Summoner rework is a huge dissapointment

[IruruCece]

Correct me if I'm wrong but SMN even back then wasn't even an unpopular job. It had a lot of appeal because it did high DPS, sometimes powercreeping BLM and people wanted to take advantage of that. That and it had more appeal than BLM for being more mobile.

It was not unpopular in the slightest.

Anyone who is claiming that SMN was somehow underplayed or the least popular DPS during ShB or Stormblood is straight up lying.

[HyperSMB]

Correct me if I'm wrong but SMN even back then wasn't even an unpopular job. It had a lot of appeal because it did high DPS, sometimes powercreeping BLM and people wanted to take advantage of that. That and it had more appeal than BLM for being more mobile.

It was not unpopular in the slightest.

Last I remember seeing, it was one of the most unpopular regardless of High DPS. I cannot speak to raid numbers, I guess we could look at old parses, but I seem to recall something from LuckyBronco showing job distribution.

[zcrash970]

Had a quick look at amount of parses on ff logs and in normal raids summoner is 2nd in amount of parses only behind reaper. On savage it is on 4th place in amount of parses. Sounds like it's really popular after rework.

And this is why context is important. It's behind red mage in the amount of parses. Rdm does everything better and a more flushed out job atm. It's ahead of black mage because BLM is a hard job to master for a lot of people, not party finder friendly, and offer no recover utility with raise.

So of course smn is high in the amount of records on fflogs. Its only real competition in its role is rdm, most people are going to bring BLM on speed clears and magic DPS is a very popular role.This isn't even acknowledging the fact that it's basically a new job and it's easy to play

[Imoen]

snip

I feel ya, but can we also quit with the bombastic language "Terrible, Awful, Horrendous, Garbage" etc... in reference to the old version? This is almost exactly the same thing, if not worse, than what you are sick of, only applied to the opposite party. I guess that makes it ok? I would argue most everyone, while having different taste, wants the best for Summoner. That's enough on that though.

This is my quickly slapped together personal list, I'm sure I missed some thoughts in my haste.

Pro
-It's accessible, easy to pick up.
-It's sweet looking (Yay summons finally being more of a focus.)
-It's more consistent during the leveling process.
-It has micro flexibility in the form of Rite/Cata, Astral and Summon order.
-Movement for the most part isn't a concern. (You can streak across the battle field naked asserting your dominance as a SMN because you can, not because you need to. lol No, I don't do this.)

Con
-No decision making points beyond movement (3/17 Rite/Cata & Astral Flow are hard cast), this makes any micro flexibility gained immediately watered down.
-Almost no failure states. (You have to try pretty hard to mess up)
-Almost no wiggle room for player growth and optimization.
-Almost no job mechanics/resources to manage, the one there is , is a passive thing and happens without thought upon despawn of Demi.
-Searing light and personal shield are clumsy and frustrating to use sometimes.
-Swiftcast is almost always on CD now, making us less useful/reliable for raise. Especially in blind fight situations.
-Pheonix can only come after Bahamut, which makes the Astral Flow immediately unreliable if not pointless.
-Energy Drain/Siphon feels out of place.
-Fester and Painflare feels out of place.
-Astral Flow comes too late.
-Summon II comes too late.
-Rite/Cata is still Ruin/Outburst spam only put on a different button for... reasons?
-Summons will stick around for the next target if one dies before their move goes off. (Or time limit expires) This adds to the frustration with personal shield and Searing Light.
-No stacking or changing effects based on order of operation etc...
-Delay is still there, with using both our Carby buffs and the summons themselves, most notable on Egis but is present on the big kids as well.
-Egi summons still require travel time, making placement more annoying.
-The "Place" command doesn't determine where summons are spawned. (It should)
-And while really not important... Unrestricted party content on solo SMN is more frustrating now, mostly due to the shield change, loss of DoTs and rigidness in the macro rotation. (Due to present company, I need to clarify that I'm not asking DoTs to be brought back here.) Some of this may be a result of the stat squish as well, not sure, so don't take this one too seriously.

[Rolder50]

Last I remember seeing, it was one of the most unpopular regardless of High DPS. I cannot speak to raid numbers, I guess we could look at old parses, but I seem to recall something from LuckyBronco showing job distribution.

I took to Google to confirm this and found...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...11_april_2021/

Lucky Bancho data as of 5.45, which shows Summoner being the most popular caster. They measured popularity by how many people had a 530 item level or greater weapon for that job, divided by all players. 530 would be Augmented Tomestone, Relic, or Raid weapons. The stats were...

SMN 11.0%
RDM 10.2%
BLM 9.7%

Compared to all dps and not just casters, it was tied for 3rd place with MCH, and beaten by SAM and DRG.

[Gruntler]

Last I remember seeing, it was one of the most unpopular regardless of High DPS. I cannot speak to raid numbers, I guess we could look at old parses, but I seem to recall something from LuckyBronco showing job distribution.

