Summoner feels really, really dumbed down now

[Jirah]

This reminds of how the complaints about DRK's Dark Art spam lead to its complete removal instead of just toning it down.

This is and has always been the ridiculous approach to job reworks. A complete reduction. SCH rework to differentiate away from SMN was delete it’s entire DPS kit, MCH rework to have it be more straight forward was to delete all of this mechanics, AST card rework to accommodate the TP/MP exodus was removing all its traits and maneuvering, MNK rework to expand its kit was to remove GL and it’s positionals, SMN rework to be more of a summoner was to delete its dots and remedialize it’s kit to a absurd degree. God bless BRD still has dots

[Dyvid]

This is and has always been the ridiculous approach to job reworks. A complete reduction. SCH rework to differentiate away from SMN was delete it’s entire DPS kit, MCH rework to have it be more straight forward was to delete all of this mechanics, AST card rework to accommodate the TP/MP exodus was removing all its traits and maneuvering, MNK rework to expand its kit was to remove GL and it’s positionals, SMN rework to be more of a summoner was to delete its dots and remedialize it’s kit to a absurd degree. God bless BRD still has dots

Well they didn't just cleave off DoTs but pets too, along with half the tool kit. It truly is a half arse redesign with little thought put into. Not sure who is running the battle design team but might be time for a change up.

[Kabooa]

"But the older Summoners didn't have DoTs!"
Rydia learns Poison. That is a DoT, a status ailment in past Final Fantasies.

The next time the Blm raise argument comes up, please remember that everyone can toss phoenix downs.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

This is the game now, button-reduction and less complexity. You better get used to it, because this trend has been going on since Stormblood, some years now.
If you're one of the players who loved MCN in HW, you're not going to have a good time in XIV in the future.

[Madoka]

For Rydia, Bio actually was a substantial spell for a large chunk of the game and probably why they gave it to SMN in the first place all those years ago. In FF4 on snes, it was between the -ra and -ga spells in damage but cast instantly. So once you picked it up, it was her hardest hitting spell for about 20 levels and had no wait on the cast. It also tended to beat all her summons until you got Leviathan due to cast times and MP costs.

So while I can usually understand most ex-wow players or XIV only players comparing SMN to other MMOs there was always a baseline of Rydia in its design. Even knowing the extremely basic healing, since she did too until she grows up.

[Feidam]

I actually love the new summoner. It’s not the dot mage from 2.0/3.0, but it’s much much better than the overly tedious 4.0/5.0 smn. I mained smn until stormblood then ditched it after that mess. Happy to be back on my original main.

[Navnav]

SMN is actually EXTREMELY well designed. It is missing some oGCDs and maybe another GCD to press during your skittle phases, but otherwise it's good.
I would say SMN is the perfect framework for introducing talent trees or similar into the game, or at the very least it has an excellent framework to improve upon in furtue expansions.

[ThorneDynasty]

Most other Summoner characters double as healers anyway, so makes sense you have to draw from Rydia for inspiration considering it's a caster DPS job. Makes more sense than rolling Ranger and Bard into one job.

Although if you filled the empty space on summoner hotbars with a few shorter cooldown and GCD heals, maybe got rid of Ruin IV and/or Fester, added a heal/shield effect to summoning Garuda/Titan, you might be half way to having the best playing healer in the game.

[Sequora]

For Rydia, Bio actually was a substantial spell for a large chunk of the game and probably why they gave it to SMN in the first place all those years ago. In FF4 on snes, it was between the -ra and -ga spells in damage but cast instantly. So once you picked it up, it was her hardest hitting spell for about 20 levels and had no wait on the cast. It also tended to beat all her summons until you got Leviathan due to cast times and MP costs.

So while I can usually understand most ex-wow players or XIV only players comparing SMN to other MMOs there was always a baseline of Rydia in its design. Even knowing the extremely basic healing, since she did too until she grows up.

You give them too much credit. They wanted to add a new job with ARR and summoner was the highest requested. They had a bunch of leftover assets from 1.0 Thamuturge that weren’t being used. It also fit that other games with a pet casters often use disease magic as well.

Saying it fits thematically because one summoner in the series could use it is such a stretch.

[dinnertime]

Most other Summoner characters double as healers anyway, so makes sense you have to draw from Rydia for inspiration considering it's a caster DPS job. Makes more sense than rolling Ranger and Bard into one job.

Although if you filled the empty space on summoner hotbars with a few shorter cooldown and GCD heals, maybe got rid of Ruin IV and/or Fester, added a heal/shield effect to summoning Garuda/Titan, you might be half way to having the best playing healer in the game.

I mean... We have Scholar that was supposed to be Summoner Healer equivalent and it was well designed in 2.0 and 3.0, but got badly butchered from trying to separate it from SMN which is ironic because in the end, SMN was the one that got reworked to the point it's nothing like the other versions.