Summoner changes that should happen onto 7.0

[Supersnow845]

There you go. And for the last time, no poison magic does not belong on Summoner. If that's the sort of gameplay you're into then go ask for Time Mage or Necromancer. Leave us alone already.

I’m still wondering who died and made you grand arbiter of SMN, some of us have been SMN mains longer than you have even played the game for; why do we get no say in the direction of SMN

And like we’ve just been saying adding more effects to astral flow doesn’t change the rigid rotation adding the other three primals would induce nor does it change that picking a primal when a Demi leaves is not any sort of decision anyway because you are always in a Demi during movement heavy phases anyway also it doesn’t change the fact that Demi’s are brainless as well

[fulminating]

Who died and made you the arbiter of what a summoner is; Why do you not acknoweldge that for the last 8 years summoner has had a coherent identity in FF14?

Why do you think that astral flow is the solution? So far all we have is a dot that you burn swiftcast on, a gap closer and busywork ogcds. They even removed the 1212 on demiphoenix so that every other minute we can cast a heal on the tank that goes to waste because the window to cast it and ability to move the window is so absurdly lacking.

[ThorneDynasty]

Classic FF summon is either screen-clear type high cost spell you use sparingly, or in the newer games where it became technically feasible, a pet that fights alongside you. It certainly never was a non-stop chain summoning barrage that changed the summoner's spell flavor (except maybe in the games that didn't have an actual summoner class per se, like FF8, which I believe also "punished" your EXP rewards for overusing them). FF games with job systems or preset classes almost always made summoners multi-class for that exact reason.

Literally none of these summoner identity gatekeepers so far actually knows what they are talking about.

[aveyond-dreams]

...

And I've played and favored the class in every iteration its had across the entire franchise. Given that FFXIV is a theme park mmorpg, that carries a certain degree of weight. Lets also not pretend that SMN mains are in agreement with the return of poison magic - some of them were the most vocal opponents of it from the class's introduction. I've played the class for varying lengths of time across the expansions of FFXIV and each time I have found it wanting. At this point you don't need to be a chef to know that something was clearly going wrong in the kitchen, especially when ShB SMN exhausted the last of many people's patience with the job, myself included until EW's rework surprised us.

I have already told you that adding more than 3 gems to choose from and diversifying the spells they bring with them will give more agency and choice to the player. Give Summoner more summons so it can finally live up to its namesake. Let them do different things. This shouldn't be a concept I have to debate with people who play the class.

On that note, I'm done speaking to you directly as well. I don't believe we can have a productive discussion moving forward if you're going to ignore what I've said in previous posts or try and argue with me, whose been here since day 1 of ARR and played the job in every other game outside this one, that it was/is ok to even entertain the idea of reversions. What is obvious to those with my mindset has been explained to those with yours time and time again, and you have chosen to meet me in the middle with nothing but arguments that have led the Summoner discussion to continue in circles rather than coming up with a more concrete vision for the job.

This cannot continue. Until you figure out away to convince the people who think like me and have my experience, it is unlikely you will be able to convince the person who designed current Summoner to re-introduce dot gameplay and undermine the newfound thematic focus of the job. If this is something you truly want, I have already told you that it is better to ask for a new caster to fit that niche. Again, leave us Summoners alone. Forcing my group and yours into the same job hasn't created a happy environment for either of us, so in this case the divorce of these identities was for the best.

[Supersnow845]

And I've played and favored the class in every iteration its had across the entire franchise. Given that FFXIV is a theme park mmorpg, that carries a certain degree of weight. Lets also not pretend that SMN mains are in agreement with the return of poison magic - some of them were the most vocal opponents of it from the class's introduction. I've played the class for varying lengths of time across the expansions of FFXIV and each time I have found it wanting. At this point you don't need to be a chef to know that something was clearly going wrong in the kitchen, especially when ShB SMN exhausted the last of many people's patience with the job, myself included until EW's rework surprised us.

I have already told you that adding more than 3 gems to choose from and diversifying the spells they bring with them will give more agency and choice to the player. Give Summoner more summons so it can finally live up to its namesake. Let them do different things. This shouldn't be a concept I have to debate with people who play the class.

On that note, I'm done speaking to you directly as well. I don't believe we can have a productive discussion moving forward if you're going to ignore what I've said in previous posts or try and argue with me, whose been here since day 1 of ARR and played the job in every other game outside this one, that it was/is ok to even entertain the idea of reversions.

You literally have not explained your position at all all you have done is basically said “if you want poison magic go ask them for necromancer like 8 times”, I don’t care one way or another about poison magic, it can come back, be reintroduced stay dead it literally does not affect me, but adding 3 more primals after phoenix and expanding what astral flow does does what, Demi’s are still brain dead and somehow also still have pointless skills like phoenix’s heal, there is still far too much rigidity in the rotation for how simple it is, choice between primals is a false choice because there is never a reason to not use any of them astral flow affects the GCD for 2 of the three so it doesn’t really speed the job up, aetherflow is still residual and doesn’t do anything

None of this has been explained, all I’ve gotten from you is “this is what i want and if you don’t like it ask square to make a new class for you because I like current SMN”

[fulminating]

You will be familiar with summoner gaining dots from scholar in ff11 then? Yeah it was introduced 8 years ago. It's had 8 years to cement this identity in this game. You are not owed a version of summoner that meets whichever bizzare criteria you deem necessary, particularly at the cost of one of the better designed jobs.

