I'm One Of The Filthiests Of Casuals And Even I Can See How Dumbdown FF14 Has Become!

[Renalt]

Don't even joke about touching black mage. They might as well just remove Flare if they keep nerfing it.



Adults can count to 4 at the very least.

Sorry...had to.

https://youtu.be/u8ccGjar4Es?si=TWaBXsUNIUmUGAx9

[Nebelheim]

FF3-FF9 my dude. Only reason it appears for 3 seconds is because youre forgetting this is a multiplayer MMO, where we cant have large animation delays in attacks.

And again, may I ask where in traditional classic fashion did summoners just summon beasts for dots? At least the attacks feel meaty enough, its just the current rotation being brain dead simple.

In ff11 you had multiple summons follow you for a significant time compared to ff14 and ff11 was an mmo as well. Being an mmo doesnt mean we can't have summon avatars follow us like they did in ff11.

[Noumenon]

There we go, some actual suggestions. I personally would've gone with an approach for a spell rotation that can build to either a black or white magic finishers for that summon; referencing back to FF3 where each summon had a black/white spell effect before actual Summoner job later on summoned the beasts for major elemental damage.

But that still doesnt deter the fact that at the very least "current" Summmoner plays more into that summoned monster fantasy than old Summoner. I'm sorry but you're very wrong on this take.

Its totally fine if you hate current Summoner and prefer old Summoner's playstyle better. Thats why I wanted for that playstyle to return but be a different job. But trying to argue that it was Summoner's fantasy to began with is just no.

There is no defined Summoner "fantasy". The developers should prioritize the gameplay of the job rather than some nebulous undefined "fantasy".

Personally I would not care if they gave Summoner a sniper rifle that shoots out anti-mech bullets and its AF gear is a hazmat suit. It literally doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is whether the gameplay is good. And right now SMN gameplay is atrocious.

[Aldath]

Although I agree the job feels too simple, its popularity also comes from endgame use. What does that tell you? To me, it speaks more about encounter design than class design when even high end raiders would rather pick something braindead.

Summoner may be too simple, but it does three things that some classes struggle with:

• You can learn the class by reading tooltips easier than most other classes.
• Its gameplay remains consistant from the moment you grab it to the moment you hit 90. Yes, Summoner at 70 feels better than before, but getting a lower level trial or dungeon in roulette makes you see how the job feels more complete at lower levels than pretty much any other DPS, making the transition less grating.
• It gives you value. You get a Healer on top of a DPS which makes queueing less tedious and lets players dip their toes into a role they otherwise might not try.

The problem is that most content outside of high end has also become very stale because of powercreep; I would be happy if simpler classes meant more fast paced gameplay, but that's not what we will get. Current endgame encounter design is extremely hostile towards casters and Summoner can serve as a backup res user and its kit only has like, what, 2 or 3 hard casts per rotation?

Lastly, although I agree SMN kit is extremely simple and the rotation repetivie, let's not pretend like it's any different for other classes, we're at a point where skill expression is more like a myth unless you play Monk, once you learn your opener you use the same few skills in the same order or ruin the raid for everyone else. You end up doing the same thing as most other classes but you have to jump through less hoops to achieve it. Ninja has high APM but let's not pretend changing Mudra to Raiton, Huton and Suiton would make much of a diference.

[LittleImp]

Don't even joke about touching black mage. They might as well just remove Flare if they keep nerfing it.

I'm honestly shocked that transpose lines have existed in the game for as long as they have. They're so out of place next to how dumbed down the rest of the game has become. I really feel it's only a matter of time before that job gets hit with the stick too.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I never found old summoner difficult, just very tedious. Unfortunately, the devs have a tendency to over-correct in response to criticism, so they went too far the other way.

I still don't play it, but mostly because it's just obnoxiously flashy and I can't see half the damn battlefield with summons going off. Especially with multiple summoners in the party. No wonder the game relies on giant orange puddles to mark attacks, animation tells won't work when you can't see the enemies through all of the explosions.

[Renathras]

OP: Are we talking about relics or SMN?

People love SMN. It's one of the most played Jobs now. People like it. I get you don't, but you aren't every one.

EDIT:

Summoner may be too simple, but it does three things that some classes struggle with:

• You can learn the class by reading tooltips easier than most other classes.
• Its gameplay remains consistant from the moment you grab it to the moment you hit 90. Yes, Summoner at 70 feels better than before, but getting a lower level trial or dungeon in roulette makes you see how the job feels more complete at lower levels than pretty much any other DPS, making the transition less grating.
• It gives you value. You get a Healer on top of a DPS which makes queueing less tedious and lets players dip their toes into a role they otherwise might not try.

Basically this, though I'd also add that it has a lot of flexibility. Need movement at one point of the fight? Shift Ifrit and Garuda somewhere else; already in Ifrit? Use Ruin 4 for movement. Need to maximize damage at one point? Use Titan there. Post-6.3 PLD also did this sort of thing. Basically you have a base rotation, and there's an optimal way to play it (Titan under raid buffs, Energy Drain on CD but use Fester only in the 0/2/4/6 cycles, don't use them with Phoenix, hold them until the next Bahamut), but there's also a lot of flexibility to shift around as needed, making it easy to alter the rotation for different encounters. You even largely just keep using Baha/Phoenix on CD (with some exceptions), allowing very straightforward optimization.

It's intuitive, you don't need to go offline to pursue guides for hours to understand arcane mechanics of convoluted tooltips, it sets up decent muscle memory early and teaches you the Job's mechanics intuitively as you level, and it's flexible with useful utility in even high end encounters, with some things to optimize around.

The only other Jobs that more or less teach you how to play early and reinforce muscle memory are stuff like WAR (by level 50 it basically has its end game rotation), RDM (by level 60 it basically has its end game rotation), some but not all of the Healers (while rotations don't change much, WHM gets doesn't get Solace until the 50s and doesn't get Misery until 74, which are arguably Job defining abilities). But a lot of Jobs give you some key ability somewhat late in the leveling cycle that completely changes how it plays or makes a major alteration to the rotation and thus muscle memory of the Job.

SMN is arguably one of the best Jobs in the game now.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I never found old summoner difficult, just very tedious. Unfortunately, the devs have a tendency to over-correct in response to criticism, so they went too far the other way.

I still don't play it, but mostly because it's just obnoxiously flashy and I can't see half the damn battlefield with summons going off. Especially with multiple summoners in the party. No wonder the game relies on giant orange puddles to mark attacks, animation tells won't work when you can't see the enemies through all of the explosions.

You can thankfully adjust summon sizes with a /command.

Personally new Summoner is too formuliac and boring atm since there isnt much agency to the rotation (technically most jobs suffer from this). But its still a step in the right direction with how it should "feel" to play. With the only dopamine feel coming from mowing down trash mobs with spamming AoE spells. But when it comes to single target it looses its thunder imo.

I like my idea where they could go for a sorta pseudo Red Mage playstyle where each summon has a chain of spells that can build up a finisher guage that can produce either a black mage or white magic effect depending on the summon spell rotation path.

At least anything that doesnt involve just spamming the same 2 skills over and over again.

[TheMightyMollusk]

You can thankfully adjust summon sizes with a /command.

Adjusting the size of the summon doesn't affect the size and flash of their attacks.

And yes, I know, turning animations down or off is an option. That doesn't address my issue, it just hides it.

[Rolder50]

I keep seeing people in this thread bring up the fantasy of summoner. I don't think anyone has a problem with the fantasy of new summoner, it's just the actual gameplay that's a problem. If the class didn't play itself, it would be perfect.

And regarding that point above me about the animations, you can fix that with certain illegal addons