Summoner Early Post-Launch Feedback at level 80

[Angry_Evil]

Kinda shocking that after 4.0 disaster, all the feedback and YEARS that's what we've got... That's whole another level of incompetence and detachment from reality. No idea what were they thinking...

[Taranok]

Kinda shocking that after 4.0 disaster, all the feedback and YEARS that's what we've got... That's whole another level of incompetence and detachment from reality. No idea what were they thinking...

Because the devs are working within a framework that is beyond what we, as customers, can see. The devs hate Egis as much as we do, and they're desperately trying to find a way to make Summoner feel like Summoner as much as we want them to. But things will hamper this. For instance, Arcanist lore makes it difficult to get rid of Egis. Aetherflow is kind of ingrained into Summoner and Arcanist both at a lore and gameplay level. The devs need to find ways to keep these various disparate bits intact, which leads to SMN feeling awful because of it.

The best thing to happen to Machinist was when the devs legitimately treated the class as no longer being sacred, but profane, and started gutting it, even going so far as to remove an ability from a class quest that was core to the class, Gauss Barrel. And look how much better MCH is now for it. SMN needs the same treatment but it's not a decision to be taken lightly to literally gut core features to the lore. But that's what Summoner needs as well if they are to turn it into a proper summoner, and the devs just are trying to work within the framework they already have instead of treating it as profane and not caring about what they do so long as the end results are where they want the class to be.

[Anvaire]

Because the devs are working within a framework that is beyond what we, as customers, can see. The devs hate Egis as much as we do, and they're desperately trying to find a way to make Summoner feel like Summoner as much as we want them to. But things will hamper this. For instance, Arcanist lore makes it difficult to get rid of Egis. Aetherflow is kind of ingrained into Summoner and Arcanist both at a lore and gameplay level. The devs need to find ways to keep these various disparate bits intact, which leads to SMN feeling awful because of it.

The best thing to happen to Machinist was when the devs legitimately treated the class as no longer being sacred, but profane, and started gutting it, even going so far as to remove an ability from a class quest that was core to the class, Gauss Barrel. And look how much better MCH is now for it. SMN needs the same treatment but it's not a decision to be taken lightly to literally gut core features to the lore. But that's what Summoner needs as well if they are to turn it into a proper summoner, and the devs just are trying to work within the framework they already have instead of treating it as profane and not caring about what they do so long as the end results are where they want the class to be.

The difference between Summoner and Machinist is that feedback on Machinist was generally aligned. Within Summoner there are two distinct camps. Those that like the job itineration and have played it for a long time despite its shortfalls and those that hate it and want something they call "a real summoner" and don't play it currently. The lore of XIV prevents what is referred to as "a real summoner" being implemented. I place "Real Summoner" in quotations as it seems to differ from person to person. While the current itineration has its problems, I think it is a step in the right direction same as the trances were a step in the right direction. But then I sit in the former camp and like how it is currently.

I think it boils down to the fact that the two design notions are impossible to fully align, therefore we get a bit of both in the current design. I think no matter what the devs do, they cannot please everyone, and it wouldn't be fair to fundamentally change the job, based on the wishes of those who don't play it. So taking the spirit of both ideas, for me, is the right approach.

That said, I do think there is a fundamental issue with the flow of the current job and I think it is caused by the phasic nature of its combined elements. On their own, each element works well and feels fine, but when combined, make the class feel clunky, and have a broken flow. At its core, the job is difficult and complex to play due to its myriad o elements that have short cooldowns and need to be tracked and stranger still is that the job gets a little easier to play at level 80 than it was at 72-79 which I think is a problem albeit one of lesser pertinence.

[Angry_Evil]

I think it boils down to the fact that the two design notions are impossible to fully align, therefore we get a bit of both in the current design. I think no matter what the devs do, they cannot please everyone, and it wouldn't be fair to fundamentally change the job, based on the wishes of those who don't play it. So taking the spirit of both ideas, for me, is the right approach.

I don't believe in this. Nobody said something like - oooof I want my dots to make ruin 3 stronger so I have low damage without them THE DREAM or I want billion useless timers to manage. Lore or community opinions did not influences current poor design of a job. And I don't see many pleased people around and I'm one of few people that doesn't mind busyness of the job... For more causal players it's probably a disaster. Like... it's POORLY DESIGNED it's as simple as that. And not because of lore. Even if you're overall fine with changes you just need to sit and think about them for like a minute and it becomes apparent that it's just BAD. Devs already kinda ignoring the lore cause smn just summons bahamut and phoenix...