I believe you'll find that every time you've tried to claim that adding more crayons will improve the summoner exerience, people have patiently explained how fundamentally incorrect that is given the current and past combat design of this game.

Being here since day 1 of arr means nothing, there is no guarantee playing for a long time has any bearing on ability nor understanding. Additionally going off lodestone ID, the fenris pendragon character seems to date to some time after 2020, so I'm sure you'll forgive people for doubting.

[SweetPete]

So if this summoner was dead in arrival what do you guys want the devs to do with summoner? I’m confused. It seems very popular now so not sure if it’s dead on arrival.

Simple yes but I guess lots are enjoying the simplicity. I think the devs have really tried to give us the classic final fantasy summoner with primals one off attack with the flavour of mmo with the elemental attunements.

I’ve been reading these summoner threads for a while and all I see is “summoner sucks, the new rework is terrible etc” I haven’t seen a single post of how to rework it again or make it better other than give back dots and give back the depth it had before. Obviously Yoshi said he got sick of people calling it a knock off wow warlock. I think instead of attacking each other and trying to prove right and wrong. We should work together to help the devs to build on this current iteration of summoner because it looks like it’s here to stay.

[Supersnow845]

So if this summoner was dead in arrival what do you guys want the devs to do with summoner? I’m confused. It seems very popular now so not sure if it’s dead on arrival.

Simple yes but I guess lots are enjoying the simplicity. I think the devs have really tried to give us the classic final fantasy summoner with primals one off attack with the flavour of mmo with the elemental attunements.

I’ve been reading these summoner threads for a while and all I see is “summoner sucks, the new rework is terrible etc” I haven’t seen a single post of how to rework it again or make it better other than give back dots and give back the depth it had before. Obviously Yoshi said he got sick of people calling it a knock off wow warlock. I think instead of attacking each other and trying to prove right and wrong. We should work together to help the devs to build on this current iteration of summoner because it looks like it’s here to stay.

We have offered ways to expand on SMN

-Sure there were complaints about knock off warlock but dots do at least present an interesting interaction with fester like they used to (tri disaster was also a good ability to refresh DOT’s and a pre-requisite for summoning Bahamut also avoiding hard casting DOT’s)
-both Demi’s need a more interesting rotation, single button spamming with all attacks being instacast is not enough for the core of the summons, nerfing astral impulse/fountain of fire and giving SMN more oGCD’s in the burst windows, you could even make it so order of those oGCD’s could buff or change the resulting primal forms after the Demi is released
-astral flow needs to be unlocked way earlier and it needs to have more than 1 effect per primal, AOE DOT, gap closer and like the single oGCD SMN has is not enough, you could add many more things to astral flow or even have it change the way a primal works like slipstream could get a duration extension from every Garuda attack you hit the boss with when it’s inside slipstream, other than that astral flow being the only ability that stops primals from just being gemshine spam is a problem
-the rotation is too rigid and all choice is false, your movement heavy phases (intemperance, act2 FOA) all occur primarily during a Demi phase, since all the Demi phases are full of instacasts the primal choice is pretty much false besides “slipstream has to be snapshotted in searing light”, if they want to make the primals an actual decision then give us difference reasons to pick them, like if you made each primal lock you into it for 45 seconds or so so you had to make a conscious decision which primal you wanted it would be better than “well it doesn’t matter what I pick because I get all three in the next minute anyway”
-carbuncle is useless and either needs to go or needs to do something to actually justify its existence
-square specifically removed Kaiten and forced all SAM Iijutsu to crit to remove damage variance and then gave us ark morhn and revelation, who decided that was a good idea

So overall it comes to a problem of the fact that level 90 SMN plays like a level 60 class, choice within its rotation is false and the fact that offered solutions in the form of “just summon shiva ramuh and leviathan” don’t change why the class is fundamentally unable to grow in any meaningful way

[ThorneDynasty]

Do you actually have some numbers to show SMN has become more popular? Not that popularity means everything (which is the mistake SE does with every job except BLM). I mean, I still do my roulettes as a healer half the time not because I find healers well designed or fun 90% of the time, but because either I get to turn my brains off grinding or I luck out and score a trashfire party that is actually tricky to keep alive (which might actually become more interesting with level sync instead of it just neutering my rotation, since you don't have one in the first place lol).

Also, it's really, really not our job to design the game. While people make these day-dream threads about how they would design or redesign whichever job, not one has been been implemented by the devs so far. Clearly normal criticism is more effective than playing video game developer.

[tearagion]

Aveyond has no idea what they're talking about, just posturing as some game design master and FF historian for some reason when they are obviously neither. They'll flip-flop between any given justification as it's convenient at the time in order to justify this utter disaster of a job SE has presented, while ignoring most of whatever you had to say that can't just be handwaved by calling you a toxic "revisionist" or some other similarly weak refutation. If they've said they won't talk to you directly anymore count yourself lucky, you won't have to be told the same thing another hundred times.