Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

The concern of the current summoner is that the gameplay is much too slow and rigid,

I think this really depends on the player. Old PLD was slow and rigid, and people liked it. BLM is slow and fairly rigid, and it also has dedicated fans. The filler phase of New SMN is basically a single Ruin 3 cast once per minute (the Primals are not "filler" phase using most traditional definitions).

I do agree they should remove the Aetherflow system. It's vestigial and just around likely because they felt they needed SOMETHING there and decided to recycle the names and abilities instead of not doing so, but if Ruin 4 was just a 60 sec CD GCD and Painflare a 30 sec 2 charge oGCD, the rotation would be unchanged and not have the weirdness of a system that is now completely dead to SMN anyway.

So I agree with you there for sure.

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What I mean is, you're arguing over a definition. You're insisting your definition is the correct and only one. And even when someone else is using the terms your definition used, you insist they aren't.

If I entertain that mentality then I suppose if their goal was to make something that looked like a Rydia-esque "classic ff summoner" imported into FFXIV then sure they succeeded.

That's exactly what I mean, yes. The only thing that sucks is it doesn't get there until level 90, but the Primal summons themselves thematically feel like what Summoners are in most of the older Final Fantasy games, or FF3 through FF9 and including FFTactics, with the DWT/FBT being the newer incarnations of summoners like FF10, 12, and 13 where they are temporary companions that join you on the battlefield briefly before departing.

Popularity is a shit metric even if we did have access to accurate numbers.

I disagree. Suppose 90% of Healers right now were playing SMN and only 1% were playing WHM. That would be a pretty good indication players probably want more complexity in the Healer roles, and would indicate that SE should make more complex ones. If they did so, and those were the popular/most played ones, it would reinforce that position. While popularity doesn't necessarily mean the GOAT, it does mean "thing people like". And I'm generally a fan of giving people what they like within reason. Or, at the very least, not taking away what seems to be well liked. If the complex Jobs were the ones being most played, it would indicate the Devs should add more complex Jobs since that's what the people want.

I'm not saying people are always right about things like domestic and foreign policy, but people are generally good judges of what things they personally enjoy.

In fact you seem to strengthen that interpretation in the second paragraph where you prioritize not needing to make any meaningful rotational decisions, that the rotation should simply happen without disruption. You've not been shy about enjoying the easier rotation. You even say it succeeded in creating a "smoothness of flow", so I don't know what your problem is here.

I think you don't understand the point. SAM has a somewhat complex rotation, but it closes its loop. You have something that's basically 1-2-3-1-4-1-5-6 (however you want to arrange it), and then 7. You also will occasionally 1-2-7. But the rotation is more or less closed. SAM I don't play as much, so I'll use MNK, as I'm more familiar with it. MNK's rotation is 18 buttons long, but it moves between abilities and the loop closes at the end to get back to the beginning. 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-6-4-5-3-1-2-6-4-5-6-back to start. It's satisfying because it is a nicely closed loop that cycles. You don't end it with 4-5-clip to 1-2-3. You finish off the loop and then it begins again. It's smooth and requires thinking about what you're doing, but there's a correct way to do it, and that's it. It's not simple (in the sense of complex or braindead), yet it's smooth and deterministic.

I don't like rotations where you have to do stupid stuff like "You have a buff and can use Atonement 3 times, but every other time...yeah, you just use two of those". And MNK's, for all that it's static, has hiccups in it when you do use the Nadi finishers, but the core rotation is nice and and I like it. I prefer the "choice" being in things like when to use oGCDs or when to use movement tools that don't disrupt your rotation (things like Ruin 4), but I like rotations that are closed loops IF they're rotations.

RDM gets a pass since it doesn't have a set rotation, though it has "micro-rotations/phases" of shortcast-longcast sets. Of which there are a total of 6 and if you ever build a decision tree for using them, it's actually pretty crazy what your mind is doing on the fly when you play the Job, evaluating conditions (is White > Black, White < Black, White = Black), what procs are up (is Verfire ready = True, Verstone ready = true, Both = true - if so, which has the shorter duration remaining?), and other contingent variables (is Acceleration sitting at 2 charges or about to reach 2 charges? Is there a heavy movement phase coming up? How close are you to your melee combo-ready? Is the phase one which allows melee range engagement? Is the next burst window close enough you want to save pooled resources for it? Is Manification up or about to be up?). But since all of this is broken into "shortcast-longcast", it's a far less daunting task than if you sit down and try to think out and math out what is actually going on.

