Shadowbringer: Summoner Changes Discussion

[Kyohei]

I must say I agree with how crazy the job feels. Especially coming from playing RDM throughout Stormblood, the amount of pressure there is for OGCD and how bad it feels compared to the smoothness of RDM has been very tricky to adjust to. I've been mostly playing by ear and really have no idea if I'm even doing it right.

The other issue is that the lack of pet tanking made the lvl 60-70 SMN job quests extremely difficult. It required chocobo companion, titan shields, and potions to complete and I still died a couple times. I'm not sure if they retuned these quests to compensate for the lack of a meatshield Titan.

Overall, I'm tempted to go back to RDM but I told myself I'd get to 80 on SMN and main it this expansion and I'm sticking to my guns for now.

If you see it as as three layer rotation you'll see just how awesome the job is by making you do more different things compared to other mages (not saying others are bad though, they're also good, but have a different playstyle). SMN whole rotation includes 3 sub rotations: one with dreadwyrm, one with bahamut and one with phoenix and only then it repeats, while other jobs consists of one bigger rotation that repeat itself. Once you notice the layers it's easier to smoothen the whole rotation .
I get it might be overwhelming at first but when you get used to it it's actually very nice to have because there no feeling of being bored to do the same thing. That's only my opinion however, i got bored by all other jobs, except NIN.

Oh, and i remember that lvl 70 quest and i died too twice before clearing it during SB, titan didn't keep aggro so i didn't use him anymore after the second try and went full dps with ifrit. Potions did help though, that's true.

What really annoying now for me is that the pet is literally non-existent in HUD layout. Meaning there's no feedback on what it's doing. You can't track garuda's dot except by looking at the tornado itself or putting her in focal.

[Trensharo]

If you see it as as three layer rotation you'll see just how awesome the job is by making you do more different things compared to other mages (not saying others are bad though, they're also good, but have a different playstyle). SMN whole rotation includes 3 sub rotations: one with dreadwyrm, one with bahamut and one with phoenix and only then it repeats, while other jobs consists of one bigger rotation that repeat itself. Once you notice the layers it's easier to smoothen the whole rotation .
I get it might be overwhelming at first but when you get used to it it's actually very nice to have because there no feeling of being bored to do the same thing. That's only my opinion however, i got bored by all other jobs, except NIN.

Oh, and i remember that lvl 70 quest and i died too twice before clearing it during SB, titan didn't keep aggro so i didn't use him anymore after the second try and went full dps with ifrit. Potions did help though, that's true.

What really annoying now for me is that the pet is literally non-existent in HUD layout. Meaning there's no feedback on what it's doing. You can't track garuda's dot except by looking at the tornado itself or putting her in focal.

That's a pretty weak argument. RDM has a rotation with two layers as well: Melee and Ranged. It flows well, is actually intuitive, and is far more approachable. That's the difference between good class design and a badly-executed salvage job. That's not surprising, though, for obvious reasons.

You're doing 4x as much work for mediocre results. The DPS disparity between Summoner and Red Mage is small enough that it simply isn't worth dealing with Summoner unless you have some sort of RP attachment to the class. It feels absolutely awful to play, and RDM brings decent utility and more available raises (due to easily accessible instant casts).

The same way [s]he can see how "awesome" it is by putting on his/her blinders and deluding him/herself with your cop-out, you can see how "awful" it is by realizing how mediocre it is to do that much more work for disproportionately meager gains.

I'll agree that some people may like the "multi-tasking," if we can even call it that... but let's not kid ourselves here.

At the end of the day, it isn't even about DPS... it's about fun. It isn't fun to play this class outside of questing in the overland zones... This class doesn't even allow one to enjoy the game while playing it.

The way this class is set up isn't even logical, FFS.

[Taranok]

And remember Trensharo, there are vastly, vastly better designed multitasking classes. RDM for casters, and Bard/Machinist/Dancer. As bad as Machinist is post-rework for people on high ping, as bad as it is to maintain drill anchor shot, the class actually does flow, unlike Summoner.

Even by multitasking design, Summoner is badly designed.

[Trensharo]

Might be harder for people on keyboard i can see that. It is an ABSOLUTE breeze for me however with the DS4. No issues here.

I use a Razer Naga and Tartarus to play MMOs. Everything is one button, even secondary hotbars that use modifiers, with another button that toggles shifts while depressed so I can do things like heal and DPS using the same keys on Scholar. Very efficient. No controller can compete with that, and I sacrifice nothing in targeting/movement fidelity to get it.

