I Love 4.0 Summoner. A lot.

[Selova]

snip

No one is asking for a do-over. Classes/jobs evolve over time across expansions, since HW summoner has been gradually moving towards feeling like a summoner and less like a job that's primary strengths are dots. Regardless of whether you enjoyed the old summoner playstyle, it was badly designed and felt nothing like a class based around strong summons and your interactions with them. While 4.0 summoner has many glaring issues, it's design is headed in the right direction. People just hate change and want their old, archaic dot playstyle back for some reason.

[Tahldon]

While 4.0 summoner has many glaring issues, it's design is headed in the right direction. People just hate change and want their old, archaic dot playstyle back for some reason.

Here is that phrase again "---- in the right direction"... as if SMN will continue moving forward. It just did an about-face, made said "step", tripped and has fallen onto the ground and is wallowing in place with clunky mechanics, uphill battle for dps, a pseudo-complexity that consists of "delaying this or that", and lockout-juggling.

I am genuinely curious as to how many people praising SMN played it throughout HW since its release up until now.

For all of this debate, the Devs took SMN and divorced it completely from what lots of SMNs already enjoyed. People liked the flow of the "dot mage" but who is to say that the Devs couldn't just add this Bahamut piece on top of that and leave everything as is? Turn some numbers for balance but leave the play-style the same.

I, and I'm sure a lot of other people, wouldn't even be here hosting counter-points if we still enjoyed the job. I'm not at all opposed to change when it's good, but right now SMN is far from that. There are more people saying "SMN Sucks, I'm going RDM" (to include myself) than there are willing to suffer a job that's not enjoyable and makes it a hassle to get decent numbers.

I agree with the other poster who stated that 4.0 SMN is incredibly easy to play. It definitely is, hands down. Why are people feel it's complex? It's fumbling over itself, tripping over its sluggish pet (who got neglected in the changes), and not meeting the same numbers as every other job. I mean you're even now rewarded for using an AF action on a target with no dots on it!

HW SMN was far better than this version, in my opinion. That SMN was graceful and everything fit together nicely. Not to mention that doing that 23 (sometimes 24) button opener was awesome and felt far more rewarding than what 4.0 SMN offers.

Bahamut doesn't cover for the fact that this job has fallen down a well. It's like this Job has suddenly shown up to a track meet declaring that it's going to sack race while everyone else is properly geared for sprints and relays. It can work, It might seem fun, if it hops fast enough it could compete, but why would you do it?

[TsundereImouto]

I see things completely opposite then you. Summoner already has been simplified.

I disagree! Summoner's playstyle was previously extremely linear; you could map out exactly when you had to recast DoTs on a target, every time. As long as you didn't use your 3rd stack before Tri-d hit the 30sec mark on its recast, you'd never have to worry about being synced up. There was some difficulty figuring out when you could hold stacks on Summoner, but the same is true now, except instead of watching a 30sec timer, you have to make sure you've used DWT at least 16sec before Aetherflow comes off cooldown; if there is downtime while AF is on cooldown, you need to figure out whether you can squeeze stuff earlier, or whether you'll have to cut DWT short. So the property still exists, it just exists in the form of making sure you can hit your AF on time every time, which becomes even harder if you are near a bahamut phase.

Before, SMN was about present thinking and upkeep management. Watch the target bar for whether dots are falling off. Watch your bar for aethertrail's timer and shadow flare's timer. Be sure you do 3 AF before tri-d comes off cooldown. Special considerations made to squeeze extra stuff into AoE phases. It was by no means simple and dumbed down, but it was easier than now in my opinion.

Now, SMN is all about forward thinking and getting the most out of the time that you have and the burst phases you'll get. Having a damage steroid every 60sec (contagion) as opposed to 180sec (raging) and the new 5 sec AF cooldowns encourages you to squeeze them together whenever possible and fit them in that window. Bonus points if you fit death flare at the beginning and tri-disaster at the end. And that's not even considering bahamut; it's incredibly tricky to fit an akh morn, 3 festers, a tri-disaster, and a bunch of wyrmwaves into that window when you have to cast it right at the beginning with no leeway; to set up that burst phase requires you think a lot about when stuff is going to come up and when you'll need it, otherwise stuff will sit off cooldown and lose you DPS. Overflowing on mana is extremely hard; between bard refresh and lucid on cd, especially in the first 2 minutes you need to be extremely vigilant in using your mana, and those 2 minutes are the hardest time to do so because so much of your kit is frontloaded and jam-packed into them. being able to use lucid 60sec earlier might mean i get 6-8 more ruin IIIs on a fight than you did, because my lucid came off cd an extra time compared to you.

