Summoner Issues & Player Feedback

[LittleArrow]

From all the things they could have done, they chose the worst one.

Of all the possible outcomes, they could've:

• Added Ramuh, Shiva and Leviathan during Phoenix phase. Even if it was just visuals, people would be way happier;
• Added Odin or Alexander as a 180s Egi-summon. Again, way cooler than another Bahamut;
• Added a fourth Egi-summon, even that would be fine (as long as it wasn't a remix of the already existing summons);
• Just reskined Bahamut. This would still suck, but it would suck less than having Bahamut to appear 3 times more than Phoenix in a fight;
• Didn't add any new summon, but made the Egi-summons physically attack their target like the Demi-summons, that way it would actually feel like a summoner;
• Added a new gauge that increases by 10 every time you use a lego, and when it gets 100 you can do the big aoe ability. This is way more interesting than simply having a follow up for the party buff, it doesn't even makes sense imo;
• Increased the Aetherflow gauge by 3 and making Energy Drain and Energy Siphon give 3 Aetherflows instead of 2. We need more buttons to press, not another tier for Fester;
• Gave us an ability like Energy Drain/Siphon that only gives 1 Aetherflow but has 30s cooldown. That's another alternative that is way more engaging than Fester 2.

Anyway, the more I think about how the new Summoner sucks, the more mad I get, and we know they won't change anything at this point. At least we now have confirmation that they don't listen or care about their playerbase, at least the western one. I'll just boycott Summoner for the next expansion and pretend I'm still worth something in this game.

I totally get the frustration, but don't give up! Summoner is still really fun. Of course, there are more complicated jobs out there, but they did change it for the better. It's not a weird dot mage, we have our classic basic summons. There might be a really cool story around Solar Bahamut. I'm 100% on your side, but if you enjoy the job, don't let criticisms / forums / whatever push you away from something that you enjoy. The job is still the same, they're just adding to it. It is a stomach punch to think we have to wait, but we're waiting with a job we already enjoy.

I say to try it out! Summoner is the single coolest job across all Final Fantasy franchises. It's such a cool job that even in the games they didn't have the job they still included the summons. I mean, come on, when you look up "best of.." or "all moves..." from a final fantasy game what do you find? Limit breaks and SUMMONS! Summoner is the most Final Fantasy job there is. It's not something you'll find in any other game. Warlock is a sad little worm of a job compared to pulling up Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda and watching them do their classic moves. Also, I don't care what they call him, Neo-Bahamut - actually it's really Bahamut Zero; Bahamut Zero is the coolest Bahamut there is!

Yes, SE really dropped the ball, but summoner is still fun and I think it's better than it has ever been for a Final Fantasy job in a Final Fantasy game!

I mean, look at this unit! It comes from space, spreads its wings to draw energy *cough*solarenergy*cough* and absolutely orbital blasts the enemy from space! I can honestly say, aside from the tanks, Summoner is the only job in the game where our base moves are 100% way cooler than our limit break! Solar Bahamut is going to be fun. SE still needs to add the other summons, but this was a super cool call back for a level 100 move.

[faiarrow]

There might be a really cool story around Solar Bahamut.

Given we used to actually get lore in the job quests, the things they stopped doing to give us the unified role quests to lessen the burden on the development cycle having to write quests for all the jobs, I doubt this. We have no lore for Phoenix and its trance beyond just '[finger guns] carteneau!' and Binding Coils if you do it since it's an optional raid series. Unless we get a sentence about it in the eventual 4th Encyclopaedia I highly doubt we're getting more beyond the casual PLL mention of 'this is more like what actual original bahamut was' and maybe a tiny bit of lore allusion in the tooltip.

The job is still the same, they're just adding to it. It is a stomach punch to think we have to wait, but we're waiting with a job we already enjoy. (...) Yes, SE really dropped the ball, but summoner is still fun and I think it's better than it has ever been for a Final Fantasy job in a Final Fantasy game!

