New Summoner looks really nice, but...

[Gruntler]

Jesus I didn't even think of that. I guess I just assumed our rotation would be empty where phoenix would be or something... I guess that's what happens when they design our entire kit about being extremely front-loaded.
That's gonna be a huge bummer. :T I really hope they can address that before launch.

SMN works around 120 burst windows but has a lesser burst window every 60 seconds, which corresponds directly to the overall design of burst windows they announced for all jobs in the game.

[Shikiseki]

Rydia is a black mage with summons.
Yuna is a white mage with summons.
Garnet is a white mage with summons.

Actually it's the other way around - in their respective games they were specifically the main summoners in their game that played an integral part to the story with their summons and not with their magic. Yuna is not called a high White Mage after all ;P

The summoner we had so far was an Arcanist primarily with added summoning (as if the summons were added through other means like G.F.s, FF7 materia or FF6's magicite system) - which explains why we had spells like Bio, Miasma and Shadow Flare.

That being said, our FFXIV version is now a Summoner with arcanist as secondary role with an added flavour of Garnet's trance summoning style being able to channel parts of the summons as attacks.

[aveyond-dreams]

I never thought I'd see Yuna described as a "white mage with summons" instead of a summoner, but now I've seen it all. Not like how that was crucial to the entire plot of FFX. Or something. Anyway.

This just shows how disconnected these two worlds are. Yeah, the egis are sticking around for a while longer but after level 90? And the 7.0 grind up to level 100? We're not going to be seeing much of them at all compared to how they used to just be a permanent eye sore anytime Bahamut or Phoenix isn't available.

I will gladly take the new trance style system over managing dots and pets who don't do as they're told. What a mark of skill that was.

[Sequora]

Forgot Edgar used a gun.
Forgot Dark knights could summon their shadow.
Forgot Sage used flying rods to shot at the ennemies while casting greek named spells.
Forgot Bards uses poisons.
Forgot Warriors could spin like monkeys before slamming the ground.
Forgot Dancers would buff their allies (It was often the opposite, they would debuff)
Forgot BLM had a thunder dot.

And so on.
"It doesn't fit" argument ironically doesn't fit in there.

All jobs use the same base but are reimagine to fit their role, the world of XIV and the Dev team vision.
Plus it would be boring to get carbon copy of jobs from previous game.

My point was that 2.0 summoner had the bulk of the job revolve around poison damage over time with summons being a minor part of the kit. 2.0 summoner isn’t even close to the power fantasy that most of us expected.

SE themselves said that they had to put together the non quickly to get it ready for 2.0.

It was the most highly demanded job.

They copy and pasted from WoW a little too hard.

[Duskane]

I think people need to stop huffing that Miasma to think Rydia and Yuna are a good reason why poison mage should stay

[MercuryD]

I mean, we're more in line with Yuna now if you take Dissidia NT into account.

Also, people keep complaining that "the whiners are the reason SMN is changing" which is absolutely wrong and we know it. SMN was rushed and broken from the get-go and as much as the development team tried to salvage or fix it they ended making things worse in another way. Current SMN was decided in SB to not survive ShB so here we are.

[CKNovel]

Here's the thing: the forums, Reddit, and Twitter don't represent anything like the core playerbase of anything. A small group of people whining on the forums or on YouTube about a change really doesn't mean that the change was bad.

1 - Because a minority speaks doesnt means it's a feedback to ignore.
Australians trying to get their own datacenter, raider asking for a different loot system or even for Ultimate difficulty.

2 - No one is arguing that the changes to SMN (And I'm bringing MCH as well) are bad.
But there is people complaining that SQEX removed too much from these jobs, including things that worked before.

Also people arguing over Yuna's role... Remember we are not talking about the lore but about the gameplay.
Yuna was effectively the only character who could access healing&protection spells (Putting aside endgame&alternate sphere grid). White mage/Black mage with summons, Summoner with white magic/Black magic, you can do as much mental gymnastic as you want, they had both.
Like how certain FF allowed you to have a primary and a secondary job.

I think people need to stop huffing that Miasma to think Rydia and Yuna are a good reason why poison mage should stay

Yes, this is mental gymnastic as well. One spell doesn't justify the existence of dots as a core mechanic.
SMN dots were poorly handled in ShB but they remained a good part of the job identity in previous expansion.
DoTs deserved a place because it was XIV's SMN interpretation.

Something like Tri Disaster (Would need to be renamed) to refresh after each summon could have been a cool mechanic without adding too much.
GNB gets 2 dots and it's nowhere in Squall's or Lightning's kits.

