New summoner is unacceptable

[Melorie]

So yeah, maybe pandering to this crowd of players who *believe* themselves to be the best was not such a good idea to begin with.

Again this is not about a certain crowd vs the rest. I haven't seen anyone thinking they are the best or something like that? People played with a job for years and that job was changed dramatically without any regard for the mechanics it had, they are allowed to have an opinion regarding it and even mourn the job. You guys gotta stop this little war inside your mind.

Also what about "if they behave reasonably"? Summoner from 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 was created by Square Enix, not by warlock fans or whatever. I don't know why you are mad with people that played something Square gave them and liked it, honestly.

[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.

[IdowhatIwant]

Nah, people are upset because some enjoy playstyles that have a bit of depth and a higher skill ceiling to work towards. But, SE keeps removing this depth and offering nothing in return. It was Machinist last expansion, and this expansion it's Summoner.

They are really just reworking messy classes.

[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.

[Shougun]

Carby really does need something lol (in a non-serious yet awkward way). So quirky to 'watch' carby exist.

Reminds me of that robot in rick in morty.

"What is my purpose?"

"You pass the butter"

Carby: "oh my god...."

IF possible I think it might be neat if Carby never vanishes (even when you summon other stuff). Then the carby spells are always accessible. The only reason not to do that, besides maybe coding issues, would be if carby dedicated spells might be trait changed later. Then I'd say give carby Sic, where if carby is on guard perhaps carby will occasionally do very light buffing and curing to you. Sic will cause carby to your target, (visually, meaninglessly visually so) but this boosts your damage lightly (I say this so therefore ghosting and such is not real, simply having carby on sic will boost your dps.. and it 'looks' like it's due to carby attacking lol). When you summon primals you can have the gem on carby's head glow the color of that primal.

Or something else too!

I love discussing (FF) summoner, while I'm not upset like some people are here, I just think it's a fascinating job / concept (and I don't particularly like seeing people upset, especially if I think tweaks exist that might keep everyone, or at least most, happy).

Plan messing with it more, soon I really want to try the different ranges out. Come back with even better understanding of my own feedback and others. Just... so many things to do.. so long of a login queue to fight.. lol.

I really don't understand where this is coming from. From a lore perspective Bio and Miasma (which aren't poisons tbf) made perfect sense. The whole concept of a summoner is they drain someone's incorporeal aether and use it to summon a primal. Hell, it's the core idea behind a lot of this game's lore. The claims of poison mage or wow warlock or whatever make no sense to me.

I can understand not liking the mechanics of the old summoner. It certainly had its flaws but summoning bahamut and phoniex absolutely made people feel like a summoner.

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.

Where were you when I needed you! lol. Back when ARR released I was trying to explain how we could get larger primals, using damage from our spells leaving aether in the air, with battery gameplay mechanics to then expend that energy (though I thought a visual pyre fly, FFX, would have been really neat), and particularly I had described using bahamut's left over energy as well. Many major lore players were telling me how it was impossible (due to lore), or how I wanted 1:1 scale primals (when I just wanted more like FFXI avatar scale). At the time it was weirdly one sides with only a couple for big primals and a lot on the side of the lore saying it's not possible so it can't / wont happen.

I definitely feel the devs listen to feedback, in part due to this job. I understand there are a lot of ways to do the job, and I've never been too strict on the mechanical side personally (thematic presentation is always my major focus), so I can see how it's a pain in the bum job to do. Particularly as it seems their program / code doesn't want to handle the pet side of things smoothly, ghosting. . .

But I do think kindly feedback, suggesting stuff, and 'why' is very much worth while (as they might not do what you want exactly but understanding why you wanted something might lead in a direction that is still appreciated). I say kindly as in not telling people to lose their jobs and stuff, but naturally saying you don't like something might seem rude when that isn't the intention.

Personally I think the job is in a pretty good spot to make changes to (good canvas), as in since we're not stacks on stacks systems I think changes are a bit less calculous based and scary lol. Also I think the eagerness to use morphing skills is interesting and potentially opens up even more fun (especially if we slide down some of the changes, opening up later stuff).

[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.