I really wish I could have your level of optimism, and respectfully I do appreciate you're trying to make people see a light to what feels like the endless tunnel of gloom most long-term SMN players have had, however since the job has been unfun to play since 6.0 it's a bitter pill to swallow having to wait to see how further butchered it will be. Again, it LOOKS great, but we could have gotten so much better with an actual 2nd gem cycle between Bahamut and Phoenix with other summons, some risk-reward with how you cycle through particular gems for single/aoe buffs in burst phase, anything beyond the monotonous 1-2-3-Burst-1-2-3-Burst where 2/3 gems feel pitiful in damage.

"But the lore says we reached our aetherwell cap after Garuda thus can't imbue further summon essences" is the weakest excuse in a game that has, constantly, retconned major plot points before given its breaking this rule already with Solar Bahamut existing.

[LittleArrow]

Given we used to actually get lore in the job quests, the things they stopped doing to give us the unified role quests to lessen the burden on the development cycle having to write quests for all the jobs, I doubt this. We have no lore for Phoenix and its trance beyond just '[finger guns] carteneau!' and Binding Coils if you do it since it's an optional raid series. Unless we get a sentence about it in the eventual 4th Encyclopaedia I highly doubt we're getting more beyond the casual PLL mention of 'this is more like what actual original bahamut was' and maybe a tiny bit of lore allusion in the tooltip.



I really wish I could have your level of optimism, and respectfully I do appreciate you're trying to make people see a light to what feels like the endless tunnel of gloom most long-term SMN players have had, however since the job has been unfun to play since 6.0 it's a bitter pill to swallow having to wait to see how further butchered it will be. Again, it LOOKS great, but we could have gotten so much better with an actual 2nd gem cycle between Bahamut and Phoenix with other summons, some risk-reward with how you cycle through particular gems for single/aoe buffs in burst phase, anything beyond the monotonous 1-2-3-Burst-1-2-3-Burst where 2/3 gems feel pitiful in damage.

"But the lore says we reached our aetherwell cap after Garuda thus can't imbue further summon essences" is the weakest excuse in a game that has, constantly, retconned major plot points before given its breaking this rule already with Solar Bahamut existing.

I 100% respect your opinion, but that's what it is, an opinion. [EDIT] And my defense of the class is my opinion also.

I'm sorry that you find the job unfun. I really do feel bad for those that loved the way the job was before, but I'll never agree that the previous summoner was summoner - it wasn't. No summoner in any final fantasy has been that. Yoshi has stated it was essentially a FF reflavor of warlock from wow. I want FFXIV to bring a job that will make previous summoners happy. There are LOADS of debuffers in the FF games to choose from. I'm really hoping for that.

However, the current summoner IS fun, imo. Not every job has to have the complexity of old school XIV summoner. There are many jobs that I would say keep you on your toes. It's not a fix, and it's not an answer to the criticisms previous summoner players have, but I will always defend current summoner. I agree it needs to be built on. I'm gutted they didn't add more summons to the Phoenix phase. I do think there could be incredibly fun complexity to the job, but I will continue to absolutely enjoy watching these summons wreck monsters.

[faiarrow]

However, the current summoner IS fun. Not every job has to have the complexity of old school XIV summoner.

We will have to agree to disagree, since this is your opinion and as you elloquently put it, it is an opinion. It is fine to defend something you think is fun, but tonedeaf to not read the room and that the greater community consensus worldwide is mixed-to-negative seeing the developers double down on the simplification.

[LittleArrow]

For the concern of lower level summons and having to figure out an egi form for them, there are already egi forms for Ramuh (they're used in his fight), and it's easy to just recolor current egi's or use current in-game models (like the water/ice sprites for Levi/Shiva). However, the easiest and most logical answer to this is, don't put those summons at lower level and keep the current rotation as it is - just add the higher level summons after 90 / 100. There's no need to include Shiva / Levi / Ramuh before the level they would be the full primal forms.

