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

[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.

[IchiExorz]

I wouldn't call the SMN rework a COMPLETE failure but I do think it's only half finished.
The successful parts of the rework:
The class identity, the actual impactfulness of the abilities. Every primal summon, & Enkindle feels impactful & satisfying. Plus you summon a lot of things now.

The unsuccessful parts of the rework:
-The mess of mechanics & abilities: Carbuncle giving a shield that u can only use half of the time feels wrong. It needs an offensive ability, or hell, even a dot? Something that interacts with our rotation maybe.
Aetherflow is tacked on and doesn't do anything for our rotation/summons other than being 3 OGCDs we press once a minute.

-How unfinished it feels: Ties in with the previous point. Class gets reworked yet they kept certain abilities that do nothing for the reworked parts (Aetherflow) or gave Carbuncle an ability that does literally nothing for our new "mechanic". (Radiant Aegis)

-How the gameplay/rotation falls flat with there being nothing to think about. I feel like they should have added one more thing that adds to our mechanic that we have to actively think about.
The 3 primals don't differ enough application wise for the player to have to make decision on when to use them (other than Ifrit.)
The rotation is way too easy, there's no real thought required to play, there's nothing that ties everything together for it to feel complete.


Something I think that would have been cool is have Titan be a melee phase. It would be another decision a player would have to make in summoning order to keep uptime while going through rotations.
All in all I feel like SMN is just messy with carbuncle feeling weird & clunky with Radiant Aegis, aetherflow is completely tacked on without thought (makes me wonder why they even kept it) the class lacks ANY depth at all. And i'm not asking for a difficult class like old SMN but it's bad that the class has much less depth than RDM which is already considered one of the easiest, if not the easiest class in the game.

I want to LOVE the new SMN because of the class identity finally being done well & it being flashy & impactful. But the simplicity & the rotation really turn me off.

Oh and a small "missed opportunity" i think is that they could have changed our appearance a bit based on what primal we're on right now. (like claws & horns with ifrit, long white hair & rocky arms with titan, wings with garuda.)

[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.

[Rika007]

To give my own thoughts on the rework. I would call it successful to a point. I enjoy the job. I like it's aesthetics. I like it's flow. I like the dopamine rush of seeing its big hits hit hard. Mobile classes have always been my jam and this summoner keeps with that. I am not a casual player. I exclusively use Summoner as my raiding job and take Bard and Black Mage into all other content. I'm not some world first level player but I raid on a static that gets tiers done in short order and put up respectable numbers once a fight is down. I do not feel bored playing this job and I certainly am enjoying prog on it far more then I did last expansion. And they took care of my two biggest complaints in banishing egi's entirely, and making it so Demi's no longer follow you like a lost puppy. Overall I'm far more pleased with this version of Summoner then I am Shadowbringers Summoner, so in that way I can call the rework a success.

But there are issues I have:

-Even with my enjoyment of the job, not even I will defend against it feeling bare bones. It does. It needs something else. Something more. 1 DoT to manage. A consistent damage buff to upkeep. More consistent weaves throughout the rotation. Just SOMETHING else to do. It would go a long way to making upper level players feel more engaged.

-While I have not in one moment had any issues with abilities ghosting, I do very much dislike not being able to use Radiant Aegis whenever I want. Searing Light being based around Carby still is just as annoying as it was before. Those abilities should center off the Summoner alone or the carby should just remain out at all times.

-There is simply put not enough oGCD's for a class as mobile as we have. Energy Drain being knocked down to a 1 minute GCD just FEELS bad when you have so much space and time to weave. Get it back to 30 seconds. Going down to one Demi Enkindle per rotation just feels off even if the hit is big and satisfying. Adjust the potency and let me rip off 2 of those suckers. More oGCD's to manage would go a LONG way in making the job feel less bare, and the above 2 I just listed would add 4 more oGCD's per minute, a small amount but one that would help.


-ED, Fester, and Painflare also could use some aesthetic love and changes that fit the jobs new aesthetic more. I don't agree with them feeling 'tacked on' they just need a visual makeover. Maybe give it some non ARR primal flair, like the Ravana or Bismark, or go full meme and make it the one thing where you pull something from Good King Moogle Mog.

-Needing to suddenly meld spell speed just feels off, and the dev team has done such a good job getting away from phases that require players to deal with ping and ability timings. I'd much rather see a GCD stacks counter then a phase timer, as right now it just feels like we are dealing with the same issues Dark Knight players are.

