Summoner Health Check

[Daralii]

Basically people just really want Summoner to be a pet job. Because they really want a pet job. And apparently current SMN is super unpopular with us way more plugged in players because it's the "simple" job despite it being healthy to have a job that's very easy to pick up and play decently well, and having it's support utility is great for that, too.

The problem is that current job difficulty ranges from easy to very easy. Almost every possible point of failure apart from mistiming your 2-minutes or just not using abilities has been sanded off in the name of jobs being able to reliably follow the script in savage/ultimate, and they somehow still can't balance the jobs.

[Azurarok]

I mained Scholar for most of ARR and HW. It was absolutely capable of everything it needed to do, but it was pretty much the only job where the main enemy was early ARR programming. Their current firms was the devs just throwing that stuff in the trash and the results were both much more reliable to play and play with.

You mained a job you clearly seem to have hated playing?

The issues with responsiveness was resolved in EW, ironically. I still remember how much praise they were getting from SCHs back then.
The hitbox and HP being removed from pets in ShB was a result of their shift to the DDR avoid the orange at all costs fight design, which is another example of job design being sacrificed for their content-first approach.

Though I'm also one who doesn't believe easy jobs, at least in the sense of low skill ceilings, should exist so there's that though.

[Eastwall]

instead of a glorified summoner, it should have been adding more dungeons to squadron or fixing astralagos so we can have a rw roulette

[Absurdity]

instead of a glorified summoner, it should have been adding more dungeons to squadron or fixing astralagos so we can have a rw roulette

You just reminded me that one of the Rival Wings maps has been disabled and "under rework" for 7 years at this point, lmao.

The issues with responsiveness was resolved in EW, ironically. I still remember how much praise they were getting from SCHs back then.
The hitbox and HP being removed from pets in ShB was a result of their shift to the DDR avoid the orange at all costs fight design, which is another example of job design being sacrificed for their content-first approach.

I honestly never understood the people who complained about responsiveness around the time of Stormblood.
Yeah, the pet still wasn't as responsive as your own actions but it was infinitely faster than in ARR or HW and you could order it to execute abilities at any point in your gameplay, even mid cast. So with some experience on the job you started to simply factor the delay into your button presses.

Ironically enough the issue got worse with the pet "rework" in Shadowbringers, because now your pet's abilities couldn't be used freely anymore and needed an oGCD slot, but were somehow just as unresponsive if not worse.
So the praise they got for "fixing" it in Endwalker must've come from people who either joined after 5.0 or had terrible memory, because all they did was fix a problem they created themselves 2 years earlier.

[Aidorouge]

Basically people just really want Summoner to be a pet job. Because they really want a pet job. And apparently current SMN is super unpopular with us way more plugged in players because it's the "simple" job despite it being healthy to have a job that's very easy to pick up and play decently well, and having it's support utility is great for that, too.

I'm reminded of all the countless arguments about how people insist there can be "complex" jobs alongside "simple" jobs to justify Square-Enix making certain jobs harder to play again and yet... the biggest issue of that suggestion remains unanswered; Which jobs get to be which? Because everyone wants something different for their main.

Personally I don't want to be a DoT mage, because there's nothing about that playstyle that screams "Summoner" to me. It would be better suited to a different caster altogether, could have even been Pictomancer's gimmick since the job was less defined and could have done whatever. (Bonus points: VPR could have been a DoT melee because you know, venom and such. DoTs jobs for DT yeah?)

[SkankyRoe]

Solar Bahamut also fascinates me. A few of older FF's (VII in particular) would have variations of Bahamut as unique summons you could collect, so it's not new either, but Solar Bahamut in FFXIV is very clearly meant to be HYDAELYN but with a spoiler free coat of paint so as not to ruin the reveal waaaay later in ShB that she's an elder primal.

But it just doesn't work aesthetically and doesn't change a thing about how SMN plays other than the AOE heal opening up.