Experienced players are not keyboard crawling across the number rows, esp. with [CTRL] modifier keys, etc. for the other hot bars. Summoner cannot be played from one hot bar only. They key bind... Pretty standard in all MMOs that have for historically had lots overkill bloat - so the control it will lose to any hip-hop playing on a budget mechanical KB, anyways.

That's why the game was sort of needed for console players, and not the other way around.

This class has more skill bloat than an EQ2 Necro, and that's quite an accomplishment. Except it has 3x as many mediocre skills that exist for no reason but to artificially inflate the "skill cap" (what the forums call it).

Which, honestly, is little more than a "twitch reaction cap" than a skill cap, since "set rotations" are nothing more than muscle memory tests, anyways.

If you do it enough you will "get it," but getting it doesn't mean it's bad. It just means you wasted enough time doing it over and over again to make it less overwhelming or clunky through familiarity.

[Aomine1992]

I must say I agree with how crazy the job feels. Especially coming from playing RDM throughout Stormblood, the amount of pressure there is for OGCD and how bad it feels compared to the smoothness of RDM has been very tricky to adjust to. I've been mostly playing by ear and really have no idea if I'm even doing it right.

The other issue is that the lack of pet tanking made the lvl 60-70 SMN job quests extremely difficult. It required chocobo companion, titan shields, and potions to complete and I still died a couple times. I'm not sure if they retuned these quests to compensate for the lack of a meatshield Titan.

Overall, I'm tempted to go back to RDM but I told myself I'd get to 80 on SMN and main it this expansion and I'm sticking to my guns for now.

Don’t do this to yourself lol I’m over here wishing I was a RDM main currently and wishing I wasn’t so invested into SMN as my class of choice. Our job is a disaster on release like it was last xpac. It isn’t just busy it’s a complete mess with nothing synergizing well...dots are all clunky as hell and don’t time well with anything, Bahamut has gotten worse cause he can’t be locked into place by ogcds.

You are constantly weaving the crap out of stuff Clipping into Ruin cast, I still don’t get why ruins potency is still crap, we are now the least mobile caster, which is wrong. BLM is currently outclassing us in every kind of way besides raise but guess who outclasses us there? RDM. so there is just very little gained for a lot given currently:/

[Miskatonic]

Don’t do this to yourself lol I’m over here wishing I was a RDM main currently and wishing I wasn’t so invested into SMN as my class of choice. Our job is a disaster on release like it was last xpac. It isn’t just busy it’s a complete mess with nothing synergizing well...dots are all clunky as hell and don’t time well with anything, Bahamut has gotten worse cause he can’t be locked into place by ogcds.

You are constantly weaving the crap out of stuff Clipping into Ruin cast, I still don’t get why ruins potency is still crap, we are now the least mobile caster, which is wrong. BLM is currently outclassing us in every kind of way besides raise but guess who outclasses us there? RDM. so there is just very little gained for a lot given currently:/

To update, I gave up on SMN after getting it and RDM to 80. Now I'm getting all the other jobs up, sort of rudderlessly looking for a job that really speaks to me. Not sure yet what I'll eventually settle on, might wait until 5.05 to know for sure. I'm hoping they do something amazing with SMN

[Len]

I'm hoping they do something amazing with SMN

Get comfortable on Red Mage, because you're going to be waiting till 6.0 for the developers to possibly do something "amazing" with Summoner: a full rework.

They had the development cycle for Shadowbringers to take the feedback they received in Stormblood and apply it. During this time, the developers took a deep enough look at Summoner for a partial rework, and they still came up short. At this point, I really have zero faith in the developers regarding Summoner going forward.

[Nyoraii]

Get comfortable on Red Mage, because you're going to be waiting till 6.0 for the developers to possibly do something "amazing" with Summoner: a full rework.

They had the development cycle for Shadowbringers to take the feedback they received in Stormblood and apply it. During this time, the developers took a deep enough look at Summoner for a partial rework, and they still came up short. At this point, I really have zero faith in the developers regarding Summoner going forward.

I'm not touching SMN again until they change it. On the bright side, I'm having a blast with WAR which IMO is much better designed than current SMN.

Sometimes I think they're just trying to make SMNs start playing SCH to solve the lack of healers haha.

[Taranok]

Sometimes I think they're just trying to make SMNs start playing SCH to solve the lack of healers haha.

Maybe if the devs actually made it so all 3 healers healed people in fundamentally different ways, there wouldn't be this problem. But that's a can of worms, and an entire thread, unto itself.

I don't personally like the WAR change, but I basically got sick of WAR's base rotation in ARR and, well, its base rotation basically hasn't changed, at all, since then outside of berserk being 5 fell cleaves in a row and other rage related things. Also fracture no longer exists, but we don't talk about that.