New Summoner looks really nice, but...

[MercuryD]

Honestly, a lot of SMN mains will continue as SMN mains, myself included, and either like it or love it. For those that don't like the changes then there are other jobs to play. Anyone who has followed the change (not evolution) of the job will have known this was coming from a technical, mechanical level.

Thematically, I personally didn't mind the SMN in XIV pre-6.0. It was odd but it was still SMN as defined in this game. I'm happy for the theme in 6.0 but less for the big booms and more for the interconnected nature of the summoner and their entities.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the devs knew in late Stormblood that current SMN was dead and would need changed in 6.0 and now it is. That's fact. If you like new SMN, great! If you don't, i hope you find a job that you can enjoy.

[MercuryD]

I double checked through the video and it definitely feels like he's choosing very arbitrary cutoffs for what counts for how many buttons you need to press. Like when he's describing how many buttons you need to hit "5 or more times per minute" and says only ruin 3 on existing summoner, but that excludes Egi Assaults and Ruin 4. Or how he doesn't seem to count the DoT skills as actions at all. It all feels very suspicious.

You can only use each egi assault 2x a minute, Ruin 4 is only really regularly used in Bahamut and used randomly as situation requires (which it often doesn't) and if you're hard casting your dots 5 times a minute then you have far more issues to take care of first.

[Rika007]

I double checked through the video and it definitely feels like he's choosing very arbitrary cutoffs for what counts for how many buttons you need to press. Like when he's describing how many buttons you need to hit "5 or more times per minute" and says only ruin 3 on existing summoner, but that excludes Egi Assaults and Ruin 4. Or how he doesn't seem to count the DoT skills as actions at all. It all feels very suspicious.

There is nothing suspicious about it. You don't use those skills at all more then 5 times per minute, at most you're using them 4 if you are playing the job right. You should only need to hard cast your DoTs very rarely, mostly relying on Tri-Disaster resets. Nothing about his video is inaccurate and he's approaching it from not only a raw numbers high level standpoint, but also a overall 'class feel' standpoint.

Also 'biggest summoner fanboy' is being more then a little disingenuous. Yes the dude loves Summoner. He loves the game in general. He's beaten multiple ultimate fights and on more then just Summoner. He plays all casters and Samurai to a very high level that more then probably 99% of the players in this game don't play at. Honestly he's one of the few influencers who I would have trusted to give a proper view, as most of them are more casual (like the rest of NEST) or don't play Summoner much at all (Mr. Happy, Xenos, etc etc).

[Sequora]

Yeah, I trust him. I think the fear is mostly coming from the replacement of skills in the phases. He said that all of the phases feel distinct and based off of his footage, that seems really accurate.

Current summoner is mostly spamming ruin during Bahamut, doing 1 2 1 2 during phoenix, and occasionally hard casting dots. Egi assaults were ok, but still very clunky. I would trade dots for this iteration in a heartbeat.

Not to mention, summon Garuda, Ifrit, and Titan are all buttons that we now click once per minute.

Current summoner is ifrit for ST, Garuda for trash, titan for occasional shield.

[Dyvid]

Honestly it doesn't matter anymore because SE made the decision for us.

Who knows, maybe everyone will quit there main job to play Summoner instead because of the changes. Maybe half the SMN main won't quit because they removed pets and dots. Or maybe SMN will be the newest job with the lowest number of people playing it.
Guess we'll find out a year from now.

[rewd]

I double checked through the video and it definitely feels like he's choosing very arbitrary cutoffs for what counts for how many buttons you need to press. Like when he's describing how many buttons you need to hit "5 or more times per minute" and says only ruin 3 on existing summoner, but that excludes Egi Assaults and Ruin 4. Or how he doesn't seem to count the DoT skills as actions at all. It all feels very suspicious.

His entire video is built on false premises. It makes sense, though, his job is to build up pre-expansion hype. No one is going to give real criticism to anything - new jobs in particular - at this time. Honest and relevant feedback will only come later.

The biggest criticism about SMN is not the lack of buttons, it's the lack of mechanics. It's about how old SMN got several things removed without a replacement and how the few things that survived were nerfed to irrelevance (Aetherflow and Ruin IV). He conveniently doesn't mention any of this and bases his video on a random "let's see who pushes more buttons in a minute".

Once you remember he is an influencer first and then a SMN player, it just makes sense.

[CKNovel]

Honestly it doesn't matter anymore because SE made the decision for us.

Who knows, maybe everyone will quit there main job to play Summoner instead because of the changes. Maybe half the SMN main won't quit because they removed pets and dots. Or maybe SMN will be the newest job with the lowest number of people playing it.
Guess we'll find out a year from now.

