Yet another SMN thread: SMN is the only job that doesn't have a gauge/proc management

[Post]

...
I really need to stress that "Oh, it's okay, you can suck and still clear content!" is actually not a satisfying "compromise" to a lot of players...

...It's really not about just "able to clear normal content" vs. "not able to clear normal content"; that's oversimplifying the issue. People want to feel like they're playing "correctly", not "scraping by because it doesn't matter anyway".

If the whole game goes in the direction of lowering the "ceiling", it likewise alienates players that have been around for a long time and HAVE gotten better, from concerted effort or hours regardless.

Part of the reason SMN is as controversial as it is is that a large number of players DID like its previous iteration, if not for its theming then for its moment to moment gameplay, which is still very important.

RDM by contrast has basically not changed at all since its introduction. It still gathers mana the same way and dumps it in an ever -lengthening combo. It's not too complicated and was often lauded as "the intuitive DPS job" that provided easy party support through rezzes BEFORE SMN raised the bar in that regard. It's only complicated now by contrast, and that happened all at once, in one patch, one day!

RDM has gotten more punishing to do the thing it does to help the party, too, cuz it has to hog melee range more often, and it loses so much more if it interrupts its combo early to rez nowadays. SMN loses more now than before, too. DoTs and a pet still hit the boss while you rezzed, and you used to be able to use dreadwyrm trance to rez faster and for no personal damage penalty as long as you used Deathflare before it fell off.

By the way, why should rezzing as a non healer be limited to jobs with low complexity ceilings? That's not fun for players that like engaging more with their job but still like to support the party, especially when they know their teammates are learning.

[Post]

At no point has FFXIV's job design ever been so inscrutable that any player that can read (at least for the English translation) did not have every tool necessary to play the jobs in the game "correctly" as you put it if not optimally. The actions themselves tell you everything you need to know to compare your actions, from costs to targets to ranges to cooldowns to potency values.

If there's ever confusion, they largely design that element out of the game. E.g.: multiple, competing aoe actions for BRD, MCH, DRG, DRK before aoe combos existed. DoTs, in SMN's case, as some players might never have realized every dot tics every 3 seconds. The only real exceptions to this have ever been BLM's astral fire damage increase being unlisted and MCH's Flamethrower hitting more often than most over time effects

Heck, the MSQ prepares you more for reading than for anything else, you'd figure folks would be great at it by the time they're 90.

I think the number of players that don't read their actions as they acquire them, one by one, while leveling in game says that most don't care about playing well. The number of people unsyncing content for glamour and mounts at every hour, even waiting for groups for duties they could easily solo if they tried also speaks volumes.

But, like your were saying earlier in the reverse, I don't think this is a bad thing. I just come away thinking, as a longtime fan that barely interacts with ANY communities or resources about it from outside of the game:

If you have a type of player that plays the game for the job design, for the battle content, for liking to do better, and you can create content in such a way that it doesn't exclude those that don't really prefer that aspect of the game... Why strictly design for the latter? They're not the ones that are going to play with and appreciate the content or the job design the same way anyways.

Apologies for the double post, can't figure out how to edit a post to beat the character limit on a phone browser.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

@Deo14 (Since quote is too long)

I doubt that buffing RDM would punish Summoners in 99% of content if Summoner is left untouched. Players would still play Summoner because it's fun and easy to play as.

Not obligated? I disagree. If there's more things for a Job to do and can do then Players are obligated to learn it or pick another Job. Which is what a lot of Players did when they picked Summoner as their Caster job over the more complicated ones.

Sounds to me that those jobs need to be changed then if only 30% is necessary compared to the 90% of Summoner. On paper that makes Summoner the way more efficient job if more players use it to its potential without too much issue. Not really something to aspire to, to make a job too complicated or busy work that most players will only use 30% of what it has to offer.

It is a fair comparison as they're both in the Tanking roles. Warrior is FAR simpler than Gunbreaker and Dark Knight and players can start learning it at level 1. I would also disagree on difficulty, as Warrior has way better self-healing and it doesn't have a couple mitigations locked out if a Boss doesn't use a certain type of attack (Magic).

If people are mad, then I'm not seeing it as Warrior is the most common tank I see running around.

