Summoner rework is a huge dissapointment

[VentVanitas]

Ah yes, taking metrics at face value. My favourite.

[Dahlinea]

Going by FFlogs, SMN right now has the second most uploaded amount of parses in the current savage iteration, only behind RPR which is pretty much EW's new flavour, so I don't know if people are as unhappy with the SMN as the regulars in this thread are presenting it.

Just because it's the job that has the most parses doesn't mean it's well designed. BLM is a well designed job and it's in the low end of the parse counter.

Current SMN has no core mechanics, doesn't have downsides to its braindead rotation and does high damage regardless. Of course it's going to be played a lot.

[Southron]

Summoner was also very popular in ShB. Not as popular as it is now, but using third party metrics show it was far from the least popular. New Summoner is simpler than Dancer's level 60 at level 90. Sure it is more like the old FF games where summons show up then leave. But it doesn't even summon more than it did in ShB. If people wanted to see the cool epic primals they could have just made it a new button or upgraded Enkindle.

[Gallus]

Just because it's the job that has the most parses doesn't mean it's well designed. BLM is a well designed job and it's in the low end of the parse counter.

Current SMN has no core mechanics, doesn't have downsides to its braindead rotation and does high damage regardless. Of course it's going to be played a lot.

Tbh being so aggressive about it doesn't help your cause because it makes you look very biased. You can call it braindead as much as you want but there are players like me that genuinely enjoy the new SMN, and reading some of the comments you guys almost make it like one should be ashamed of such thing, it's ridiculous.

But on topic... what do you propose we take into account to measure whether people are happy with the new SMN or not? I used the FFlogs savage parsing because to me, it looked like it could be at the very least, slightly indicative? What should we go by instead? Because "There are a lot of people that are unhappy with the new SMN" sort of comments doesn't sound like it could be used to make an accurate representation of peoples' satisfaction with the new SMN right? And all I see in this thread are the same couple dozen users bumping each other for the same cause.

Now, you have every right to not like the new SMN, but for instance, I had to swallow ARR, HW, SB and ShB iterations of SMN and to me they were absolutely unedible, and in none of those I remember myself making this much noise, and I disliked the old SMN with passion and thematically it's my favorite job.

Say 75% of the job like the new SMN, but 25% dislike it a lot. What's the solution here?

[Dahlinea]

Tbh being so aggressive about it doesn't help your cause because it makes you look very biased. You can call it braindead as much as you want but there are players like me that genuinely enjoy the new SMN, and reading some of the comments you guys almost make it like one should be ashamed of such thing, it's ridiculous.

I'm not being aggressive, that's what the job is right now. You like it and that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact the job is way too basic, to the point it plays the same as in level 60 with just one more button to press and that new skill doesn't even affect your rotation.

Now, you have every right to not like the new SMN, but for instance, I had to swallow ARR, HW, SB and ShB iterations of SMN and to me they were absolutely unedible, and in none of those I remember myself making this much noise, and I disliked the old SMN with passion and thematically it's my favorite job.

Maybe the noise isn't because we liked the old SMN and hate the new one but because the rework took a lot of skills from the job and didn't give much back to us? The rework feels incomplete, rushed, and that can be seen clearly when you level the job from the beginning.
I don't need the old SMN back but I want a SMN that can reward you for playing it right, with options that really make a difference, and not just some different colors that you will press regardless and will always produce the same result in a general scenario.

[Nizzi]

I don't really have any skin in the game but one of the things I don't like about how SMN was handled is the fact that there's nothing for old SMN players to enjoy like their old job. They effectively killed a play style that many enjoyed and loved for years. Arguments about aesthetics aside, just look at gameplay.
If you enjoyed the DoT management gameplay of SMN... there's nothing in the game like that anymore. SCH had its DoTs removed in ShB, so if you liked Arcanist because of the DoT aspect... SE says "sorry, you're out of luck. Hope you enjoyed it for the many years prior, though!" Not even BRD is a DoT centered job anymore. There's nothing left.
If you enjoyed the pet management gameplay of SMN... there's Scholar, I guess, but that's healing, and not DPSing. SCH also doesn't "manage" the fairy really, due to healing optimization and DPS optimization being entirely different ball games.
What are people who enjoyed their old job supposed to do? They can't swap to SCH anymore for DoT gameplay, they can't play any other DPS for DoT gameplay or pet management. Are they just supposed to suck it up and kick rocks because now SE says it's someone else's turn to enjoy SMN?

