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

[HikariKurosawa]

Well maybe if SMN wasn’t reworked to be a boring overly simplistic mess that a 2 year old could play then the devs wouldn’t struggle to balance it so much

Every change the devs make to the jobs since the toilet paper lily fiasco is basically to attract FOTM players to temporarily boost numbers so they can declare it a success before they abandon it

5.0 MCH was like that, 5.0 healers were as well, same as 6.0 SMN, 7.0 AST, 7.2 BLM and every other class I’m missing

And as soon as the class is abandoned then all the problems crop up. How do you balance a class that’s so easy that if it did any respectable damage it would dominate its archetype? How do you balance a selfish class in a role not allowed to do decent damage? How do you design classes that HAVE to contribute to damage but aren’t built like they should be contributing to damage?

None of these questions get answered, they just get left on the trash heap

Do you really believe there shouldn't be a simple job in this game like SMN? Just curious, should every job in the game pander to your personal preferences? What makes you think ANY job in the game should pander to the preferences of a twisted individual? Not saying you are twisted, but maybe you are. Hypothetically speaking though, should the devs pander to the interests of twisted individuals?

[Supersnow845]

Do you really believe there shouldn't be a simple job in this game like SMN? Just curious, should every job in the game pander to your personal preferences? What makes you think ANY job in the game should pander to the preferences of a twisted individual? Not saying you are twisted, but maybe you are. Hypothetically speaking though, should the devs pander to the interests of twisted individuals?

That’s purely a shift in the “job difficulty Overton window” so to speak. When RDM released in 4.0 it was laughed at for being too easy. Now RDM is the de-facto answer as the hardest caster for those who haven’t read up on how absolutely cursed 7.2 PCT optimisation is. And RDM hasn’t changed at all in the way it is optimised. Everyone has a different answer for what a “simple job” should be but if you are asking specifically “should a job AS simple as SMN exist” then my answer is no as it warps game balance because a job that easy HAS to be terrible to be balanced. There is a difference between your “low floor medium ceiling” jobs like RDM and ceiling and floor are both having a limbo contest in hell like SMN

I have no idea what you are talking about about “twisted individuals”

[HikariKurosawa]

That’s purely a shift in the “job difficulty Overton window” so to speak. When RDM released in 4.0 it was laughed at for being too easy. Now RDM is the de-facto answer as the hardest caster for those who haven’t read up on how absolutely cursed 7.2 PCT optimisation is. And RDM hasn’t changed at all in the way it is optimised. Everyone has a different answer for what a “simple job” should be but if you are asking specifically “should a job AS simple as SMN exist” then my answer is no as it warps game balance because a job that easy HAS to be terrible to be balanced. There is a difference between your “low floor medium ceiling” jobs like RDM and ceiling and floor are both having a limbo contest in hell like SMN

I have no idea what you are talking about about “twisted individuals”

Basically people who care about parsing or optimizing dps in an rpg, or people who care about balance too much in a pve game. RDM in 4.0 had way less in its kit compared to now, it likely was the simplest caster, and now it is not.

[Rithy255]

Basically people who care about parsing or optimizing dps in an rpg, or people who care about balance too much in a pve game. RDM in 4.0 had way less in its kit compared to now, it likely was the simplest caster, and now it is not.

Red mage hasn't really gained anything other then finishers each expansion lol. The reason why RDM is now seen as the "difficult caster" now is because everything else became easier over time, if anything RDM has become slightly easier with how you only need 50/50 gauge mana for combos, how magnification doesn't add gauge mana so your at no risk of over capping.

Wouldn't you be someone who cares about parsing and optimising the fun out of jobs? you sure sound like someone who complains that you can't pick up a job and be a Pro good at it right away, If you truly didn't care about optimising the fun out of everything you wouldn't be advocating for easy auto play jobs, It feels odd that you'd complain that people caring about balance too much but you want every job to be easy and functionally the same.

[Sifpatata]

I prefer a thousand times that egis moves come back than dots, or they can adjust the job in general, the big mistake of the devs is to make smn and scholar share job quest, smn should have been a separate job.

[Valence]

The situations where you don't have 5 layers of mitigation because of deaths. You probably just jump into the wall when it gets that bad though so it's understandable if it's something you can't grasp.

We're not really living in a world where success in an encounter is binary. There are always situations where mitigation can salvage the pull. Again, it's the problem with the playerbase that is overly eager to jump into the wall. Overly concerned with parsing so they give up on "bad pulls" because they don't want to see a bad parse on their fflogs. Can't parse grey if you don't clear the boss after all.

