IS NEW SMN A JOKE?

[ThorneDynasty]

Or just don't care about the DPS neutrality between summons but force you to cycle through all of them.

But make each summoning phase take longer than 10 seconds though, for the love of god. Just casting the summon spell should take like 5 seconds. There's so little fanfare and weight to the fire-and-forget instant summons, I really don't believe anyone actually feels like they are channeling great demigods.

[remiff]

The way I'd look at it is this: Instead of visual reskins, make summons that are randomly chosen for a given color but DPS-neutral with each other. That is, same rotation length but different way of getting to it.

For example, Garuda and Ramuh paired together. Garuda is 1 slipstream 4 winds at 9.5s cast time. Ramuh is 5 1.5s lightning bolts and 1 2 second cast lightning attack. Both are 9.5 seconds long and both do, completely arbitrarily speaking, 1300 potency.

Red can randomly be Shiva. Ifrit is 2 2.8s casts + 2 2.5s for 10.6 seconds baseline. So Shiva can be a 3 step sword combo for 7.5 seconds and 1 3.1s cast for a giant glacier. Again, arbitrarily speaking.

Titan is 10s of rocker rotation, let it also summon leviathan. This one's harder to really design well but could honestly be the inverse. Instead of the 1-2 spam it could be 2-1, or it could be 2-1-1-2-1-1 with 2s long 2s and 1.5s long 1s, where 1 is your Gemshine and 2 is your astral flow.

Summoner in the past was defined more by how its rotation had minor changes in the texture of the rotation. Even in ShB it was basically a texture shift between your DWT, demi bahamut, rest period leading to Demi Phoenix, FBT/DP, and the rest towards DWT reset. As long as it's DPS neutral and length neutral with its paired attack, then no one should care about which you get.

Frankly, it doesn't even need to be random.

My point is, there's more than enough ways to skin this cat, and it certainly doesn't need to be just reskins. I'd also like for solar bahamut, DP, and DB to have slightly different rotations. There's 100 ways to make this work provided it offers some texture differences to the rotation but keeps everything's relative length the same.

Certainly, but it won't change the feeling of the rotation; it will remain homogenized over two buttons, and thus he won't be able to get real impressions of change in the way they play. If they respect the invocation times to keep it on a 60-second cycle, then why not, but they can't really change the feeling of each invocation with this system—they will remain copies of each other no matter what.

All we would have are green, yellow, red buttons, and then blue, gray, and purple buttons.
But apart from the visuals, the way it will be played won't be different because it will all remain on two buttons for single target and on a 60-second cycle.

Personally, with this system, I don't see any change that couldn't just be reskins without at least touching the foundations of the current summoner.

The only chance to get more identity for the summons in the rotation is if they change the foundations of the SMN again. Otherwise, we will have exactly the same thing as with the current Demis,
which is 11111 astral flow galvanization but with no flavor behind it. Even if they make you do 2121 or 1212, it will not change the feeling at all.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Certainly, but it won't change the feeling of the rotation; it will remain homogenized over two buttons, and thus he won't be able to get real impressions of change in the way they play. If they respect the invocation times to keep it on a 60-second cycle, then why not, but they can't really change the feeling of each invocation with this system—they will remain copies of each other no matter what.

All we would have are green, yellow, red buttons, and then blue, gray, and purple buttons.
But apart from the visuals, the way it will be played won't be different because it will all remain on two buttons for single target and on a 60-second cycle.

I’d like to think the whole point of the rework was so they could add more stuff without adding a ton of new buttons. It’s future-proofing for the next hundred levels, because a good chunk of the player base is either on console, or plays with a controller.

I’m in the latter category. So I definitely don’t need, or particularly want, more buttons. But I do want more summons with their own unique animations and actions. For me, adding the last 3 elements via Levi-Shiva-Ramuh is bare minimum something that needs to happen. The only way they would be “reskins” is if they just changed the look and not the actions; I don’t think anyone is asking for that. Now if the potencies have to remain close to the original triad in order to keep to the 2-minute rotation that the players have essentially created for themselves, that doesn’t make it just a “reskin,” so long as those actions and animations are unique to their respective summons.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

"Sir, we need to give SMN a new summon, now we've got 30 years of series history to work with, so what shoul-"
"Bahamut"
"Sir?"
"BAHAMUT AGAIN, BUT MAKE IT SHINIER"

[NorthernLadMSP]

I agree it's a huge slap in the face. Solar Bahamut is a fucking joke. I'm giving up playing the job until I see what they come up with in 8.0.

[Connor]

Solar Bahamut could be cool as a concept. Like an upgrade to Summon Bahamut or something.

As a separate, allegedly ‘new’ summon, and not only that, but the sole ‘new’ summon we get? That’s giving real skull emoji vibes

[Elkanah]

I’d like to think the whole point of the rework was so they could add more stuff without adding a ton of new buttons. It’s future-proofing for the next hundred levels, because a good chunk of the player base is either on console, or plays with a controller.

I’m in the latter category. So I definitely don’t need, or particularly want, more buttons. But I do want more summons with their own unique animations and actions. For me, adding the last 3 elements via Levi-Shiva-Ramuh is bare minimum something that needs to happen. The only way they would be “reskins” is if they just changed the look and not the actions; I don’t think anyone is asking for that. Now if the potencies have to remain close to the original triad in order to keep to the 2-minute rotation that the players have essentially created for themselves, that doesn’t make it just a “reskin,” so long as those actions and animations are unique to their respective summons.

The sad part is not having new summons every expansion.

Expectations:
ARR -> Ifrit - Garuda - Titan
HW -> Leviathan - Shiva - Ramuh
SB -> Yojimbo - Gilgamesh - Valefor
ShB -> Fat Chocobo - Moogle - Ixion
Endwalker -> Alexander - Caith Sith - Siren/Atomos

Reality:
8.0 -- "YoshiP: GUYS! I GOT A NEW IDEA! LUNAR PHOENIX!"

[Khryseis_Astra]

The sad part is not having new summons every expansion.

Expectations:
ARR -> Ifrit - Garuda - Titan
HW -> Leviathan - Shiva - Ramuh
SB -> Yojimbo - Gilgamesh - Valefor
ShB -> Fat Chocobo - Moogle - Ixion
Endwalker -> Alexander - Caith Sith - Siren/Atomos

Reality:
8.0 -- "YoshiP: GUYS! I GOT A NEW IDEA! LUNAR PHOENIX!"

And the funny thing is, anyone who suggests more triads after the 6 basic elements seems to pick different summons! But the three that most of the player base seems to agree on (Levi-Shiva-Ramuh), and have been begged for forever now, just can’t seem to make it on their to-do list.

[rawker]

For as long as the mechanics on how each summoning is done will be the same as Endwalker's where multiple summons share a single button, then it will never be engaging and impactful. It will still remain a literal 1 button job.

Even if each demi will have long cast times, again, if it follows the same Endwalker reworked mechanic, it will not change a thing.

The fix to SMN is to introduce another mechanic, preferably involving Carbuncle that is completely separate to the current summoning shenanigans. You can command Carbuncle to execute attacks, debuff enemies, buff allies, heal.. to a certain extent... Next is to put cast times to all the summoning. the stronger the summon, the longer the cast time. the idea is that both parties get what they want.. pets and blinding summons. While casting the primals/demis, you can control Carbuncle.

[RulerOfPotaoes]

The issue with the job isnt its simplicity. The job was incredibly popular in EW for both casual and hard content due to it.

The issue with DawnTrails smn is its getting another Bahamut. With the exact move set.

The job is clearly popular because of its simplicity. It just needs a little more versatility.