I don't want to go on and on about this, but it truly does seem the only way to enact change with the devs is to make the most noise. Seeing as how they still haven't fixed the limited races, they still haven't come up with a better rotation for healers, they still haven't addressed many more very valid gameplay criticisms after years of complaints, and on top of that they definitely don't seem to implement the complaints that are just passively given; it does kinda seem squeaky wheel gets the oil sort of situation.

[rawker]

Sure... let's ignore FFXI SMN exists. It is a pet job. The egis of ARR up to HW is expected as you do not expect to summon primals at 50. They started with Bahamut at 70. I was fine with that but no.. they made the egis and carbuncle do nothing. Took out the pet management and then the disrespect up to DT. It is not acceptable. If you didn't like the pet management, it's fine.. but rejoicing to the point they removed it and then give a blanket statement of feeling sorry for people who thoroughly enjoyed old summoner is just insulting. If you truly are sorry you will not follow up with a shallow statement of feeling sorry and just keep your praising of the new summoner.

Edit.. btw, before being able to summon the big ones, you have elemental spirits you have no control of what they cast, have atrocious perpetuation costs and the only thing you could summon that isn't an elemental spirit was.... Carbuncle. You fight with Carbuncle in the trials to be able to summon Ifrit, Shiva, Garuda, etc... that's what's expected in FFXIV... but no.. this gutted version of SMN is clearly a downgrade... oh wait Yuna on FFX also summons Aeons as pets. Funny

[LittleArrow]

Sure... let's ignore FFXI SMN exists. It is a pet job. The egis of ARR up to HW is expected as you do not expect to summon primals at 50. They started with Bahamut at 70. I was fine with that but no.. they made the egis and carbuncle do nothing. Took out the pet management and then the disrespect up to DT. It is not acceptable. If you didn't like the pet management, it's fine.. but rejoicing to the point they removed it and then give a blanket statement of feeling sorry for people who thoroughly enjoyed old summoner is just insulting. If you truly are sorry you will not follow up with a shallow statement of feeling sorry and just keep your praising of the new summoner.

Edit.. btw, before being able to summon the big ones, you have elemental spirits you have no control of what they cast, have atrocious perpetuation costs and the only thing you could summon that isn't an elemental spirit was.... Carbuncle. You fight with Carbuncle in the trials to be able to summon Ifrit, Shiva, Garuda, etc... that's what's expected in FFXIV... but no.. this gutted version of SMN is clearly a downgrade... oh wait Yuna on FFX also summons Aeons as pets. Funny

My only praise of the the removal of XIV's old summoner was the dot mechanic. I agree with your statement though, that a blanket statement like removal of other aspects of the job then add an apology at the end is insulting. That's not my intention as I am genuinely sad to see anyone lose a job that they had fun with as I experienced that during iterations of XIV's job streamline / update as well. I didn't mean to say there were no positives to the old XIV summoner, just that I truly do detest the dots from the old job being tacked onto the very traditional / classic job of FF Summoner. Even in that, I completely concede that's a closeminded / old way of thinking. There could definitely be ways bring in new additions to the traditional class that I would never have thought of as "summoner." I think a better statement would be, I want to see the traditional summoner first (all the summons, not just a bahamut mage) before seeing them adjust what I have seen as classic summoner. Probably an even better statement would be to see both at the same time. Either way, just some thoughts out loud.

I loved FFXI summoner for the era that was in. Of course, that idea would need to be updated, and there have been so many exceptional posts in this thread alone that could do that. I truly hope SE is listening, because this thread along with the others in response to the job trailer alone could truly make this job shine.

