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

[CatboySweatlord]

1. Continuing to insult and belittle people's abilities when it comes to old SMN isn't helping its case much. In any case while those egis are somewhat annoying to use, I don't have much of a problem as long as I'm using them in melee range. These issues then disappear with the level 90 upgrade. So far I have not experienced ghosting with Carbuncle or the demis since launch but if that is the case for some then I hope those issues are resolved.

2. Views vary as to what made old Summoner complex, for me it was due to the fact that I felt like I was fighting more against my keyboard and the systems than the actual boss in front of me, combined with the bugs and glitches that were far more prominent and widespread then compared to now.

3. You can make a macro to play just about any job, in any case no jobs should not have huge barriers to entry like Summoner used to have. "Complex!" gameplay lovers don't get to have entire jobs to themselves, if you want complex gameplay and challenges then Savage and Ultimate are right there.

SMN Was not that complex lmao, all you have to do was precast ruin 3, burn all your Egis, use the raidbuff, do DWT and go into bahamut, after u recast ur dots and save a R4. like that's not complex at all and I wish people who didn't even play the class that much would stop gaslighting players into thinking this job was some gigabrain caster, it was easy as heck, Only hard part comes from opti but that's like every job

[Xiaoki]

They'll come for you too one day. Just wait

Meh, I'll just switch to a different Job. Again.

You see, in FF14 you aren't beholden to just one.

[Grimoire-M]

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."

There's been about 100 pages scattered across multiple threads refuting this exact point. I've even explained the technical details of why to some casual people in game and they have no problem understanding the argument once they do some quick testing.

There's three test cases available to you right now that explain the issue:
- Swap to Scholar and just press the various pet buttons (Fey Union/Blessing/Illumination, Whispering Dawn, Summon Seraph/Consolation) between Broil IV spam, then Ruin II spam on a dummy.
- Swap back to Summoner and after using Bahamut, Summon an Avatar and mash Radiant Shield until you're able to use it, Counting how long it takes. Along the way, make a mental note when the Avatar appears, when it does damage, and when it leaves. Radiant Shield will be available when Carby reappears.
- Contrast the rough numbers of the dummy situations above with the same tests in an actual encounter (Doing your normal rotation on Stone Sky Sea will do), or by comparing them to a hardcast raise (which every Summoner who is even remotely interested in these cases should be familiar with doing in an encounter) on a friend.

A lot of the issues with the new rotation immediately get explained once you see that the Resummon mechanic itself forced it into this situation. And those are three obvious test cases that anyone in this thread can figure out just from playing the Endwalker Arcanist jobs naturally and paying attention if they feel something is off. It doesn't even take an imagination to see what could have been with the context of Scholar alone. However, the other two examples are necessary to explain how we got this rotation. People can easily understand the Resummon mechanic has to go once they see it's holding the job back, because it factually is. Not necessarily the rework, the Resummon mechanic. Because then there might be room for more complexity that actually makes the Summons and Carby feel impactful and like they're a core part of the rotation. That's the Summoner we're all looking for.


I have made the argument that the Resummon mechanic is core to a lot of issues with the new rotation, but it all stems from actually testing out those use cases in isolation and in practice to actually see it. I'm sure some people have already intuited those problems given the Searing Light ghosting issue somehow still exists for them. It doesn't for me and I'm at 200 ping, but I also liked Shadowbringers Summoner's response time and I agree it was objectively worse, so, eh. Somewhere the devs got the rework wrong (I presume as a knee jerk reaction to FesterRuin in ShB's launch), but whatever they did to pet AI in the interim is more right than it ever has been. And I want them to know that because it should be celebrated. What makes me in particular angry is knowing they could have planned around that.

Which is another reason they need more staff. Straight up. Get more people into their design, AI, and QA teams and they'd have the breathing room to make stuff like this work consistently.

[Yuella]

Gameplay is infinitely better than pre-rework. Therefore, rework is successful. Whether it does enough damage is another question unrelated to gameplay rework.

[Megguido]

Gameplay is infinitely better than pre-rework. Therefore, rework is successful. Whether it does enough damage is another question unrelated to gameplay rework.

