Rotations: Making them DIFFERENT

[Raikai]

The entire kit is used to give jobs flavor, so comparing core rotations only is not a tangent I'm interested in taking. I liked old SMN because it was the tiniest bit versatile across the entire game, not because it could shuffle a few buttons around to squeeze more uptime during a Savage raid.

MNK is a DPS. It still gets to have Mantra, a traditional FF Monk skill, with a healing-related function similar to its function in other games. BRD is a DPS, but it still gets to have Warden's and Minne and Troub, non-DPS utility songs similar to what traditional FF Bards have. DNC is a DPS, but it gets to have non-DPS support skills (which don't fit its traditional character because they were plundered from BRD, but that's another tangent). None of them are Limited Jobs. Why does SMN, with a legacy of being more support-capable than the also-DPS jobs Monk and Dancer, have fewer on-demand support oGCDs?

And why aren't the ones it has consistently-themed to old FF games? Why does RDM have the party-wide magic barrier while Carbuncle, the recurring Final Fantasy magic defense summon, gives a single-target barrier? Shouldn't that be reversed? Shouldn't Carbuncle be giving party-wide magic resistance and RDMs casting some kind of juicy single-target buff spells? Oh, but you can use Phoenix, one of the most powerful recovery tools in Final Fantasy, to apply a piddly regen and a heal. Not whenever you want, though, only during the pre-approved Phoenix phase for 15 out of every 120 seconds. Doing it whenever you want would just be silly! Boo.

Really, it feels like Carbuncle is only still there now because it's cute and you can make it follow you around town and that will appeal to people who don't play Final Fantasy, but oh, we need to make a head-fake toward it having some kind of function, so uhhhh... make it required for the actual combat summons. Why? What for? It's all so slapdash and lazy and points further toward a preoccupation with visuals.

And on the topic of damage, why does most of its damage GCD time consist of blapping people with a Variety-Pak of Ruin spells instead of, you know, summoning different magical creatures? You say DoTs and a pet don't feel like a Summoner, but a wizard who just shoots bolts from his hands 85% of the time does? Nuh.

Why is the job flavor so lacking on the job that 'finally feels like a Final Fantasy summoner'? Is all the praise because people were getting nothing for so long and now they're getting crumbs instead?

Carby currently just serves as a nuisance to make SMN's utility shield a bit less practical to use.

I don't mind it existing, but either put something for it to do or just make it optional. I'd love to have it out hanging on cities still, but not in combat.