New summoner is unacceptable

[Haseno]

I thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the Summoner rework and I believe it is the right track.

However, the rework feels incomplete.

Furthermore, the rework has exposed how terrible and out of place Aetherflow stacking is. A unique resource which only has 2 usable skills as options. I believe a good path for the summoner is:

1. Expansion of the Aetherflow system with newly added skills and utility skills.
2. AOE Heavy

[Riusvell]

Can we go one page without the attacks, please?

Like seriously, if you have nothing but jabs to say about the side that you aren't on, just don't say it.
No one said they were better because they enjoyed the old iteration or anything of the sorts. As I see nothing of that verbal abuse, no.

What I see is the other side continuously attacking and even slinging verbal assaults whenever they try to make a point as to why they like it or when they are faced with counter arguments.

[AceofRains]

Also, I don't understand why these three new elemental summons make you feel like a summoner now when before you didn't. It's not like they are brand new pets. I used both ifrit and garuda day to day. Poor titan needed work. I didn't even use him while solo anymore. I feel like these new elemental summons are just low tier trash. Why aren't we summoning Alexander, Diablos or Knights of the Round? All of which we've seen in game.

Because now the job revolves around Summoning instead of poison. All of your damage is front loaded into the act of Summoning. Keeping your pet out, instant casting the pet, and never having to actually Summon it but out of combat or after death failed to deliver on job fantasy. As you say, Titan needed work, but that is because they couldn’t balance all three of the pets against eachother. It was very unclear where to use which Summon in the correct situation, and god forbid you use Titan. One was always the best to use regardless because of their nature as pets. Now, that they simply appear and cast, there is a reason to use all three, especially in situational context.

We could perhaps see more out of other Summons down the line, I feel that was alluded to by the Magus Sisters dungeon. Since the MSQ is over I hope they put more focus on secondary systems that never got to see the light of day, like new Summons. I was hoping the addition of Shiva, Ramuh, and Leviathan could deepens the job mechanics with Astral/Umbral attunement depending on which 3 you Summon. Here’s hoping for level 100.

[Rin_Kuroi]

Because now the job revolves around Summoning instead of poison.

The job revolved around the bahamut and phoenix dps windows. It was core to the job. At least at 80. They were also the coolest parts of being a summoner. Hell, they were the coolest parts of any job in the game (and still are). The existence of DoTs doesn't change that.

To be honest I'm glad the dots are gone. Overall they were not good mechanically. A cast time on a damage over time spell? Refreshing the duration by using other abilities? Are you nuts SE?

Also, none of this negates the problems with the new job.

[eva3071]

Meh, I get the sense that most of the complainers are complaining because they absolutely hate it one others enjoy the rework and they don't. How dare Square Enix caters to the filthy casuals, and so forth. Most everyone, from newcomers to those who mained the SMN job since 2.0 has complained that the job is a butchered form of the Summoner. Square Enix listened and gave us the job we had always wanted. Know that Square Enix will never roll back a job once they have reworked it. Also know the the Devs don't read the english forums anyway, they only pay attention to the Japanese forums, which if I last recall were overwhelmingly in favor of the rework. I, for one, am glad to be on the side of the winners and not the losers. I am making big bucks this week with all of the salt mining going on.

[IdowhatIwant]

Meh, I get the sense that most of the complainers are complaining because they absolutely hate it one others enjoy the rework and they don't. How dare Square Enix caters to the filthy casuals, and so forth. Most everyone, from newcomers to those who mained the SMN job since 2.0 has complained that the job is a butchered form of the Summoner. Square Enix listened and gave us the job we had always wanted. Know that Square Enix will never roll back a job once they have reworked it. Also know the the Devs don't read the english forums anyway, they only pay attention to the Japanese forums, which if I last recall were overwhelmingly in favor of the rework. I, for one, am glad to be on the side of the winners and not the losers. I am making big bucks this week with all of the salt mining going on.

