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

[Imoye]

The alleged "massive" backlash is a handful of people on the forums and reddit, so massive in this regard would refer moreso to their specific reaction rather than that of most people. For whatever reason, they refuse to approach things in a healthy way and try something new, instead choosing to relive the pain of losing old SMN over and over again on here I suppose. Of course the job could use a little extra, but both old and new SMN mains in game are better off with the current state of affairs compared to the hand-twisting mess of a job that SMN became over the years.

SMN mains were never united in what they wanted, some wanted to be actual Summoners while others did indeed want to be poison mages. Rather than continue twisting the job's identity further, they decided to bring things in line with its actual namesake while getting rid of the systems players had been complaining about for the past 8 years, which reached fever pitch with the SMN of 5.0-5.X.

People grow attached to their job over the years. What exactly is unreasonable about being upset when your job completely changes? The biggest issue by far, though, is the sheer simplicity of the job. It's mind-numbingly easy even if the job otherwise has decent mechanics. You cannot go from a job being highly complex to braindead easy. It's bound to upset a lot of people - which it did.

[tearagion]

snip

None of this is an argument, it's mostly speculation and misrepresentation, you have the least healthy approach of anyone.

The problem with the new design is that the job went from having been a dot class for EIGHT years to being something entirely different. I don't see how the devs could not foresee the massive backlash from summoner players that this would bring. They not only changed how the job works, but they also changed complexity from arguably the highest in the game to the lowest. Changing a job so fundamentally without deep dialogue with summoner players speaks to a complete lack of respect for those who main the job.

The new design is interesting, but ultimately it is way too easy to play and does not feel rewarding. There's no room for optimizing the rotation, and decision-making does not really exist.

It's a decent fundament, but it's not finished and should not have been released.

This sums up many of my feelings as well. I want to assume that the developers did consider what summoner players enjoyed, but the rework really doesn't show any of that potential consideration from my perspective at the very least.

[Shuuli]

Because the people that like it are playing it, and not complaining on the forums. The people that don't like it are here.

This thread title is just troll bait. Some clearly do not like it, but that doesn't make the rework "unsuccessful". Seems that plenty of people actually do like it. Clearly, it was a very divisive rework, but calling it unsuccessful is just hyperbole.

I would kindly ask to not generalize. There are people like me who cleared both EX trials and are doing savage raiding as summoner.

I play summoner, I gear summoner, but day by day I keep thinking, maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't, because I do not enjoy it at all. It is just the stubbornness in me that does not want to let my 585 ilevel go to waste that does not want to change.

I started playing as dancer for P3S and holy macaroni, so much better. I feel like I am much more useful to my team. I told this in another topic and will say it here too. I do not like the new summoner. However, I will not be devastated if they do not change it. I will just change job Fine by me.

[Rolder50]

I would kindly ask to not generalize. There are people like me who cleared both EX trials and are doing savage raiding as summoner.

I play summoner, I gear summoner, but day by day I keep thinking, maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't, because I do not enjoy it at all. It is just the stubbornness in me that does not want to let my 585 ilevel go to waste that does not want to change.

I started playing as dancer for P3S and holy macaroni, so much better. I feel like I am much more useful to my team. I told this in another topic and will say it here too. I do not like the new summoner. However, I will not be devastated if they do not change it. I will just change job Fine by me.

Well, you could switch to Red Mage and most of the gear would still be useful. That said, i don't know how the stat priorities are different, but I imagine they'd be about the same as long as you weren't doing meme spell speed summoner or something.

[Megguido]

Complexity set aside, the rework didn't take away the pet jank that was a big problem of old SMN.

I can't use Searing Light / Radiant Aegis during Baha or Phoenix, I can't use it 5 seconds after summoning a primal either. That's about 30 seconds every minute where I can't use both my teamwide buff and my shield. And on top of that if I don't leave some time to Carbuncle to cast its spell, it's going to ghost with the next summon.

This was an issue with old SMN, this is still an issue now, but worse because I have even less time to use Devotion/Searing Light.