Yes, you would look at parses and not LuckyBancho. LuckyBancho only measures how many people completed a specific quest and got an achievement. In Shadowbringers, that meant that they looked at the number of players who had the level 80 Arcanist achievement and call it Summoner numbers... and somehow come out with completely different level 80 scholar numbers, despite those numbers being exactly equal. It counts a BLM main who levelled all the jobs but only ever plays on BLM as all the jobs.

LuckyBancho has no means to measure who plays what. It's simply not valid data for that end.

"Lucky Bancho data as of 5.45, which shows Summoner being the most popular caster. They measured popularity by how many people had a 530 item level or greater weapon for that job, divided by all players. 530 would be Augmented Tomestone, Relic, or Raid weapons. The stats were..."

That should be a redflag of data viability. You can't see the inventory of people in FFXIV nor their armory chest. So if you are wearing an relic weapon and log out on Dragoon on the day they pull their data, they don't see the BiS gear you have on your main. This would go 'This person plays dragoon' and it doesn't say nothing, literally nothing, about what you play. People got a ton of weapons on jobs they don't play.

Also, 530 weapons did not include relics in 5.45. Also, if you're looking at 5.45, that would only be people who do savage and not a proper census of what people play who don't raid savage, seeing as the only ones who could get ilvl 530 weapons in 5.45 were those who were getting roborants in E10S, or those who were getting edenmorn in E12S. Thus the claim given about what the data includes has to be false, at least on this level.

It takes a moment of thought to recognize this is not valid data towards the conclusion. You HAVE to look at something else.

[Gruntler]

And this is why context is important. It's behind red mage in the amount of parses.

This statement, while true, is misleading. You need to look at more than two data points to come to a conclusion.

https://i.imgur.com/zsfdXUb.png

Looking at reality, everyone except Reaper is behind RDM in total parses. That doesn't imply Summoner is rarely played, seeing as it's the fourth most played job in Savage, according to clears. Summoner is played the average amount of the casters, both by median AND by mean. Summoner is played more than every melee EXCEPT Reaper!

It's not hard to see that cries that Summoner is an underplayed job is heckin huffing the Nopium.

Rdm does everything better and a more flushed out job atm. It's ahead of black mage because BLM is a hard job to master for a lot of people, not party finder friendly, and offer no recover utility with raise.

RDM's always been a very popular job. It was popular in Stormblood, it was popular towards the end of Shadowbringers, and it's popular now. And while I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and say that RDM isn't a good pick in pugs (far from it, it's the pugchamp), the truth is, RDM players don't care if it's op. So long as it isn't shit, they'll play it, and EW RDM plays really well. Of COURSE the second most popular job since SB is going to stay second most popular!

So of course smn is high in the amount of records on fflogs.

I mean, it is high, because it's popular. A lot of people like summoning chunky monsters. Sometimes the reason behind a job being used really is just 'It makes people have the goody goody chemicals.' It doesn't mean the job is good or bad--it just means that people like it.

Its only real competition in its role is rdm, most people are going to bring BLM on speed clears and magic DPS is a very popular role.This isn't even acknowledging the fact that it's basically a new job and it's easy to play

Magic DPS hasn't always been very popular, there've been times where it hasn't. It's gone through rough patches.

I won't argue that SMN doesn't need some tweaks but when we have jobs that are played less than half as often than SMN, it's hard to really paint a picture of SMN doom.

[Rolder50]

So if you are wearing an relic weapon and log out on Dragoon on the day they pull their data, they don't see the BiS gear you have on your main.

As a minor correction here, I do believe Bancho pulls data repeatedly over a course of a few weeks in order to get a more accurate count. But regardless, it's the best data we have considering that SE doesn't release any official statistics. At the same time, people claiming the job was NOT popular have just as much if not more reason to be discredited using the same logic.

[Grimoire-M]

As a minor correction here, I do believe Bancho pulls data repeatedly over a course of a few weeks in order to get a more accurate count. But regardless, it's the best data we have considering that SE doesn't release any official statistics. At the same time, people claiming the job was NOT popular have just as much if not more reason to be discredited using the same logic.

Keep in mind it also ignores the fact that some people actually are completionists and will max out and even attempt to gear out all jobs fairly regularly, and that it's pretty easy to alt-gear within a role but moderately difficult across multiple roles even if you know what you're doing. I'm fairly certain I had i530 RDM/BLM at the time of that poll's release despite never touching either for months, just cause I had the tomes and tokens lying around for the appropriate weapons. I'd hedge that it's a minor factor overall, because those Bard and Monk numbers make total sense to me and look pretty similar to the FFLogs trends around that period. They're comparable enough proportionally speaking that you can at least use one as a guide/reference in absence of the other.

[dinnertime]

Seems like there's really no factual proof to support that SMN was an unpopular job in the past from what it looks like, but the opposite even if the statistics aren't highly specific enough. It's the only proof we can go for that's not mere hearsay. Basically, it's been consistently played by many players even back then.

Anyway just because a job is popular, doesn't mean it doesn't have problems. SMN had problems before, and still does even now.