I think a11s was pretty hard as SMN too. I enjoyed thinking about when i could and couldn't hold aethertrail stacks between phases. But I think with SMN's crazy chain-lockout windows right now, that fight would be much, much harder to optimize properly.
I don't think it was the hardest fight, though. For me, optimizing a8s, juggling movement and mechanics and multiple targets that you had to be careful about pushing the HP value of, was much more demanding.
Thanks for your post! It was interesting to hear your opinion

[TsundereImouto]

Bahamut doesn't cover for the fact that this job has fallen down a well. It's like this Job has suddenly shown up to a track meet declaring that it's going to sack race while everyone else is properly geared for sprints and relays. It can work, It might seem fun, if it hops fast enough it could compete, but why would you do it?

The problem I have with your mentality is that, whenever I read something like this, it makes me believe that people like you don't actually really like this game very much. I know, I know, that's a rude and lame thing to say about you, and I don't mean it in the accusatory sense, or even literally at all, so forgive me for the faux pas as i explain what I mean in further detail.

It seems like when you say "I can't compete with other people," what you are focused on is how you look vs the rest of the crowd. You enjoy being noticed and feeling like you had an impact, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's a different mentality from me. Whenever I play SMN, all I am thinking is "how can I do what I did, but better." As long as a job continually gives me things to improve on from last time, I am personally happy. I don't care whether or not I did amazing numbers as a result of that complexity. I want the challenge to be the reward in and of itself. I want the gameplay to be the reward in and of itself. I don't need a reward in context of other people and their rankings versus me, with the exception of other Summoners versus me. I am glad you feel that RDM brings more to the group; they undeniably do. They are overpowered. They are able to dualcast+raise six times in a fight and still have mana to spare, a very good one can match a very good Summoner's DPS and average ones always beat out average SMN, and they bring embolden. Despite BLM being able to pull near-5k numbers at the highest level on certain fights, they're still way, way better.

I play Summoner because I find it to be engaging and thoughtful, rewarding in the sense of gratification when you finally, *finally* feel like you did everything right and had an amazing run. In that sense, Summoner is a success. The tuning of the specific numbers is still under review. I don't care about how strong a deep and engaging class is. For me, playing a simple and straightforward class is agonizing. Imagine an RPG where you had an option that dealt 10 damage, and was really really fun to execute, it made you feel really rewarded and fulfilled for choosing it, it was engaging and held your attention the whole way through. Imagine you also have an option that deals 11 damage, but you have to stab yourself in the gut. This is the dichotomy that I'm working on right now. Why would I ever play those other classes when they are so simple to grasp, when I feel like I could learn the entirety of the complexity of their kit (agnostic to raid fight complications) in a day. It just doesn't make sense to me.

But your mindset is equally valid. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel like you're making a bigger difference. There's nothing wrong with wanting to help out your team as much as possible in terms of progression on a fight, so you can clear faster and beat other groups to the punch. I want to do those things too, but not at the cost of my own personal enjoyment. And I really, really enjoy Summoner.

[TsundereImouto]

The problem isn't how RDM or BLM plays, it's that SMN has too many phases and not a smooth transition from each one.

Currently it's "dot > AF _ skill _ skill _ skill > DWT >__________dots__________ > AF _ skill _ skill _ skill _ DWT > __________dots___________ > AF > Bahamut"

This is true on a dummy; in a boss fight, the tricky part is leveraging downtime and movement to eat up the empty time between your dots instead of pushing back your more busy phases. In that sense, Summoner finds themselves particularly resilient to downtime, because a skilled one will make sure they're only losing a couple ruins, and not time on DWT / cd on AF.

[Selova]

snip[/I]?

All you are doing is proving my point for me. It doesn't matter that people liked the dot mage playstyle, the job is a summoner not a damage over time mage. I already agree'd currently summoner's post 4.0 have issues that need addressed, but with the introduction of bahamut, a summon that makes it feel like your actually playing a summoner and not a watered down affliction warlock and with more emphasis on egi interaction with the summoners rotation ie. ruin mastery. I'm personally hoping they give the job the changes they need to make them fill less clunky and not as punishing as they are if you die/screw up. I'm not going to ever support the old dot mage playstyle of summoner, it was a badly designed mess and not even remotely satisfying to play. I sincerely hope they keep designer summoners around their summons, which is what it should have been at the start.

[Tahldon]

Snip.

Don't worry, I don't harbor any grudge towards why you may think that; however, let me point out that the way you feel could not be farther from the truth.

The very reason that I am here contesting opposing points about SMN is because I love this game and SMN a lot; so much so, that I took the time to earn a Zeta and a Lux for it and use it as my singular and primary DPS exclusively. It I grew wholeheartedly fond of SMN, even through the hardships we had to go through from the early aughts. As a story, I'll share that as 4.0 got closer and closer, I spoke with my friends several times over about whether or not I would even bother trying RDM (despite it being my favorite FF job in its versatility lore-wise) and that I wanted to stick with SMN. Little did I know SMN would go through such drastic changes and slide away from what I had grown to love and into what we're all debating about here.

