Machinist vs Summoner vs Red Mage vs Reaper

[WiccaP]

Machinist.

As popular as it is to hate on summoner. It has cast times, a (non-optional) ground-target effect, and melee attacks. You have to plan where you're going to put those casts and melees, and potentially adjust your rotation based on the boss's movements, or take a DPS loss.

Machinist has none of these restrictions.

Machinist also does need to reposition for most of their aoes. Spreadshot/shotgun, bioblaster, ricochet and auto crossbow and flamethrower are all cone sprays that work better from just outside of melee. They ate also the most ping dependent out if the 4 listed so with a weak ping, your wildfire is shot in the foot. But it's overall rotation is pretty basic, I'd say summoner is only easier because of the abilities sharing buttons.

[MikkoAkure]

"Tell me you don't play summoner without telling me you don't play summoner".

Yeah, it's not a huge number but it's more than that. But uh, best not to let facts get in the way of the forum's hate rituals for SMN, I guess.

I play SMN, actually like it, and I’m confused what other hard casting spells you think you are you doing in your rotation other than Ruby Rite and Slipstream or why you think my post is putting it down. Slip swiftcast into your rotation and you have decreased your cast timers/stationary time by a full third and your mobility is even closer to the ranged physical DPS than it was before compared to RDM and especially BLM.

[Zomkei]

SMN is by far the easiest, but it can be fun to play. MCH is easy to learn, hard to master. with it’s strict rotation, there’s no room for error. you have to time queen with raid buffs, make sure nothing drifts, and pray to the ping gods you don’t mess up during wildfire. it isn’t necessarily a hard class, but if you’re looking for a chill class that is fun (opinion ofc) i rec smn.

[Mcg55ss]

SMN only has 3 actions in its entire rotation that have casting times, which can be cut down to 2 with swift cast. SMN has similar freedom of movement to ranged physical DPS at this point and even SAM has more casting time in its rotation than SMN does now.

SMN’s rotation is also much easier to figure out than the other casters because the buttons change into the spells you’ll be using for that stance and your bar lights up with what to do next.

Yes tell that to my g.f I play with who is new to MMOs. Generally she didn't like it because she wasn't strong at position herself for the next ability or moved too much which messed up her casting time pretty frequently (she also has terrible memory remembering bosses abilities to be fair as well). After trying it for months despite getting her like fully melded 610 ilvl gear she decided to switch to dancer and enjoys it far more because of the freedom she has to move around and still hit stuff.

[Nizzi]

"Tell me you don't play summoner without telling me you don't play summoner".

Yeah, it's not a huge number but it's more than that. But uh, best not to let facts get in the way of the forum's hate rituals for SMN, I guess.

Was it necessary to be pedantic over them missing 1 cast? SMN has 4 hardcasted spells in its rotational loop between summoning Bahamut and summoning Phoenix - 2 Ruby Rites, Slipstream and one Ruin III. They said 3, so they probably just forgot about the filler Ruin III?

[MahthildisMMORPG]

I've been playing MMORPGs since Grand Fantasia released. So 2009

PSO2, Grand Fantasia, Zomg, BDO, World of Warcraft, FFXIV, all games I have countless hours in. Also, I'm really good at Dancer, I just wanna change classes because it is lack luster in most deep dungeon content, in comparison to the S tier classes in deep dungeons that is Reaper, Red Mage, Summoner, and Machinist. Also, it's mid at PvP too.

I use a Logitech G600

I've actually been playing FFXIV for 2 years as a Dancer, and WoW since Wrath.

Didn't include Dancer in the comparison post because its not a "which class of all classes is easier", but which of the S tier deep dungeon classes is easier outside of deep dungeon content. (Savage, Ultimate, Endgame, PvP, Raids, Trials, etc)

[SassyAssassin]

After a hard depression hit and meds, my reactions aren’t great at all times so I turned to smn, it’s easy to play, allows me to still do quite a good amount of damage but I only play until and including some extremes, savage is out for me.