With some Jobs play style completely changed, isn't it time for alternate job specs?

[Oshirigami]

Summoner is currently my favorite job. I like the difficulty of it, and how it has Raise and a good party damage buff and how it still does great DPS, nearly as much as BLM and SAM, at the cost of this difficulty of dealing with finnicky pets and having to make sure your pet abilities have gone off so you don't ghost them and making sure you don't move too much so your pets get all their attacks off.

I also like how pets can currently damage things while out of range for mechanics (such as Ancient Flare in Labyrinth).

While new SMN looks cool, and maybe I'll enjoy it, if the damage is compareable to BLM people are going to (rightfully) complain and get it nerfed since it can't be easy to play, high damage, and have a rez for balance reasons. I'm going to want my old difficult to master good at everything 5.1 Summoner back.

4.2 Monk also had this going on. In 4.2-4.4 it was very high skill with double-TK and also strong.
Now Monk looks to be made easier than ever to play. But also probably will still be "worse Samurai".


Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that Square is making jobs feel better to play with combo buttons in PvE bringing the number of buttons you have to press to around 20 for most jobs, and making a easier skill floor for most jobs so it's difficult to perform badly.
I think new Summoner looks cool and I'm glad many players like it more than the current Summoner that they find too difficult. But if it's... basically a reskinned RDM, I doubt I'm going to care to play it.

The problem is: there are still those of us who like a job that is difficult to play and master, and it feels like Square is completely ignoring those and completely doing away with that with each expac.

I guess one solution would be to give us alternate job stones to change spec or to make it so Pugilist and Arcanist get the old Monk and Summoner designs (with 70-90 skills added).
I understand this isn't really elegant, but might be worthwhile instead of a new job.

Square could instead design a new job that, instead of what they said about Reaper "We think it'll be popular so we designed it to be easy", they could say with this new job "we wanted to give something to people who enjoyed the difficult 4.2 Monk and/or 5.1 Summoner play style".
I'd personally like a magical DPS melee with a rez that can do "selfis DPS" levels of damage despite having a rez and raid buff, but is mechanically difficult in how you line up your rotation even if not necessarily positionally heavy to actually do that damage.

Even if players who want this "difficult to play and master, but rewarding" job like 4.2 Monk and 5.1 Summoner was are a minority... that minority are still players of the game and shouldn't be ignored.
Making a job for them does not hurt the other players who enjoy these more streamlined and easy to play job reworks. 2% of players wanting something like this is still tens of thousands of players.

[Deceptus]

We already semi have them.

Instead of Jobs, think of them as Specs

You have the Tank job with 2 distinct specs: Burst (Warrior / GNB) and Defensive (PLD / DRK)

Healer Job: Regen and Shield Based (this has largely failed)

Ranged physcial job: Buffing (BRD / DNC) and Burst (MCH)

etc etc etc.

[Roda]

We already semi have them.

Instead of Jobs, think of them as Specs

You have the Tank job with 2 distinct specs: Burst (Warrior / GNB) and Defensive (PLD / DRK)

Healer Job: Regen and Shield Based (this has largely failed)

Ranged physcial job: Buffing (BRD / DNC) and Burst (MCH)

etc etc etc.

So where is the caster that damages with arcane spells instead of elemental spells, dots, and pets with a rotation that expects you to pay attention to it?
'Cause all the casters I see now are elemental direct damage nukers.

Ya can't just say "switch to a job that has your preferred playstyle" when they deleted that job. :T

[StriderShinryu]

As much as I personally don't like DoT classes, I think the change to SMN actually helps the DoT class concept. It could allow for a proper DoT Mage class in the future that isn't explicitly tied to being a half baked Summoner. With the old SMN, Summoner fans weren't really happy and DoT Mage fans didn't seem completely happy either as the class wavered between how much and how little it actually focused on DoTs VS Pets VS Summons. Now if we get a new DoT Mage (Time Mage maybe?) it could be a real DoT Mage.

Although, as for the original question of the thread, I've always been interested in alternate versions of classes. I know SE finds it a massive pain to work with on the backend, but I would want to see more SCH/SMN stuff instead of less. Of course, for me that comes in the form of a proper DPS bow user to oppose the support DPS of Bard.