I agree with damage being unrelated to gameplay, that's just a matter of number tweaking. But saying the gameplay is infinitely better now so the rework is successful, is using your own opinion to conclude than the rework is a success.

Old SMN was far from perfect. New SMN is also far from perfect. We still have to deal with pet actions that either ghost or are unavailable because Carby must disappear half the time for whatever reason.

[Flay_wind]

Gameplay is infinitely better than pre-rework. Therefore, rework is successful. Whether it does enough damage is another question unrelated to gameplay rework.

Gameplay is complete dogshit pre 86. Press your summon button, press damage button 6 times, press another button, spam damage button 2-4 times (repeat that step 3 times), repeat. Mix in Energy Drain/Syphon and glowy combo buttons in there once a minute.
Post 86 gameplay is not much better, but it's a slight improvement.

[JacobNewblood]

Precisely!
~
1-57 : ruin mage with carby>egi summons that nets you more powerful/instant ruins, weaving Festers/Painflare. About half your Ruins are instant (8 total from Garuda n titan, 8-10 from ifrit and Aethercharge)

58-69(nice) : you get DWT, Bahamut Ruins in DWT, and other ruins stay ruin. Approx 80%? of your spells are instants (pending on how many normal ruins you cast plus Ifirits Ruins) with Deathflare to weave in with Festers/Painflare.

70-79 : Same as 60-69, but now you get Bahamut summoned, Enkindle Bahamut to weave. FINALLY ruins become Elemental; note after lvl 70 (74 pending on what you count), we learn no new abilities other than trait upgrades till 86, respectfully. no Phoenix trance while leveling

80-85 : Same as 70-79, tri-diaster is elemental, and we have phoenix, plays similar to Baha but with rekindle instead of deathflare.

86-90 : Add egi astral flows; outside of that is still the same stuff we press with one more button to press during Egi. Only for 4 levels of content, as more 90 content is released will be less of an issue

~
I played ShB Summoner and a touch of SB summoner. I miss and don't miss old SMN,
~