That sounds like a RDM issue, not a Summoner issue. So, fix RDM. Players aren't going to abandon Summoner in huge numbers all of a sudden for a job that's much more busy work (and switching things up) compared to Summoner unless it's buffed to ridiculous levels which it won't be.

[Vandso]

smn is braindead. ppl that say "i feel like a summoner" are just copium because they want an easy job. every summon does aoe damage and lights up 2 buttons. nothing unique or different about what u choose to summon. phoenix does a little healing but u cant choose to use it wisely it must be used on cd.

I find the idea of having the other summons stay in the battlefield just like Bahamut and Phoenix interesting, but I seem to be alone in this idea.

[Deo14]

I doubt that buffing RDM would punish Summoners in 99% of content if Summoner is left untouched. Players would still play Summoner because it's fun and easy to play as.

So are you fine with SMN being locked out of EX and higher content? We're talking RDM having potentially 10%+ higher overall damage contribution than SMN if we wanted to rank DPS by their difficulty. Keep in mind that in 6.2, community was not allowing multiple jobs to join their party, because they were just few % weaker than other jobs.

Not obligated? I disagree. If there's more things for a Job to do and can do then Players are obligated to learn it or pick another Job. Which is what a lot of Players did when they picked Summoner as their Caster job over the more complicated ones.

But you just don't have to do them. Look at current SMN, what makes you feel like you're obliged to use Searing Light, Aetherflow skills or others? You can do your regular summon rotation without it. And what's wrong with players learning? That's how all games work, you learn the game's system and you get better. It's not like other "hard" jobs are hard to learn, they are already pretty easy if you just read your tooltips.

Sounds to me that those jobs need to be changed then if only 30% is necessary compared to the 90% of Summoner. On paper that makes Summoner the way more efficient job if more players use it to its potential without too much issue. Not really something to aspire to, to make a job too complicated or busy work that most players will only use 30% of what it has to offer.

This is just peak of how lazy you can get. Why would you need to learn a job? Why won't we just have 1 button rotation? Healers already have that, ask them how they like it. And if we already have 1 button rotation, why even play it? Can't FFXIV just be a movie at that point?

It is a fair comparison as they're both in the Tanking roles. Warrior is FAR simpler than Gunbreaker and Dark Knight and players can start learning it at level 1. I would also disagree on difficulty, as Warrior has way better self-healing and it doesn't have a couple mitigations locked out if a Boss doesn't use a certain type of attack (Magic).

WAR vs GNB, potentially, if you have hard time tracking your cartridges and somehow struggle with few oGCDs. WAR vs DRK, not a chance. Difference between DRK and WAR is that you just spam some extra oGCDs in your burst, that's everything there is to it. You don't need to upkeep Darkside, order of your oGCDs isn't super relevant, and there is no other complexity. Difficulty coming from Dark Mind is irrelevant here, we're talking about people who want to put as little effort as they can, no way they can differentiate between magical and physical attack.

If people are mad, then I'm not seeing it as Warrior is the most common tank I see running around.

Of course WAR is running around, he's OP, which is why other people are mad. WAR discredits other tanks by being jack of all trades while having highest damage.

That sounds like a RDM issue, not a Summoner issue. So, fix RDM. Players aren't going to abandon Summoner in huge numbers all of a sudden for a job that's much more busy work (and switching things up) compared to Summoner unless it's buffed to ridiculous levels which it won't be.

So you're suggesting to give RDM a SMN treatment and gut it until there's nothing left? I'm curious how RDM mains will like that. One expansion of being too weak balance wise, and they neuter it in next expansion? I'll start hoarding all the popcorn right now for that shitshow.

[Eorzean_username]

If the whole game goes in the direction of lowering the "ceiling", it likewise alienates players that have been around for a long time and HAVE gotten better, from concerted effort or hours regardless.

I'll try to respond in more detail later, but for now I just want to reinforce:

Yes, to your point here — this is absolutely a valid perspective. The frustration from more "dedicated" players is not unfounded, and I'm not at all trying to invalidate that FFXIV is slowly and steadily eroding a great deal of the elements that previously made it interesting and rewarding to more "detail-oriented" players.

