Adding complexity to SMN

[AristocraticCorgi]

This brings back memories... I quit SMN during Stormblood, and that version of SMN was still a lot of fun!

Can't even imagine how bland and boring it must be today in comparison.

[SoloWingMetatron]

SMN should have remained as it's 2.0 self!!!!....It's interesting seeing the discourse around todays' SMN and how it lacks any complexity. Yet for those of us who remember 2.0 SMN, the forums often complained it was too complex...This is why most of what it was got gutted in the first place. Granted there was some issue with pet reactivity to commands in high end raid scenarios. But other than that, 2.0 SMN was pretty solid in terms of a gameplay loop to me...I really enjoyed having commandable pets! - One of my fondest memories of "classic" SMN was when I tanked Great Gubal (Hard) with Titan because the actual tank dropped at the beginning and after waiting ages another never showed...But thanks to a very skilled healer and fellow DPS I was able to tank the whole dungeon by micro managing Titan! (This was when the dungeon was brand new btw) - Everything is so simplified down now, that there's no room for interesting gameplay situations such as this to appear anymore!

All the 2.0 SMN really needed was a visual change - Change the poison based DoTs to match the Primal elements and allow for the Egi to become more like their full Primal counterpart! - Had SE just done this, which is objectively much simpler than a full job rework...We probably would have seen the Egi glams expanded by now!
Sure the current SMN has very impressive visuals!...But there is only so many times you can see Titan's giant craggy arse fill the screen, before you start to miss the days of a more complex SMN with actual unique gameplay elements, such as DoT's/Pets!

[-Xenia-]

“The most optimal time to pick the one that has 4 instant casts or the one that has 4 instants + a cast you swift or the one that has the only 2 casts the job has”

Yeah real big decision there, deciding when to fit in two (2) casts per minute is real gigabrain. How does SAM manage to figure out how to do five (5) casts per minute

This is definitely a bit disingenuous. It’s not just about the number of casts, you have to factor in that earlier summon choices imply later ones. So you have to have the order planned out well in advance. In the end, you map out the summon order for the entire fight and it’s hardly different than mapping the fight out on other casters.

Furthermore, since optimal play puts titan in buffs, you often lose your best mobility at a point where you don’t need mobility.

This also didn’t consider the difficulty of keeping slipstream on the boss for its complete duration. Not a problem in Endwalker with massive boss hitboxes, but something that has to be handled properly in Dawntrail.

Finally, it doesn’t consider optimization around downtime and the optimal way to condense summons around it.

This isn’t to say summoner isn’t easier than the other casters; it is, but I see a lot of exaggeration about its difficulty.

[Carighan]

Thanks for at least trying to set that right.

Yeah, sure, Summoner is a very low-complexity job. But it's not without depth, as you say. Titan-in-buffs vs Titan-for-mobility is like a damaging-gapcloser decision on tanks, only with a pre-selection-timer, which is kinda neat. Weighty mid-fight player choice to make. Not super brainy of course, but still needs more braincells to perform than people give it credit for, maybe because making the wrong choice has a rather low penalty attached and we're used to seeing Summoners near the bottom and hence don't truly notice the difference in someone optimizing that vs not doing it.

More noticable now with M5S of course. The near-constant mobility in that fight makes correctly sequencing your minors a bigger deal than in many other fights. Low as the outcome effect of that correct choice will still be.

But yeah people keep exaggerating Summoner in simplicity. More so because people also never differentiate complexity and depth, thinking of the two as the same when in particular FFXIV struggles hard with a ton of complexity (mostly via button bloat, extremely so comparing other similar games) versus very little depth (all static rotations with pseudo-static solutions). So the teensy tiny bit of depth the correct sequencing of minor summons adds on Summoner while having such low complexity is actually really cool to see. High depth + low complexity is the top design result after all.

[Dahlinea]

But yeah people keep exaggerating Summoner in simplicity. More so because people also never differentiate complexity and depth, thinking of the two as the same when in particular FFXIV struggles hard with a ton of complexity (mostly via button bloat, extremely so comparing other similar games) versus very little depth (all static rotations with pseudo-static solutions...

I think most of the criticism on SMN's simplicity don't come from mixing complexity and depth. Some players complain because they compare it to what it was before the rework, where the devs stripped it of almost everything (mechanically wise) and gave basically nothing in return, me included in this group. Some other players complain because they were expecting the so called "base to expand upon" to realize in this expansion but that never came and SMN stayed basically the same as it was in Endwalker.