I thought people might be exaggerating about SMN

[Shuuli]

Because there is more to a job then aesthetics. Gameplay is more important

100% what people don't understand about this job. I was super worried before the changes about how it will feel, how much dmg it will output, how much it will fit into teams and fights.

After playing summoner in Savage. I absolutely hate it. I feel useless, low dmg person who is carried by the team.

I have a mind numbing combo that I cannot even use properly half the time due mechanics (I cant jump in cause tethers, I cant cast my strike after jumping cause of boss aoes/cleaves that requires me to move away and then boom 430 potency lost, in other cases I need speed for heavy dps checks...) The only times I am successfully helping my team is when I skip majority of Ifrit phase...

I love dancer, it deals also low dmg, but feels so much better to play.

So, basically, if you love current summoner, that is cool. If they don't want to change it, that's okay. People who don't like current summoner will just switch. Ez pz.

[Floortank]

Because there is more to a job then aesthetics. Gameplay is more important

So all these people are playing something with no gameplay.

[NoxLumina]

Again, not sure how any of the above is doing anything to further the cause of convincing the devs to add "complex!" mage back in. All the devs see you doing is arguing in circles and being rude to me because I'm not interested in seeing SMN go backwards. How is this supposed to convince anyone of doing what you ask?

Summoner is currently the most backwards it's ever been, what are you talking about? It went from a class that rewarded precision with immense DPS, to a class without any depth.

[Hanaya]

that would come as surprise but.... *gasp* different ppl like different things ...

SMN is flashy , and fun on its own ...it could be more "interesting" to play ? yes...ofc! , it will get better? im fairly sure

BRD nowdays is easy as hell , too u are spamming 1 button 80% of time , refresh dots /change song every 45s and using procs when up ...

the question should be are u having fun? if yes keep playing that job , else look into another.

I mean, I don't think it's unfair for people who really loved a class to be upset that the entire gameplay and core mechanics of it have been absolutely changed. There isn't really an equivalent class to old smn for them to go play. I guess blm in general difficulty, but the class plays completely different from old smn (long cast times vs lots of mobility, less dot management, etc).

also, idk if I'd really call bard easy. I played sam/nin during the last 2 raid tiers of shb, and I found them vastly easier than current brd (outside of melee uptime stuff, but keeping melee uptime is honestly not that hard in most fights). It definitely has a super low skill floor, but the skill ceiling if you're trying to play optimally is pretty high. and if you want to clear current savage fights (besides p1s/p2s bc the enrage on those is super forgiving), you really need to play as optimally as possible. Your song timings change with a lot of fights (though ideally it would be 43 wm > 37 mb > 43 ap). Dying at any points can absolutely destroy your song timings for the rest of the fight.

You have to save 2.5-3 bloodletters for burst phase, burn pitch perfect at 2 stacks in the very last second of your buff window if you get unlucky with procs, never drift empyreal arrow by more than 1.5 seconds, make sure you use apex arrow at 80+ gauge within 60 second buffs, definitely not drift any of your many buffs during your burst phase, delay barrage if you get a refulgent proc, and so on. being a phys ranged makes doing mechanics very easy, but at the same time you have so much to keep track of that honestly (in my personal experience) it's way harder to do mechs than it was on sam/nin, because a lot of brainpower is going into managing all your stuff instead of doing mechs. whereas on most melees it's just the same rotation over and over again with much less management and variation, so after a certain point you don't need to look anything other than your job gauge because it's all muscle memory.

though obviously different people find different things easy/difficult. but in my experience bard feels like i'm trying to play mental chess against 3 people (the 3 people are my cooldown management, pressing all of my burst phase buttons without clipping anything, and me getting so distracted with my resource management that I end up dropping my dots).

[ReynTime]

It honestly feels clunky and slower paced now. Definitely my new least favorite job.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Because there is more to a job then aesthetics. Gameplay is more important

And to many the Summoner changes are welcomed hence why it's being played far more than it ever has been in a very long time. You may disagree on the why but that's how it is. That should tell you that it's doing something right that old Summoner clearly wasn't.

Because it had engaging gameplay, and bahamut/FBT felt like nice, giant burst phases we earned. Instead of doing the same thing every 15 seconds.

DoT stacking and maintaining wasn't engaging for most players hence why Summoner was played far less before the changes and many complained that Summoner didn't feel like being an actual Summoner. Now it does.

Because there is more to a job then aesthetics. Gameplay is more important

Your interpretation of gameplay is purely opinion based and a minority in this instance due to far more playing Summoner now than they did in Shadowbringers. If they didn't enjoy it then they wouldn't be queueing as Summoner still. The newness coat of paint has worn off already yet they stay as Summoner.

