Summoner rework is a huge dissapointment

[stellahawke]

Why did they even revamp it in the first place? Were people even playing it? I really wasn't. Was it a big-brain job? I thought it was kind of interesting but it always felt a little funky to me. Also, I'm not a huge fan of DoTs. I wouldn't shed a single tear if they pulled them out of Bard. But that's just me.

old smn was second most played caster. smn had its niche people who liked it played it people who did not like it played a different class. one part of the niche loved the class because of how funky it felt and managing the funk. The rework was more of on the devs side do to them not knowing what direction to take the class so they decided to wipe the class clean and try to appeal to a wider audience instead of the niche which in tern alienated the people who liked the old heavy management of the old smn. part of the big brain on smn is to learn when you are aloud to move and learning the long ass opener. after you basically get the main opener down the class becomes easer then its learning to when you can and cant hold off on the bursts cause unlike current smn holding off burst damage is not a giant hit to dps.

I'm ok with them removing the dots but they did not add anything to replace them. dots was just a means of management for the class and i am sad to see them go its just the lack of depth to the class do to the lack of sub systems do to them removing basically all the weaving, the hard casts, dots, is without putting anything to replace them and only keeping the summons part makes the class lack of depth

people want the concept of old smn (management, weaving, and summoning) without actually going back to old smn (dot mage)

[Hanayumi]

Was told dots got removed from Smn cause Sage and Reaper got some dots and they didnt want to add more clutter the debuff list too much again, its still possible to loose the icon in heavy player content, no idea if that true though. As for general Smn change, it was because of pets, they just couldnt decent responses with skills, wouldnt be surprised if Sch was next up for they pet chop.

[Dyvid]

Was told dots got removed from Smn cause Sage and Reaper got some dots and they didnt want to add more clutter the debuff list too much again, its still possible to loose the icon in heavy player content, no idea if that true though. As for general Smn change, it was because of pets, they just couldnt decent responses with skills, wouldnt be surprised if Sch was next up for they pet chop.

They fixed that issue back in HW. Mobs have a 40 debuff count so even if 18-man had 2 debuffs each that would still be 36. As for pets, they got rid of the core Egis but Demi's, Fairies, Automatons Queen, etc... are still ingame. There is no reason they could have changed Egi's to Primal and have them just auto attack like Demi until a new summon. The whole redesign was half thought and lazy IMO.

[Tarrinus]

What if SMN got the other 3 ARR summons and they got paired with the first three so you'd have to choose between Titan/Ramuh, Ifrit/Shiva and Garuda/Leviathan and they have either a damage focused favor(like Garuda and Titan) or a utility(like Ifrit just adjust the potency) but summoning them would charge their respective favor(there's 3 separate slots) which you can keep for later. And the same thing for Demi-Bahamut/Zodiark(damage/shields), Demi-Phoenix/Hydaelyn(heals/damage)? Would that make the job complex enough for people?

[Tatano]

While implementing the three new summons as mentioned above would add a little complexity I feel it doesn't address the fact that you would still just be spamming 1 button the entire time.

I'll throw out a crazy idea and say instead of say Ifrit giving you access to Shiva, why not have both of them be summoned at the same time and have use be able to use both of their abilities. Also have these abilities interact with each other in some way such as Shiva buffing Ifrit or something and the problem of single button spam can be solved.

[5trange]

So, lately I've been thinking: does EW Summoner really respect the so-called "Job fantasy" after all? I haven't played many FF games, but I'm a huge enjoyer of FFT which apparently is very beloved by the devs and I can say in that game:

• SMN has terrible mobility — but in XIV it is basically a ph. ranged Job.
• SMN cast time is usually very slow — but in XIV almost everything is instant.
• SMN uses Rods and Staves — but in XIV it uses books.
• SMN has a wide variety of summons which do very different things — but in XIV it's just recolored damage (except Phoenix regen).
• SMN consumes a lot of MP to summon — but in XIV everything's basically free.
• SMN is not accompanied by Carbuncle, which is a support summon usually providing Reflect — but in XIV you need to channel summons through him.
• SMN is unlocked through Black Mage and Time Mage so black magic is part of its origin (and black magic has a Poison spell DoT).

