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

[tearagion]

Old SMN wasn't even remotely complex....It was clunky and annoying to play because of how you interacted with the egi's.

I see this a lot, but I've never seen any reasoning behind it. Could you please explain to me why you think it was simple?

[Ransu]

I see this a lot, but I've never seen any reasoning behind it. Could you please explain to me why you think it was simple?

Because it was? The only thing "complicated" about SMN was its opener when you're weaving a handful of oGCD's between egi assaults and I'd barely call that complicated. You just followed a 2 minute rotation that was broken up by phases with Bahamut, filler, firebird while using Ifrit 98% of the time....woo....

What exactly did you find about the job that was complex? Dot management? Damn I guess nearly all the jobs are complex then.

[tearagion]

Because it was? The only thing "complicated" about SMN was its opener when you're weaving a handful of oGCD's between egi assaults and I'd barely call that complicated. You just followed a 2 minute rotation that was broken up by phases with Bahamut, filler, firebird while using Ifrit 98% of the time....woo....

What exactly did you find about the job that was complex? Dot management? Damn I guess nearly all the jobs are complex then.

So it was simple because it had an optimal rotation in a vacuum to follow? Complexity is just pressing more buttons? If the job was still around I would encourage you to take it into higher end content to try to optimize it yourself. Unlike current SMN it was possible to run out of movement in SB and to a much lesser extent ShB, and your burst windows weren't handed to you on a silver platter (well, phoenix kind of was, but it was my personal least favourite of the Demis). There wasn't a pre-ordained and extremely straightforward way to deal with downtime, you didn't use your raid buff mindlessly off of cooldown, the list goes on. Even the DoTs you hold in so little regard could be shifted out of the standard to give you a Bio instant cast somewhere you needed it to move, and in scenarios like TEA phase 1 and 2 your rotation would be altered significantly in order to keep uptime on two main targets. EW SMN actively considers only when they can use Ifrit, which is melee for 1 gcd and casting for 1 or 2, and Garuda, which is 3s of casting and whether or not the boss will move within 15s (absolutely minuscule damage loss if they do move). Saying ShB SMN was simple in a much wider lens than FFXIV is fair, but compared to other FFXIV jobs and ESPECIALLY new SMN I'd argue it was complex.

Even all of that aside, taking ShB SMN into only "low" end content, say maximum alliance raids, the rotation was significantly more engaging because you had more than one resource to manage (that one persistent resource has also been simplified), and the margin for failure in the rotation was higher.