Rotations: Making them DIFFERENT

[Eorzean_username]

You could say that with the amount of obligate AoEs in the game now, on multiple jobs, that it seems like they have no intention of doing anything clever with adds, ever again, but if so, why waste precious button slots splitting Shoha from Shoha 2 and Edge of Darkness from Flood of Darkness? I'm not sure that it's a foregone conclusion.

Just to quickly comment on this one thing:

Sadly, Yoshida already covered this in a Live Letter or pre-expansion interview or something. Searching for a specific Yoshida interview / stream is always an exercise in information-seeking torture, but to paraphrase from memory, it was something like:

"We noticed that a lot of times players in Dungeons weren't using their AOEs very much. So we thought, what if we give everyone more AOEs, and make it more obvious that you're supposed to use them? And so that's why we decided to expand on AOE skills so much, so players could have more fun in content like that."

That's extremely heavily-paraphrased (please don't consider it a citable source), but that was the basic vibe: the AOE bloat since ShB has been implemented specifically with "having fun" in Dungeons / trash pulls as the design intent.

[fulminating]

Not quite sure what you mean by "unalloyed"?

As I said, FFXIV's SMN feels like a hybrid of Rydia from FF4 and Clive from FF16.

Also, your picture is pretty misleading. Not only does it leave out a huge part of 5.X (and earlier) SMN (the DoTs; not to mention Egi-Assaults and Further Ruins), it ignores that Phoenix and Bahamut are also in the 6.X rotation. I get it's supposed to be a meme, but it's an example of what I'm saying.

Unalloyed as in not a hybrid. Rydia isn’t a summoner alone, but has black magic too, fairly sure ffxi jobs all take a secondary job, other summoners are also white mages, I think ffv was the one where you also have a mix of your choice, similar to ffta/2. It’s been a while since 1990,

That would be because it’s the phases. You’re pressing 3 until it’s ctrl 3 time repeatedly. I think it probably should be a picture of gem shine into ruin 3 but I couldn’t find a better one at short notice. They do not feel nearly as distinct as they did, whether or not this is a 2 minute issue isn’t really relevant, we can only compare what is there. For the record I don’t think it helps, and should they change it they’ll have a hell of a time changing it. It also suffers from the riveting gameplay of casting ruin 3 lots while waiting on the phoenix buff because high concept 2 always comes along at the same time and there’s no flexibility in how you play it and prematurely bahamuting would be a hilarious dps loss comparatively. Builder spender that operates from debt sounds a lot more interesting than the reality.

Honestly if they added current summoner as evoker I’d still be pretty annoyed about it. Even if there’s a collection of rabbits who literally just taught the beastmen how to summon properly and learning a job from them would have been a good way to expand on the world building and integrate it into the story. There’s just isn’t enough to it nor anything to justify its rigidity.

[Semirhage]

Until today I had been laboring under the delusion that disliking dumbed-down all-visuals-no-substance job design was a "legitimate" position. I see the light now; "objective", "real" criticism means I have to only care about things that casual players who don't like engaging their brains with this game in any capacity care about. Otherwise I'm lying about my preferences. Thank God I have Renathras to tell me what I think.

[ForsakenRoe]

It also suffers from the riveting gameplay of casting ruin 3 lots while waiting on the phoenix buff because high concept 2 always comes along at the same time and there’s no flexibility in how you play it and prematurely bahamuting would be a hilarious dps loss comparatively. Builder spender that operates from debt sounds a lot more interesting than the reality.

'We need to delay buffs by 25s because of this mechanic being trash to try and get damage out in (eg pinax), we don't lose a use of the buffs'

Old SMN: Okay I can hold Bahamut and Searing Light for 25s, filling the gap with one extra Egi Assault 1 and 2 to not overcap, the 2 Ruin IV procs, and then the Ruin III's I'd be casting with Bahamut out anyway

New SMN: My whole rotation falls apart because of this, and I am forced to spam my weakest spell for 25 seconds unless I want to misalign from raidbuffs (which is a bigger DPS loss)

I think this is what people mean by 'Old SMN was more versatile' maybe?

[Renathras]

That's close to it, but no. My prior argument is that I believe people are saying new SMN feels like a FF summoner based on visuals, which feels facile and incorrect to me.

Ah, I see.

I think the disconnect is you're fundamentally misunderstanding the argument, then.

