Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

The concern of the current summoner is that the gameplay is much too slow and rigid,

I think this really depends on the player. Old PLD was slow and rigid, and people liked it. BLM is slow and fairly rigid, and it also has dedicated fans. The filler phase of New SMN is basically a single Ruin 3 cast once per minute (the Primals are not "filler" phase using most traditional definitions).

I do agree they should remove the Aetherflow system. It's vestigial and just around likely because they felt they needed SOMETHING there and decided to recycle the names and abilities instead of not doing so, but if Ruin 4 was just a 60 sec CD GCD and Painflare a 30 sec 2 charge oGCD, the rotation would be unchanged and not have the weirdness of a system that is now completely dead to SMN anyway.

So I agree with you there for sure.

...

What I mean is, you're arguing over a definition. You're insisting your definition is the correct and only one. And even when someone else is using the terms your definition used, you insist they aren't.

If I entertain that mentality then I suppose if their goal was to make something that looked like a Rydia-esque "classic ff summoner" imported into FFXIV then sure they succeeded.

That's exactly what I mean, yes. The only thing that sucks is it doesn't get there until level 90, but the Primal summons themselves thematically feel like what Summoners are in most of the older Final Fantasy games, or FF3 through FF9 and including FFTactics, with the DWT/FBT being the newer incarnations of summoners like FF10, 12, and 13 where they are temporary companions that join you on the battlefield briefly before departing.

Popularity is a shit metric even if we did have access to accurate numbers.

I disagree. Suppose 90% of Healers right now were playing SMN and only 1% were playing WHM. That would be a pretty good indication players probably want more complexity in the Healer roles, and would indicate that SE should make more complex ones. If they did so, and those were the popular/most played ones, it would reinforce that position. While popularity doesn't necessarily mean the GOAT, it does mean "thing people like". And I'm generally a fan of giving people what they like within reason. Or, at the very least, not taking away what seems to be well liked. If the complex Jobs were the ones being most played, it would indicate the Devs should add more complex Jobs since that's what the people want.

I'm not saying people are always right about things like domestic and foreign policy, but people are generally good judges of what things they personally enjoy.

In fact you seem to strengthen that interpretation in the second paragraph where you prioritize not needing to make any meaningful rotational decisions, that the rotation should simply happen without disruption. You've not been shy about enjoying the easier rotation. You even say it succeeded in creating a "smoothness of flow", so I don't know what your problem is here.

I think you don't understand the point. SAM has a somewhat complex rotation, but it closes its loop. You have something that's basically 1-2-3-1-4-1-5-6 (however you want to arrange it), and then 7. You also will occasionally 1-2-7. But the rotation is more or less closed. SAM I don't play as much, so I'll use MNK, as I'm more familiar with it. MNK's rotation is 18 buttons long, but it moves between abilities and the loop closes at the end to get back to the beginning. 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-6-4-5-3-1-2-6-4-5-6-back to start. It's satisfying because it is a nicely closed loop that cycles. You don't end it with 4-5-clip to 1-2-3. You finish off the loop and then it begins again. It's smooth and requires thinking about what you're doing, but there's a correct way to do it, and that's it. It's not simple (in the sense of complex or braindead), yet it's smooth and deterministic.

I don't like rotations where you have to do stupid stuff like "You have a buff and can use Atonement 3 times, but every other time...yeah, you just use two of those". And MNK's, for all that it's static, has hiccups in it when you do use the Nadi finishers, but the core rotation is nice and and I like it. I prefer the "choice" being in things like when to use oGCDs or when to use movement tools that don't disrupt your rotation (things like Ruin 4), but I like rotations that are closed loops IF they're rotations.