I get what they were going for with Solar Bahamut, it's just a big miss to me personally, especially since there's no Zodiark equivalant. I also dislike it mechanically, mainly that we get an extra Solar Bahamut phase in between Bahamut and Phoenix, which means we see those two summons far less often, particularly Demi-Phoenix which may as well not exist outside of boss fights. I'd actually be much less averse to Solar Bahamut if we had also gotten a Zodiark equivalent for the "in between Bahamut and Phoenix" spot. As it is now it just feels very tacked on in my eyes

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm reminded of all the countless arguments about how people insist there can be "complex" jobs alongside "simple" jobs to justify Square-Enix making certain jobs harder to play again and yet... the biggest issue of that suggestion remains unanswered; Which jobs get to be which? Because everyone wants something different for their main.

They can all be both at the same time. Low skill floor, high skill ceiling.

I can't speak for DPS Jobs because I'm not as familiar with their rotations, but I do know Healers, so here's a SCH example:

Current rotation for SCH per 2min 'loop' is 44 Broils and 4 Biolysis.

Rework Broil's potency to be 360p (it is currently 320p). Move Ruin2 into the Ruin>Broil levelling process.
Rework Biolysis potency to be 40p on cast, plus 35p for 30s (totalling 390p, it is currently 850p)
Re-add Miasma(lysis) as a replacement for Ruin2, with a potency of 300p on cast, plus 10p for 24s (totalling 380p). The on-cast potency even makes it stronger to spam than current Ruin2
Re-add Shadowflare, as a GCD, with a potency of 75p on cast, plus leaving a puddle centred on the target that deals 60p for 15s (totalling 375p).
Re-add Bane as an upgrade to Energy Drain, spreading Bio and Miasma without resetting their duration or penalising their damage. Because durations are not affected, it can spread Chain Stratagem as well

The 'optimal' rotation with the above, per 2min 'loop', would comprise of 8 Shadowflares, 5 Miasmalysis, 4 Biolysis, and 31 Broils.

With the above, the 'low skill floor' for dealing damage as a SCH is 'spam Broil for 48/48 possible GCDs in the 2min loop'. The 'high skill ceiling' is not just 'maintain all three DOTs', but also factoring in 'should I hold Miasmalysis for X GCDs for mobility purposes, because refreshing it 'on time' and then having to press it again and clipping the DOT, would 'cost' 60p because the 'on time' use could have been replaced with a Broil', etc. In terms of GCDs (not factoring in any OGCDs/raidbuffs, not factoring in using all your AF on EDs, etc) the difference in potency output between 'spam Broils' and 'perfectly manage all three DOTs' with the above numbers, on a dummy, would be just 340p per full 2min loop. Additionally, the potency per 2min of DT SCH is 17480, and the potency per 2min of the above, while doing nothing but spamming Broil and ignoring the DOTs entirely, is 17280. The absolutely LEAST 'optimal' gameplay for the above numbers (besides just not pressing damage buttons at all), would be 99-point-something% of the effectiveness of the MOST 'optimal' gameplay of Current-SCH. So these numbers would be able to, with even greater ease of play, clear every piece of content released thus far (even Ultimates and such)

The issue is that some players want to have the 'simple' and 'optimal' be at the same point. They want the output of 'simple' to be 100%, which leaves no room for 'optional additional complexity' to exist

[Uzephi]

The issues with responsiveness was resolved in EW, ironically.

Responsiveness has not been resolved. If that was the case, it wouldn't take nearly a full second for Eos/Selene to cast Whispering Dawn after the button press.

[VeyaAkemi]

Responsiveness has not been resolved. If that was the case, it wouldn't take nearly a full second for Eos/Selene to cast Whispering Dawn after the button press.

I always understood this as more of a quirk of the system, the fairies also have their own GCD system and Embrace is a GCD for them, so when we command them to cast specific spells, they cast it on the next available GCD window, comparatively, Carby not doing anything in the current Summoner means that it will act as soon as you press the button, because it doesn't have a GCD rolling.

[Uzephi]

I always understood this as more of a quirk of the system, the fairies also have their own GCD system and Embrace is a GCD for them, so when we command them to cast specific spells, they cast it on the next available GCD window, comparatively, Carby not doing anything in the current Summoner means that it will act as soon as you press the button, because it doesn't have a GCD rolling.

It would make sense if that delay only happened when party health is below 100% so she is casting. Even prepping the fey illum when party is full has a noticeable delay (she shouldn't be casting anything when party is full health). That side effect of carby doing nothing is the exact reason I stopped playing SMN and my retainer keeps the soul stone. I'm a summoner, why is my pet doing literally nothing?