New summoner is unacceptable

[Doc_Seraph]

Don't stress too much kupo because the sun still shines. A giant advanced chat with avatars kupo.

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[Connor]

I’m currently at level 89 and from the dungeons etc I’ve done as Summoner I found it way more fun than it was before. And I genuinely enjoyed DoT Summoner too. But personally I feel like this one feels closer to a ‘traditional ff style summoner’ than the ‘ffxiv unique edition summoner’ we had before.

If I had one criticism I would like it if they separated Summon Bahamut/Phoenix. I know everyone hates the idea of extra buttons, but because you can’t control when you summon Phoenix, the really useful healing effects from Everlasting Flight and Rekindle end up getting wasted, and then when you desperately need them you’re stuck with Bahamut lol. The conditions to summon them are fine, it’s just being locked into one or the other that’s the problem, especially when they both function quite differently (one is more focused on big aoe attacks, one is focused more on passive healing / regens)

[Shougun]

Your comment is overall wrong.

Summoners don't feel like elementalist, first of all because summons are something you don't spam (unlike new SMN). Secondly, because summoners have their own capabilities outside of summons. Yuna and Garnet are specialized in white magic for example, Rydia (the first "true" FF summoner) in black magic instead, and as such she could use damage over time spells.

Lastly, DPS jobs are objectively getting easier.

I wouldn't put much stock in the summoner had other mechanics concept though. Summoner has been paired with all jobs, no jobs, black mage, white mage, pure summoner (yes there have been "I only summon summoners"), etc.

The only important part of all of that is that it summons cool things, otherwise the mechanics have literally been all over the place. Including both pet and not pet like concepts.

I mean people can have a favorite variations of summoner (classic is more one off, meanwhile recent summons are generally more pet based). But to say summoner needs DoTs or need black magic, or whatever else, I think is pretty much, nay not pretty much is actually, proven untrue by FF itself. Summoner / summons have been associated with everything, with the only consistent element being they're pretty, and pretty freaking cool. lol.

I’m currently at level 89 and from the dungeons etc I’ve done as Summoner I found it way more fun than it was before. And I genuinely enjoyed DoT Summoner too. But personally I feel like this one feels closer to a ‘traditional ff style summoner’ than the ‘ffxiv unique edition summoner’ we had before.

If I had one criticism I would like it if they separated Summon Bahamut/Phoenix. I know everyone hates the idea of extra buttons, but because you can’t control when you summon Phoenix, the really useful healing effects from Everlasting Flight and Rekindle end up getting wasted, and then when you desperately need them you’re stuck with Bahamut lol. The conditions to summon them are fine, it’s just being locked into one or the other that’s the problem, especially when they both function quite differently (one is more focused on big aoe attacks, one is focused more on passive healing / regens)

May I suggest that if they do that then they ensure the damage of the two is similar, at least on single target (for boss reasons), but that each one provides a different QoL. Phoenix may be healing, then maybe Bahamut is CC / mp regen? Not sure. I just really feel if you did that then people are going to basically say goodbye to one of the summons for the vast majority of situations. Maybe if they added an extra layer of support to phoenix so it was even better in "oh lord" situations? Like if you use phoenix your revive becomes instant cast, free, and heals them after being revived?

Though some people have commented they wish phoenix was better damage anyways, certainly if the rotation is forced as it is currently it might be nice to have phoenix just be an improvement (though that does take away from Bahamut's grand legacy). I'm not sure... I just hear an alarm bell at adding freedom on that without some mechanic. Like if you let people choose and make no changes otherwise it'll be Paladin's clemency except maybe slightly worse since it's a HoT and one decent cure, meanwhile if Paladin had to clemency they'd at least get to spam it out and really help the team (which is why one of my suggestions is to boost the support a lot if it is to be relegated to the clemency life).

[Tsukino]

Probably a mistake to wait almost 500 posts into a huge thread to write a novel about it, but I do love Summoner and this seems like the place everyone is congregating.

I've played all the games up to XIV in the series and summoning magic was always one of my favorites. I suffered through it in XI, and I've played it primarily in XIV since it was added in 2.0. There's not much that would convince me to leave the job when I like the concept so much, but I never really liked the way it played as a "poison mage" in XIV. Again, I still played it primarily because it's a Summoner, but as many people have pointed out in this thread and others over the years, it's really obvious they just reskinned WoW's warlock class with FF names.