RDM gets a pass since it doesn't have a set rotation, though it has "micro-rotations/phases" of shortcast-longcast sets. Of which there are a total of 6 and if you ever build a decision tree for using them, it's actually pretty crazy what your mind is doing on the fly when you play the Job, evaluating conditions (is White > Black, White < Black, White = Black), what procs are up (is Verfire ready = True, Verstone ready = true, Both = true - if so, which has the shorter duration remaining?), and other contingent variables (is Acceleration sitting at 2 charges or about to reach 2 charges? Is there a heavy movement phase coming up? How close are you to your melee combo-ready? Is the phase one which allows melee range engagement? Is the next burst window close enough you want to save pooled resources for it? Is Manification up or about to be up?). But since all of this is broken into "shortcast-longcast", it's a far less daunting task than if you sit down and try to think out and math out what is actually going on.

Anyway, point is: Rotation that smoothly interlocks at the end and start of the next loop is not simple or bad.

Hell, OLD SMN did this. The rotation was a perfect(ish) 2 min full cycle.

Where did I say you weren't using the definition I quoted? Perhaps using "defined" here to articulate that I explained my position was confusing.

"I clearly define what I mean by "disjointed", and you just...ignore it?" - If I'm ignoring it, I can't be using it, right? Can a person be using a thing while ignoring the thing? But I'm willing to let you off the hook on this one. But when you say I'm ignoring things, that kinda means I'm not using them, hence why I thought you said I wasn't.

In any case, the other stuff...we're going to disagree on, but I would say that "continuous" is not a word that fit Old SMN. Connected I'll give you in the sense that individual strands connected to others like a spider web. I don't feel it was as coherent as something like RDM where all the systems seem more or less connected, and Old SMN's were, as I said, tangentially connected or connected in individual elements to other individual elements. But sure, we can call that connected. Not "continuous", though. Old SMN, as I've said, was ALL OVER THE PLACE. It lacked coherence, which was one of the things people complained about even back then. "Why is Phoenix attached to FBT but DWT and Bahamut are separate things?" and so on are arguments of how Old SMN wasn't coherent.

You don't seem interested in other people's views at all, unless they're non-critical of newSMN.

Since we're otherwise having a decent conversation...I'm going to ignore this. Please stop doing it.[/hb]

...

New SMN is fine.

New SMN is not what you like, enjoy, or think is good for the game. Those are different arguments.

It is on the low end of DPSers. The only things lower than it are RDM (for reasons that make no sense and even I've said RDM shouldn't be doing less than SMN) and the three party buff Jobs, though I think MCH is also able to output numbers higher than SMN. BRD and DNC doing less makes sense given their party buffing and that DNC is well known for NOT being a difficult Job itself.

I'm going to ignore that last quip, because it's yet again you trying to derail the thread with personal attacks and I'm trying not to respond in kind.

They'll never return Noct Sect back the way it was (at least not in next expansion) now that they added a new shield Healer unless they repurpose it to something completely different.

Misshapen Chair pointed out that this makes no sense. Suppose they ever DO add another Healer. Then what? Will there be 3 Pure 2 Barrier or 2 Pure 3 Barrier? Will they only add Healer Jobs in pairs from now on? Even if we assume the Pure/Barrier split survives where the Main Tank/Off Tank split did not (and it's dubious if it will), there's no real NEED for there to be exactly the same number of each. We have 5 Melee, 3 Ranged, and 3 Casters. Melee not having 3 or 6 (depending on if you math for 1 or 2 party slots) isn't throwing everything in the world off. There not being 6 Tanks and 6 Healers (2 party slots...!) isn't destroying things, either. So they very easily could have 2 Pure/3 Barrier (with AST being one of each) without an issue.

It would probably BE BETTER FOR HEALER BALANCE because right now, AST is a Pure + Barrier-lite Healer given it has a 60 sec party mitigation and a 2 min party AOE barrier while WHM has just a single 2 min party mitigation and no party barrier. AST as it is is already half-Nocturnal and so it's getting the benefits of being a Pure and a Barrier Healer at the same time, which is making it stomp all over WHM in the meta. WHM's saving grace is...it's just so damn easy to play by comparison that people bring it anyway since it's easier to get good performance out of. If WHM was as APM heavy crazy as AST is, AST would be wiping the floor with WHM (or people would be running SCH/SGE comps for everything), one of the two.