Every single criticism with every job just boils down to this: The community cares way too much about parsing and is ruining their own engagement with the game for something that makes them look like losers to most people. Wow you parsed 99% on a boss in an mmo. That's awesome. Really cool buddy! Goes to show that giving up on a bad pull over and over and over really makes you look good in the end. Giving up on your favorite job fantasy, at least you get to look "cool" on the fflogs LOL. What a joke. Your parents should be ashamed.

That's rich coming from someone that literally doesn't play savage+, but it only goes to show that you have no idea what you're talking about. Never in my life I have seen tactician or whatever save a scuffed pull, especially not since EW and onward where everything is literally designed to be binary with body checks everywhere (7 players instead of 8? Too bad, you wipe). That's savage+ design, and I don't like it more than you would, but it is how it goes right now.

The fact that you think people wall it during PROG out of all things because of parsing is unhinged. Hint: people wall it during PROG when they know they cannot fulfill the requirements for the coming next mechanic in time, when walling happens. If you're speaking about CLEARS/RECLEARS, I'm sure there is groups that are all about the parsebrain, but otherwise you use your mitigation according to the spreadsheet plan, not to save a scuffed run, else it's like telling tanks to keep their cooldowns just in case they're about to die. When the scuffed run actually happens, odds are your party wide mitigation is on cooldown because you're using it on what is planned for the fight. You're reasoning with a casual content mindset, not a savage+ mindset. And again, I don't like this spreadsheet encounter planning and raidplans more than you (probably?) do, I find is extremely distasteful in fact, but that's how it is for now as well.

Edit: I don't know if you realize that you're talking to someone that has raided extensively and has actually a strong dislike for a lot of the things you don't like as well. But I'm certainly not gonna let pass unhinged takes on mitigation from people that don't have that experience to make it look like a job is okay when in fact, it is not.

Basically people who care about parsing or optimizing dps in an rpg, or people who care about balance too much in a pve game. RDM in 4.0 had way less in its kit compared to now, it likely was the simplest caster, and now it is not.

Parsebrains are in fact generally the players constantly asking for simplification and the sandpaper. If anything they feel right at home with takes from that other group of players that do care about their performance enough to play above casuals, but cannot get the most out of the jobs they play (or specifically don't even play), which makes them angry and ask for the same simplifications.
Like I don't think BLM hardcore fans play the job to parse or speedrun with it... At least until the latest changes.

[Sunako]

What makes SMN extremely boring to play, it does not have any kind of flexibility. Everything is locked behind demi window which makes it boring and terrible gameplay experience, because you can not push or delay your rotation properly without losing massive amount of dps.

[Carighan]

What makes SMN extremely boring to play, it does not have any kind of flexibility. Everything is locked behind demi window which makes it boring and terrible gameplay experience, because you can not push or delay your rotation properly without losing massive amount of dps.

Well yeah but that applies to ~every job. Readily of top of my head I constantly play Astro, Paladin and Gunbreaker who all have essentially 0 drift-resistance (Astro has marginal amounts but only every second minute).

[Yeonhee]

Every single criticism with every job just boils down to this: The community cares way too much about parsing and is ruining their own engagement with the game for something that makes them look like losers to most people. Wow you parsed 99% on a boss in an mmo. That's awesome. Really cool buddy! Goes to show that giving up on a bad pull over and over and over really makes you look good in the end. Giving up on your favorite job fantasy, at least you get to look "cool" on the fflogs LOL. What a joke. Your parents should be ashamed.

If I remember correctly, you want every damage number imaginable being hidden so players cannot see any of them under any circomstances. Isn't for people who are terrible at the game and don't want to look like losers ?

[HikariKurosawa]

If I remember correctly, you want every damage number imaginable being hidden so players cannot see any of them under any circomstances. Isn't for people who are terrible at the game and don't want to look like losers ?

It's for people who care more about fantasy than pretending they are accomplishing something with their parses. I've cleared UWU several times so I am at least okay at this game. I know it's not a really great accomplishment at this point, but it's alright.

Parse culture is simply bad for the game's fantasy elements though, it's not really about skill at all and that's just a weird and toxic thing to suggest.

You have people who main MCH not playing it because they want to parse higher. Maybe their groups are pressuring them to not play the job because it would be detrimental to their parses.

There are some people who don't want their poor performance being exposed, but even in those cases it is less about looking like a loser and more about avoiding the experience of being put down by a hyper nerd like you.