Pictomancer Appreciation Post

[HikariKurosawa]

It's funny you say when that is what happened to old smn...smn was changed bc ppl complained about how it was a "real" ff summoner and how it was too hard all the time. So what did the devs do? They completely reworked into baby's first job and ripped all the fun out of the job for those who main it for years! SMN now is a shell of itself and it rework left players like myself with no job to play for a whole expac...All EW I had to give up my fav role bc of the smn rework and I don't think that's very fair at all.

There is nothing wrong with jobs being static but taking an already existing job and reworking it into one like they did with smn was wrong. If they wanted to make a straightforward job for beginners then make a new job, don't turn one that already had a fan base into one... In fact, instead of having blu mage being a useless limited job, turn it into beginner-friendly caster...and revert smn back to what it once was.

I think summoner being reworked was actually a good thing. I wasn't around for the summoner before rework but I've watched videos on its gameplay and it was not what I would call a final fantasy summoner. What we have now is iconic and clearly a summoner.

What I hope they do, is make something like green mage that brings back the dot based gameplay for people who enjoy managing dots. Managing dots is not the identity of a final fantasy summoner though, and the game desperately needed something that was more approachable.

I agree with you though, they should be extremely careful about changing existing jobs. It's better to implement new jobs for new ideas rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater just to appease people who are unhappy with what currently exists.

[Carighan]

I agree with you though, they should be extremely careful about changing existing jobs. It's better to implement new jobs for new ideas rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater just to appease people who are unhappy with what currently exists.

This is going to be tricky, considering that all but ~3 current jobs (Red Mage, Picto, Summoner) have massive and deep, underlying, conceptual issues. Their gameplay in button presses might be alright, but the job you control via those is entirely unusable from a balancing POV and more or less needs to be ripped out and re-implemented. And even those three are only superficially okay, except, as you say, Summoner. Which conveys their job fantasy extremely well, it just needs "more". Mostly more summons that aren't Bahamut-From-Wish.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

I think summoner being reworked was actually a good thing. I wasn't around for the summoner before rework but I've watched videos on its gameplay and it was not what I would call a final fantasy summoner. What we have now is iconic and clearly a summoner.

What I hope they do, is make something like green mage that brings back the dot based gameplay for people who enjoy managing dots. Managing dots is not the identity of a final fantasy summoner though, and the game desperately needed something that was more approachable.

I agree with you though, they should be extremely careful about changing existing jobs. It's better to implement new jobs for new ideas rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater just to appease people who are unhappy with what currently exists.

The rework may be a good thing but the way they did the rework wasn't. They reworked smn and have it fit the "ff summoner" idea ppl had sure but that is all they did to the job, There is nothing interesting about smn other than "press button, see light show happen.' Its rotation is the easiest and most boring one in the game and it as has the depth of a kiddy pool. Sure ppl like you may be happy with it being that way but my point was is that it cost players like myself a job. I went a whole expac with nothing I really liked playing bc the devs decided to delete the one I loved. I went to rpr to raid in 6.0 but I didn't LOVE rpr, it was ok job, and had some fun with but not the same fun I had with SB and ShB smn. That was my baby, that was the job I spent years mastering and getting good at and now its gone just so ppl could have their pretty little lights and they summons that don't do anything but jump on screen for few secs to do an animation and leave. They even made carbuce useless and I never forgive them to making my lil guy a minion.

[Carighan]

The rework may be a good thing but the way they did the rework wasn't. They reworked smn and have it fit the "ff summoner" idea ppl had sure but that is all they did to the job, There is nothing interesting about smn other than "press button, see light show happen.' Its rotation is the easiest and most boring one in the game and it as has the depth of a kiddy pool. Sure ppl like you may be happy with it being that way but my point was is that it cost players like myself a job. I went a whole expac with nothing I really liked playing bc the devs decided to delete the one I loved. I went to rpr to raid in 6.0 but I didn't LOVE rpr, it was ok job, and had some fun with but not the same fun I had with SB and ShB smn. That was my baby, that was the job I spent years mastering and getting good at and now its gone just so ppl could have their pretty little lights and they summons that don't do anything but jump on screen for few secs to do an animation and leave. They even made carbuce useless and I never forgive them to making my lil guy a minion.

Yeah although it's conceptually so close to working well mechanically. We got a bunch of buttons each minor summon can override, they just need to not be different variants of "just nuke", rather I'd sort them as:

* One is slow casts (3.0s-3.5s) with high damage (the only one that keeps the DPS level of the major summons).
* One is all instant casts but low damage, this summon emphasizes mobility.
* One is fast (1.5s) casts but medium damage, this one always has some form of utility.

Then have at least two summons per "slot" and make them work differently mechanically albeit sharing the role. Maybe Leviation instead of Ifrit always has line AoEs (and hence no separate AoE button), etc. Then a few seconds before the major summon ends the minor summons "fill up", and you can see the selection you randomly get. As each one works differently mechanically but shares the role, you got an assured combat performance, but not an assured combat gameplay. You got to react to that.

And this'd all be done with +3 summons (something everyone wants anyways) and a bunch of ability swaps and potency changes, no major reimplementation. Oh and removal of fake sword bahamut, because it should have never existed in the first place.