Hopefully not. I expect the devs have learned their lesson and never do something like what they did to SMN to any job ever again. No jobs deserve to be become like that.

Again - agree to disagree - there's nothing wrong with SMN.

But I do agree that no Job should be changed that way. I've already said extensively why and how I don't think Jobs should be completely changed out from under players. WHM going from SB to ShB to EW didn't change that much (contrary to some people's claims), so it's fine. SHM, on the other hand, had a completely massive change in both mechanics and complexity and gameplay. That isn't fine. The Job's mechanics and systems THEMSELVES are fine, but it should have just been made into a separate Job, like Evoker that unlocks from Arcanist at level 30 and call it a day from there.

[Valence]

I think you don't understand the point. SAM has a somewhat complex rotation, but it closes its loop. You have something that's basically 1-2-3-1-4-1-5-6 (however you want to arrange it), and then 7. You also will occasionally 1-2-7. But the rotation is more or less closed. SAM I don't play as much, so I'll use MNK, as I'm more familiar with it. MNK's rotation is 18 buttons long, but it moves between abilities and the loop closes at the end to get back to the beginning. 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-6-4-5-3-1-2-6-4-5-6-back to start. It's satisfying because it is a nicely closed loop that cycles. You don't end it with 4-5-clip to 1-2-3. You finish off the loop and then it begins again. It's smooth and requires thinking about what you're doing, but there's a correct way to do it, and that's it. It's not simple (in the sense of complex or braindead), yet it's smooth and deterministic.

I don't like rotations where you have to do stupid stuff like "You have a buff and can use Atonement 3 times, but every other time...yeah, you just use two of those". And MNK's, for all that it's static, has hiccups in it when you do use the Nadi finishers, but the core rotation is nice and and I like it. I prefer the "choice" being in things like when to use oGCDs or when to use movement tools that don't disrupt your rotation (things like Ruin 4), but I like rotations that are closed loops IF they're rotations.

This hurts to read. Go look up a guide for MNK and SAM before posting such enormities. It doesn't do you any credit, for whatever is even left anyway.

[Dahlinea]

New SMN is fine.

No. YOU think SMN is fine. Pretty much everyone knows it can't stay the way it is right now. I already said it before: because it just works doesn't mean the job is fine.
A quick inspection in SMN rotation and you can see that even being as simple as it is there are elements that works against each other there. For instance, your main abilities (the 3 summons) that you use between your bursts are locked behind the burst phases. In a scenario you want to hold your bursts for whatever reason you simply can't because otherwise you'll be left with only Ruin III, which is just a filler spell to wait for Bahamut/Phoenix come from CD if you're using the miminum amount of SS (that gerenally amounts to one cast only). This needs to be adressed because it not only works against the SMN rotation in a backwards way but also put severe restraints to your options in the job, being one of the main reasons the job is so braindead.
But I mean, believe what you want to believe. You like the job and will the defend no matter how bad it is anyways, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. We want current SMN to be better and engaging, not the old one back(since the job is already reworked anyways...), like you've been implying throughout the whole thread.

Also, just to address your "personal attack" claim. It's not personal attack, it's what I've gathered from you by reading all posts up until now.

[JacobNewblood]

Just wanna say I love your signature!

As someone who played SMN in ShB and EW.

( I was not in any way the best player )

I love and hate the new SMN.

The main thing I wanted in EW for SMN was a change to the Demis. Mainly I wanted DWT to augment our ruins like Firebird did to add bahamut aesthetic and for the demis to remain in place after being summoned (and have hard casts be our movement limiting factor). And Hey! we got that in EW! (( I would also have liked if we got the ability to choose what Demi we summon but hey, we got it in PVP so ill take it))

But... I liked the DOTs, I liked Bane and such. I like building up to the Demi Summons,
((And why did we lose firebird trance at 72? why??? now we just WOOHOO summon Phoenix, (I know the lore reason but I like FBT, felt like a nice buildup))

I don't hate new SMN, but I miss aspects of old.

And I liked the auto attacking pet. Had its uses!

