Feedback for Summoner

[WarGiver]

I held off giving my opinion in full of the current state of SMN since DT to truly give myself a chance to ensure I am not just saying this as a knee jerk reaction, or speaking without reason. So this is with as much thought as I can to express the main issues I have as a SMN.

For the most part the general flow of SMN is nice, the weaving the 6 Demi actions when one is called is tighter then I would like, like a third a second window, but not unreasonable.

My first issue is with the Ifirt Primal. Specifically "Crimson Cyclone" this fills the role of a gap closer, and part of the main rotation. but its only usable for a 12 second window every minute. It is not reliable as a gap closer. Many times I am standing in a tower to soak something and the DPS its offered 490 plus its follow up Strike of 490 is entirely unavailable, I need to replace them with ruin a 360 potency spell and abandon them in that rotation.

As a Gap closer, given its limited availability when we can use it, well, its a failure in that role. Given the general flow of SMN over all, sitting in a soak mechanic having a button light up that I cannot press or the raid wipes is very distressing.

I do not disagree that it is thematic given the Ifrit fight. I do feel its on point with the over all feel and lore, but as gameplay. I have to say that it feels... bad for a job that is already known to be weak in DPS to have to sacrifice more DPS just to not wipe the party by using a skill that the UI is telling them to use.

I think it would feel better if instead of the SMN charging forward they send a clone of Ifrit to do it. That would still be fully in theme, Ifrit does make clones of himself. And the follow up strike is just another clone. As to a gap closer a new skill, perhaps zero damage one as a pure gap closer would feel right for a SMN to have.

I do get that Red Mage has their own equivalent in Corps-a-corps, but a Red Mage has an entire melee combo in their rotation, for them its rush in do multiple skills and rush (Back flip) out.

[WarGiver]

Now for the Dragon in the room. My personal feelings on getting another Dragon instead of replacing the three Primals on the Phoenix part of the rotation with other ones (even if its just a reskin) put aside, I think that "Solar Bahamut" is in essence a design mistake and not a single small one.

Before we have Solar Bahamut we have two Demis, Bahamut and Phoenix, one is the Burst Damage phase (Bahamut) and one is a lesser Damage phase with some recovery (Phoenix). Solar Bahamut, however, does almost the same healing (Solar does 1000pot in its two rotations and Phoenix does 700pot), and it deals more damage then normal Bahamut.

The fact that it is in essence doing the same job, and doing it better then both Demis makes them feel lessened by the mere existence of Solar. What is worse is that because Solar is called twice as much as the other two it makes them even more so weakened. I do not think getting rid of Solar is the right choice, but properly replacing Dread Bahamut entirely in the rotation would make the optics and feels of it better. I do not think Solar would need any tweaking down for that either, if you really think on it functionally its more like we are replacing a Dread Worm with Phoenix with this suggestion, We are still summoning Solar Bahamut just as often, without it standing next to Dread Bahamut it would feel less bad. The only issue is the obvious one that Phoenix cannot cover the damage difference. and SMN would suffer another hit to its output. So something would need to be buffed in exchange.

Yoshi-P himself said that the team went too far in removing stress, and part of that is that everyone has so much self sustain. Having another source of self sustain in "Lux Solaris" is just part of that. While I do not want to advocate for removing sustain from a job, especially my main. If getting SMN to feel proper requires that so be it.

To summarize: Solar Bahamut makes Dread Bahamut redundant by existing, its literally an upgraded form that is still used. Its healing removes the identity of Phoenix as different from Bahamut. Its Healing also is part of the eliminate stress problem as outlined by Yoshi-P. Being used twice as much as either of the other Demis even more exasperates all of the above.

I do get that Solar Bahamut is meant to be a reflection against the Lunar Primals and Lunar Bahamut in particular. Comparing a summoning by beings tortured into insanity with ourselves, a well refined and disciplined mind. One that has been exposed to Dragons that have many times evoked that the Primal Bahamut is basically an insult to the noble protector that the real Bahamut was. This is meant to be story telling via game play. We turned our false image of Bahamut, the Primal, and forged it into something that respects the original being. The fact we still pull out the Dread Dragon, when we have the Solar one is kind of like summoning Titan-Primal, then following up with summoning Titan-Egi.

[Zarkovitch]

DT SMN was the biggest slap on the face for EW SMN enjoyer. Why they add follow up on raid buff and bahamut mk.2 when there room to do more fun things. We expected room for fun stuff due how the rework have strong base to do fun stuff. New 3 egis and mega primal would be so cool. But noooooo, let add a bahamut mk.2 and follow up on raid buff. The devs have so much lore and tools to choose, we got lame garbage and unispired ideas from devs who didnt play any final fantasy. The damage of my ex-main Job is garbage, why SMN is below red mage dmg. RDM is luck proc job, we should do more dmg on unlucky rdm. They are treating SMN as basic starter friendly role, No, SMN is not a phys range when others caster like blm and picto is getting more and more freebies casting tools. I will not be shock seeing them having the smn treatments with spells and be good in dmg. Bruh, the balance of this game is so cooked, it make EW balance a genius.

