Rotations: Making them DIFFERENT

[vetch]

[That said: I like Goring's animation WAY better than Royal Authority, which is probably my least favorite melee attack animation IN THE ENTIRE GAME. I'd much rather they use Goring's animation for Royal. Makes me think of the Armor Break Knight attacks from Final Fantasy Tactics.]

It's one of my biggest problems with continually trimming and trimming skills from kits but without giving us any kind of 'skill glamour' system to offset the times when the visual "upgrade" du jour looks horrendous. As memeworthy as it was to kill Selene but allow Eos to wear her skin, I think I'm glad they at least left us the option.

It's like SMN; for all the flack it gets, you can move the three Primals around and use them in whatever order you deem most beneficial. It may not seem like much, but it makes the rotation more dynamic/less static, gives the player some agency in how they want to play out their rotation, and allows an at least slightly meaningful choice on the part of the player.

I guess I just find such a definition of 'choice' to be so constrained as to not merit the word. You have the 'choice' to do damage, or to do damage, or to do damage, but you can do those damages in any order that suits you! Yippee!

As much as a certain segment of the population claims that SMN 'finally feels like a Final Fantasy summoner', I find this to be wrong, and mostly based on surface-level assessments of aesthetics and visuals. (Speaking of visuals, why do we have to wait until endgame to summon an actual summon instead of a chicken nugget? Talk about failing to give new players little reasons keep playing...)

Pre-6.0 SMN, much derided as 'discount WoWlock' with its three pets where you actually wanted a different one for different situations, actually felt like a (small, scuffed) mirror of the versatility of the classic FF mechanic -- which as you recall, saw summons like Sylph and Kirin and Starlet for healing, Golem and Phantom and Carbuncle and Zoneseek for protection, Cerberus to buff your spellcasting, Doomtrain and Stray and Siren for enemy debuffing, and on and on and on.

Old SMN was a passable inheritor of the legacy in spirit, if not visuals. New SMN feels like a non-Final Fantasy-player's idea of what a Final Fantasy summoner does.

[SenahPanipahr]

It's one of my biggest problems with continually trimming and trimming skills from kits but without giving us any kind of 'skill glamour' system to offset the times when the visual "upgrade" du jour looks horrendous. As memeworthy as it was to kill Selene but allow Eos to wear her skin, I think I'm glad they at least left us the option.

Oh my god, yes. It's so sad to look at old videos and see these gorgeous animations that you never got to experience. I'm not sure I even disagree with Enochian being made a passive but the animation was super cool. Your idea of "action glam" would be a great reward those later job quests that otherwise don't give you very much in real time rewards.

As for SMN, I like some of the new visuals compared to what I've seen of the previous iterations', but I agree that the mechanics feel very surface given you are hitting the same buttons for all the elements. (Pressing the same button/keys obviously isn't the problem, but the effective difference between them being so minor is.) The Ruby/Topaz/Emerald prefixed abilities have so little difference between them that it should be seen as antithetical to the job design, much as making all AST cards the same defeats the core idea.

[ForsakenRoe]

The Ruby/Topaz/Emerald prefixed abilities have so little difference between them that it should be seen as antithetical to the job design, much as making all AST cards the same defeats the core idea.

They have so little difference in fact, they're the exact same VFX as the base Ruin cast, up until the level they become 'Ruby/Topaz/Emerald Rite' instead of just 'Ruby Ruin III' etc. Like, iirc they don't even change the color to suit the element or anything (I can't be bothered to log in to double check that so I might be wrong'

[Aravell]

They have so little difference in fact, they're the exact same VFX as the base Ruin cast, up until the level they become 'Ruby/Topaz/Emerald Rite' instead of just 'Ruby Ruin III' etc. Like, iirc they don't even change the color to suit the element or anything (I can't be bothered to log in to double check that so I might be wrong'

I was logged in, so I went and checked. No, they didn't change a thing about them, they look exactly like Ruin III, they couldn't even be bothered to tint it red/green/yellow or something.

[Renathras]

On SMN, I don't mean the visuals at all, actually. You have Ifrit's long casts and required melee range, Titan's total freedom of movement, or Garuda's mostly freedom with a VERY long cast. SMN is a DPS, so doing damage is what it's going to be. Much as I'd love having Summons to deal with different situations, I don't want SMN being made a Limited Job to get that.

