Thread: Summoner 5.05 changes are in

I am honestly glad they finally fixed the whiff from bane when you cast it too quickly after dots, I hated having to wait to actually make sure it went off.

I am a little surprised that as many unhappy summoners that are out there complaining about where the class is, that they didn't do a little potency boost until they fix the class. Both for smn and nin. Damage plummets when bad design choices work against us, such as dots falling off. The design flaw is very evident in casual pug content where you have to spend a lot of time accounting for other issues, say multiple healers going down when you are the only one who can rez in party. Because of the rigidity of the rotation, the lack of flexibility makes it difficult to recover to where you would like to be.

As Rauderi says, how can a class feel so busy and yet so slow and unsatisfying at the same time? I'm not sure.

Forgive my ignorance, it’s very hard to honestly sit down and level a job with this much negativity on it xD but I did love summoner when I started the game near the end of SB.

I know from what I’ve seen the difficultly of the jobs risen ALOT, (somehow even when they said they were simplifying things?)

What’s actually going wrong with the job? (apart from how unrewarding the job looks for how difficult it’s system currently is)

Originally Posted by Drayos

Forgive my ignorance, it’s very hard to honestly sit down and level a job with this much negativity on it xD but I did love summoner when I started the game near the end of SB.

I know from what I’ve seen the difficultly of the jobs risen ALOT, (somehow even when they said they were simplifying things?)

What’s actually going wrong with the job? (apart from how unrewarding the job looks for how difficult it’s system currently is)

A lot of people have issue with the amount of off global cool downs, and separate timers you have to keep track of, resulting in a two minute rotations where everything has to stay on cool down, and remain in the same spot in your rotation.

I personally love this and enjoy it more than any other job, some dont agree.

The issue many do agree on is that its dps does not reflect the amount of work you put in, where the other casters have very easy to learn and master rotations that pump out equal or more dps

Originally Posted by SWB

A lot of people have issue with the amount of off global cool downs, and separate timers you have to keep track of, resulting in a two minute rotations where everything has to stay on cool down, and remain in the same spot in your rotation.

I personally love this and enjoy it more than any other job, some dont agree.

The issue many do agree on is that its dps does not reflect the amount of work you put in, where the other casters have very easy to learn and master rotations that pump out equal or more dps

Yeah, the work to damage ratio is just not there atm. I do also think some QoL changes to give you a bit more leeway in how you structure things would do a lot of good too. You can have busy classes that still feel smooth. I don't think Summoner is as smooth as it ought to be atm. DPS and smoothness not being there when the class was shifted to be very busy is why it has pushed many away from the class, understandably so.

Originally Posted by SWB

A lot of people have issue with the amount of off global cool downs, and separate timers you have to keep track of, resulting in a two minute rotations where everything has to stay on cool down, and remain in the same spot in your rotation.

I personally love this and enjoy it more than any other job, some dont agree.

The issue many do agree on is that its dps does not reflect the amount of work you put in, where the other casters have very easy to learn and master rotations that pump out equal or more dps

The thing I dislike the most is the animation locks that trip you up if you use the off GCDs too quickly. For example, if I use EA1, EA2, then Fester in a single GCD there's times were all 3 abilities go off and times when just EA1 and Fester go off and then I have to hit EA2 again to make it go off.

Same issue I had with Machinist in Stormblood. So many times when Reassemble didn't want to go off...

I'm not really a high level player. Hell, still leveling my SMN from 60 right now, not maining it by any means. But, for me, it almost doesn't really even feel like it has a "rotation" as much as spamming a bunch of oGCD and weaving in Ruins where you can. I might be missing something, maybe it all starts clicking together with Bahamut and/or Phoenix. But, it doesn't even really feel like there's a particular flow to this job, it's just a bunch of stuff you can use whenever.

Originally Posted by dinnertime

At least 4.0 SMN was actually so busted that it was top DPS and that made up for it. 5.0 SMN is just the absolute worst.

