Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Heroman3003]

They learned that from EW SMN apparently: "I feel like I"m -really- summoning things now!"---summon what? That's literally just some flashy VFX attached on an instant GCD.

Because previous iteration of summoner where you just spam ruin and press a button for your pet to swing a little harder once a minute felt extremely engaging and varied. Now it's also ruin spam, but at least there's some impact to the summon attacks and actual tangible feeling like summoning is happening and it's relevant to the job in some way.

[ASkellington]

They learned that from EW SMN apparently: "I feel like I"m -really- summoning things now!"---summon what? That's literally just some flashy VFX attached on an instant GCD.

Probably due to cycling the summons now instead of just:

Titan - never Solo
Garuda - Trash
Ifrit - Bosses

The problem is that SE did nothing with it. What I wanted with NuSummoner was: reasons for switching between the summons, each of them properly being a pet (so they had their own abilities we could use), and have the summons build up to Bahamut/Phoenix.

What we got was only the first bit.

[Deceptus]

The eternal problem

If we stay they call the numbers healthy and change nothing

If we leave they think we are leaving because healer is too hard and make it easier

Enough players stopped playing healers that Yoshi-P literally begged people to "try healer" on a live letter.

So, they know there is an issue, now we see if it's enough to change course or keep going in the failed direction.

[Aravell]

They learned that from EW SMN apparently: "I feel like I"m -really- summoning things now!"---summon what? That's literally just some flashy VFX attached on an instant GCD.

I don't know why "being a real summoner" has to be mutually exclusive to having pet management.

The old playstyle is not incompatible with flashier summons, I don't know why people act like they absolutely cannot exist together.

[AmiableApkallu]

I don't know why "being a real summoner" has to be mutually exclusive to having pet management.

They're not mutually exclusive, per se.

If you think of someone like Rydia (FFIV), then a summoner calls forth an entity, and the entity does a flashy thing and goes away. If you think of someone like Yuna (FFX), then a summoner calls forth an entity, and you-the-player get to tell it what to do for a bit.

But those are both from single-player, turn-based games, so they both need adapting for an MMO context. What we have now is essentially the Rydia model (to go along with the FFIV-inspired post-EW story line?) with too few summons and no meaningful adaptations for an MMO.

[ty_taurus]

They're not mutually exclusive, per se.

If you think of someone like Rydia (FFIV), then a summoner calls forth an entity, and the entity does a flashy thing and goes away. If you think of someone like Yuna (FFX), then a summoner calls forth an entity, and you-the-player get to tell it what to do for a bit.

But those are both from single-player, turn-based games, so they both need adapting for an MMO context. What we have now is essentially the Rydia model (to go along with the FFIV-inspired post-EW story line?) with too few summons and no meaningful adaptations for an MMO.

I don't think the concept is bad--that you summon a demi primal for a single, powerful attack, then gain enhanced attacks based on that summon's element. Honestly I like it a lot better than "Arcanist but with some floating chicken nuggets." The problem is just the execution, how the job is so rigid and inflexible, yet somehow just as slow and unfun. It's also the poster child for needless button bloat that exists exclusively for trash mobs. Summoner all ready has a small number of hotbar actions, but it gets even smaller when you discount all the buttons that are two of the same thing for single target and AOE.

I also don't dislike the idea of Carbuncle existing to be a conduit for your support, but that support needs to be more than a single personal barrier cooldown. He needs more tools that provide situational benefits.

[Supersnow845]

One thing that I don’t think gets bought up enough with healers amongst the other 10,000 issues they have is that the modern healers don’t feel like classes a WOL would use

Can any of us legit imagine meteor in the wedding cake gown AF gear throwing out UWU lily spells. We don’t even feel like WOL’s we feel like the actual WOL’s UWU cheer squad here to remind them of the power of friendship in their darkest hour

How is it in a game that goes to such lengths to characterise what the WOL is they just utterly fail to make all classes feel like classes the WOL would actually play

[ty_taurus]

One thing that I don’t think gets bought up enough with healers amongst the other 10,000 issues they have is that the modern healers don’t feel like classes a WOL would use

Can any of us legit imagine meteor in the wedding cake gown AF gear throwing out UWU lily spells. We don’t even feel like WOL’s we feel like the actual WOL’s UWU cheer squad here to remind them of the power of friendship in their darkest hour

How is it in a game that goes to such lengths to characterise what the WOL is they just utterly fail to make all classes feel like classes the WOL would actually play

It really isn't hard to make a more masculine/gender neutral healer artifact set. This is just a recoloring of Robin in Super Smash Bros, but case-and-point:


I could absolutely see Meteor in something like that and it not look out-of-place. Like, this example isn't even all that detailed. And for magic, he doesn't need to be spinning around and doing angelic poses to cast spells. And not every depiction of magic needs to be directly representative of something in-game. Potentially having a moment where he calls down a judgement ray can look very powerful and not all that feminine. The only thing I think would be Afflatus Misery would probably want to be represented since it's sort of the heart of White Mage's style, but you could have it not be used in battle even. Maybe you could have a scene invovling purifying land in some way, if that ends up being a part of that expansions story, where Afflatus Misery is used to purge some sort of pollution or corruption off something like a tree or whatnot that's relevant to the plot, and then pan over to show Meteor in a more adventure-inspired White Mage look.

The funny thing is none of this really requires a difficult amount of creativity or out of the box thinking, but just requires the team to see White Mage or healers in general as anything other than dainty ballgown damsels in distress that clench their eyes and yell "YAMETE!" every time they need to cast a DPS spell.

[Aravell]

The funny thing is none of this really requires a difficult amount of creativity or out of the box thinking, but just requires the team to see White Mage or healers in general as anything other than dainty ballgown damsels in distress that clench their eyes and yell "YAMETE!" every time they need to cast a DPS spell.

This image is really funny to me considering that they just introduced an aggressive-looking battle medic that literally fires laser beams.

[rawker]

To be fair, of the 4 lv89 healer sets, SCH has got to be the closest thing that doesn't make my highlander look feminine.. if only there's a way to cut off those ribbons.

Also, if they stuck up with ARR/HW SMN, they could have simply upgraded Enkindle via trait to tranform the egis to its primal forms to do their signature moves then dissipates and puts the summon egi in a lengthy cooldown. And when all egis are used up, Carbuncle is the "filler" pet.

Also the dreadwyrm trance could have also been upgraded to summon Bahamut. Plus make the summoning have requiments other than it off cooldown.