Because there were things to think about, keep track of, line up, manage, timings to consider, abilities played/interacted with each other (ruin stacks, resetting of tri disaster), Interesting little tactical things you could do in situations and most of all there was room for personal growth. You still summoned too, idk why people think you didn't? Like you still had Bahamut and Pheonix in the last xpac, they just turned Bahamut into a Pheonix this xpac and made it so you spam one button instead of two during them (ST or AOE) and gave them a single astral flow click.

Titan, Garuda and Ifrit don't have any real things to consider other than movement with Ifrit, they are all roughly 4gcd with a bit of potency difference none of which is soo important that you need to really think about what order beyond movement, since you generally get to all 3 anyway unless a specific fight messes with it.

Visuals =/= fun. The visuals should enhance the experience not be the experience. I think they are headed in the right direction thematically... game play, it needs more, this is the only job in the game that makes me blatantly aware I'm clicking hardware buttons to play because there is so few things to think about or consider. I guess the upside of that is I'm 100% focused on the fights because lord knows there's nothing to pay attention to in the kit besides searing light.

It was a unique experience that no other jobs in XIV delivers on, now it's gone. No other job comes close to it's feel, I've played all of them (not all to 90 mind you) I'm all for the new visuals, and changes, but it needs more. The old one scratched a certain itch for me that is just gone though with no other job filling that void.

These other people talking about mobility , I feel like they never played summoner in the past, as it's always been mobile, to my memory. There was never a point in time where it wasn't able to move that I recall. I'm so confused by those comments.

I mean it's w/e I'm still playing it, I'll live. But ya, yikes in my opinion. Frankly the job is making me lazy as hell in fights when I try to play other jobs. This is all my opinion obviously and I'm not bashing anyone that likes it. It is what it is.

It was a bad experience. Players wanted Summoner - not DoT Mage. They got it and Summoner is much better off as it is now than how it was. The changes also open up a ton of expansion opportunities that the old Summoner kit wouldn't have allowed.

[Leigaon]

Since the job is considered dead yourself and some others, what are you playing now that fills the SMN void, if anything? Just curious to see what some might move to if they feel the same way.

[Mika_Zahard]

Just saying the fisher job has more buttons to press and depth to it than Sum imo.

Fishing raid when?

[Flatopia]

I played SMN since ARR, mained it for a bit in SB, and was fairly decent in 5.0 and actually disliked the egi assault GCD changes 5.1 brought personally. I have a bit of history with it.

People have wanted Egi's to be replaced with just big spells since ARR. Those little bastards have sucked in each iteration of the job. They sucked slightly less each expac, but they've always sucked.

The game lacked the proper mechanics for pets to be interesting, and frankly should have been removed a long time ago. Summoning for a big attack and augmenting your skills and changing how you play is a much healthier, sustainable, and honestly flavorful direction to take it. Ruin spam was boring. Dots had little to no thought behind them, especially when tri-disaster started refreshing itself during your rotation. The demis, while cool and letting the job feel like a summoner for some of it's rotation, had AI that broke all the time. The job worked awful with ping. So much of the job was just layer on layer of band-aid fixes on an outdated design that needed to have changed back when it came out.

That said, it was fun. I had fun with it despite it's jank. I do agree it sucks that people who managed to have fun with the older versions may not like the newer version. I personally do, but hey.

I think people are freaking out when it's not really needed. Summoner is now effectively a good base to actually build on. I can easily see 3 more summons taking the spot of ifrit/titan/garuda after phoenix, or maybe even something along the lines of the last summon buffing the next one in a unique way. It doesn't matter, but now they can actually do something instead of "well lets just add an entire new phase that doesn't interact with how the job worked at all prior because it's honestly just fundamentally flawed."

It sucks that it changed so much that you may not like it when you may have found it fun prior despite it's jank and awkward design, it really does. But we really should recognize this was specifically asked for since 2.0's launch. If anything, get hype because now an actual dot mage without stepping on summoner's toes.

[Dahlinea]

I think people are freaking out when it's not really needed. Summoner is now effectively a good base to actually build on . I can easily see 3 more summons taking the spot of ifrit/titan/garuda after phoenix, or maybe even something along the lines of the last summon buffing the next one in a unique way. It doesn't matter, but now they can actually do something instead of "well lets just add an entire new phase that doesn't interact with how the job worked at all prior because it's honestly just fundamentally flawed."

People love to bring that this SMN is good base to build upon or a good foundation, but we're talking about a LV90 job that feels like it's at base level.
Also, we have other two new jobs (Sage and Reaper) at their foundational levels that have far well designed kit in terms of complexity and gets better as you level up, while SMN stays practically the same from LV60 to LV90.

Fun fact is that they probably could have implemented all the shiny and flashy summons and their skills in the old SMN structure by getting rid of Bio, Miasma and the Pet skills. But hey, guess DELETING the old SMN and replacing it with a Braindead Mage was more easy.