You're absolutely correct that, one way or another, someone is being "left out" and "alienated". And I think that it's a lot harder to actually "compromise" on this issue than a lot of people — on either polarity of the debate — seem to realize; in either case, someone's play experience is almost always going to be injured.

This is why I think it's important to be sympathetic to former Summoner mains who have lost a unique experience that no substitute Job provides; current Black Mage is, frankly, in no way at all similar to what optimizing (or just "playing well") ShB Summoner felt like, so telling ShB SMN mains "well just go play BLM" is honestly not a "solution", any more than telling EW Summoner mains "well just go play White Mage".

In my opinion, it's a really sticky situation — kind of a (to be a bit melodramatic) Ancients vs. Mortals case, where someone's just going to "lose" no matter what happens.

At no point has FFXIV's job design ever been so inscrutable that any player that can read (at least for the English translation) did not have every tool necessary to play the jobs in the game "correctly" as you put it if not optimally. The actions themselves tell you everything you need to know to compare your actions, from costs to targets to ranges to cooldowns to potency values.

This is an area where a lot of disconnect occurs between parts of the community, I think.

Different people think differently, and different people approach the game with a different sense of priorities... so it can be misleading to generalize too much from your own perspective.

Something that seems as simple as "consider Potency-per-GCD when looking at combo chains", "make a mental chart of how Potency scales with target count for ST vs AOE actions", or "Divide Potency by Resource Cost to establish the relative value of resource-consumers" is actually opaque black-magic to a lot of players.

Another part of the problem, I think, is that FFXIV is a game that's largely about "setting up the piano-sequence correctly" — seemingly-minor "errors", like where actions are placed in a sequence, can compound and spiral to bloating potency losses due to how the buff system interacts with rotations.

That is also confusing and unintuitive to players — I don't think examples like optimal Perfect Balance usages, or opening encounters with precast Meikyo Shisui, or whether Meisui is actually a DPS button or not, or facepulling on Dark Knight to pump out Living Shadow on-time, or manipulating Acceleration and Swiftcast to prevent OGCD drift on RDM... are intuitive to people, even if they're trying to read their tooltips.

Same for throughout history — I'm sceptical that many players could figure out how to operate HW Dark Knight or SB Machinist or ShB Summoner correctly without some amount of external guidance. There's just way too much going on, and way too many competing possibilities all clashing for attention as the rotation branches through. I think most people definitely become "totally lost" trying to figure it out for themselves, and end up either giving up, or leaving a lot of tools and/or potency "on the table" after they reach their limit for trying to process it.

I think a contributing factor is that, if you look at MMOs from the perspective of players who don't "live" in the genre, a lot of the required "homework" is unintuitive — it's not necessary to perform any calculations or tooltip-analysis to understand how to play Mario, Zelda, shooters, etc. A lot of people coming to FFXIV are in the mindset that they play a game just by using the buttons it gives them, and it starts to spiral into a mess when those buttons start punitively competing with each other, or "rotationally imploding" if done in the improper sequence or outside a narrow "buff window"... etc.

EW Summoner comes much closer to that "pick up and play" feeling that "most" games offer the player, so I think that's another reason that it's well-received by a broader segment.

If you have a type of player that plays the game for the job design, for the battle content, for liking to do better, and you can create content in such a way that it doesn't exclude those that don't really prefer that aspect of the game... Why strictly design for the latter? They're not the ones that are going to play with and appreciate the content or the job design the same way anyways.

It's a fair question, I'm just arguing that it's too binary.

You're positing a world — and this is a very common argument that I've seen for years — where there exists exactly two types of players:

a) Doesn't read tooltips and doesn't care, just wants to unsync everything and farm glamours and RP in clubs

b) Carefully-reads tooltips, seeks external resources, practices rotation religiously, seeks perfection in parsing and content-optimization as a point of personal pride and honour

And under that premise, certainly, it makes sense to say, "Why design for A? 'A' doesn't care anyway".

I just think that this is actually reasoning from an inaccurate premise, and so it's reaching an inaccurate conclusion.

In reality, I think that it's not "a" and "b", but much more like a smooth continuum that flows between something more like "a" and "z", with the entire alphabet in-between.

So as you increase your distance from "a", you encounter players who take increasing amounts of pride and willingness in trying to learn their Job and play their rotation "correctly".