Expect the MCH scenario.
More people that never touched SMN will play SMN. And that's SQEX goal.

I have to admit I'm myself much more attracted by the job and hate the current clunk of gummies.
SMN is a good favorite of the devs, I doubt it will be in the lower damage part even if its gameplay is equivalent to MCH now.

SMN will probably remain in a good spot in the raid scene since they keep the res and their utility.

[Sequora]

His entire video is built on false premises. It makes sense, though, his job is to build up pre-expansion hype. No one is going to give real criticism to anything - new jobs in particular - at this time. Honest and relevant feedback will only come later.

The biggest criticism about SMN is not the lack of buttons, it's the lack of mechanics. It's about how old SMN got several things removed without a replacement and how the few things that survived were nerfed to irrelevance (Aetherflow and Ruin IV). He conveniently doesn't mention any of this and bases his video on a random "let's see who pushes more buttons in a minute".

Once you remember he is an influencer first and then a SMN player, it just makes sense.

What false premises? Current summoner is incredibly clunky. There’s a lot of buttons that’s you barely use. Most of the mechanics don’t even interact with one another. It’s not even that complex.

The job is based around having to hard cast to the dots as little as possible.

I believe that the changes that have been made are something you need to experience first hand before you make a judgement call like that.

Even just seeing the gameplay, the three primal phases are all distinct. Even if the rotation within those phases are simple, the phases are short enough where you’re moving to the next one.

There’s also the fact that while we lost bio and miasma and bane, we gained summon Garuda, ifrit, and titan as actual spells. They do damage and you’ll be summoning them once a minute.

How often are you actually summoning ifrit, Garuda and titan right now?

[zcrash970]

This is a good video, he really tries to compare the current filler phase to the new SMN and button diversity.
It somehow shows that SQEX learned about players getting bored from spamming the same button 5 times in a row... Hopefully they learned.

I remain on my take:
Wait for the release to get a good grasp of the job and provide feedback.
The rework was inevitable since the 2.0, it had to happen at some point.

This is one of the few times I disagree with Larry.

My problem with his logic is he really not counting egi assaults, fester, ed, and ruin 4s with ruin 3 in 5.0 smn filler phrases.

Ultimately what 6.0 filler phrase will be like is gem shine or brilliance spam, astral flow and your 3 summon buttons. You literally traded one spam for another.

And at least with current summoner, you can weave a few more oGCDS in

[rewd]

snip

I've already said it: the complaint is not about buttons, so building the entire video on that premise is dishonest and doesn't really prove or disprove anything. I'll just address some things he said. I don't want to rewatch the video, so if I'm misremembering something, let me know:

Old SMN is static VS New SMN is fluid and varied
Every job is, at its core, static. Some jobs have more variety than others (mainly because of procs) but they are all, fundamentally, static. Old SMN will always start with an Egi, then Bahamut, then Egi, then Phoenix and so on. However, the so-called filler phases are indeed fluid. These phases exist under the assumptions that you are, more or less, free to do what you want, as long as you fulfill some conditions. Use oGCDs, don't lose EA charges, don't overcap Ruin IV and have enough stacks for Bahamut. How you get there is not as important, as long as you do get there. Your use of EA and Ruin IV will depend on the amount of movement needed in that portion of the fight, or lack thereof. Reducing them to "hurr durr Ruin III spam all the time" is very dishonest and just plain false.

New SMN has variety because you decide the order you summon your Egis/Primals, but this only means that once you (or more correctly, the guide you are reading) figure out the best order, that's what you are going to follow. Garuda at xy minute because the boss is going to jump soon after, Ifrit at xz minute because you have to be out of melee range soon after and so on. You are still going to do the same thing over and over again.

More on new SMN's "variance"
He fanboys about the primal phases being sooo different (something I definitely don't agree with) but he purposefully doesn't mention how Demis are actually a step back. Now they are fundamentally the same. The problem with new SMN is that it is too same-y. Take Titan, Garuda, Bahamut and Phoenix as an example. The core gameplay of 4 out of 5 phases is spamming a single button, which is always an instacast. The only meaningful choice in this big part of your rotation is Slipstream and that's it. Movement is not an issue and you barely have oGCDs to weave. Pretty much every job in the game has buffs to keep up, or debuffs to keep up, resources to manage and balance, procs to react to... SMN has none of that. Being same-y isn't necessarily a problem, I would consider BLM same-y too as the job basically revolves around spamming as many Fire IV as humanly possible. The thing is that BLM has timers to keep up, resources to manage, movement to be concerned about, procs to react to (and this adds real variety). What about new SMN?

You can remove clunkiness and still give a job stuff to do. This is what some people don't like about new SMN and it's really, really not hard to understand. It's same-y and barren.