with the ability to choose when they do their melee combos more often. Summoners were already the most mobile caster in the game before this rework, and to keep that title with how RDM and BLM are, you basically have to be as mobile as summoner is now. So yes, we asked for that. Now if you feel that its bad those other 2 jobs are as mobile as they are now, that's cool, but overall across the board I doubt most see an issue with that.

-Shadowbringers summoner had literally one of the most restrictive gameplay loops in the games history, especially when compared to Stormblood summoner which had one of the most free-flowing ones out there (god i missed being able to aetherflow dump everything right before a phase change and do a mini burst with dreadwyrm). One mistake on 5.0 SMN and you would tank your DPS in an instant. Now I'm not gonna sit here and state that Endwalker SMN is some free flowing job, it deffinitely is not, but it is in no way as restrictive as what we were working with before, and that was 100% something the SMN community asked for.

[Aikaal]

Gonna need to call out a few things here:

Now I'm not gonna sit here and state that Endwalker SMN is some free flowing job, it deffinitely is not, but it is in no way as restrictive as what we were working with before, and that was 100% something the SMN community asked for.

Yeah but none can boast to say they only see 7 casts per 2 minutes. Strong mobility should not outright just ignore the whole concept. Black Mages need to plan that mobility for mechanics. In that sense, SMN should never be punish or suffer from firepower because of that.

As for restrictions, what I mean is when I get in situations such as P2S and you drop down time during burst window and my party, with reason, go ahead and delays all CDs. That works fine but you suddenly have 4 options as a Summoner
1- You take the L and hold Bahamut becoming a Ruin III mage for 12 second and lose massive DPS.
2- You force the group to take the L and lose 9 seconds of burst (Who would ever do that)
3- You take the L, still use Bahamut asap and have your whole burst window out of sync from burst cooldowns
4- You take the L and try to make some sort of copium fast BiS so your Bahamut recast time is about 55s.

Those restrictions are punishments for you and your party. Other jobs have restrictions also, Black Mage and Red Mage have restrictions but they are fun restrictions to work around. In the case of the current Summoner, they are straight not enjoyable, they just refuse my right to optimize my damage with my party.

You can delay Searing Light but Searing Light is restricted to Carbuncle. Can't use it while Baha/Phoenix. You also can't use it while summon Ifrit/Garuda/Titan which all suck 5 seconds windows each. So you have a time frame of 30 seconds out of 60s to use your buff. Radiant Aegis is subject to the same restrictions but it has 2 stacks so you do gain niche over Manaward so this is fine.

Your gems are restricted to happen when you press Phoenix/Bahamut. I honestly do not understand the logic behind a super smooth brain rotation that forces your brain to remain smooth. It's just not fun.

What you're telling me is those restrictions are definitely fine. It's definitely fine to hinder your party because your restrictions prevent you to synergize with your group. I don't think that's what you wante dto say but that's kinda what you've just told me. You can take a look at the current P2S top summoner logs, This one since it has the fastest kill time in the top 10 The Summoner just took the L by take off his Bahamut burst from the buff window. It's a bad decision but in this case, it's the lesser bad decision you can take. We essentially have to just continue the smooth brain rotation because we have no option of optimisation from the restriction. I doubt any previous Summoner gameplay had this issue.

[Myon88]

As for restrictions, what I mean is when I get in situations such as P2S and you drop down time during burst window and my party, with reason, go ahead and delays all CDs. That works fine but you suddenly have 4 options as a Summoner

1- You take the L and hold Bahamut becoming a Ruin III mage for 12 second and lose massive DPS.
2- You force the group to take the L and lose 9 seconds of burst (Who would ever do that)
3- You take the L, still use Bahamut asap and have your whole burst window out of sync from burst cooldowns
4- You take the L and try to make some sort of copium fast BiS so your Bahamut recast time is about 55s.

Those restrictions are punishments for you and your party. Other jobs have restrictions also, Black Mage and Red Mage have restrictions but they are fun restrictions to work around. In the case of the current Summoner, they are straight not enjoyable, they just refuse my right to optimize my damage with my party.

I feel you on this, but honestly good luck trying to get people to understand things like this. The vast majority of players do not grasp these concepts because they don't engage with the game at that level. This introduces a problem where people have major blind spots when it comes to critiquing job design objectively.

Historically this is why jobs like the melees and blm have great PR. Even a novice player can relate to being out of range or unable to cast, so their skill component is never in question. In contrast, sources of difficulty that are nuanced or emergent are basically invisible to them. When a job forces you to greed for uptime, that's part of its skill expression. When you have to deal with juggling pets or dots or timers, suddenly it's 'clunky gameplay' or 'artificial difficulty'. Sound familiar?

This is why you see contradictory sentiments all the time, like combined trances getting rave reviews when bahamut and dreadwyrm trance being split was nothing but a benefit. Or wyrmwave cueing mechanics being panned despite being the only thing forcing summoners to stand still in Stormblood and Shadowbringers. If people resent summoner mobility that much, why are they not clamoring for that back? Evidently, distaste for difficult mechanics outweighs aversion to phys ranged gameplay.

[zcrash970]

I wonder how Yoshida-san would feel about Summoner if he was truly playing it during Pandaemonium and enjoy all the frustrations Summoners currently share. I don,t think the situation was create on purpose but it was create from ignorance of how the class playstyle feels. They didn't playtest it enough. If it was damage only the issue, the solution would be simple but it isn't just damage that I have issue with Summoner.

I think this is part of the problem. It's evident that the devs play certain jobs like yoshi and blm. Some jobs just feel better than others and some just feel like that were just slapped together. Healers and smn come to mind.

Take whm for example. Literally so many skills and traits are hot garbage. Like yeah, whm is easy to play but there's literally no point to freecure. Lilies should restore mp at least. Cure 3 is nice but is so niche that most people can't use efficiently. Lilybell is kinda useless outside of frequent raid hit

But going back to smn, I believe they said they realize smn will need a rework in 4.x. if that is so, I'm just sad that this is best that they can come up with. Like none of the issues were fixed other than turning haha/phoe into a standing turrent.
It feels like they had a checklist and need to summon full size egis was the only thing on that list