Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

[Karshan]

Lots of things to address here:

- You didn't get more summons that worked like Phoenix. You got avatars that show up and go away after 2 seconds. What you actually got is 3 different phases where you fight as a channeler/geomancer/elementalist, not a summoner

- Let's compare old Bahamut and new Bahamut. Old Bahamut was a burst phase and you could feel the build up to it. In order to maximize DPS you needed to prepare for it and get 4 Ruin IV stacks. Movement was something you had manage, not necessarily because of pet AI (which was only a problem in the last ~5 seconds anyway), but because you would alternate instacasts with hardcasts. You could deal with movement by shuffling around your use of instacasts while still keeping your Wyrmwaves total to 8. You could even have the option to decouple Bahamut from DWT.
New Bahamut: there's no build up, Bahamut is a GCD you use at the start of the fight. It is actually the build up to something minor. Movement? Not an issue, you get to spam the same button over and over again which is of course an instacast, so you could run a marathon if you wanted to. We did get two cool animations in return, though. If you think the new Bahamut is more fun/less boring, then good for you. Sadly, me and other people wouldn't mind to have to use their brain even just a little.

- They kept mobility intact? They took a very mobile caster and made it a phys ranged DPS. SMN was very mobile but its mobility options were tied to DPS, so you still had to manage those (Assaults and Ruin IV). Now, all gone, you are the... Instacast mage, I guess?

- You didn't get functional pets, you get 3 animations. Pretty, but still animations.

And animations are all they were until FFX. Garuda coming, doing an attack and immediately leaving, is EXACTLY what I always wanted and thought I get before starting ARR, and got a pet / dot class instead.
I got used to it but class fantasy was really wanting. Now ? I don't care that I'm a geomancer for the 15 seconds after : the summons finally behave the way A LOT of people like them, which is the pre-FF10 way.
Demis are more like most recent FF.

So I can play current SMN in full rotation and find it ok, but the class fantasy isn't there. The new iteration is clearly dumbed down rotation wise (there is still one or 2 subtleties on some transitions, I tried checking a preliminary rotation) but class fantasy has shown its nose for the very first time. I would have been ok keeping the old one but now that I saw the new I'm really reaaallllyyy excited and want them to develop further that road now, with Alexander, Ramuh, Shiva....

The only gripe I have with the rework (I'm not 100% selfish, only 70%), is that they did not provide a pet / dot class at the same time. So for people who didn't play or love FF and their summoners until 9 and thus preferred the warlock / pet aspect of XiV smn, they got robbed of this kind of gameplay without a trade off. And will have to wait 2 years for the (very probable) next caster DPS in hope it embarks those "tactical" aspects.

I feel a lot of heat and pages would have been avoided just for one word : if the current iteration would have kept the name arcanist (without the demis), and the one coming presented as something new, a summoner, everybody would be more relaxed. Like someone mentioned, they attached the word summoner when gameplat wise they were not ready for it, and for 8 years it's been called that and so many people don't understand why we were upset of this "initial ill branding" that's getting rectified. And by rectified I don't mean superior gameplay but "adequate to classic FF name" gameplay.

Now they need to design a real pet / dot class as well. It's a shame they are only gonna do it in 2 years (with a chance of not happening), they should have done it here to split in 2 the functionnalities.