Please stop alienating the playerbase with job total reworks

[Valence]

While I respect your opinion as a fellow old MCH enjoyer, I think we simply enjoyed different things about the job. I vastly prefer HW MCH because if the choices you had to make, dropping Gauss Barrel for extended movement, knowing when to Hypercharge and which turret to use it with, knowing when to support your healers or melee who are hurting for resources, plus dropping Gauss Barrel to squeeze in the last auto before Wildfire explodes was an amazing feeling.

I personally felt that SB introduced a bit of unneeded clunk into the kit while removing aspects of what I enjoyed, which is why I don't favour it. It's worth noting that I don't think the SB kit is bad though, I just think it's not a good evolution to me.

I actually do not disagree with the barrel mobility and especially with the turret tactical choices, when to hypercharge, etc. I missed this during SB, even though I had a blast with the job's new systems.

[Valence]

You really think they aren't considerate? They are in Japan and people in Japan are more considerate than most people in the west. Dealing with people in the west is exhausting tbh. Me this, me that.

Spare me the cultural clichés.

If anything I have faith in the devs to listen, and I do know they are considerate. Even too much so at times.

They do have to weigh it up. Take MCH for example - a job that virtually didn't exist it was so unplayed. They redid it like a whole new job for Shadowbringers. Did it upset the few people who played it? Sure, but when weighing it up, they didn't affect the scale next to the amount of people who didn't like the job in Stormblood.

I am also not sure respectfully to appreciate your "screw the minority" approach and discarding it like it's just an inevitable fact of life. A game that consistently sends middle fingers to its veterans is threading into weird waters already. When you see the amount of people that are just scared now when any job rework is announced instead of being thrilled (like we were for MCH back then), it's very telling in itself.

Many, many people are glad it's an actual Summoner now.

There is something morally crooked in discarding your biggest fans to make room for more, when there is often alternative solutions or better middle grounds (or new jobs...).

You still have 3 casts, and Ruin as filler if you didn't delay the GCD enough prior to repeating the rotation.
You can literally choose earth, wind or fire and at level 90 you can choose between two buttons, such as the ifrit dash or the ifrit casts.
Garuda's wind AoE would qualify as a DoT, technically, except it doesn't have 100% uptime.

Do I really have to reply to this?

It was intended to make it super popular and "an actual summoner". It was worth it in my opinion because the egis just weren't fitting. Most of the people playing it, did so for the gameplay, not "because it was a summoner", and SE could easily make a new job that is similar to it "for the gameplay".

Having an actual summoner is mutually exclusive with having good gameplay?

But quite honestly, it doesn't seem... less-complicated now. So I'm not sure that it helped anything lol. I still don't see any Monks.

Some jobs having less numbers and being more niche is not dirty. We constantly have to deal with absolute tools that don't even play the job that will always show up and argue for it to be changed under the guise that it's not played enough.

[LilimoLimomo]

Obviously it's subjective, but I love the Summoner change. DoTs aren't part of my summoner fantasy, and I don't need to have absolute control over a pet because that has rarely been part of Summoning in FF games. Now the class is frequently rotating through flashy summons and the strategy comes from determining the order, such that the level 90 experience is chef's kiss. Before I didn't like Summoner because it didn't feel like a Summoner, and now I love Summoner because it feels like a Summoner.

If they can do for other classes what they did for Summoner, I'd be down.

That said, different strokes for different folks.

[VentVanitas]

what about pre-EW SMN wasn't "Summoner" enough, though? why does it have to fall more in line with some arbitrary definition of what a "real" Summoner is? is it really that bad for XIV to have its own unique take on a Summoner job?

if you enjoy it good for you, but I personally don't think it should have come at the cost of eradicating an entirely unique playstyle from the whole game and leaving players like me with nothing to go to. especially when EW SMN itself doesn't even bring anything new or unique to the table and a lot of the elements that people praise EW SMN for are things that already existed in previous versions.

[ty_taurus]

what about pre-EW SMN wasn't "Summoner" enough, though? why does it have to fall more in line with some arbitrary definition of what a "real" Summoner is? is it really that bad for XIV to have its own unique take on a Summoner job?

if you enjoy it good for you, but I personally don't think it should have come at the cost of eradicating an entirely unique playstyle from the whole game and leaving players like me with nothing to go to. especially when EW SMN itself doesn't even bring anything new or unique to the table and a lot of the elements that people praise EW SMN for are things that already existed in previous versions.

