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

[rewd]

New SMN is good.

Okay, I'm convinced.

[OtakuSempai]

lmfao...i'm nearly crying

Lmao this is literally what some people sound like to me, sorry not sorry lol

[IruruCece]

If they do something horrendous like adding Bio or Miasma back then consider me and everyone else who loathed poison mage Summoner gone.

God, if only this would actually happen

[Imoen]

You can choose to view the different Rite/Catastrophe spells as the same or not (even if they each have/trigger different effects, but anyway

/looks at trait list. "Ruin Mastery III"

Ya, I suppose we could choose to think that. lol

Seriously though, they are filler and function not unlike the demi replacing ruin and outburst, which is why people say this. Even if they are slightly different, they don't significantly change the way you play or think about the way you play. There are safety nets available for Ifrit if you don't know a fight. That doesn't mean I don't like the idea of obtaining a portion of the summons element on my abilities, but I don't think it's executed well or interestingly enough here.

Also I know you seem to think old summoner, wasn't a summoner for w/e misguided reason. Let me remind you that there are previous iterations of Summons/Summoners in the IP that have used white/black magic either on the summon or through the caster, where they did Dots, Debuffs, Buffs or all of the above. So that concept wasn't some wild outlandish idea that made the old version not a summoner. I just wanted to point that out.

A lot of the newer main line titles dating back 21ish years at this point, treat them as persistent pets or timed pets on the field or something that you take direct control of. What about the people expecting that type of summoner? Are these not true summons/summoners either? I'm personally fine with them coming out, doing a thing and vanishing... I'm simply saying that summoner is really freaking old at this point and there has been many titles that approached them differently since that time, so naturally there is going to be some disagreement. I don't envy the person in charge of this job, like at all.

It's fine if you didn't like the dots, just say that. Don't try to paint it like a few DoT spells somehow made it not a true SMN and like there was this huge uprising in the past because of it, while then simultaneously downplaying peoples discontent now as a small vocal minority. It looks really silly is all I'm saying on that.

[aveyond-dreams]

The older Summoners of the series have never used dots to the extent that old SMN did. Bio lasted for a level in FFIV and proceeded to be outclassed by every black magic nuke that Rydia learns afterwards. If we wanted to build entire job identities off of niche one-off gimmicks then there's no reason why SMN couldn't have been an archer, seeing as how Rydia also could use bows. When you pair the focus of a few niche spells with hideous pets and the only 2 cool pets being locked behind too long of a wait, what you have isn't Summoner. What you have at that point is a poison mage equipped with Bahamut and later Phoenix magicite. It was not worthy of its namesake.

Coming from FFXI where I started off with Carbuncle, got access to the main summons of the series at level 20, and then Fenrir and Diabolos way later on, needless to say there was no way you could have convinced me to play FFXIV's version seriously until Stormblood and Shadowbringers, which then exhausted my patience with the job even more. Carbuncle and then the bad looking egis till level 70 when you get Bahamut. Then that's it till Phoenix at level 80. I honestly wish we got the look of the level 90 primals far earlier in SMN's levelling, but at least the egis don't outstay their welcome when they pop up on screen.

Note, I would not have touched Summoner at all this expansion if it weren't for the rework. I considered the job beyond salvation and a waste of time to level because it failed to deliver on too many aspects. I didn't want to babysit dots and debuffs. I wanted to call up my summon and do stuff with it. Now that I get to play a Rydia-style SMN, it's my new main.

In any case that part of FFXIV's Summoner has been discarded and is unlikely to ever surface again. They said it themselves that a goal of the rework was to wash away the stigma that came from the unsuccessful merging of Affliction Warlock onto Summoner. The only people who really lost out in that regard are those who were more attracted to being poison mages than Final Fantasy Summoners. For 8 years they got to co-opt the job when they rightly should have been playing Time Mage or Necromancer. Now it would be wonderful if each of our spells was casted through our summons and that they could stay on the field like they did back in FFXI. As much as I enjoyed that playstyle I know that's not happening around here. The happy compromise we got here, I'm fine with. The past 8 years of trying the other route led to nowhere.

[VentVanitas]

It's like clockwork, man. Do you not get bored of this? Saying the same stuff all the time?

[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.

[Rolder50]

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.

Yes there is. People want a job that is actually engaging and has depth. The aesthetics and theme are fine as is, just give us some extra buttons to press for the love of all that is holy. The fact you can play current summoner with literally one button is a travesty.

[IchiExorz]

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.

I'm fine with the direciton of Summoner. Dots didn't fit the theme and I don't really want dots back. I just want some form of complexity back. Doesn't have to be as complex as the old SMN at all.
But yeah despite liking the direction of the new Summoner I really dislike the direction of its gameplay so I did start playing RDM again instead.
But that doesn't make me wish that the new Summoner felt better to play.

I quite enjoyed the "dot mage" that was HW SMN. And I personally wasn't a big fan of SB & ShB SMN. But Seeing those cool summons and all really made me want to play the class in EW and i'd say the new summons are so much better than the old dots when it comes to class identity.
When it comes to gameplay i just can't stand it though. It's not that I prefer dots. It's just that the actual summoning rotation is boring.

And no I don't want it to be as complex like the old summoner AT ALL. ShB SMN actually scared me away from the job.
I'm enjoying RDM perfectly fine now despite it being a rather easy job but SMN now is just WAY too simple & easy.

Also there may be a lot of people enjoying new SMN but when I ask someone what they think of the new SMN they answers I get are generally "the summons are cool but the class is boring & has no depth." So I think you're in the minority here.

Until they add some sort of complexity to the job i'll just stick with RDM.

[aveyond-dreams]

After 8 years of babysitting dots and watching them tick, my baseline for true boredom is somewhere around there as opposed to the current rotation of summoning one thing after another. It feels active and flashy like Yuna's Dissidia playstyle, largely a hit among most people. Note, there's not one of us who wish there wasn't something more, but the way in which people go about asking for things varies.

In terms of future additions what we need are additional one-off attacks inspired by summons and/or additional summons themselves. This would not taint the job's identity nor would it steer things back in the "complex!" direction both of us ran away from.

Some ideas include additional charges of aetherflow-so long as we finally get rid of the word "Fester" and replace it with something related to one of the many primals they can draw inspiration from. I'd be sad to see Painflare go, but if it means sneaking in Ramuh, Levi, or Shiva, so be it. You could also add in a Blood Pact: Rage/Ward skill per summon in addition to the trance spells we already have, with there being quite a lot of potential abilities to lift over from FFXI for those. There's also the idea of introducing a "grand summon" ability as a button we press before pressing one of our 3 summons to upgrade it to another summon entirely along with its respective trance. If none of the above can be done then I'll be fine with additional summons as glam, but I'd rather see something more.

Realistically I'm not expecting these abilities during 6.X but if they manage to do it, that's great and I'll give them the praise for it. Otherwise I'm good with how things are now and don't see myself dropping the class if they stay the same. But if we see reversions back to mechs lifted from old SMN and the re-adding of Bio and Miasma? That's where I draw the line, and switch straight back over to Black and Red Mage. The rework has happened, now its time for them to commit to a consistent design instead of flip-flopping.