Imagine not being able to use Manawall during Astral Fire, or Litany during Life of the Dragon, or Raging Strike during Wanderer's Minuet. That's how dumb Searing Light is.

[Sequora]

I keep reading all of these posts about how rigid the rotation is. Did any of you even play the old summoner? The only extra thing you had to pay attention to was the DoT timer. Otherwise it was a very strict rotation.

Red mage is a proc caster. Every cast has a chance to activate another spell. The rotation itself is pretty set. I think people are forgetting how simplistic 4.0 red mage was. It was a very well designed simple job that has gotten really solid QoL changes.

Black mage too, has a fairly set rotation. Black mage has a couple of systems that make things complicated. Procs being one.

I think 6.0 summoner is a fairly strong base, that would have been great in 2.0 or 3.0. That being said, if we are indeed paying the range tax, I wouldn’t mind losing some of it for damage. Either that or they take away rez. I wouldn’t mind being slightly under blm, without rez

[SargeTheSeagull]

The alleged "massive" backlash is a handful of people on the forums and reddit, so massive in this regard would refer moreso to their specific reaction rather than that of most people. For whatever reason, they refuse to approach things in a healthy way and try something new, instead choosing to relive the pain of losing old SMN over and over again on here I suppose. Of course the job could use a little extra, but both old and new SMN mains in game are better off with the current state of affairs compared to the hand-twisting mess of a job that SMN became over the years.

SMN mains were never united in what they wanted, some wanted to be actual Summoners while others did indeed want to be poison mages. Rather than continue twisting the job's identity further, they decided to bring things in line with its actual namesake while getting rid of the systems players had been complaining about for the past 8 years, which reached fever pitch with the SMN of 5.0-5.X.

I’m convinced that you either are a troll or genuinely have no clue what you’re talking about.

[Xiaoki]

People grow attached to their job over the years. What exactly is unreasonable about being upset when your job completely changes? The biggest issue by far, though, is the sheer simplicity of the job. It's mind-numbingly easy even if the job otherwise has decent mechanics. You cannot go from a job being highly complex to braindead easy. It's bound to upset a lot of people - which it did.

It's unreasonable to think that everything will stay the same after 10 years.

Well, at this point you can evaluate your options.

Play a different Job
Quit the game
Or (and the most likely course of action) keep playing Summoner but complain endlessly about the "good ol' days"

Hey, maybe the developers will revert the changes if you whine enough. I hear that works sometimes, just ask the HW Dark Knight people.

[aveyond-dreams]

I’m convinced that you either are a troll or genuinely have no clue what you’re talking about.

When they announced the rework the most common sentiment everywhere from SMN mains and now-interested players was "thank god this class is finally a Summoner now and good riddance to its old systems." The only places where poison mage Summoners still have somewhat of a voice is on here and some obscure discords probably. The job could definitely use some more ogcds and new summons added in whatever way they can manage, but we don't need to entertain ideas about bringing back the mechanics that already exhausted people's patience.

[CKNovel]

When they announced the rework the most common sentiment everywhere from SMN mains and now-interested players was "thank god this class is finally a Summoner now and good riddance to its old systems." The only places where poison mage Summoners still have somewhat of a voice is on here and some obscure discords probably. The job could definitely use some more ogcds and new summons added in whatever way they can manage, but we don't need to entertain ideas about bringing back the mechanics that already exhausted people's patience.

Is it now a summoner? Yes.
Is it good job design? No.
Are dots the best solution to fix the current design? Not necesseraly.

SMN got away from the dot mage since HW.
Please kindly remember how SMN used to play and had to manually reset dots and spread those through the use of Aetherflow.
As expansion went through, the dot management was more and more reduced with the use and reset of Tri disaster. If I'm not mistaken, you had to manually reset you dot only once in your rotation loop during ShB.
Samurai is not supposed to be a dot job, Ninja is more akin to use dots yet it was removed.

Please understand that people don't actually wants the dot. They want the complexity that was behind the dots, one additional thing to follow and to care about, which isn't a lot to ask for.