SMN endgame how is it

[Varyntheos]

I am a returning player, and wanting to stick around for good to get into endgame, after trying a few classes I am deciding to go with SMN since It will be easy to move to healing as well.

My question is how is summoner for endgame? I have read about it taking a minute to get through the rotation but imagine with practice it will come with muscle memory?

[Tulzscha]

I think it's great. It's more about managing resources than anything so if you like keeping track of multiple things at once you'll probably enjoy it. Also it's very mobile so mechanics are easy peasy. The main downside is dealing with the pets because depending what you do their abilities might not go off, that takes some getting used to. But the job is likely getting a rework to some degree next expansion so it could change a lot or a little, we don't know yet.

[ty_taurus]

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

[DPZ2]

Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

Cf. Astrologian

The job is fun to play, despite controversy. Many of those who I've read lately who don't like it appear to dislike the 'pet' in particular.

I've learned to live with the pet over the years, it's much simpler to deal with now: think 'auto attack' + 3 special spells bound to the GCD.

[ty_taurus]

Cf. Astrologian

The job is fun to play, despite controversy. Many of those who I've read lately who don't like it appear to dislike the 'pet' in particular.

I've learned to live with the pet over the years, it's much simpler to deal with now: think 'auto attack' + 3 special spells bound to the GCD.

The pet doesn't really bother me. Personally, I feel like it's actually not that fun to play mainly because of how disjointed everything feels. None of SMN's tools seem to have anything to do with one another outside of just being on the same hotbar. In contrast, the majority of BLM's spells all have a very important purpose that strings your combo together. Fire refreshes your Astral Fire, Fire III is what helps you swap back to Astral Fire from Umbral Ice, and on the flipside, Blizzard IV is working to give you free Despair/Flare casts, Freeze maxes out your Umbral Ice right away so you can get straight into your combo, and it all feels more cohesive. This is something that doesn't bother everyone, it seems, and so it really depends on the person.

[wereotter]

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

Yeah, personally I love it right now. I think it's a blast to play... but I do think the divisiveness comes more from people thinking the job doesn't fit their fantasy of what a summoner should be more than anything else. And considering how varied summoners have been in just about every game they've existed in, this is always going to be a losing battle for Square to try to appease. Old school players might think the summons should be big one and done spells while others might think that every single action they take should be executed by the pet, and there's really no middle ground between the two.

As far as the play, I can't speak to you personally... but I was pretty easily able to get the flow of the job after a little practice and now love it for its high damage and high mobility, as well as for having a rotation that's just varied enough to keep it from getting boring. You'll have the occasional time of just casting Ruin 3 for a few seconds, but in general the job has a lot of flexibility and variety of things you're doing to keep it fun and interesting.

[JacobNewblood]

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

Heh.. Ruin-ed

[Vallhallix]

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

Which is basically no different from every other expansion. And the main reason is because people want them to do multiple things with the SMN and they all conflict. You have some people who want to keep the useless pets just because they want pets, you have people who want them to give us meaningless pet glamors for them. You have the outright weird suggestions like some people wanting summoner to go back to how it was pre-heavensward, which was basically just an Arcanist with a SMN tag, did not at all feel like a summoner or like an evolved job class with it's own identity beyond reskinned carbuncles.

Then you have people like me who prefer that they continue on with the demi summons that actually make the SMN feel like a summoner rather than an arcanist with a pikachu, letting us use the abilities of the primals which is inline with the actual lore of the summoner in this game. Just change our abilities around for each demi summon phase just like they did with Phoenix. It's the obvious route to go, and the one that works.

Summoner's main problem is that it never ever ever should have been attached to a healer class. It should have had it's own seperate identity from Scholar from the start, they should have NEVER shared a base class. This hindered Summoner's development from the start.

[wereotter]

Summoner's main problem is that it never ever ever should have been attached to a healer class. It should have had it's own seperate identity from Scholar from the start, they should have NEVER shared a base class. This hindered Summoner's development from the start.

This isn't really a problem any longer. If you look at the Scholar kit, there's only skill now that Scholar takes from the base Arcanist class, and that's resurrection. Even skills they both share in name, Scholar's version is technically different (even if the potencies and animations are identical) because they're all listed as Scholar job abilities. I do agree that it made things a massive pain for the developers in trying to make the jobs work for a long time, but they can now more freely create distinct identities for the two.

I now just wish they'd make the break permanent, and make Scholar a job that you can just unlock once you get any job to level 30, and starts at level 30 with no base class (and yes, that means you'd have to level the two separately)

[Anvaire]

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

Its been like that since heavensward though, the issue as i see it is you have 2 camps. 1 that kinda like the itinteration of summoner in XIV and others who just want a traditional FF summoner. I think because of this over the years the adjustments have made summoner into a convergence of multiple systems and ideas that alone are pretty good, but matched togther is a stack of cards that can function, allbeit while being slightly clunkly. I kinda think what SMN needs is a realignment of some of those systems, and removal of others while re-affirming the class identity into a singular focus. This has been happening over the years, as dots become less and less relevant and every attempt at making them so, ends up being undone. I think its close to the point of whatever they do, not everyone will like it, so they should just chose a direction and stick with it (evoker > trance to demi seems to do this they just need to adjust it from 3 systems into 1) But then ive mained it since ARR Beta. Its always been fun and rewarding to me.