Rotations: Making them DIFFERENT

[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.]

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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?