When I first saw the changes I knew the people who have played it as it was, with its really technical rotations and proneness to massive failure on a mistake, would not enjoy how simple it was going to be. But I also knew I was going to love it more because it finally was going to let me play the job closer to the summoning magic in games I grew up with from FFIII to IX. I don't really care about complexity at all - I can do it, I did fine with the intricacies of 4.x SMN - but I don't have any particular interest in it being that way. And I was totally right, I love the new Summoner, and it's really fun cycling through the different types of spells that each summon gives alongside their big flashy summoning.

That said, there are a lot of little things that annoy me, pretty much all of them already having been mentioned in this thread. Carbuncle just sitting there staring at you is weird; why is he even there if he only powers two abilities? I'm glad to see the focus on DoTs gone and replaced with a focus on summoning magic, so why is Ruin and the Aetherflow stuff all still there? And biggest of all, I felt like this big overhaul was their chance to give us more or different summons but it's still just Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda like it's always been. I don't think we need to have every primal that's in the game, but it would have been nice to see at least one more of the elemental summons instead of zero. It's also a bit unfortunate that all of this new stuff comes at 86 and 90 - before 86 the gemstone summons barely feel different from each other, and before 90 they don't have their full looks and attacks resulting in the same weird disconnect as the previous incarnation - why can we summon big full Phoenix and Bahamut before we can handle an equivalent Ifrit?

I feel like they could have created some pretty easy solutions to multiples of these problems at a time. For instance, keep Carbuncle as our constant companion but make it so that rather than being replaced by the others while they're out, all the Aetherflow stuff is actually being done by Carbuncle, making Aetherflow more thematic, Carbuncle less pointless, and still giving SMN some buttons to press during cooldowns. Or go the opposite direction and get rid of Carbuncle and Aetherflow/Ruin, and just make both spells and abilities all change to corresponding elements rather than just spells. And since pretty much every gemstone summon spell other than maybe Slipstream is just for flavor and a different feel rather than a necessary part of a rotation to keep up, put the other half of the elemental summons as gemstones following the other trance - after Bahamut get Ifrit/Titan/Garuda, and after Phoenix get Ramuh/Leviathan/Shiva (or redistribute them to match light/dark aspects).

Overall, despite all these things I think they could have gone even further with, I'm really happy to finally feel like a Summoner instead of a Warlock. And I know it sounds rude, but for the people who loved the complexity or difficulty of execution rather than because it's a Summoner in a Final Fantasy game, there's a ton of other jobs to pick from that are tough to get right but rewarding when you do, like Black Mage.

[Roda]

I feel like they could have created some pretty easy solutions to multiples of these problems at a time. For instance, keep Carbuncle as our constant companion but make it so that rather than being replaced by the others while they're out, all the Aetherflow stuff is actually being done by Carbuncle, making Aetherflow more thematic, Carbuncle less pointless, and still giving SMN some buttons to press during cooldowns..

Yes to this^

Or go the opposite direction and get rid of Carbuncle and Aetherflow/Ruin, and just make both spells and abilities all change to corresponding elements rather than just spells.

Never to this ^



And I've said this many many times before. Our problems aren't simple vs complex, hard vs easy, arcanist vs smn, dots vs direct damage, busy rotation vs chill, casts vs instants, my job fantasy vs your job fantasy, or anything like that. I'm 100% sure the complaints based on those features are symptoms, not the disease itself. And disagreements are caused by how we as individuals experience gameplay differently (numbers=feel vs mechanics=feel vs visuals=feel, being the most important for different people in different ratios)


What my problem is, is that at level 90, SMN feels like a level 90 CLASS, not a job (yes even with astral flow). It sure has buttons, but its buttons don't really do anything outside of the one button press. This job's EVERYTHING is uptime and buff alignment, which is just the basics of e-ver-y combat job. Summons and their rites are no different than a melee's 123 combo. Just "press X button to make the next button worth pressing", and that's ALL we have. Our actions aren't building towards anything, they're not augmenting anything it's just press button to do damage, make sure the buff is on you when your buttons are doing the most damage. There is literally no empowerment in the rotation, and that's what's causing it to feel underwhelming to us mechanics=feel oriented players. Anyone who is used to spreadsheeting out their rotation and potencies, or following rotations made by those players likely won't get that feeling, because they're not used to paying attention to those interactions (and those focused on visuals are just happy to see pretty colors)



One day, when I have the energy, I'll do a like detailed analysis on my experience with the new job, but currently I am mush brained @@,
But I'm firmly, FIRMLY, of the belief that carbuncle should ABSOLUTELY stay out permanently (maybe can go away with the demis) and provide some interactive mechanic that uses our gem summons to empower our demi summons.
It'll solve two problems with one feature (the loss of a pet job identity, and the lack of interactivity in our kit, which can cause the feeling that the job is too easy/simple.)