[CelestiCer]

I think you don't understand the point. SAM has a somewhat complex rotation

I play Samurai 24/7... it's not Complex. We also received like 6+ Simplifications. Be it some were necessary QOL's due to fight designs like...

• Iaijutsu - Increased range
• Third Eye - Increased duration by 1 second
• Enpi - Cast no longer breaks Combo

Others really just make the Job easier and dumber...

• Tenka Goken - Changed from Cone to Circle
• Senei - Kenki cost cut in half less thinking
• Seigan - Third Eye no longer procs Seigan and Seigan removed

The biggest perpetrator for many Samurai players has been " Kaiten removal " bar none.

Some of the above mentioned changes were indeed QOL, but collectively made Samurai easier, hollower and dumber to play. Samurai does still have nuances, and requiring to know how to do more then face-rolling our braindead 2 minute loop is set at " Go play Ultimate ".

What you call Complex? is me performing it in P8S while watching Netflix, while type weaving in-game callouts... it's made literally Braindead. You have Samurai players turning off their Hud's and Hotbars to perform their rotations blindfolded just to make it exciting... that's actually depressing...

[tearagion]

asdf

I'm not saying my definition is the only one, just fully clarifying my position. Otherwise words like "coherent" can be interpreted differently.

Then their goal was to make a bad minion/summon class lol. From a gameplay perspective you don't really feel like you summon much: you have almost no control over the summons (you get 1 Enkindle a minute), and your summons don't have a great impact on your gameplay either (no, I don't consider changing your "Ruin II" button to a different colour is particularly impactful, and Astral Flow has problems imo).

Popularity doesn't necessarily mean "thing people like", there are so many more factors that influence popularity. Big one in FF is ease of use, and nothing is easier than SMN.

I guess I would contest with I like jobs that can float a resource to better deal with downtime or alignment, and that too closed a loop just gets really annoying in harder content (like a certain reworked job). Atonement wasn't an elegant example at all, but it's the one thing Bard's Songs do decently at the moment (even if it maxes out at 9s). I don't really remember why this was important if I'm being honest, I think you just wanted to make what yourself clearer?

It wasn't any more or less continuous from how I interpret than newSMN is; it went from Egi resource generation+Filler to DWT to Egi resource generation+Filler to FBT repeat. Just replace one filler with a flashier, but less consequential one. RDM is pretty coherent, but my assertion is that newSMN is less coherent than oldSMN. Old FBT and DWT being different wasn't "incoherent", it was inconsistent. This is why I specified what I meant by coherent. Even using the arguably more applicable definition of coherent, there's no significant rationale for the assertion that it was incoherent other than they should work the same...just because. It's not illogical for the two to work differently, and failing half of that definition it's inaccurate to not just reduce to inconsistent.

[Renathras]

Holy Spirit/Circle has been providing sustain since expansion launch, and the Confiteor combo has been as well since 6.1, and in both old and new PLD were timed incredibly consistently at around the same points in each rotation respectively. That isn't even counting the regen from Holy Sheltron since we are strictly mentioning rotational sustain. The problem was not with the sustain, PLD fell behind defensively, which is what was remedied in the rework when they Brought bulwark back and made [Holy]Sheltron give a flat damage reduction instead of blocking.

Let me clarify:

Old PLD's self-healing was crunched together in the form of 4x Holy Spirits under Requiescat once per Requiescat CD.

There was no consistent healing during the rest of your rotation; Royal, Goring, and Atonement combos didn't have healing components in them. Contrast WAR (Storm's Path), DRK (Souleater), and GNB (Brutal Shell). Old PLD would have to go through 7 three hit combos (Goring, Royal, Atonement, Goring, Royal, Atonement, Goring), dropping an Atonement somewhere in there, THEN use Requiescat before it got to its rotation self-sustain. And it was all in one big burst of 4x Holy Spirits at once.

You could, of course, break you rotation at any time to cast Clemency...but that was a DPS loss (especially when it actually BROKE your combos to do so), while the other three Tanks had their sustain baked into their core single target rotations.

That's what "consistent self-sustain" meant. As in "consistent across its rotation".