From a gameplay standpoint, new Summoner is hilariously under designed and is insulting to former Summoner mains. But from a thematic standpoint, I vastly prefer the job's new aesthetic direction. FFXIV is its own game, but is still deeply connected with the series proper, and for a lot of people, the identity of a job's gameplay is extremely important. Summoner has always struggled to feel like a proper representation of the Summoner job from the series, which is otherwise one of the most prominent in terms of its identity. Summons were a tacky DOT with ugly, underwhelming representations of iconic Final Fantasy characters--the summons themselves.

This is not to say that I feel the old Summoner's gameplay was bad or didn't deserve to exist. I just don't know why we called that job "Summoner" at all. I would've just called that job "Arcanist" and leave "Summoner" as an available concept that could be explored later instead. That way the original playstyle could be preserved while leaving the door open for a job that would better represent the Summoner namesake for players who like the identity of Summoner. (Something better than the attrocity that we got in Endwalker no less). I'd say the same for Bard as well.

"Bard" is not a Bard. It's something else, and I would rather call it something else so that a real Bard could exist in the future.

[Supersnow845]

They even justified in 14’s lore why old SMN was the way it was and drew parallels to its partner class in SCH (ACN for both is us later rediscovering the foundations upon which alleg built SMN and nyrm built SCH, that’s why ACN is the origin class for both), full summons were never part of the design because alleg wouldn’t allow the full summoning of primals; even if it was primarily done from the summoners aether and the allegen origins explain why the class included DOT’s

Modern SMN has no lore that makes any remote sense given 14’s world and the fact its origin class is still ACN, SMN has long since abandoned its partnership with SCH (which also creates the annoying drama of people playing the easiest DPS level the hardest healer by proxy for free, have you ever done dead ends with a SMN main playing SCH) and even then it still plays more like a diet enchanter anyway because the summons feel meaningless

[ty_taurus]

They even justified in 14’s lore why old SMN was the way it was and drew parallels to its partner class in SCH (ACN for both is us later rediscovering the foundations upon which alleg built SMN and nyrm built SCH, that’s why ACN is the origin class for both), full summons were never part of the design because alleg wouldn’t allow the full summoning of primals; even if it was primarily done from the summoners aether and the allegen origins explain why the class included DOT’s

Modern SMN has no lore that makes any remote sense given 14’s world and the fact its origin class is still ACN, SMN has long since abandoned its partnership with SCH (which also creates the annoying drama of people playing the easiest DPS level the hardest healer by proxy for free, have you ever done dead ends with a SMN main playing SCH) and even then it still plays more like a diet enchanter anyway because the summons feel meaningless

Justifying it in lore does nothing to address that form an outside perspective, I just do not think the job is "Summoner." And that's fine, which is why I think it should've just retained the name "Arcanist" instead. That's the only issue I had with the former Summoner design.

[VentVanitas]

This is not to say that I feel the old Summoner's gameplay was bad or didn't deserve to exist. I just don't know why we called that job "Summoner" at all. I would've just called that job "Arcanist" and leave "Summoner" as an available concept that could be explored later instead. That way the original playstyle could be preserved while leaving the door open for a job that would better represent the Summoner namesake for players who like the identity of Summoner. (Something better than the attrocity that we got in Endwalker no less). I'd say the same for Bard as well.

identity is important sure, but taking it way too far into the other direction and making a job a one-trick pony that revolves entirely around a singular gimmick is just as stupid, in my opinion. it's why I hate modern SCH or WHM's aesthetic.

[ty_taurus]

identity is important sure, but taking it way too far into the other direction and making a job a one-trick pony that revolves entirely around a singular gimmick is just as stupid, in my opinion. it's why I hate modern SCH or WHM's aesthetic.

I have no idea what Scholar's identity is supposed to be.

It has dark magic: Ruin, Broil, Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, Energy Drain
It has "techno" magic: Art of War, Chain Stratagem, Recitation, Sacred Soil
It has a faerie companion with a butterfly motif: Eos, Fey Blessing, Whispering Dawn, Expedient (which is somehow not associated with the faerie)
It has its own generic, sparkly healing magic independent of the faerie: Indomitability, Adloquium, Succor, Protraction
It has an angel motif with Eos turning into Seraph: LB3 Angel Feathers, Summon Seraph, etc.

It feels thematically disjointed to me, so I don't really see that as a one-trick pony.

[Supersnow845]

identity is important sure, but taking it way too far into the other direction and making a job a one-trick pony that revolves entirely around a singular gimmick is just as stupid, in my opinion. it's why I hate modern SCH or WHM's aesthetic.

I’m confused on how you have that idea on SCH, it’s easy the most visually diverse healer and it has the widest range on the diversity of heals, does it really have a visual aesthetic