To be fair if you played a class for 8 years for it to be completely reworked into some different that you don't care you. You would be upset. I have played summoner in every expansion, I don't share the opinion with many on this forum. I think summoner got worst with every expansion with Shadowbringers being the worst state it has ever been in. Sure the summoner numbers were good but over all game play I thought was reached a new level of bad for it. In fact I am not sure many of you remember that the egi assult skills were OGCD on release which was extremely clunky and weird. Once that was fixed the class did feel better but was not for me. This forum has really turned into complexity vs simplicity. Summoner honestly was not a complex class, it was a clunky class with an extremely long opener.

As far as people spouting out its being homogenized like all the other classes. Sadly the only roles that are truely homogenized are the tanks and heals. All dps classes feel very unique but sadly share the same utility.

I personally like new summoner and think it needed to be redesigned. Hopefully we will get some further changes in future patches to make this class function better and become more appealing to everyone.

[aveyond-dreams]

I played 5.0 summoner as my first level 80 and man was I questioning what went on in the design room by the time I had maxed out that class. The fixes it got later on just didn't do enough to win me back over to the class.

If that was "complexity" then I'd rather play 6.0 summoner any day. Complexity should come from the difficulty of the battle content you want to do, not your rotation. Rotations should have good flow and not hurt your hands to execute.

[Melorie]

Complexity should come from the difficulty of the battle content you want to do, not your rotation. Rotations should have good flow and not hurt your hands to execute.

What I feel like most people say when they want depth or complexity isn't making a class hard to learn or inaccessible, but being able to feel like you have a learning curve and are improving with it. For most content of the game, you can clear it without ever even reading about your rotation. Fights are limited. They are scripted, they are out of your control. There are few per tier, and most of the time you aren't doing current content all the time (specially if you play casually). And your favourite fights, as time goes on, and gear power creep grows, gets easier and easier. Look at Thordan normal mode nowadays, it's basically a visual novel.

Once you get the hang of a fight, having a new layer of actually optimizing your class is another possibility for having fun. If your rotation is actually something that keeps you interested, you might have fun even in content you already know, such as an expert roulette for example, or a trial that you have done over and over again.

There must be a difference between a good summoner and a bad summoner and a o-kayish summoner. Not so you can feel better than others, but so you can have something to improve in yourself and in your gameplay that it's also something you can control. The class doesn't need to be clunky or full of buttons in order to do that, but more often than not (and I say that as a healer main), SE simply decides to flatten the entire building. You don't have builds in this game, specs, your gear is far from being customizable besides a few materia and there's not a huge amount of decision-making from your part into a huge part of the game. Actually having room to grow and get better at playing YOUR CLASS and not a specific fight is a valuable gameplay aspect that many people enjoy, and you don't need to be a hardcore to enjoy these things. It's not being elitist, hardcore nor anything like that, it's actually not unusual to feel this need for control while playing an RPG. I hardly do savage let alone extreme and still, I don't see why a class has to be simplified to the point that there's zero room for learning and improving inside it aside from doing a very rigid rotation, without ever managing resources or doing any sort of decision.

[Rin_Kuroi]

Just got to 90*. Summoned my first Titan. Having his bouldery butt landslide some fools was pretty damn cool. Regardless of the flaws this job might have this won't stop being cool for some time.

Also, Crimson Strike should 100%, unequivocally, without a doubt be off the GCD.

[Cherishes]

I'm enjoying 6.0 summoner so far at 8x but have a few nitpicks.

- I miss instant cast ruin 2 for moments when the mob/boss is at 0.5% and I'm all out of instants. There is nothing to do but cry and press ruin IV and see the cast cancelled anyway because someone auto attacked it to death.
- Carby is pretty much useless.... and isn't summoned when you sync down... He's there to look pretty but give him something to do please???
- Egi summons pathfinding for their initial hit is... sad. They move slowly (titan and ifrit), will run back to you when their mob dies before they can land the hit and then run to the next mob.
- Atherflow and the two skills are very extra. It feels clunky to have to juggle it alongside the normal rotation.