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

[tearagion]

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

I'm not sure you played very much SMN, the rotation was very flexible outside of your Demi summons, of which Bahamut was only somewhat flexible.

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.

What is the point of this post? SE devs don't care, so don't bother voicing an opinion?

[Sequora]

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

I mean I think there’s been a very vocal minority being unhappy with summoner changes. You would never think that being logged into the game. I see summoners in almost every group. On NA servers at least it seems at least as popular as red mage, if not maybe more so.

[Navnav]

The problem with forums, is that they don't realise they are a vocal minority. The VAST majority are loving life in the game with the new summoner, and half of them don't even know this place exists anyway.
Square has the numbers, and unless them numbers are below ninjas, nothing will change much, if at all with the current summoner, no matter how loud the forum cry.

[Sequora]

I'm not sure you played very much SMN, the rotation was very flexible outside of your Demi summons, of which Bahamut was only somewhat flexible.



What is the point of this post? SE devs don't care, so don't bother voicing an opinion?

Are you trying to tell me that there wasn’t an optimal rotation? Because there was, and it was way more rigid than black mage and red mage. Pre 6.0 Summoner was a priority job. Do you have your dots up? Do you have egi assaults to use?

Can you be more specific with flexibility? Or maybe give your definition of flexibility? I remember quite a bit of ruin spamming with lots of oGCD weaving.

Is 6.0 summoner perfect? Absolutely not. I think it’s a step in the right direction.

[tearagion]

Are you trying to tell me that there wasn’t an optimal rotation? Because there was, and it was way more rigid than black mage and red mage. Pre 6.0 Summoner was a priority job. Do you have your dots up? Do you have egi assaults to use?

Can you be more specific with flexibility? Or maybe give your definition of flexibility? I remember quite a bit of ruin spamming with lots of oGCD weaving.

Is 6.0 summoner perfect? Absolutely not. I think it’s a step in the right direction.

It was flexible because, as you say, it was a priority system and those priorities didn't dominate every GCD between burst phases. As long as you entered Bahamut with 4 Ruin IVs and, didn't drop your DoTs, didn't drift CDs like Egi-Assault and Energy Drain, you were 90% of the way there. The skills not important to your burst could be fairly freely shuffled around to optimize a specific fight's movement and windows.

[SargeTheSeagull]

On NA servers at least it seems at least as popular as red mage, if not maybe more so.

“Lots of people play it so it’s fine” It’s basically a new job, of course people are playing it. Lots of people played red mage and samurai when 4.0 dropped. Lots of people played DRK, Astro and MCH when HW came out. Doesn’t mean it’s good. Doesn’t mean it’s well designed. It means people want to try it out. I mean people played a bunch of monk in 5.0 thanks to GL4. We all know how that turned out. Give it six months and nobody will touch summoner in anything harder than a dungeon.

[dinnertime]

I mean I think there’s been a very vocal minority being unhappy with summoner changes. You would never think that being logged into the game. I see summoners in almost every group. On NA servers at least it seems at least as popular as red mage, if not maybe more so.

People seem to like saying this to undervalue negative opinions with the rework, but have nothing to justify their claims. This is pretty much hear-say.

Like, we can't even factually say if the job is being played all that much other than the clear rates for it on Savage.

And if SMN does end up having a lot of players in statistics, it's most likely because people are trying out a completely reworked job. Doesn't necessarily mean most people like it though. Someone said this before, but just because jobs like White Mage get a lot of players doesn't mean it's not full of problems.

[MellowMink]

Old SMN was clunky and annoying - ✓
Usual buzzwords for "I'm not good at this" and/or "This personally doesn't click with me, so it's clunky".

False. “Clunky” here doesn’t mean that someone didn’t like playing as the job or wasn’t good at it; it’s referring to multiple things that have been listed in past posts.

For one, weaving wasn’t as smooth as it could be, which is helped now by cast times being lower for some spells. A second thing was Bahamut annoyingly having to follow you around before he casted attacks that you requested he perform; asking him to attack could often not happen if it was done with only a few seconds left in his timer. That’s improved with the newer job design where he stops following you around constantly. But the biggest thing to me was that the egi actions in Shadowbringers often had an inconsistent delay, whether it came to attacks or Devotion; you would have to sometimes hold off on starting one of the demi-summons in case you risk one of your pet attacks not fully executing and thus being wasted, when they shouldn’t have had that sometimes awkwardly queued delay to begin with. And this wasn’t an occasional problem; it happened frequently and was irritating.

Dismissing legitimate criticism of the older job design as other players simply being bad is rude, uncalled for, and is less likely to have your own criticisms be taken seriously by Square Enix; they’ll probably be more likely to ignore criticism that involves harassment.

[Xiaoki]

What is the point of this post? SE devs don't care, so don't bother voicing an opinion?

Old Summoner is never coming back. No matter how much you whine and complain about how "brain dead" new Summoner is, it's gone.

It's in the trash bin forever right next to Monk positionals and old Dark Knight.

But, hey, keep voicing your opinion if you want. However, all that time and effort will be wasted because, as you said, the SE devs don't care.

[Navnav]

“Lots of people play it so it’s fine” It’s basically a new job, of course people are playing it. Lots of people played red mage and samurai when 4.0 dropped. Lots of people played DRK, Astro and MCH when HW came out. Doesn’t mean it’s good. Doesn’t mean it’s well designed. It means people want to try it out. I mean people played a bunch of monk in 5.0 thanks to GL4. We all know how that turned out. Give it six months and nobody will touch summoner in anything harder than a dungeon.

Except you SEVERELY underestimate the casual joe. He doesn't care about complexity, he just wants to finish his raids and trials and cruise through content in easy mode while looking at nice animations and getting the summoner feel aesthetically. These players are MANY, and will most likely stick with the job. You bring up monk, but for most players, pre 5.4 monk was very hard for a LOT of players, so naturally they would bow out after a while, summoner is NOT of that ilk.