New SMN is a mind-numbingly boring one-button job

[aveyond-dreams]

I could ask the exact same question of those who still to this day cannot bring themselves to try out a new job if they are so disappointed with the current direction of Summoner. I find their takes interesting to read. In fact, so does the wider internet outside the forums with several choice posts making the rounds on twitter. Those were especially interesting. Anyway the choice is in their hands to either move on from the job like most people do when job changes don't go their way, or to continue complaining about the rework that people have overwhelmingly been happy with.

This isn't some noble cause with any solid basis underlying it like how badly people wanted Eureka fixes or the whole male Viera situation. The "complex!" poison mage SMN was given up on by enough players and the devs themselves to realize that things had reached the breaking point. The solution they enacted proceeded to be embraced by people and SMN displaced Red Mage as the most popular caster on NA and EU. Seems like straightforward gameplay and thematically consistent designs work well and don't drive people away.

So we have a whole lot of people who are generally doing their own thing and having a good time with the class, even if we want more summons etc added, and then we have people who refuse to budge, despite the whole "10 spinning plates" style of job design largely being done away with after Heavensward ended, and Shadowbringers streamlining things further. Old Summoner felt like it was the last remaining relic of that era. These people then proceeded to, in summary, act the way they did, and chased after the likes and clicks from each other by again, acting the way they did, rather than presenting their arguments in a way that was palatable to anyone besides themselves, and their arguments fail to convince those of us with a long history with the franchise because there is no fooling us with takes like "Rydia had a poison spell too!" When the coolest parts of Rydia was calling down her eidolons and her highest power nukes.

As long as next week's update doesn't do a whole 180 then the second that job-boosts are made purchasable for more than one use I'm buying several SMN potions for my alts who I didn't bother unlocking the job on and would take too long to level all the way from 1-90. All the time I spent grinding BLM and RDM on them does sort of feel wasted looking back, but there was no way I could have imagined the changes we got in Endwalker.