[Kes13a]

while you are right, minorities should not be ignored for playstyle... one look at WoW and what the raiding minority did for that game, shows what happens when they are listened to.

the hard truth here is that SE does its best in FFxiv to cater to the idea that the game should be accessible to all. I dont see that changing. making things more difficult to play does not seem to be in their design philosophy, which is both good and bad. in this case, its definitely bad for you. But, dont take it personally, it just the way they made the game we all play.

[Snorky]

while you are right, minorities should not be ignored for playstyle... one look at WoW and what the raiding minority did for that game, shows what happens when they are listened to.
the hard truth here is that SE does its best in FFxiv to cater to the idea that the game should be accessible to all. I dont see that changing. making things more difficult to play does not seem to be in their design philosophy, which is both good and bad. in this case, its definitely bad for you. But, dont take it personally, it just the way they made the game we all play.

I'm so very glad they don't cater to the raid or die crowd. Look at some of the other games where people are locked out because they are considered sub par, not by game standards but by other people's interpretation of what standards they wish to impose. Summoner now looks like a job I want to try out can't wait for the changes.

[Jeeqbit]

While this change will upset a lot of SMN mains who played it for the busy gameplay and DoTs, it will now appeal to thousands more casual players who want to play it for the summons. Even I might play it and there was no chance I would before with those pixelated egis. SMN has been one of the less played DPS and this could bring it closer to the popularity of RDM.

[Kyuuen]

Pass. Hard Pass.

There's about to be 19 Jobs in the game with the inclusion of Reaper and Sage, adding specs would make it feel as though there were 38 and all of them would have to be balanced. Moreover the more there is the more things begin to feel homogenized and things are already starting to feel that way in some regards, now double that.

Asking for specs is the wrong direction, personally think asking SE to keep a harder technical Job in each role would be the better way to go.

[Oshirigami]

While this change will upset a lot of SMN mains who played it for the busy gameplay and DoTs, it will now appeal to thousands more casual players who want to play it for the summons. Even I might play it and there was no chance I would before with those pixelated egis. SMN has been one of the less played DPS and this could bring it closer to the popularity of RDM.

But... Summoner wasn't an unpopular job to begin with!
It still performed decently if you didn't do the perfect rotation and even if you accidentally ghosted abilities occasionally or blocked your pets attacks with movement.

New Summoner looks cool and I can see lots of excited about it, but they really should be two different jobs.

As much as I personally don't like DoT classes, I think the change to SMN actually helps the DoT class concept. It could allow for a proper DoT Mage class in the future that isn't explicitly tied to being a half baked Summoner. With the old SMN, Summoner fans weren't really happy and DoT Mage fans didn't seem completely happy either as the class wavered between how much and how little it actually focused on DoTs VS Pets VS Summons. Now if we get a new DoT Mage (Time Mage maybe?) it could be a real DoT Mage.

Although, as for the original question of the thread, I've always been interested in alternate versions of classes. I know SE finds it a massive pain to work with on the backend, but I would want to see more SCH/SMN stuff instead of less. Of course, for me that comes in the form of a proper DPS bow user to oppose the support DPS of Bard.

It's not so much the lack of dots.
It's that the new 6.0 SMN has a very easy rotation that's more like RDM.

While BLM will still exist as a more challenging to play caster DPS, it's challenging in a much different way than SMN was and it also doesn't have rez.
I think it's strange that they're going to leave both caster DPS with rez as such easy to play jobs, so no room for either to also contribute a lot of damage for the sake of balance.

I'm so very glad they don't cater to the raid or die crowd. Look at some of the other games where people are locked out because they are considered sub par, not by game standards but by other people's interpretation of what standards they wish to impose. Summoner now looks like a job I want to try out can't wait for the changes.

Not saying they should make every job difficult and difficult to raid with.
But they should have, you know, one or two maybe? Not make them all super easy.

[Vahlnir]

As far as SMN goes...you've got a real Summoner on the way. The way it should have been from the start. For those who enjoy it now, they aren't playing a real SMN job. It's a glorified budget WoW Warlock, with even less bells and whistles. Heck, even a warlock's pets back in the day with worse graphics looked better. How anyone could complain about the changes being made is beyond me. Even so, I'm not opposed to them adding a dps job focused on dots. Perhaps that would appease some people. Also, different specs are nice on paper, but when it comes to balancing them...I'm gonna have to say no. God no. I've watched Blizzard struggle to balance every spec for every class in WoW since I started. Let's not repeat that.