My point was not that.

My point was that you have a rotation, but it's not rigid. Contrast DRG with SMN. The former is absolutely rigid. Buttons are essentially pushed in the same order more or less no matter what because of how its rotation works and how rigidly it flows between attacks. On the opposite end, you have something like BRD, which has no rotation. It has a priority system based on what's procing, an underlying long rotation of the songs, and then a filler attack for when nothing on your higher priority system is up/proced. SMN kind of straddles the line between these extremes, having a rotation that has waypoints of rigidity (Bahamut/Phoenix), but between those points has flexibility in how you get there.

I get it's easy to miss that if all you see them as is "damage vs damage", but...it's a DPS Job. They ALL are "damage vs damage" when it comes to their core rotation. Vercure is not part of the core rotation. RDM's buttons are also all "damage vs damage". That's the way it works due to the rigid combat system FFXIV has, so that's not what I'm talking about.

I do also disagree with your "non-FF players notion of..."; Summoners have been distinct across the history of the games to the point that isn't really a valid point. Sometimes even within the same game. Contrasting Garnet and Eiko's Summoning in FF9, for example, the latter has an array of support Summons and several uncommon elemental attack summmons (like Wind and Holy) while the former has mostly just direct attack summons which are more powerful. The attunement/augment effect of EW SMN also is vaguely similar to FFXVI's Clive, though in a pure caster form rather than Clive's hybrid caster/fighter form.

...the point being, FFXIV's SMN is distinct, as all FF game SMNs are, but well within the realm of what a Summoner is.

Pre-EW's SMN was not. You focus only on the mechanics (and only vaguely at that; Phoenix in EW and ShB is vastly more different than Ifrit and Garuda and Titan were from each other in ShB, for example) but I think that's why you miss how EW's SMN feels more like a FF Summoner to people. Pre-EW's version had a heavy focus on DoT gameplay (something Summoners in FF games...don't have; I can't actually think of a single one offhand whose primary gameplay revolves around DoT maintenance), and the Egis didn't feel or work like any Summons in any of the games other than maybe the one Tactics with Vann and Penello in it. No other iteration of Summoner that I can think of had a permanent follow-pet. The closest might be FF12's, but they were temporary big attacks (costing a charged resource to use) and ended with mega-attacks, which the Egis did not.

I can't think of a single FF game where the Summoner played like pre-EW's SMN did.

I was logged in, so I went and checked. No, they didn't change a thing about them, they look exactly like Ruin III, they couldn't even be bothered to tint it red/green/yellow or something.

I think this is what most pissed me off. I don't mind it having the same general animation as Ruin 1/2, but they didn't even give the little flying ball a red/green/yellow tint. you can't even tell if you're casting the elemental one or the normal one, visually.

[vetch]

On SMN, I don't mean the visuals at all, actually. You have Ifrit's long casts and required melee range, Titan's total freedom of movement, or Garuda's mostly freedom with a VERY long cast. SMN is a DPS, so doing damage is what it's going to be. Much as I'd love having Summons to deal with different situations, I don't want SMN being made a Limited Job to get that.
...
I get it's easy to miss that if all you see them as is "damage vs damage", but...it's a DPS Job. They ALL are "damage vs damage" when it comes to their core rotation. Vercure is not part of the core rotation. RDM's buttons are also all "damage vs damage". That's the way it works due to the rigid combat system FFXIV has, so that's not what I'm talking about.

The entire kit is used to give jobs flavor, so comparing core rotations only is not a tangent I'm interested in taking. I liked old SMN because it was the tiniest bit versatile across the entire game, not because it could shuffle a few buttons around to squeeze more uptime during a Savage raid.

MNK is a DPS. It still gets to have Mantra, a traditional FF Monk skill, with a healing-related function similar to its function in other games. BRD is a DPS, but it still gets to have Warden's and Minne and Troub, non-DPS utility songs similar to what traditional FF Bards have. DNC is a DPS, but it gets to have non-DPS support skills (which don't fit its traditional character because they were plundered from BRD, but that's another tangent). None of them are Limited Jobs. Why does SMN, with a legacy of being more support-capable than the also-DPS jobs Monk and Dancer, have fewer on-demand support oGCDs?

