Thread: Revert summoner to 5.55 while re-reworking it please?

I've played SMN since SB with various levels of effectiveness, and I like it now better than what it was. I think the issue is that it looks like they made it as a "base" or "foundation" at 90 so they can add to it, but that makes it feel like having a Job at 50 and not having the additions yet. Plus side means they're forward thinking and giving themselves a plan to grow it over time, but downside means it feels incomplete right now.

...but it was an absolute mess before. As someone else here said, it had lots of things that work individually, but were a total mess together. And that's also why the Devs said they really couldn't figure out how to expand on it without breaking it, since it was already held together with duct tape and happy thoughts; it was a fluke it was even playable in that form, honestly.

Originally Posted by SweetPete

I just don’t understand why we don’t have Shiva, Ramuh and Leviathan? This baffles me honestly. The current summoner we have feels very unfinished. It’s like they wanted to do more but ran out of time on the job and had to move to the next job to meet the deadlines.

I COULD be wrong, but if I had to guess, it's as you say that they designed it this way specifically so they could add to it. I could see them giving us three more summons in 7.0, then in 8.0, we get a new Demi (possibly with 3 summons). So your rotation would be something like Bahamut, Titan/Ifrit/Garuda, Phoenix, Leviathan/Ramuh/Shiva, Alexander, Ravana/Bismark/Odin [Knights of the Round seems like it wouldn't be a Jolly Rancher gem summon, lol)

And for people wondering how many ways they can employ those two buttons, I'm just thinking of the BLU Ravana spell (that little 4 hit cleave thing where you have Ravana's wings and strike with two swords)

...but this IS a total guess on my part. I just am looking at the design and seeing that being the most likely direction they'd go based on this foundation.

.

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot:

To the OP: It's HIGHLY unlikely they'd revert it.

1) It would be an admission they made a horrible mistake, which they PROBABLY don't want to do.

2) It would have nothing from 81-90, which does matter, but they'd also be reverting the entire leveling process rework.

3) It would wreak absolute havoc with current damage numbers and Job balance (who would play old SMN when it does slightly higher than MCH levels of damage like new SMN?), and require them to re-balance everything, but only for 8-16 months; lots of effort for little gain.

4) A temporary reversion would mean people would have to learn this new-old SMN only for THAT to be ripped away from them when they change it again in 8-16 months.

5) It would make people that like old SMN even madder when it's ripped away from them a SECOND time with 6.5 or 7.0 (whenever they converted it to whatever the new new thing would be)

6) It would alienate all the people that like the new SMN, and it would only make the old SMN fans happy until the 6.5/7.0 rework.

I'm just seeing a lot of downsides here and no real gain.

Originally Posted by fulminating

Summoner is currently fundamentally broken which is especially impressive given how little there is there.

No, it's not. Saying "thing is broken" is not an argument. HOW is it broken? What SPECIFICALLY is broken? And note these have to be things that DON'T WORK, not preferences that you don't enjoy. "It's too simple" is not broken, that's just it not matching your preferences. WAR is simple, but not broken. BRD is simple, but not broken. MCH is simple and kind of broken because it has nothing to make up for its lack of utility and its lack of damage doesn't do so sufficiently...but even it's not REALLY broken, the community just doesn't value what it has as worth taking one over a DNC or BRD. Likewise, SMN isn't broken, either.

1) What is FFXIV as we know it but an admission of a horrible mistake?

No, that's ARR. FFXIV as a whole is not an admission of constant mistakes.

2) Caster potencies remained largely unchanged if that's what you're referring to? Else you're saying that the issue is not the issue.

Old SMN did high DPS, usually top 5, often top 3 if played well, and could out DPS a lot of BLM and some SAM players in the hands of a skilled master. Current SMN is not tuned to that, so if we got old SMN's rotation but balanced to do new SMN's damage (that is, if SMN's overall damage was unchanged), you'd be playing the hardest Job in the game but doing the functional damage of a MCH.

3) see 2)

See above.

4) This doesn't seem to be a point with any substance.

No, but that wasn't a rebuttal with any substance. The point has substance, you just have no counter to it.

5) Hopefully they'd have made something that has gameplay, specifically gameplay in keeping with the summoner we've had for the last decade so the change wouldn't be as bad.

And if they haven't?

6) If they'd done it properly then it wouldn't be necessary.

But that's not the world we live in, now is it?

New summoner does scarcely better than mch damage, old summoner was an actual caster and did appropriate damage for such a role, ie upper half of the dps.

Exactly. So pasting old SMN into new SMN's spot today would make it a worthless Job no one would use unless they ALSO reverted the damage and balanced its damage to be boosted. Keep in mind it has no 81-90 level abilities for OLD SMN, meaning it wouldn't be getting the potency boosts and higher burst finishers that everyone else has. Thus it would be doing less damage than RDM while being harder to play than BLM.

Originally Posted by tearagion

What part of SMN's direction is fine? Care to specify? All I see is a set in stone rotation of the ruin spam everyone apparently hated, with different colours every 15s. Please elucidate specifically what part of newSMN is a good direction to take the job, without diverging into fanciful imaginations about where it could go. I am sincerely curious about what an answer would be.

Wait, what? If you're spamming Ruin, you're doing it wrong. You should only even cast Ruin MAYBE twice per minute, which is less than old SMN did. The variations while under Primal effects are not Ruin, don't cast like Ruin, and don't work like Ruin. Garuda's are instant casts with a reduced GCD. Titan's are instant cast with an oGCD to weave between them, and Ifrit's is a GCD cast longer than the GCD itself. NOT ONE OF THESE is like Ruin. And if you're going to say "That's just Ruin with a different flavor", then Miasma, Bio, and Egi Assault were "just Ruin with a different flavor", too.

There are arguments to be made, but SMN is "fine" right now. It's not perfect (but no Job is) and it's not interesting to people that like doing things like managing a buffet of DoT timers and CD buttons. But that isn't what makes a Job "fine". It's "fine" because all the pieces work together (unlike old SMN), the combat flow is understandable and works, the things that are supposed to buff or alter or interact with other things do so as they're supposed to do, and the Job has a groundwork laid for future additions so it isn't designed into a corner.

I get you don't like it. But you not liking a thing is not what defines whether or not it is fine.

Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Or people like playing it. That it’s not complicated enough for likely a huge minority of players on the complaining (err dps) forums is irrelevant.

We can also see this with things like the Lucky Bancho numbers and other surveys showing that the most played classes in each role are generally the easiest - WAR, WHM, and SMN. RDM is also frequently played (and also easy), and all three of the Ranged physical are similar to each other (because they're all relatively easy), and RPR, followed by SAM, are the most played Melee, which area also - you guessed it - the easiest of them.

While the forums are often filled with VERY vocal masochistic complexity purists, the game as a whole isn't. And we have other Jobs for the people that like complex, clunk, and convolution anyway.

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Do SMN rly need even more summons tho?

Certainly.

And that's exactly what we were "promised" back when they announced the Egi glamour system, which would've allowed us to change the summons we currently had with the ones we were missing (even if it was "cosmetic").

Just a shame they never expanded upon it since its original release...which (by the way) we're looooong overdue.
Like SEVEN (EIGHT?) YEARS OVERDUE, in fact.

Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I don't think SMN really needs more Summons in their rotation I think it'd be too much

Right, which is what I implied in my original post:
That they should add more summon variety as "glamours" rather than new (separate) skills.
These would still work the same as the ones we currently have (like say, a Leviathan-Egi/Sapphire Leviathan working like Ifrit-Egi/Ruby Ifrit).