To me, what makes a Summoner in Final Fantasy is GENERALLY that you use these big spells to unleash a big blast of damage via a summoned creature, with some iterations (namely more recent ones) having the Summoner and Summon occasionally fighting side by side for a time. FF12 and I think FF11 did the side by side thing, FF10 did the thing like having Bahamut or Phoenix on the field (though in that case you directed their actions, but this is probably the closest FFXIV can get to that), FF16 has the "you take on the powers of the Summon" element (the Gemshine and Astral Flow abilities VERY MUCH to me seem like a proto-very caster oriented-version of FF16's gameplay), and there's also the big blasts of damage like FF15, FFTactics, FF9, FF8, FF7, and FF6 between the initial Primal hits and Deathflare/Akh Morn/Revelation from Enkindle and Bahamut's Astral Flow.

I think the problem is you assume that people talking about this are all shallow. They're probably thinking about it on a deeper level than you give them credit, and so it's causing you to misunderstand their argument and thus reach the wrong conclusion.

This is a common thing from people who don't like new SMN to assume everyone who does is shallow/lazy/doesn't care about combat/etc.

Maybe if people did that less, they'd see why there's a disconnect between them and others, as I think that's where your disconnect lies. [Semi, as you can see above, is a particularly bad offender in this category of action.]

.

Couple other points:

1) Agree that fight design is an issue. I've said so many many times, so you're preaching to a choir in agreement with me here.

2) I would like to hear some of these other facets of what you would consider versatility.

3) The AOE thing I think I see what you mean, you mean the initial Summon hits. I'm trying to think of any cases where that's an issue now, since Tanks have to pull the adds apart in most fights where you're supposed to focus them, and the only fight that springs right to mind where hitting an add is bad is Pharos Sirius with the bird boss that has the eggs and enrage mechanic. But the Summon AOE's are small enough to not hit those, generally? This also seems to be more a reflection of modern fight design. You point out Shoha 2 and Edge vs Flood, but I can also point out all of RDM's formerly single-target big attacks are now AOE as well. So any fight designed with adds everywhere that you can't hit, RDM couldn't use Holy/Flare/Scorch/Resolution or Contre Sixte. PLD's burst includes mandatory AOE Swords, WAR's Primal Rend, GNB's Double Down and Bow Shock, etc etc.

Honestly, they seem to do this randomly from Job to Job, like RDM and SMN have automatic AOE, but BLM doesn't. I have no idea the logic behind those choices, but it doesn't seem isolated to SMN.

But yes, I'd like to hear the other forms of versatility. Surely it's not just the one?

[Renathras]

Unalloyed as in not a hybrid.

Ah, I see. There...seem not to be man/any of those.

Given, by that token, there aren't very many non-hybrid Jobs in general. Taking FF9 for example, Zidane is a Thief but also a Squire/Fighter, Steiner is a Knight but also a Paladin but also a Mystic Knight (with Vivi in the party), Vivi seems to be the only pure Job in the bunch (other than Quina?) as BLM, Garnet is a SMN/WHM, Freya is a DRG/RDM (or maybe DNC is more accurate...) hybrid, Eiko is a WHM/SMN, Quina is a BLU, and Amaranth is never in the party. (Seems to be a MNK/Fighter). FF6, FF7, and FF8 characters can all be customized, so are generally some version of Fighter/Archer + Mage + Summoner. FFX characters kind of fit into that same camp, except without the Summoner (aside from Yuna). FF12 and FF13's characters are also hybrids. FF15s are also hybrids but in kind of a different way, and no mages. Prompto is probably the least hybrid as a MCH, I guess (when not going 3PS shooter). And FF16's main character is a Fighter + Summoner + debateably Red Mage...you know what, let's just call him a Red Caller and be done with it.

So I don't really think this is exclusively a SMN problem in that sense. You could probably make that argument related to all FFXIV Jobs.

It also suffers from the riveting gameplay of casting ruin 3 lots while waiting on...

I made a proposal a little while back in the DPS forum that was mixed reception but some people seemed to like it as a possible solution to this problem: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...tweak-proposal

Would basically address this very problem.

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As for the AOE vs Single Target thing; they could just make two versions of each Primal for that. But then people would ask why the single target existed when they do the same damage. People already ask this all the time now. AOE gameplay in this game is more or less an afterthought at this point, I think. Agree? It certainly seems to be. Most content is either adds you bunch up (if possible; Extreme adds often seem to be static emplacements you simply have to destroy - ZodEx, HydEx, and RubiEx all did this, and the others didn't have adds) and then nuke down without thought all together; and the rest of the content is single target where it doesn't matter if abilities have an AOE effect because it's irrelevant.