It's not the Bahamut piece that was the issue, it was the complete turn-around of the gameplay style that I take issue with. They fixed a thing that wasn't broken

I would wager that despite all of that, I am only being critical of the Job because I want to love and enjoy it as much as I did prior to the changes. The only difference is that I am not beholden to romanticizing the job as it is simply because it's SMN.

But more importantly, it's natural to want to contribute to the team in a number of ways while enjoying the experience and having fun. If one is not doing 2 out of the 3 of these then, then what is the incentive for continuing to play it? Fervent loyalty, alone, isn't enough to substitute the hardships this job has to carry through all the encounters.

[Ariomi]

Planing when to execute a part of your rotation that takes ~15 seconds to build, lasts for 16 and backlogs/effects your rotation for the next 1-2 minutes is the same as holding 1 skill? Please.

Takes 19 seconds to build in the opener with a skill that doubles our mana. (Takes Summoner a maximum of 15 seconds to Dreadwyrm in most Openers)Outside of Manafication takes 35 seconds to build enough Mana to use Melee Combo/Verholy (And that's if you get lucky and proc everything.) Lucky meaning you get it off with something like 3 Verstones, 4 Verfires, 4 Verthunders and 5 Veraeros.
Normally a Red mage looks more like three Jolt 2's Two impacts, 5 Veraeros 6 Verthunders 1 Verfire and 3 Verstones.(If you use swiftcast to build mana) And that's around 45 seconds if you are uninterrupted casting.

Compare that to Summoner who's only requirement to enter dreadwyrm trance is casting out three festers in the span of 15 seconds. The planning needed for Summoner is a lot easier. You know without a shadow of a doubt, that unless you die, Aetherflow will be up at this time, and you can get in dreadwyrm trance from there, and two dreadwyrm trances you can Bahamut.

Rng Red Mage is a little more finicky to plan out with random procs

Aetherflow's only single problem is that it's clunky. It's linear, straightforward but it's a clog in the system. If they made Summoner seamless, Meaning Aetherflow and Aethertrail attunement were separate again, there would be no issue. And seeing how Summoner is lower then the Support dps of Bard and Machinist most fights, I don't see how buffing Fester 10% part of the time would be an issue to class balance.

[Ariomi]

I disagree! Summoner's playstyle was previously extremely linear;

You inadvertently clarified in several more ways how summoner is even easier.Mana Management. Back in 3.0 You had a limited amount of Mana regen per minute. Summoner's now have Aetherflow (With somewhat reduced Mana regen) and Lucid Dream.
And comparing Raging Strikes to Contagion, Raging Strikes was an 180 sec cooldown. (Only 120 sec for bard) and was a 20% boost. Fester used to have a hard 10 second cooldown, Meaning you could at most 2 under raging strikes/dreadwyrm trance. Contagion has more uptime, Requires less planing and is less punishing to mess up. If you botch a contagion, you have another one in 45 seconds. You mess up old raging strikes, You won't see it again till the next battle litany. The only part is that it's too short/clunky pet ai. Fitting three fester's in contagion is possible. You can get two festers off in 6 seconds and three off in 11 seconds. Old Summoner could only get two festers off in roughly 10 seconds. You can dot enemies in 2.5 seconds-instantly vs 5 seconds each.

Summoner is as linear as it ever was. The only change to it now, is you have aetherflow roadblocks. What do I mean by this?
Summoner went from keeping aethertrail attunement up, to aetherflow down. You went from holding it as long as possible so you could dreadwyrm as aetherflow came off cooldown and get the extra damage. Now you never have to worry about Aether falling off, and focus more on never delaying it a second. What's easier? Juggling and keeping something in the air, or keeping it permanently planted on the ground under lock and key.

New Summoner is arguably more Linear, with gates that prevent you from doing what you want.

New Summoner is also easier in that you have three sets of tools for the situation. You have aetherflow, Dreadwyrm trance and Bahamut. And since they made aetherflow foolproof, you can't muck it up anymore unless you die. If you pushed Cruise Chaser in a11s, and he caught you by surprise and went untargetable, you had to pray that you could dreadwyrm before aether attunement fell off vs aetherflow sitting on cooldown for a few extra seconds.

Summoner has to worry less about mana management, lining up cooldowns, and is easier. You can't mess up dreadwyrm anymore. The only thing a Summoner fears is dying. Losing 45% of your dps instead of 25%. Summoner currently went from I used to much Mana, not enough for skills I dropped Aetherflow to I didn't use enough Mp. I didn't use dreadwyrm soon enough vs I didn't use aetherflow soon enough.

[Viridiana_Sovari]

I disagree, SMN requires less thought and less management to play now. 3.0 SMN was my favorite job in the game. 4.0 SMN doesn't even rank top 5 for me. SMN is more rigid about its rotation if you playing optimally now, not less. SMN requires less thought now as well as compared to 3.0.