What should have been done is that:
we get the egi upgrades periodically through low levels(30-45), we Get the full primal upgrades periodically as well between 80-86. 86 is the last full primal summon.
Move the astral flow upgrades to the 60-70 bracket(63 66 and 69), we barely get any upgrades or traits there, allowing more additions to our rotations at a lower but reasonable spot and making our ruins upgrade to their elemental forms with said unlocks.
Give us back Phoenix Trance at lvl 72,
as for capstone, give us a nice summon ability or something, (open to ideas on this)
~~~

There is a lack of build-up, especially past 70. 1-69 we slowly gain the ability to summon egis, get DWT before summoning Bahamut, we build up to that point over time. 70-80 our ruins get aug, then we summon phoenix. 80-90 our aoe gets Aug, we gain astral flow, we can summon all 3 primal forms, there's no build-up really.

~~

We have room to weave but only 3-5 things(6 in titan after 86) to weave
(1ED 2AF and 2 demi abilities, and Titans)
Ruin IV feels weird, it has its uses, movement or Burst windows,
I'd remove ED/Siphon, add their potency to Fester/Painflare, and make them shared CDs with 2 stacks, Yes I know it removes one weave spell. or like others have said, reduce ED CD so we can weave more often. even if it's a trait later on.

~

please let searing light be used out of combat like aetherpack.

~~

That's my take,
I would not call this remake a failure, I stay true to my book and summons out of love for the job and pure primal spite. And while I like it, it can still use some tune-ups or something added/rearranged.
I am grateful for the time the devs put in. And I know SMN while Great, can and will be even better as time goes on, I mean, it's only 6.05, what can happen?

[dinnertime]

To reiterate again, SMN's "old systems" and most issues were never addressed with this rework.

-Aetherflow is still disconnected from SMN's entire kit. A problem with 5.x SMN when they changed it to how it is now, from being your main resource to progress your rotation in 4.x and earlier.
-Pet ghosting is still a thing and frustrations from delays still happen. It's removed from Bahamut and Phoenix by making them auto-attack, and the RGY summons being flashy animations instead, but Searing Light and Radiant Aegis from Carbuncle can ghost, and if you're below level 90, your RGY summons can still ghost their enkindle if they can't reach the target fast enough. But back to Searing Light, not only is it possible to ghost, it's unusable when you use your other summons which is roughly 98% of the time.
-Lack of flexibility. This is an issue with 5.x SMN after they reworked Aetherflow. Now I believe it's even less flexible because there is just zero downtime to delay on using your summons, or else it's a DPS loss.
-Ruin Spam is still a thing. Believe it or not, The Rites and Catastrophes are still Ruin/Outburst in a different coat of paint (it's especially apparent in lower levels and the trait upgrading them being called Ruin Mastery), along with Bahamut and Phoenix's themed spells. Not that this is an issue to me ever personally, but this was a very common complaint with SMN back then.
-Phoenix's utility is largely unreliable, especially when they added Rekindle.
-Physick is still useless and kept around for absolutely no reason.
-Lack of new summons. This has been a complaint since the very beginning. We did get Bahamut and Phoenix over the years, but I'm sure most of us wanted to see Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva for the longest time.
-Egi glamours were forgotten, especially now where you can't glamour your summons at 90.

I'm sure there's more but this is all I can think of at the moment.

EDIT:
What they "fixed":
-The theme and fantasy of the job. Not a technical thing, but a lot of us can agree that we appreciate this the most out of the rework.
-DoTs being gone. Believe it or not, they started removing DoT-themed abilities in favor of Summoning-themed abilities starting 4.x but now it's completely gone.
-Egi Assault being replaced with the new RGY summon system. Reason why is because instead of these spells being casted by your summon, it's casted by yourself. So no ghosting.

New issues:
-Acquiring Phoenix is a DPS loss because it has no damage-dealing Astral Flow.
-Garuda apparently becomes a DPS loss at a certain level. (Not at 90)

[Payadopa]

SMN has a solid foundation. Looking forward to how they'll improve it. Love how it plays.

[tearagion]

To reiterate again, SMN's "old systems" and most issues were never addressed with this rework.

-Aetherflow is still disconnected from SMN's entire kit. A problem with 5.x SMN when they changed it to how it is now, from being your main resource to progress your rotation in 4.x and earlier.
-Pet ghosting is still a thing and frustrations from delays still happen. It's removed from Bahamut and Phoenix by making them auto-attack, and the RGY summons being flashy animations instead, but Searing Light and Radiant Aegis from Carbuncle can ghost, and if you're below level 90, your RGY summons can still ghost their enkindle if they can't reach the target fast enough. But back to Searing Light, not only is it possible to ghost, it's unusable when you use your other summons which is roughly 98% of the time.
-Lack of flexibility. This is an issue with 5.x SMN after they reworked Aetherflow. Now I believe it's even less flexible because there is just zero downtime to delay on using your summons, or else it's a DPS loss.
-Ruin Spam is still a thing. Believe it or not, The Rites and Catastrophes are still Ruin/Outburst in a different coat of paint (it's especially apparent in lower levels and the trait upgrading them being called Ruin Mastery), along with Bahamut and Phoenix's themed spells. Not that this is an issue to me ever personally, but this was a very common complaint with SMN back then.
-Phoenix's utility is largely unreliable, especially when they added Rekindle.
-Physick is still useless and kept around for absolutely no reason.
-Lack of new summons. This has been a complaint since the very beginning. We did get Bahamut and Phoenix over the years, but I'm sure most of us wanted to see Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva for the longest time.
-Egi glamours were forgotten, especially now where you can't glamour your summons at 90.

I'm sure there's more but this is all I can think of at the moment.

EDIT:
What they "fixed":
-The theme and fantasy of the job. Not a technical thing, but a lot of us can agree that we appreciate this the most out of the rework.
-DoTs being gone. Believe it or not, they started removing DoT-themed abilities in favor of Summoning-themed abilities starting 4.x but now it's completely gone.
-Egi Assault being replaced with the new RGY summon system. Reason why is because instead of these spells being casted by your summon, it's casted by yourself. So no ghosting.

New issues:
-Acquiring Phoenix is a DPS loss because it has no damage-dealing Astral Flow.
-Garuda apparently becomes a DPS loss at a certain level. (Not at 90)

since Fountain of Fire buffs Phoenix isn't a damage loss anymore at 6 casts. Everything else is completely accurate though.