And why aren't the ones it has consistently-themed to old FF games? Why does RDM have the party-wide magic barrier while Carbuncle, the recurring Final Fantasy magic defense summon, gives a single-target barrier? Shouldn't that be reversed? Shouldn't Carbuncle be giving party-wide magic resistance and RDMs casting some kind of juicy single-target buff spells? Oh, but you can use Phoenix, one of the most powerful recovery tools in Final Fantasy, to apply a piddly regen and a heal. Not whenever you want, though, only during the pre-approved Phoenix phase for 15 out of every 120 seconds. Doing it whenever you want would just be silly! Boo.

Really, it feels like Carbuncle is only still there now because it's cute and you can make it follow you around town and that will appeal to people who don't play Final Fantasy, but oh, we need to make a head-fake toward it having some kind of function, so uhhhh... make it required for the actual combat summons. Why? What for? It's all so slapdash and lazy and points further toward a preoccupation with visuals.

And on the topic of damage, why does most of its damage GCD time consist of blapping people with a Variety-Pak of Ruin spells instead of, you know, summoning different magical creatures? You say DoTs and a pet don't feel like a Summoner, but a wizard who just shoots bolts from his hands 85% of the time does? Nuh.

Why is the job flavor so lacking on the job that 'finally feels like a Final Fantasy summoner'? Is all the praise because people were getting nothing for so long and now they're getting crumbs instead?

[ForsakenRoe]

Why is the job flavor so lacking on the job that 'finally feels like a Final Fantasy summoner'? Is all the praise because people were getting nothing for so long and now they're getting crumbs instead?

I think it'd be a lot cooler if using the summons gave us an aspect of that summon. Like instead of Ifrit's 'slam the ground with a book' it summons Ifrit's claws to swipe at the enemy. Garuda's instantcasts being explained with 'you have her wings for those 4 GCDS', using Titan's fists to upheave the earth for his moves, etc. Like the summon comes out, does it's ultimate/LB/whatever, then you absorb it into your body to take part of it's physiology for the duration of the phase

[Raikai]

The entire kit is used to give jobs flavor, so comparing core rotations only is not a tangent I'm interested in taking. I liked old SMN because it was the tiniest bit versatile across the entire game, not because it could shuffle a few buttons around to squeeze more uptime during a Savage raid.

MNK is a DPS. It still gets to have Mantra, a traditional FF Monk skill, with a healing-related function similar to its function in other games. BRD is a DPS, but it still gets to have Warden's and Minne and Troub, non-DPS utility songs similar to what traditional FF Bards have. DNC is a DPS, but it gets to have non-DPS support skills (which don't fit its traditional character because they were plundered from BRD, but that's another tangent). None of them are Limited Jobs. Why does SMN, with a legacy of being more support-capable than the also-DPS jobs Monk and Dancer, have fewer on-demand support oGCDs?

And why aren't the ones it has consistently-themed to old FF games? Why does RDM have the party-wide magic barrier while Carbuncle, the recurring Final Fantasy magic defense summon, gives a single-target barrier? Shouldn't that be reversed? Shouldn't Carbuncle be giving party-wide magic resistance and RDMs casting some kind of juicy single-target buff spells? Oh, but you can use Phoenix, one of the most powerful recovery tools in Final Fantasy, to apply a piddly regen and a heal. Not whenever you want, though, only during the pre-approved Phoenix phase for 15 out of every 120 seconds. Doing it whenever you want would just be silly! Boo.

Really, it feels like Carbuncle is only still there now because it's cute and you can make it follow you around town and that will appeal to people who don't play Final Fantasy, but oh, we need to make a head-fake toward it having some kind of function, so uhhhh... make it required for the actual combat summons. Why? What for? It's all so slapdash and lazy and points further toward a preoccupation with visuals.

And on the topic of damage, why does most of its damage GCD time consist of blapping people with a Variety-Pak of Ruin spells instead of, you know, summoning different magical creatures? You say DoTs and a pet don't feel like a Summoner, but a wizard who just shoots bolts from his hands 85% of the time does? Nuh.

Why is the job flavor so lacking on the job that 'finally feels like a Final Fantasy summoner'? Is all the praise because people were getting nothing for so long and now they're getting crumbs instead?

Carby currently just serves as a nuisance to make SMN's utility shield a bit less practical to use.

I don't mind it existing, but either put something for it to do or just make it optional. I'd love to have it out hanging on cities still, but not in combat.