I Enjoy Summoner

[Ramiee]

In my opinion they’d have been better staying with the Summoner we have now (ideally a better designed one lol but in concept at least lol) and creating a new job to accomodate its old playstyle. My main reasoning behind that is that Summoner ended up a little weird as it progressed until the remake, because there was a bit of a clash between the Arcanist ‘DoT’ aspects, the ‘Summoning’ aspects where they ended up vying for the design’s attention. You either end up with the old ‘Poison Mage’ type Summoner that some argue doesn’t feel like a ‘Summoner’ at all, or the current ‘Plonk down big primals and run in circles while attacking’ type Summoner that some would argue ‘isn’t an FFXIV-Summoner at all’.

Naturally when I say ‘new job accommodating SMN’s gameplay’ I don’t just mean giving something else its abilities and calling it a day. But I think a DPS job specifically built around DoTs, debuffs, powerful abilities interacting with DoTs, would be able to do the playstyle even more justice. It wouldn’t end up weighed down by things like needing to be doing ‘Summoner things’ on top of the ‘Poison/DoT’ things.
I think it could be like, a perfected realisation of what they were going for originally with Summoner without any of the baggage that came with being a traditional FF job

Honestly the new Phys Range next expansion could be this, dots don't need to be magical in nature. DNC and BRD kinda play the same except BRD is more busy while MCH plays the most unique a fourth Phys Range job that resembles the dot playstyle of SMN without the pet would be fine. Most of the fuckery in ShB SMN mostly came from the pet jank. I would probably main it because I like dot playstyles, SCH/SMN were a lot of fun.

[mallleable]

I think it's kinda fine that it's just primal spamming, but I think I would enjoy it a little more if each summon button had a short cast time, more filler primals, and primal mechanics that are more varied. As it stands, it's too much instant spell spam.

[Connor]

I think it's kinda fine that it's just primal spamming, but I think I would enjoy it a little more if each summon button had a short cast time, more filler primals, and primal mechanics that are more varied. As it stands, it's too much instant spell spam.

I said before but as hot a take as it seems to be I like the Summoner we have now. Or, maybe, I think the Summoner we have now has what it takes for me to like it lol. But, having played the old Summoner too (it was actually my first class to 50 in 2.0 since I’d levelled Bard in 1.0!), I do get why people who liked that one really don’t like this one.

They’re complete polar opposites to the point that if you looked at the abilities before/after rework without context you’d have genuinely believed they were two different jobs entirely. Even the way ‘summons’ works is the complete opposite to before, where from what I remember Egi Assaults gave you some fairly high apm moments since they activated as speedy gcds.

I like the idea of the summons themselves having cast times, it’d add a bit more ‘caster flavour’ to the job itself, and it would feel very ‘classic ff summoner’ too lol. Honestly I feel like they really need to do something about Demis. The current Solar - Bahamut - Phoenix cycle is just weird and super long. Over the course of a fight you barely get to see Phoenix once, and chances are you won’t get any actual usage from Everlasting Flight or Rekindle. Also Lux Solaris is just weird. I get that they’ve like specifically designed fights to have an AoE at 120s, but I still don’t get the point. It’s not much of an emergency heal if it’s never an emergency and you can’t use it when there is one lol.

Maybe it’d be cool if they made Bahamut/Phoenix interchangeable like in PvP? That way you could choose between the two based on the situation, then have Solar stay where it is for bursts?

[Laerune]

Not every job needs to be complex or have a high skill ceiling. Playing classes like: Summoner, Dancer and Warrior is very relaxing.

Just wish we got other primal.

[Mondschnee]

I was a summoner main in SHB and unfortunately I heavily dislike the changes. Because of my attachment to the job, I kept playing it in EW but DT has been the first expansion in which I've leveled the job through scholar.

For what it's worth, I'm glad some people find enjoyment in the new version. Just sucks that the rework came to the detriment of people who enjoyed the job before with nothing to replace it.


Luckily I have Viper now. Oh wait, no I don't, they butchered that job as well

[Carighan]

The team didn't have to make Summoner fun for me, but they did. I didn't enjoy it back in the day because it felt like I was playing a WoW Warlock rather than an actual summoner, but it feels great now. I wish we got Alexander this expansion instead of Bahamut though. Just wanted to give a thanks to the dev team since there's so much negativity around here. Wish there were more positive posts.

