Summoner needs a fix or a new reason to play it.

[Owyn_Addens]

I still stand by the idea that the underlying core is in fact more or less the best job they have right now, simply because it isn't the same base type of rote static rotation as all the other jobs are.

Isn't it, though? There's some freedom about which order you do the demi-summons in, but you'll be summoning them in that order every pull once you've decided on a plan and you'll always prefer to summon Titan first if 2-minute buffs are running. The rest of your post is just a version of Summoner that could exist but doesn't, and requires additions to the underlying core that you could make to literally any other job too.

[Supersnow845]

If anything isn’t PCT a better example of how you could achieve “randomness” in the summons without is messing anything up

Not that I want them to copy PCT but isn’t that fundamentally how you would fix summons

“Long summon then you get a summon that does something when you want and when all the summons are done you get a payout”

[Reginald_Cain]

I think the reason to play it should be the same as any other job: because you enjoy the fantasy of it. It's difficult dealing with FOTM players as a dev because if a job like SMN is too viable then everyone plays it for easy performance and they start to complain about the game being too easy or boring. That's part of capitalism and recognizing the weak will of the playerbase for what it is. It should be viable, but it's delicate due to most players "not caring" about what job they play as long as it is the best performing job.

Damage numbers and combat logs kinda ruin the game. All this stuff should be under the hood completely and health bars should just be without values or percentages. Base engagement with content on having sufficient ilvl and leave it at that. Destroy the parsing community.

even if hiding that info was remotely possible or reasonable, it wouldn't solve the problem of a dev team completely out of touch with job design. Machinist's damage and lack of utility has been a huge problem for 3 expansions. Can it clear sure, does it feel good to be a pure dps with peapod sized number no. In a world without parsing I'd still like all dps jobs to either do similar damage or be given tools to excuse doing no damage. Why does it have feel awful to do solo content on machinist like fate grinding and not samurai or another selfish dps like black mage?

[Averax]

Summoner is so boring anymore and any opportunity to give it interesting gameplay was squandered with this expansion. Just gave it another Bahamut, one extra OGCD sometimes, and a Fester reskin.

It's got unnecessary bloat for the sake of having more buttons to press, but it doesn't make it remotely interesting. In fact you can just macro ruin/tri disaster together with the summon abilities, which is something that should just be baseline, that way we can free up space for some actually interesting buttons to press.

It's like playing a healer without as much healing.

I love the fantasy of summoner and i'd like to enjoy it more but it's just so bland to play that i can't stomach it.

[Sunako]

Just make summons abilities instead of spells and add second charge to Bahamut and it would be significantly more fun to play

[Carighan]

Just make summons abilities instead of spells and add second charge to Bahamut and it would be significantly more fun to play

Yeah I feel the look&feel could be improved if the "spells" we cast are just pet-commands that have the summon execute the ability, which also stays around the entire time. Ruin/Tridisaster are then basically just what the Carbuncle does if we have no other summon around, it's still a "pet command".

There's even precedent for cast-time pet-commands, see old Necromancer in DAoC!

[HikariKurosawa]

even if hiding that info was remotely possible or reasonable, it wouldn't solve the problem of a dev team completely out of touch with job design. Machinist's damage and lack of utility has been a huge problem for 3 expansions. Can it clear sure, does it feel good to be a pure dps with peapod sized number no. In a world without parsing I'd still like all dps jobs to either do similar damage or be given tools to excuse doing no damage. Why does it have feel awful to do solo content on machinist like fate grinding and not samurai or another selfish dps like black mage?

Wanna know how to make the game way more fun? Turn the floating combat text off and play for the fantasy of the jobs. Can't tell you're doing "no damage" if you're can't see the damage numbers on any job. Solo content too, everything dies the moment I start to burst on DRG currently or within 2-3 casts of fire 4 on BLM. Is that what you want on MCH? If solo content is a valuable metric of anything, other jobs should be brought down to that level.

MCH does higher aDPS than a lot of jobs. That's the damage you'll be dealing in solo content. It has unique utility in dismantle, on top of another defensive raid buff. I'm not really seeing the problem with MCH. People are crying because their favorite job has the lowest rDPS for some reason. There will always be a job that has the lowest dps, that's unavoidable.

It is very reasonable and possible to hide all that info though, and it would make the game much better. Just like if fflogs were shut down. People think they want fflogs to exist, but the reality is that it is a pure detriment. There is absolutely nothing positive about the existence of fflogs and all it does is reduce the experience of the game. Absolutely reductive.



If you look at nDPS it's even more favorable for MCH. The variance between the lowest parse and the highest parse on MCH is extremely slim relative to other jobs too, which means it's a very low skill expression job. So why is it bad again? What's the problem with it?

[Supersnow845]

^n and aDPS are useless metrics for cross class comparison of anything besides the tanks in 8 man content whatever your opinion of MCH is

[HikariKurosawa]

^n and aDPS are useless metrics for cross class comparison of anything besides the tanks in 8 man content whatever your opinion of MCH is

Context is important, read the post I was replying to carefully before you go for what you believe is an easy gotcha moment.

[Supersnow845]

Context is important, read the post I was replying to carefully before you go for what you believe is an easy gotcha moment.

There is no gotcha, pointing to aDPS or nDPS on a selfish DPS as a sort of “see it’s not that bad if you just ignore the raid buffs the rDPS jobs are built around then MCH kinda does decent damage”

Fact is a selfish DPS needs to do comparable n/aDPS to a buffers rDPS, which MCH does not do