Granted it's impossible to translate an identity from a turn-based game to XIV but... just maybe this current so-called "fantasy" of Summoner is in the head of people more so than in the tradition of Final Fantasy. Still, I would agree that it feels more like a Summoner now and if people enjoy it, I say let them enjoy it — just give me back the almost self-sufficient toolkit that was removed so we can all be happy. Discarding a complete Job just feels extremely silly.

Side note: am I the only person who's annoyed by the dozen copy-paste SAM threads clogging the front page? x') I sympathize with them and think they have every right to protest but... why-so-many-threads?

[Shurrikhan]

So, lately I've been thinking: does EW Summoner really respect the so-called "Job fantasy" after all?

Visually? A bit more than before.

In any other way? No. No, it does not.

But let's be fair. The only way to get an actual SMN in XIV would be for the devs to stretch role lines and abandon their "Role template first, job gimmicks after" approach to job-making.

[Hezhi]

Side note: am I the only person who's annoyed by the dozen copy-paste SAM threads clogging the front page? x') I sympathize with them and think they have every right to protest but... why-so-many-threads?

We don't want our job to get SMN'd
Sorry buddy

[5trange]

We don't want our job to get SMN'd
Sorry buddy

Don't get me wrong: as I said I think you have every right to raise your voices and I believe even non-SAM players should support your just and reasonable claims. No one wants to see their Job get the Summoner treatment. I was just surprised by the sheer number of threads, most of which add nothing particular to the discussion. Still, it was just a passing thought and I don't want to go off topic here — I sincerely hope you SAM players can get what you are asking for!

[xAFROx]

So, lately I've been thinking: does EW Summoner really respect the so-called "Job fantasy" after all? I haven't played many FF games, but I'm a huge enjoyer of FFT which apparently is very beloved by the devs and I can say in that game:

• SMN has terrible mobility — but in XIV it is basically a ph. ranged Job.
• SMN cast time is usually very slow — but in XIV almost everything is instant.
• SMN uses Rods and Staves — but in XIV it uses books.
• SMN has a wide variety of summons which do very different things — but in XIV it's just recolored damage (except Phoenix regen).
• SMN consumes a lot of MP to summon — but in XIV everything's basically free.
• SMN is not accompanied by Carbuncle, which is a support summon usually providing Reflect — but in XIV you need to channel summons through him.
• SMN is unlocked through Black Mage and Time Mage so black magic is part of its origin (and black magic has a Poison spell DoT).

Granted it's impossible to translate an identity from a turn-based game to XIV but... just maybe this current so-called "fantasy" of Summoner is in the head of people more so than in the tradition of Final Fantasy. Still, I would agree that it feels more like a Summoner now and if people enjoy it, I say let them enjoy it — just give me back the almost self-sufficient toolkit that was removed so we can all be happy. Discarding a complete Job just feels extremely silly.

Side note: am I the only person who's annoyed by the dozen copy-paste SAM threads clogging the front page? x') I sympathize with them and think they have every right to protest but... why-so-many-threads?

In the sense that an iconic summon appears for a brief attack and vanishes afterwards, yes. It now acts more in reminiscence of classic SMN from the franchise. The main line games and tactics included, SMN typically acts the same, though I wouldn't compare things like cast times in a turn-based game to a game that goes in real time, nor would i think they're comparable by range.

In tactics, summons hit a large area of the map. Maybe not the whole map, but a large area for massive damage. But in xiv, the slow but strong caster is already taken by BLM. They aren't going to make two immobile turrets, else that would alienate more players who already avoid BLM for the 'difficulty' it has.

Its a step towards looking more like classic SMN, but only that. A step. EW smn is the bones from which the job will have structure later. At least, that was the interpretation I got from playing the job.

As for SAM, most of the numerous threads are just folks who are brand new to the forums, like myself, doing what seemed to be an open invitation to 'provide feedback' which basically amounts to most of them saying 'we do not like the changes', so.. yeah. They're new. I'm new. We never had reason to check the forums before now.