Same.

I don't like our Bahamut Reskin, but everything else about modern Summoner is pretty awesome, and for me personally, much more enjoyable than the previous botched-pet-job implementation.

And I should say: I love pet classes. I'm sad they got removed entirely in FFXIV. But considering how both SCH and SMN were before the pets got removed, we lost less than nothing. A proper pet job would be nice, but this was not it, and what we got now has a ton of good game feel with the huge FWOOSH and BOOM visuals and meaty spell hits.

[Exodus-E]

I too enjoy this current iteration of Summoner (even if I miss some aspects of its previous ones).

But if there's ONE thing that would make me enjoy it even more, it would be for them to finally implement the other Egis/"gemstone summons" (Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva, at the very least), even if they worked exactly the same as our current Ifrit, Titan and Garuda (from a mechanic/game-play perspective).

I mean, come on...it's been (nearly) a decade now. It's waaaaaaaaaay past time they did so.

EDIT:
Oh, and also doing something about Physick being completely useless post-Lv.50.
It almost feels like a joke to leave it as is for long...

[Khryseis_Astra]

But if there's ONE thing that would make me enjoy it even more, it would be for them to finally implement the other Egis/"gemstone summons" (Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva, at the very least), even if they worked exactly the same as our current Ifrit, Titan and Garuda (from a mechanic/game-play perspective).

I mean, come on...it's been (nearly) a decade now. It's waaaaaaaaaay past time they did so.

This… there are other ideas I’d like to see them implement, but I’d be perfectly content if they finally did this. They can add on 5 zillion more Bahamut Demis if they want to. AFTER we get Levi, Shiva and Ramuh! That really needs to be next… with such a long, repetitive rotation, we need new gem summons in between before they add yet another Demi.

[Post]

Same.

I don't like our Bahamut Reskin, but everything else about modern Summoner is pretty awesome, and for me personally, much more enjoyable than the previous botched-pet-job implementation.

And I should say: I love pet classes. I'm sad they got removed entirely in FFXIV. But considering how both SCH and SMN were before the pets got removed, we lost less than nothing. A proper pet job would be nice, but this was not it, and what we got now has a ton of good game feel with the huge FWOOSH and BOOM visuals and meaty spell hits.

Yeah, screw that. I sort of see where people complain about SMN pets in the past (still mostly just parse heads that cry over losing a pet auto attack or cast here and there and landed us in a world where the current normal raids are more random and harder to maintain uptime on than the savage ones), but SCH pet went from being able to receive commands while you were casting something else to a totem that pulses oGCD actions that you cannot activate at all unless you're not casting.

It's a straight downgrade for SCH since ShB. Can't even deploy off the damn faerie anymore, though why bother addressing that when we can just make every AoE heal 50y and ignore positioning as a part of the battle system.

I'd say keep Physick on SMN how it is. It being in this state is actually the most interesting part of post EW SMN.

[Connor]

Honestly the new Phys Range next expansion could be this, dots don't need to be magical in nature. DNC and BRD kinda play the same except BRD is more busy while MCH plays the most unique a fourth Phys Range job that resembles the dot playstyle of SMN without the pet would be fine. Most of the fuckery in ShB SMN mostly came from the pet jank. I would probably main it because I like dot playstyles, SCH/SMN were a lot of fun.

Bit of a late reply lol but I agree with this. It’s also worth mentioning that Bard’s DoTs / interactions with them have all but disappeared too, so there is a niche there. No idea what form the job would take identity wise, but it could still draw from the old SMN playstyle/concepts to appeal to players who still enjoyed it.
Not to mention with all the talk of walking casts on phys ranged it doesn’t even necessarily need to be entirely cast-free. Like, it could have cast times on its DoTs or something to make application more interesting, maybe it could fill a niche of ‘cast times on dots but higher sustained damage’, with damage output being more in line with Machinists. Naturally it could also forgo the raid buffs/support utility Bard/Dancer has to go all-in on dps output. I’d play it personally too; I always enjoyed old SMN and Bard when it’s DoTs were more than just relics lol