[Carighan]

DT SMN was the biggest slap on the face for EW SMN enjoyer. Why they add follow up on raid buff and bahamut mk.2 when there room to do more fun things. We expected room for fun stuff due how the rework have strong base to do fun stuff. New 3 egis and mega primal would be so cool. But noooooo, let add a bahamut mk.2 and follow up on raid buff. The devs have so much lore and tools to choose, we got lame garbage and unispired ideas from devs who didnt play any final fantasy. The damage of my ex-main Job is garbage, why SMN is below red mage dmg. RDM is luck proc job, we should do more dmg on unlucky rdm. They are treating SMN as basic starter friendly role, No, SMN is not a phys range when others caster like blm and picto is getting more and more freebies casting tools. I will not be shock seeing them having the smn treatments with spells and be good in dmg. Bruh, the balance of this game is so cooked, it make EW balance a genius.

Yep. the whole - very obvious - point of the rework was to make it so that future expansions only need to add sets of minor summons and/or new major summons. Instead of the former we get nonsensical ability upgrades and follow-ups that nobody needs at all, and instead of the latter actually adding a new major summon, we get Bahamut 2.0, Lame Graphics Version.

[Supersnow845]

Yep. the whole - very obvious - point of the rework was to make it so that future expansions only need to add sets of minor summons and/or new major summons. Instead of the former we get nonsensical ability upgrades and follow-ups that nobody needs at all, and instead of the latter actually adding a new major summon, we get Bahamut 2.0, Lame Graphics Version.

If people are still buying the whole “foundation to expand upon” I don’t even know what to say anymore, how many times have we been fed that lie

[Ggwppino]

DT SMN was the biggest slap on the face for EW SMN enjoyer. Why they add follow up on raid buff and bahamut mk.2 when there room to do more fun things. We expected room for fun stuff due how the rework have strong base to do fun stuff. New 3 egis and mega primal would be so cool. But noooooo, let add a bahamut mk.2 and follow up on raid buff. The devs have so much lore and tools to choose, we got lame garbage and unispired ideas from devs who didnt play any final fantasy. The damage of my ex-main Job is garbage, why SMN is below red mage dmg. RDM is luck proc job, we should do more dmg on unlucky rdm. They are treating SMN as basic starter friendly role, No, SMN is not a phys range when others caster like blm and picto is getting more and more freebies casting tools. I will not be shock seeing them having the smn treatments with spells and be good in dmg. Bruh, the balance of this game is so cooked, it make EW balance a genius.

Look, Solar bahamut is proof that even if I wanted to add 15 different summons, they would only be a reskin of the 3 primary bases.
It is precisely the concept behind the new smn that is totally wrong.

[Sifpatata]

Look, Solar bahamut is proof that even if I wanted to add 15 different summons, they would only be a reskin of the 3 primary bases.
It is precisely the concept behind the new smn that is totally wrong.

things that seem incredible to me considering that the FF11 devs had a worse engine but they managed to fit most of the summons, if ff14 devs can't handle so much technology and tools at their disposal, it speaks volumes about them or rather they don't want to.

[Emitans]

things that seem incredible to me considering that the FF11 devs had a worse engine but they managed to fit most of the summons, if ff14 devs can't handle so much technology and tools at their disposal, it speaks volumes about them or rather they don't want to.

FF11 actually cared about the jobs feeling unique. All the FF14 devs care about is making everything homogenized so they can put in minimum effort in development.

[Ggwppino]

things that seem incredible to me considering that the FF11 devs had a worse engine but they managed to fit most of the summons, if ff14 devs can't handle so much technology and tools at their disposal, it speaks volumes about them or rather they don't want to.

Okay, but let's say that FFXI is a completely different game compared to FF14.

The problem with the new smn is that the summons have no real identity and are not really tangible (they are all the same, unique ifrit that for better or worse is saved).
The old one, with all the defects it had (and they could easily be resolved by making less wicked choices), had each summon being used for a very specific purpose. Every single summon had a true identity and a true purpose and above all it was a tangible and interactable entity. Actually similar to FFXI.

It's not the developers who can't fit FFXI's 20 summons, it's precisely the bad closed restricted design of the new smn that doesn't allow them to do so.

[Manamaru]

Look, Solar bahamut is proof that even if I wanted to add 15 different summons, they would only be a reskin of the 3 primary bases.
It is precisely the concept behind the new smn that is totally wrong.

Picto shows with a button press and a meter or some ui thing to use up, we could have alternate sets of 3~5 summons. I have a previous post somewhere that has a list of all the primals we are currently missing. Since the 90 summon animations of the 3 are basically copy paste of Heaven-on-High's magicite, we could've gotten Odin. We should've gotten Odin. But we didn't. Instead what we got was something either YoshiP or a dev saw coming from FF16 and saying "Wow, let's put that in the mmo. It'll be cool." Kind of like the EW and DT summoner feeling of "tapping into the primal's power" is basically based off of FF16's Clive.

It's alright in concept, but they need to detach the way how arcanist/early summoner's carbuncle/egi will path over to the enemy to do their "big attack". It's a janky leftover system of what they used to have. Since they like to ctrl C, ctrl V so much, they could at least do what they had for 90's SMN where it's an animation and let things play out from there. Though, I haven't touched SMN in so long I didn't realize they changed up arcanist/SMN's drawn weapon animation.