[Shikiseki]

I think as a foundation it served a good purpose until you realize how much potential the kit had but they focused on the wrong thing first (adding a demi in the form of bahamut2? but I digress)

If you realize that if you would have added just 1 additional gemshine summon into the mix, you could have already shaken the decisionmaking within the fixed 1 minute window: Do I fully use 3 gem summons? do I use all 4 of them but which one would you cut short? Or even have Shiva being one gemshine phase you cannot get out of until it's completely over due to the method of summoning being different - so many options! After that you add the 5th and 6th gem summon, each time expanding the possibilities even further

On top of that, you could introduce each gem summon to give an astral or umbral seal which will determine the demi summoning outcome like:
3 Astral nodes --> Bahamut
3 Umbral nodes --> Phoenix
2 A / 1 U nodes --> Odin
2 U / 1 A nodes --> Alexander

this idea alone would basically carry you as buildingblock until 10.0 as you can easily expand it which not only gives you even more summoning but also high decision making depening on the situation you're in as you suddenly not only have a variance in how many gemshine summons you summon but on what demi you ultimately want next in the line, all hopefully serving a different flavour while being identical in damage

[ShadowNyx3]

I think as a foundation it served a good purpose until you realize how much potential the kit had but they focused on the wrong thing first (adding a demi in the form of bahamut2? but I digress)

If you realize that if you would have added just 1 additional gemshine summon into the mix, you could have already shaken the decisionmaking within the fixed 1 minute window: Do I fully use 3 gem summons? do I use all 4 of them but which one would you cut short? Or even have Shiva being one gemshine phase you cannot get out of until it's completely over due to the method of summoning being different - so many options! After that you add the 5th and 6th gem summon, each time expanding the possibilities even further

On top of that, you could introduce each gem summon to give an astral or umbral seal which will determine the demi summoning outcome like:
3 Astral nodes --> Bahamut
3 Umbral nodes --> Phoenix
2 A / 1 U nodes --> Odin
2 U / 1 A nodes --> Alexander

this idea alone would basically carry you as buildingblock until 10.0 as you can easily expand it which not only gives you even more summoning but also high decision making depening on the situation you're in as you suddenly not only have a variance in how many gemshine summons you summon but on what demi you ultimately want next in the line, all hopefully serving a different flavour while being identical in damage

It's honestly so insulting to see this kind of potential they have sitting there for this job and they just refuse to put any effort into it. Like all they could be bothered to do for this entire new expansion is shove a new Bahamut animation into the exact same current rotation and one additional button press for the 2 minute window. Absolute laziness and lack of pride in their own game.


Your idea is spot on though and something I've thought of too since I first saw the EW rotation. Adding the three egis everyone's been begging for for 8 years allows us to use the lore-based Umbral/Astral designation to pop big Demi Summons which is just a vastly more engaging job mechanic than "chose first egi, choose second egi, repeat same buttons for one minute."

[Khryseis_Astra]

"But the lore says we reached our aetherwell cap after Garuda thus can't imbue further summon essences" is the weakest excuse in a game that has, constantly, retconned major plot points before given its breaking this rule already with Solar Bahamut existing.

And really they’ve already started laying the foundations… Eden, the fact that we’ve got an extra shard of our soul from Ardbert, the way summoning was explained during EW with the difference between how primals were summoned under Ascian influence as opposed to Ancient creation magic… I mean, a large chunk of the player base wants Levi-Shiva-Ramuh, and at this point, it would be so easy to say old lore is old, and we’re powerful enough to handle it now, and we have more knowledge of what summoning actually is and how it works. I doubt I’d come here and see people complaining “but lore!” if they finally gave us our other 3 gems! Ok there’s always a few, but most of the posts I’m seeing here and elsewhere, this is the most wanted item on the list.

Add to that, it would take up no extra hot bar space, as our gems could go to Levi-Shiva-Ramuh buttons just like they do for Garuda-Titan-Ifrit… and they could continue that further ahead with other triads of summons if they wanted.

I do share Little Arrow’s optimism though… SMN was the second job I picked up and though there are some things I miss about old SMN (DOT spread was fun lol), I like the format it’s in now a lot better. They’ve built a good foundation for future growth, but now they need to start doing it! So I share everyone’s disappointment in having to wait another few years to get what I thought would be the next logical step. Still love the job, I just want more! lol