[Anvaire]

I don't believe in this. Nobody said something like - oooof I want my dots to make ruin 3 stronger so I have low damage without them THE DREAM or I want billion useless timers to manage. Lore or community opinions did not influences current poor design of a job. And I don't see many pleased people around and I'm one of few people that doesn't mind busyness of the job... For more causal players it's probably a disaster. Like... it's POORLY DESIGNED it's as simple as that. And not because of lore. Even if you're overall fine with changes you just need to sit and think about them for like a minute and it becomes apparent that it's just BAD. Devs already kinda ignoring the lore cause smn just summons bahamut and phoenix...

thats the point though, the only reason we have the Demi summons in the first place is to appease the crowd that were shouting "Summoner isn't a summoner unless its summons are big" I think the issue is that they are trying to tie two design fronts together - the reason we now have Egi Attack 1 and 2 is because the community moaned that Summoner didnt feel like a summoner because there was very little interaction with the pets and it was far better to just leave them on Sic. I think they moved the dots increasing Ruin to match the old style with fester - during SB there was a lot of complaints that the job penalised harshly, so they moved the fester = 0 damage when used with no dots to ruin and fester are buffed by dots instead.

As for the lore implications, if I recall, it isn't that we actually summon Bahamut, more just form his visage from the residual aether that remains after a DWT. Lore always comes after gameplay anyway - so I agree it doesn't really matter. But it is a convenient excuse they use now and then. I think the issue with Summoner now, is that individually its elements aren't overly bad. But when aligned together its a hodgepodge. That said, I don't think it requires any major changes to actually resolve. Small changes like increasing Energy drain cooldown to 60 secs but granting 4 charges instead of two, or allowing them and DWT to hold 2 charges would help. Rolling Demi Bahamut into DWT would also work, but I wonder whether we would end up with a lot of downtimes. The core issue for me isn't that the job is busy, though the new rotation has taken some getting used to, it's in how inflexible it is and that the damage output feels extremely low for its job difficulty. I do, however, like the flow from DWT to Bahamut to FBT - but I agree that a lot of things do not line up well and are difficult to keep in the flow due to their varying cooldown timers.

Actually thinking about it, maybe they tied the dots to ruin as another complaint in SB was that dots had little to no interaction with the other aspects of the job. At this point, I wonder if it wouldn't be beneficial to remove them entirely and role their damage into the egi or DWT. Not entirely convinced that would solve the job issues either though.

[Angry_Evil]

thats the point though, the only reason we have the Demi summons in the first place is to appease the crowd that were shouting "Summoner isn't a summoner unless its summons are big"

Again, I highly doubt that. SMN was going in this direction since HW. When they decided to not give us new egis and came up with all lore reasons for that. You are really overestimating how much community can influence what square does.

I think the issue is that they are trying to tie two design fronts together - the reason we now have Egi Attack 1 and 2 is because the community moaned that Summoner didnt feel like a summoner because there was very little interaction with the pets and it was far better to just leave them on Sic. I think they moved the dots increasing Ruin to match the old style with fester - during SB there was a lot of complaints that the job penalised harshly, so they moved the fester = 0 damage when used with no dots to ruin and fester are buffed by dots instead.

I don't like what you're saying about our great community. "Shouting"? "Moaned"? Or were they right in notion that square was unable to properly design the job? Thinking... I don;t understand your explanation about dots... it doesn't make any sense just like the decision to make dot buff ruins. Literally you can change that and NOTHING will change except QoL. People complained about fester not cause it was 0 damage on no dots but cause it didn't give you stacks delaying both dwt and bahamut and yeah it is a harsh penalty for no good reason. They changed that in 4.1 or whenever that balancing patch was.

Actually thinking about it, maybe they tied the dots to ruin as another complaint in SB was that dots had little to no interaction with the other aspects of the job. At this point, I wonder if it wouldn't be beneficial to remove them entirely and role their damage into the egi or DWT. Not entirely convinced that would solve the job issues either though.

I really don't think that EVERY decision by square is an answer to some complain lol It's not like they don't have agency. I actually remember people trying to blame the community for poor smn design in 4.0 too. It was just as wrong then as it is wrong now.

As for the other stuff - I always thought since SB that demi-summons is the right way for summoner, but their implementation is just ugh. Think about it - after years bahamut STILL WON'T CAST on command and will fly around like an idiot. It's actually even WORSE now cause he doesn't do as many WWs... So I'd argue that individual elements are also bad, or were MADE bad. Literally 1 thing that feels good about SMN right now is FBT. And yeah even IF your notion that they're trying to merry 2 concepts now demi summons and pets is true, there are still billion better ways of handling that. But ultimately I think this situation is WHOLLY of their own making.

