Quote Originally Posted by dinnertime View Post
Meanwhile my biggest gripe with 5.x Summoner is definitely how detached everything feels, all because they changed how Aetherflow, the very foundation of the job, worked. I don't really care if they bring it back or delete it entirely for something that works the same or similarly (but better), Summoner feels like a chore to play ever since these changes along with other lingering problems it has like pet action ghosting, the Egi Assaults, lack of flexibility etc.

People asking for only cosmetic/thematic changes along with design overhauls isn't going to help Summoner in any way, especially when design overhauls just replace things and not necessarily fix the problem. Also the current iteration of FFXIV Summoner already does a good job in making it feel traditional and less of a disease mage like it used to be.
I'm in full agreement, removing the Aetherflow to me was absolutely something that took a lot of enjoyment out of the class, and worse until the rework to egi assaults made the job nearly unplayable. The rework made the job playable but removed all flow and rhythm to the rotation, and the hilarious thing is, everyone's biggest complaint about the job, how rigid, busy and long the opener was in Stormblood, they actually made it worse. It's even busier, has absolutely no room for a skilled player to adjust on the fly for the mechanics of the fight, and is only a few GCD's shorter to get to your big burst. To me it's hilarious that SMN is the only job that you could remove any of their significant mechanics, like say Egi's, dot's, or aetherflow attacks and it would only take minor reworking to get the others work and keep a similar rotation. That shows how disjointed the job is. If you removed the jumps from DRG, it's whole rotation breaks down. If you removed Ice phase from black mage, the whole job has to be redesigned. Mudra's from Ninja's, Greased Lightning from Monk, Repetioir procs on Bard. Every other DPS jobs mechanics are intrinsically tied together.

But Summoner.... If we removed Egi's today completely. All it would take is replacing the Assaults with Ruin 4 as a charged action and nothing about the job changes. If we removed aetherflow entirely, it literally would have no effect on the overall rotation except making it slightly less busy. Compare that to 4.0 SMN when every mechanic was so perfectly tied together and built on top of each other.... I've had a year to get used to it and I still can't believe how much they mucked it up.