-The post Phoenix rotation feels repetitive going into the same summons as we did before. This feels like it will be addressed next expansion, as it seems like its basically just an easy change to just make the next big thing we get be Levi, Ramuh and Shiva to step in and replace Ifrit, Garuda and Titan respectively in the post Phoenix Summon. Then probably in 8.0 will get the inevitable next big Demi. After that the rotation will probably feel way too tight again and they might have to reconsider the jobs timer once it reaches a full 2 minute cycle.

-The actual act of summoning Ifrit, Garuda and Titan is not fast enough. This also goes into the Radiant aegis and searing light not being useable enough issue, but also prevents us from maybe doing the old Stormblood rush style of Dreadwyrm trance when a phase transition is about to hit. Speeding it up would give more control over the rotation and just a better overall feel.

So yeah, overall I am pleased, but I understand the complaints. Some of it is easily fixable now, some of it cant be addressed till a new expansion. Overall I have a positive impression of the rework, and while it doesn't challenge me to the level of Shadowbringers SMN, I enjoy it far more. Shadowbrings SMN was never a fun job for me, just rewarding to fight through it's jank and frustration. SB SMN is still the gold standard, and I would like to see the job get back to those heights overall, but I will take this as a solid start.

[Corbeau]

Summoner is good, actually.

[Madoka]

I also agree that it failed and I don't trust the devs to add any meaningful changes in 7.0 after the last few reworks. BLM always gets good upgrades and QoL because it's Yoshi's main. MNK gets a rework every expansion for whatever reason, but almost every other job that gets sweeping changes just gets left like that and maybe some minor adjustments. This is the first savage tier where I just don't feel like trying. I was already bored as hell doing normals and extremes and my static had no problem replacing me with a RDM.

Some things I would do personally.
- Put Gemshine and Brilliance abilities on Ruin and Outburst. There is zero reason they are new buttons considering they mirror the functions and it just feels like they were obligated to replace the egi assaults with something.
- Make the Gemshine and Brilliance buttons unique oGCDs based on the old egi actions. This way the animations and effects still exist and can be implemented easily. Give each one one charge per summon cycle to be used during that infusion. For the animation have the egi appear on top of the target and then the old skill animation be used. The egi doesn't need to actually be summoned and replace Carbuncle, just visually appear like Reaper's voidsent.
- a. Add the old dots each Egi used to have into these. Ifrit's inferno dot but have it come from the flaming crush animation, Titan's ground aoe earthen fury, and since Slipstream is still in Garuda's kit maybe bring back contagion to extend inferno and pee circle, though that would make garuda a lock for 3rd in the rotation so maybe Aerial Slash.
- b. They could also introduce two new oGCDs for Phoenix and Bahamut on these buttons since I doubt they will let us get 2 Enkindles in anymore.
- Energy drain back to 30s CD. Right now we're just holding the festers from phoenix to use during bahamut. We'll probably still hold 2 but at least phoenix can have some ogcds this way. Or eliminate ED entirely and just have Fester recharge. It's been kinda pointless to have ED and ES thematically considering we haven't sapped HP or MP with them in years
- Make zero pet skills rely on the pet's animation to happen. Have them come out centered from the SMN and just trigger the pet animation later.
- Bring back old Ruin 2, make it upgrade into Ruin IV when we have a stack. If I have to have a button just for Ruin IV I'd like to have another option for it.
- Make physick scale with int or get rid of it
- Make everlasting flight and Rekindle stacks that can be used with some other button on demand.


These are just off the top of my head after reading this thread, I also like many other players suggestions.

[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.

[remiff]

The basic summoner concept is good, but it seems incomplete and needs more work in the future, I don't expect any significant changes for endwalker other than a few quality of life hotfixes and maybe some buffs on ifrit's potency cast but actually the job feels incomplete and need some major changes in 7.0 like put back cast on certains spells,
restore a spell equivalent to old ruin II in case of impossibility of casting, make the ruin IV less insignificant than it is today, restore better management of resources,
make the summon system more thoughtful by adding for example an elemental combo system, give 3 stacks of summons per demi-summon and give the choice to summon on the 6 présents summons, also give up to max 6 stack in case we can't use our summons during downtime, or a spell to sacrifice stacks for a personal damage bonus, like 1 gems 2%, 2 gems 4% 3 gems 6% damage 15s.

[Katie_Kitty]

I find it funny that for such a "successful and most popular class", complaint threads about SMN keep popping one after the other.

Huh, go figure.

It's almost as if there's a vocal minority of players who are unhappy with it.

Ask any random summoner in-game and they will tell you new summoner is a true summoner and a huge improvement over the WoW class it used to be.

[Lilyth]

Ask any random summoner in-game and they will tell you new summoner is a true summoner and a huge improvement over the WoW class it used to be.

You'd be surprised.