[Taranok]

*snip*

While the class will never be a "real summoner" such as a FFX summoner, the devs are remarkably close to getting as close to a "real summoner" in FFXIV as is possibly, but it requires basically accepting that the first couple iterations of summoner were deeply flawed, and that the DWT/FBT cycle is the closest to "real summoner" that FFXIV has ever had, and emphasizing that is better.

To the people who want a poison mage, the devs should take all the ideas they've had for SMN pre-SB and find a way to work that into a class that functions well as that type of class, and split the "real summoner" off and design it based on the other half of the class, the DWT/FBT rotation, and possibly add more pseudo-summons. Consider removing the DoT nature from the class outright, definitely remove egis because the egis are stupid at this point, and find ways to allow the player to more meaningfully interact with the demi-summons beyond simple enkindles and GCD copying.

I've heard ideas for making it so "egi assault" instead temp-summons a summon, partially, to do a singular attack before fading away. The two camps are divided because some people legitimately like SMN's base gameplay in ARR and HW and, despite it breaking the game balance wise, there are legitimate reasons to like how it played, and it might work well for a different class altogether. But the people who saw ShB's changes and went "Wow, it's starting to look like a real summoner" want to push it towards the best version of summoner that FFXIV can possibly have.

What I think we can all agree on at this point is that, whether you like its business or not, the class has serious flow issues right now, and they need to be addressed.

[HeulGDarian]

why does yuna from ff10 comes to play? is it cause it was called a high summoner? yuna also had healing magic and the null magics is that any different from having the poison magic and ruin spells? Sure one is healing the other is dps but you can't judge a job in ff14 by looking at other ff games that's the beauty of those games, every iteration is different. Honestly sb smn had some problems but what they did wasnt fixing the problem as much as wiping half of it call it fixes and creating more problems . This is a summoner the argument of this doesn't feel like summoner is honestly dumb.

For arguement shakes let's say they remove all the arcanist build up cause that's what they are trying to do and people seem to ask for it and leave the summoning part. now you d have a job that only fights with their summons and nothing else . isn't that the beastmaster job? let's take the arcanist part and make a job dots only and a couple ogcds that would probably be the necromancer job from ff5 though I'm sure it had more tricks up it's sleeves. In arr the job was made like that cause the devs took inspiration from WoW so it makes sense that it was like warlock . at Hw they didn't expand the "poison system" they added the trance and deathflare system which lorewise was the way to summon bigger summons . at stormblood it finally happened we reached what we wanted we finally learned how to do demi summons . And what did Shb do? all this build up got destroyed cause some people wanted more summons . Actually no that's False, old summoner and new summoner summon just as much . if you remove everything that has to do with the rework and only put the updates summoner would still be summoning just as much and not only that it would have made the ruin spam after the 2 min demi summon less if trance and pheonix were a different button like they made it with bahamut . So really all these rework changes were just a detriment. PS before i see this answer coming in dungeons you get to summon more by swapping garuda and ifrit for trash and bosses which is great but if they just have made them instant they could have been more usable in 8mans by simply swapping to use radiant shield and contagion though if it would have been usable that i don't know.

[Nyoraii]

Because the devs are working within a framework that is beyond what we, as customers, can see. The devs hate Egis as much as we do, and they're desperately trying to find a way to make Summoner feel like Summoner as much as we want them to. But things will hamper this. For instance, Arcanist lore makes it difficult to get rid of Egis. Aetherflow is kind of ingrained into Summoner and Arcanist both at a lore and gameplay level. The devs need to find ways to keep these various disparate bits intact, which leads to SMN feeling awful because of it.

The best thing to happen to Machinist was when the devs legitimately treated the class as no longer being sacred, but profane, and started gutting it, even going so far as to remove an ability from a class quest that was core to the class, Gauss Barrel. And look how much better MCH is now for it. SMN needs the same treatment but it's not a decision to be taken lightly to literally gut core features to the lore. But that's what Summoner needs as well if they are to turn it into a proper summoner, and the devs just are trying to work within the framework they already have instead of treating it as profane and not caring about what they do so long as the end results are where they want the class to be.

I think gameplay is much more important than lore. If the gameplay isn't working, doesn't feel good, the story should align itself with gameplay and not otherwise.

People aren't playing SMN because it doesn't feel right anymore, I've seen a lot of people making the change to SCH now that SMN has been thrown into the thrash.