Anyway, point is: Rotation that smoothly interlocks at the end and start of the next loop is not simple or bad.

Hell, OLD SMN did this. The rotation was a perfect(ish) 2 min full cycle.

Where did I say you weren't using the definition I quoted? Perhaps using "defined" here to articulate that I explained my position was confusing.

"I clearly define what I mean by "disjointed", and you just...ignore it?" - If I'm ignoring it, I can't be using it, right? Can a person be using a thing while ignoring the thing? But I'm willing to let you off the hook on this one. But when you say I'm ignoring things, that kinda means I'm not using them, hence why I thought you said I wasn't.

In any case, the other stuff...we're going to disagree on, but I would say that "continuous" is not a word that fit Old SMN. Connected I'll give you in the sense that individual strands connected to others like a spider web. I don't feel it was as coherent as something like RDM where all the systems seem more or less connected, and Old SMN's were, as I said, tangentially connected or connected in individual elements to other individual elements. But sure, we can call that connected. Not "continuous", though. Old SMN, as I've said, was ALL OVER THE PLACE. It lacked coherence, which was one of the things people complained about even back then. "Why is Phoenix attached to FBT but DWT and Bahamut are separate things?" and so on are arguments of how Old SMN wasn't coherent.

You don't seem interested in other people's views at all, unless they're non-critical of newSMN.

Since we're otherwise having a decent conversation...I'm going to ignore this. Please stop doing it.[/hb]

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New SMN is fine.

New SMN is not what you like, enjoy, or think is good for the game. Those are different arguments.

It is on the low end of DPSers. The only things lower than it are RDM (for reasons that make no sense and even I've said RDM shouldn't be doing less than SMN) and the three party buff Jobs, though I think MCH is also able to output numbers higher than SMN. BRD and DNC doing less makes sense given their party buffing and that DNC is well known for NOT being a difficult Job itself.

I'm going to ignore that last quip, because it's yet again you trying to derail the thread with personal attacks and I'm trying not to respond in kind.

They'll never return Noct Sect back the way it was (at least not in next expansion) now that they added a new shield Healer unless they repurpose it to something completely different.

Misshapen Chair pointed out that this makes no sense. Suppose they ever DO add another Healer. Then what? Will there be 3 Pure 2 Barrier or 2 Pure 3 Barrier? Will they only add Healer Jobs in pairs from now on? Even if we assume the Pure/Barrier split survives where the Main Tank/Off Tank split did not (and it's dubious if it will), there's no real NEED for there to be exactly the same number of each. We have 5 Melee, 3 Ranged, and 3 Casters. Melee not having 3 or 6 (depending on if you math for 1 or 2 party slots) isn't throwing everything in the world off. There not being 6 Tanks and 6 Healers (2 party slots...!) isn't destroying things, either. So they very easily could have 2 Pure/3 Barrier (with AST being one of each) without an issue.

It would probably BE BETTER FOR HEALER BALANCE because right now, AST is a Pure + Barrier-lite Healer given it has a 60 sec party mitigation and a 2 min party AOE barrier while WHM has just a single 2 min party mitigation and no party barrier. AST as it is is already half-Nocturnal and so it's getting the benefits of being a Pure and a Barrier Healer at the same time, which is making it stomp all over WHM in the meta. WHM's saving grace is...it's just so damn easy to play by comparison that people bring it anyway since it's easier to get good performance out of. If WHM was as APM heavy crazy as AST is, AST would be wiping the floor with WHM (or people would be running SCH/SGE comps for everything), one of the two.

Hopefully not. I expect the devs have learned their lesson and never do something like what they did to SMN to any job ever again. No jobs deserve to be become like that.

Again - agree to disagree - there's nothing wrong with SMN.

But I do agree that no Job should be changed that way. I've already said extensively why and how I don't think Jobs should be completely changed out from under players. WHM going from SB to ShB to EW didn't change that much (contrary to some people's claims), so it's fine. SHM, on the other hand, had a completely massive change in both mechanics and complexity and gameplay. That isn't fine. The Job's mechanics and systems THEMSELVES are fine, but it should have just been made into a separate Job, like Evoker that unlocks from Arcanist at level 30 and call it a day from there.