And before you say "well they're probably going to add a DoT job/a job like old SMN soon," the direction of this game shows that they're absolutely not going to. They should've reworked SMN while retaining the aspects that SMN players enjoyed about it while also cutting out the things that were bad, but instead they gave it a level 60 stagnant rotation at level 90 with an admittedly nice coat of paint.

[rewd]

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying it. Simple, but smooth and clean. I've seen every SMN iteration before this one and I could never stomach it (and I love the SMN thematically).

Unresponsive pets (contagion taking 3 seconds to cast in ARR), dying pets to random stuff (with the whole sustain drama with some people wanting it back), fester registering too early after dot appliance resulting in terrible damage, 1 minute atherflow prepulls, Ifrit-egi wandering around aimlessly against spread targets, aetherflow spells landing on immune targets not giving any dreadwyrm attunement which pretty much destroyed your entire rotation, SMNs dying being extremely crippling to recover, Egi Assaults going from OGCD to GCD because people were getting carpal tunnel after pressing 544 buttons every rotation cycle. Demis ghosting AAs. Egi Assaults ghosting too. And that's just scratching the surface because the list is endless.

I don't miss any of the above.

To summarise, I'm happy with the current SMN, yes, it is simple, but it flows well, it works, it has good DPS and everything about it looks clean, smooth and polished. The other iterations almost looked like the rotation was in a Beta state with a zillion bugs and issues.

Going by FFlogs, SMN right now has the second most uploaded amount of parses in the current savage iteration, only behind RPR which is pretty much EW's new flavour, so I don't know if people are as unhappy with the SMN as the regulars in this thread are presenting it.

Good for you if you enjoy the job, but SMN objectively wasn't and still isn't polished.

The rework is incomplete and rushed. You were heavily punished for holding your burst in 6.0. Hitting level 80 meant being nerfed. Carbuncle has no purpose and only exists to avoid riots from the playerbase. Aetherflow is a relic from the past they still don't know how to make interesting. The leveling experience was developed by someone that has probably drunk way too much.

If SMN is polished, every other job in the game represents pinnacle job design.

[Coletergeist]

I wouldn't say summoning the primals over and over again with no choice in the matter is good design. It's a headache of simplistic repetition.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Going by FFlogs, SMN right now has the second most uploaded amount of parses in the current savage iteration, only behind RPR which is pretty much EW's new flavour, so I don't know if people are as unhappy with the SMN as the regulars in this thread are presenting it.

Honestly I count those high numbers for some things. One new SMN is easier to play and you really don't have to think about your rotation. So for prog that means you can fully force on the fight's mech and still do decent dps. That isn't bad pre said but it makes some ppl want more since after learning the fight what do you have while playing smn? Two the lack of choices in casters. Right now casters have 3 jobs and two of them bring pretty much the same thing to a party(rezzs, buffs and mit). The big issue with that is RDM on paper is far better than SMN since it can quickly rez more than one player in a row and an on-demand mit with magic barrier. SMN is one played more because of what I said on the first point.

Now, this is just me but I still play smn just because I really have no other choice. I'm married into the job/role in my static because no one wants to switch with me. So that leaves me 3 choices: BLM(which I have never cared for and hate playing it, mostly bc I so bad at it), RDM(I'm so so on this job but it's really not for me since I don't like heavy support casters), and then smn(back in SB and ShB I fell in love with smn bc it was fun to learn and to get better at it, it offer high dps with little support). So yeah the remake has left me with really no caster I enjoy learning or playing and when they finally add a 4th caster(hopefully 7.0) I will jump to it.

Im glad others like the new smn and no I don't want them to go back to older smn. What I do want is a finished job that has what other jobs have in design. I would love if smn felt like rpr, drg, or blm. Those jobs feel complete and flushed out but new smn doesn't to be honest.

[KikiTia]

I imagine we will get a dot mage to replace old SMN come next expansion or so, it seems unlike the devs to just remove a playstyle from the game, especially one that tends to be a staple in MMOs overall.