[Donoman]

Dancer and current Machinist are some of the more fun classes in game. 80/20 rule. If reworking these classes to be palatable to most people means the loss of the old mains who for whatever reason were highly attached to the outdated design, so be it. For every old main lost the job gains 10 new ones, with a lot of them being players who otherwise wouldn't have touched the job before because it was in such a weird place compared to the others in game. Old machinist and summoner were at constant war with themselves in terms of gameplay mechanics and class fantasy, until they reached the absolute breaking point where the devs got together and collectively went, "Yeah, there's no way we can do this anymore."

The most logical progression for summoner in 7.0 would be to obtain new primals to summon whether they be in the form of demis, one-off attacks like Ifrit/Garuda/Titan, or one offs that eventually come to replace Fester and Painflare. I do not consider 6.0 summoner an afk job by any means but if I have to choose that between the "nuance" of dot management and pets that don't do what you tell them to do, then me and the majority of the playerbase will choose the job that is simply more fun. I have always found Black Mage far easier to play than 5.0 summoner, because the class has consistently good flow to it instead of being...a mess.

The reality is that summoner was stagnant for far longer than it should have been because they kept doubling down on the dot portion and leaving the summons for last. There is no good reason why their capstone ability in Heavensward was Dreadwyrm Trance instead of a summon. Bahamut in Stormblood took forever to build up to and the same could be said for Pheonix in Shadowbringers, with nothing but egis and dots in between. This makes machinist's old overheating mechanic look better by comparison, a truly astonishing feat.

"Carpal tunnel" and "warlock" summoner will not be missed.

This is the reality. For every old main that quits there will just be more people coming in to take their spot and enjoy what is given. I feel for the people who enjoyed old iterations of jobs, but unless there are mass complaints on certain designs there's no reason for the developers to care when so many other people are enjoying the new changes. I've learned this lesson playing other games. Most of the time being an old timer doesn't do you any justice, you just have to move on.

[dezzmont]

This is the reality. For every old main that quits there will just be more people coming in to take their spot and enjoy what is given. I feel for the people who enjoyed old iterations of jobs, but unless there are mass complaints on certain designs there's no reason for the developers to care when so many other people are enjoying the new changes. I've learned this lesson playing other games. Most of the time being an old timer doesn't do you any justice, you just have to move on.

You also have to be able to form a positive relationship with new players. One of the most damaging things that can happen to a community is people deciding new people who are excited to play and have a unique perspective on problems as new players are just complainers who need to 'get good' or 'play a different class.' You don't complain if you don't care, after all, and SMN got a LOT of complaints.

SMN was an interesting job with a cool gamefeel, it wasn't like MNK where the attachment to how it worked was purely based on an exclusionary sort of joy at other people not being able to enjoy it. But SMN is one of the jobs that really needs to instantly be a Job that evokes a 'Wowzers, I am really a final fantasy summoner' feeling, because it was a job so heavily associated with the FF brand as a whole, and old SMN didn't cut the mustard there because of just how little thematic and visual emphasis it put on actual summons.

[zcrash970]

I mean all of the media tour people I’ve seen said the new iteration feels really good to play. The three primal summons are all slightly different.

Not to mention “summon Garuda, ifrit and titan” are now all actual spells now.

With current summoner you might swap between Garuda and ifrit in a dungeon for trash vs, the boss, but now you’ll be pressing each of those buttons once per minute.

I like that all three casters are very different from one another.

The question is how long does it feel good to play. I can't shake the feeling that after a few weeks of playing at level 90, the luster of the new gameplay will wear off and the job get boring to play. Much like 5.0 mch after it's rework.

I was watching some video tour videos and was kind of sadly-laughing at one of the suggested openers for SMN. It was mostly just mashing one button and then weaving in the "special" button. Throw in some Aether "management" and that was pretty much the whole job. Guess it was pretty to look at, though.

Maybe changing the name and animations would be nice. But, I don't agree that removing the only aspect of the job that doesn't basically force you to push is a good thing.

So I made this point on a Reddit thread about Larry's newest video about summoner. I got downvoted to hell because I called out this BS. You are literally pressing very little buttons because everything got shifted to GCD casts instead of having a balance between GCDs and oGCDs with SMN.

You literally have 6 actions that you are using once a minute.
Your summons, ED, and ruin4. The rest of the time your using ruin3/tri-disaster and gem shine/brilliance spam with Astral Flow sprinkled in.
However it seems that you aren't using ruin3 very little nce you unlock gem shine so we literally traded one spam for another....cool

I'll give it a chance, but my faith in the job designers after 5.0, is not high.
If visuals does it for you guys, more power to you but I need depth to a class. Something that makes me think while I play. I just would hate to give up my main from since FF11 and since the beginning of 2.0 early access