But as you increase distance from "z", you encounter more and more players who aren't dedicated enough to master things like Optimal Drift Monk, or play Black Mage in Extremes/Savage (or, any more these days, Red Mage in that same content... ironically enough).

So what you're actually encountering is a "filter system" — the more intuitively-accessible a Job's "correct play" is, the more of the upper and mid-level continuum it appeals to. The more exacting and demanding a Job is, the more it starts to winnow the willing candidates down towards the "z" end of the spectrum.

In my own anecdotal experience, I would guess that the population distribution is kind of "bell-curvy":

• At one "tail", a minority of "hardcore a" types that truly don't care whatsoever about their tooltips, and will happily "freestyle" or "RP their rotation"
• At the other "tail", a minority of "hardcore z" types that will eat, sleep, and breathe encounter timelines in order to ensure that not a single cast is dropped (or etc)
• And distributed through the central "hill", a much larger number of "b-to-y" types who are genuinely trying, but have varying limits and standards for how much is "too much" when it comes to trying to understand and master a single class in a single game.

I think that EW Summoner has "struck sparks" for a large segment of that distribution. As much as it can be memed as the "EZ farming Job", it's also appealing to a wide demographic of players that all feel like they can "figure it out" and "play well" entirely on their own (and are genuinely trying to).

I think this may be because FFXIV has a bad habit of "overcorrecting" — making things either utterly-pointless ("Press Glare, then press Glare again") or the exploding-brain-meme ("EW Monk burst optimization").

For a lot of players, EW Summoner seems to make a sweet-spot in-between — it's far more engaging than "1111121111" on Healers, but far less intimidating than "Here is a 34-point plan for how you can get Red Mage through a single 20-second mechanic sequence in Savage Floor 3".

[Post]

Something to point out as well is that jobs are largely being simplified due to their arbitrary decision to change the game to a 2 minute cooldown meta, and to make this DPS synchronization window more obvious to more players. However, he more they lean into this, the more jobs that were already established before this push are punished.

PLD lost its constant damage rotation because it didn't fit. DRG is due to change, especially because it deals more damage on the odd minutes of a fight because Life of the Dragon lands there. RDM can't really fit all its 3 potential combos into this window well, and worse, it loses its ability to gain resources if the boss goes away for a long time, unlike SMN which peaks on its 1min Summon Bahamut/Phoenix.

The most dramatic changes have lately been to conform to this standard rather than to serve or evolve the job's existing playstyle.

[Raikai]

The most dramatic changes have lately been to conform to this standard rather than to serve or evolve the job's existing playstyle.

I'd LOVE to hear at least a hint of future plans from YP. The 2min meta is truly something they wish to move forward with? Because it's vivid that it hinders whatever new ideas they can have for new jobs, or even new fight mechanics.

Most of the people here on this Forums would probably say that it won't ever change, but I like to think that they might eventually realize how limiting it is.

[Renathras]

If the whole game goes in the direction of lowering the "ceiling", it likewise alienates players that have been around for a long time and HAVE gotten better, from concerted effort or hours regardless.

Sure, but who is arguing that?

Who is suggesting that BLM or RDM's difficulty should be reduced?

No one seems to be making the argument to lower the skill ceiling of the entire game. People are just saying having one Job with a lower skill ceiling is nice, popular, enjoyed by many, is likely good for the game, and isn't having the over-hyperbolic dire consequences people wanting it to be made harder are insisting.

SMN is easy, people like that. The rotation is intuitive, people can understand it by just reading their tooltips and playing with it. This is good Job design.

It cooexists in a space with BLM, which isn't at all easy. People (generally different than the first group in SMN) like that, too. The rotation is convoluted, can be tuned to specific fights and even specific phases of specific fights, but no one's playing the Job anywhere close to optimally without spending quote a few hours on Discords and reading/watching guides online, as well as playing with it on their own, testing various things out, and memorizing fights, including watching videos and timing mechanics out, to squeeze every last ounce out of the Job.

...and BLM actually does reward those players with higher DPS, enough to make them worth taking even though SMN has superior utility.