SMN wasn't busted in 4.0. They gave it some buffs in...4.05 I think? Maybe 4.1? It didn't become busted until Demi-Bahamut was made 160 potency wyrmwaves and the DoTs buffed to 1050 potency combined, which was later nerfed (Wyrmwave) because SMN had the whole oGCD echoing on DB as well that basically busted the classes balance. I'm not 100% sure when it happened, but it definitely wasn't at launch.

Originally Posted by Hasrat

I'm not really a high level player. Hell, still leveling my SMN from 60 right now, not maining it by any means. But, for me, it almost doesn't really even feel like it has a "rotation" as much as spamming a bunch of oGCD and weaving in Ruins where you can. I might be missing something, maybe it all starts clicking together with Bahamut and/or Phoenix. But, it doesn't even really feel like there's a particular flow to this job, it's just a bunch of stuff you can use whenever.

This is kind of the big issue. My biggest complaint is that SMN doesn't really have a rotation right now, and I describe it as "John Madden" because of how much it has to throw out, and it tends to pulse in waves. It has very limited resources for unpenalized movement and has to just follow so many separate timers. It has substantial amounts of time wasted under FBT because ruination doesn't impact it at all, and the class fundamentally lacks flow.

The biggest giveaway to a rotation being bad is when you see players doing unnatural or tedious things to maximize damage. E.G. it's unnatural to end DWT early. You can, but it's unnatural to. And you're expected to with the current SMN to maximize DPS.

After leveling both Machinist and Bard, as well as Black Mage, I can safely say Summoner's rotation is by far the worst of all of them, outright, hands down. Bard actually handles the "Manage a bunch of different cooldowns and timers" gameplay that SMN is trying to handle far better than Summoner does, and Machinist handles "Busy rotation that flows well but has some hiccups" better.

Summoner's rotation just...isn't. It doesn't have one so it feels like a chaotic mess that's constantly fighting itself instead of complimenting itself.

Originally Posted by Kiteless

So this means that there's either a big SMN redesign in the works, or the development team has just given up on SMN entirely. Either way, I'm probably best off just giving up on SMN entirely now, not even worth levelling to do the caster DPS role quests.

It's worth leveling, because DB and DP are legitimately awesome. But the class has a lot of issues right now, and the biggest are its ST and AoE rotation feel like complete and utter crap.

Originally Posted by Drayos

Forgive my ignorance, it’s very hard to honestly sit down and level a job with this much negativity on it xD but I did love summoner when I started the game near the end of SB.

I know from what I’ve seen the difficultly of the jobs risen ALOT, (somehow even when they said they were simplifying things?)

What’s actually going wrong with the job? (apart from how unrewarding the job looks for how difficult it’s system currently is)

To put it simply it's clunkier, more frustrating with lockouts and expanded DoT management, has more button bloat, less mobile, less flexible with downtimes, busier with the ogcds, does weak damage and does weak party buffs which makes it good for nothing. There's more layers to it now and they either do not interact or conflict with each other which makes the job feel chaotic.

It's not worth playing compared to BLM, heck even RDM at this point.

So this means that there's either a big SMN redesign in the works, or the development team has just given up on SMN entirely. Either way, I'm probably best off just giving up on SMN entirely now, not even worth levelling to do the caster DPS role quests.

Originally Posted by Kiteless

So this means that there's either a big SMN redesign in the works, or the development team has just given up on SMN entirely. Either way, I'm probably best off just giving up on SMN entirely now, not even worth levelling to do the caster DPS role quests.

I wouldn't give up per se. Its fun for dungeons where you aren't taking up a slot from another caster.

And their rotation is fun, some find it clunky, I don't, but some can play instruments that others dont understand, and some can do puzzles, or math equations that others can't, so for me, I understand its flow, and where everything should go in their two minute rotation, and you may enjoy it.

I enjoy it's current state and I personally hope they only fix clipping of certain skills, and keep their current rotation but the dps needs to be raised to reflect how much work a summoner has to do, otherwise were just wasting everyone's time, and that robs what fun I do have from the job when they'd rather take another job that does just as much and more.