(every other complaint I have is about numbers (garuda and phoenix being weak), about visual clutter (let us glamour our big summons so that my raidgroup can SEE, and also because carbuncles are good), and about jank (Let the leveling summons attack from range with an aoe centered on the target like the final summons, and figure out how to let carbuncle cast while moving to stop ghosting))

[zcrash970]

Don't stress too much kupo because the sun still shines. A giant advanced chat with avatars kupo.

<3 kupo

Nah, I'm going keep trashing on this terrible rework

[Darksummoner]

Your comment is overall wrong.

Summoners don't feel like elementalist, first of all because summons are something you don't spam (unlike new SMN). Secondly, because summoners have their own capabilities outside of summons. Yuna and Garnet are specialized in white magic for example, Rydia (the first "true" FF summoner) in black magic instead, and as such she could use damage over time spells.

Lastly, DPS jobs are objectively getting easier.

I hate when people want a class to be complicated or hard to play. That shit reminds me of the garbage from WoW. Where EVERYONE whined when a class got a redesign. NOT EVERY class (job) needs to be all complicated and difficult to play. And where is the rule book that says a summon needs to be a long cast to call something forth ?? I'm sorry. But I don't want jobs to be shitty and unfun and boring like WoW classes. FFXIV has fun jobs, I would like for them to stay that way.

[Rolder50]

I hate when people want a class to be complicated or hard to play. That shit reminds me of the garbage from WoW. Where EVERYONE whined when a class got a redesign. NOT EVERY class (job) needs to be all complicated and difficult to play. And where is the rule book that says a summon needs to be a long cast to call something forth ?? I'm sorry. But I don't want jobs to be shitty and unfun and boring like WoW classes. FFXIV has fun jobs, I would like for them to stay that way.

Sure not every class needs to be complex. But it still stings to have one of the few that WAS complex be dumbed down to possibly the simplest in the game. Just like not every class needs to be complex, not every class needs to be simple and easy. And yet FF14 has been trending to making ALL of them simple and easy.

[Shougun]

(every other complaint I have is about numbers (garuda and phoenix being weak), about visual clutter (let us glamour our big summons so that my raidgroup can SEE, and also because carbuncles are good), and about jank (Let the leveling summons attack from range with an aoe centered on the target like the final summons, and figure out how to let carbuncle cast while moving to stop ghosting))

I definitely agree there should an option for players to hide or choose the size of other people's summons (local option of course lol).

I was making a case for it like Diablo 3 where other people's minions are slightly transparent so you can see through the zoo-builds. Size, transparency, etc, that could be really valuable options for FFXIV too.

Already I hide most other players spell effects so I can see what I'm doing without having to squint through the flashing and pulses with the power of a thousand suns. Yet just because I turn down other people's effects cause they're distracting from my own stuff doesn't mean I want my own stuff to be any less flashy lol. So I think these options are very valuable in allowing the insane FF effects without making it an unplayable MMO.

[Edewen]

I definitely agree there should an option for players to hide or choose the size of other people's summons (local option of course lol).

I was making a case for it like Diablo 3 where other people's minions are slightly transparent so you can see through the zoo-builds. Size, transparency, etc, that could be really valuable options for FFXIV too.

Already I hide most other players spell effects so I can see what I'm doing without having to squint through the flashing and pulses with the power of a thousand suns. Yet just because I turn down other people's effects cause they're distracting from my own stuff doesn't mean I want my own stuff to be any less flashy lol. So I think these options are very valuable in allowing the insane FF effects without making it an unplayable MMO.

There is

/petsize "all" "small"

This will make everyone elses pets, including your own if you have them appear small. This is handled on a personal level. The size of someones summons on your screen is yours to change, they cant affect it. I actually have a hello macro when i join a dungeon to give out that command to people