Everyone's comparing SMN to RDM, but the opposite end of the spectrum is BLM, and SMN and BLM seem to have a healthy coexistence going.

This suggests the problem isn't SMN, the problem is RDM. Either it's doing too little damage, its utility isn't seen as worthwhile, it's too hard to optimize, or maybe some combination of the above. But the problem seems not to be that SMN is simple nor that SMN is simple and doing the damage it's doing, since it and BLM still seem to have a healthy relationship.

"But fewer people play BLM!" - True, which may not be because "SMN is easy" so much as it is "Most people don't like having to hyper-optimize and spend ours in weird third-party places outside of the game". But at the high end, people that want to play BLM aren't being denied and BLMs are assets to their teams.

The problem seems to be with RDM.

At no point has FFXIV's job design ever been so inscrutable that any player that can read (at least for the English translation) did not have every tool necessary to play the jobs in the game "correctly" as you put it if not optimally.

That's the point being made, though:

That players should be able to figure out how to play their Jobs optimally with in-game resources. And we're not even saying all Jobs; just 1. Jobs that require extensive outside research and planning are fine to exist as well - BLM does.

EDIT:

This is why I think it's important to be sympathetic to former Summoner mains who have lost a unique experience that no substitute Job provides; current Black Mage is, frankly, in no way at all similar to what optimizing (or just "playing well") ShB Summoner felt like, so telling ShB SMN mains "well just go play BLM" is honestly not a "solution", any more than telling EW Summoner mains "well just go play White Mage".

Agreed.

It's why I've held since 6.0 that the next Job they need to introduce should be Green Mage which just takes old SMN's kit (minus Egi-Assault, and the Demis) and replaces them with DoTs and the same refresh and cycle system. The only things that would be missing would be Egi-Assaults, Demi-Bahamut, and FBT. DWT isn't inherently "SMN-y", and the two big summons can be replaced with field effects that do things. The "get 8 GCDs in during Bahamut" could work like NIN's Dotan gaining the ground snake attack when you do your AOE thing while it's up. That would keep that same type of gameplay without the "Summons" and thematically fit a "plague doctor/DoT Mage" class fantasy (think Corrupted/Salted Earth). And Egi-Assaults were honestly just glorified GCD attacks that generated a stack of another ability to use for movement and "Corrupted Earth" optimizations.

This way, both playstyles can exist side-by-side.

I do think the Devs want to move away from DoTs (except on Healers for some reason...), but if they could be persuaded, GRM would be a good addition to the game to scratch that itch some people still have.

.

SMN itself...I want them to give Carby a SCH-like Ruin 2. Just SOMETHING it can do other than Radiant Aegis, and an instant cast will have minimal disruption (at most while waiting for the 0.7 sec animation lock after casting Ruin 2) before Aegis, which I think is more than acceptable. Especially since Searing Light doesn't cast from Carby anymore and since every time I want to use Aegis, it seems to be while a Primal or Demi is on the field and I can't ANYway, so nothing different.

[Deo14]

I've made yet another masterpiece today, which visually showcases the problem:


Chart only has damage as Y axis, skill expression is distance between skill ceiling and skill floor

Once again, we have Bob and Greg. Bob isn't very good and Greg is kinda decent. When Bob plays RDM, he does significantly less damage than Greg. He puts in less effort, so that's fine, right? But what if both Bob and Greg switch to SMN? Greg still deals very similar damage, while he does not need to put in as much effort. What about Bob? He deals significantly higher damage, even though he puts in same effort as he did when he played RDM. It's so significant, that the difference between him and Greg is very tiny.

So why would Bob go back to RDM, when he can just relax and play SMN and deal more damage? Why should Greg keep trying his best while playing RDM, when he could just play SMN and deal same damage for less effort?

Both jobs must deal similar potential max damage, otherwise they will be getting kicked out of parties. So there are only 2 ways how to make both RDM and SMN good picks. You either make RDM as brain-dead as SMN (I'm sure RDM mains will be happy about that) or just simply allow more skill expression for SMN. This will make Bob deal less damage, however that is simply fair.

I'm not putting in my personal suggestions how to increase the skill expression for SMN, but it does not necessarily mean drastic changes or adding button bloat just for the sake of adding bloat. There were some good suggestions from other people however.