Summoner Health Check

[ForsakenRoe]

I could hypothetically go level up a new character that is a level 100 rogue and show-up in your 7.3 necron trial, no in this scenario, I don't have the ninja job stone.

EDIT: Also almost forgot, job quests are not fully mandatory. So in that same scenario of being a level 100 rogue, I would also be missing rogue job skills Throwing Knife and Mug. Which when put like that sounds an awful lot like a blue mage who only has water cannon.

And that since Hide and Trick Attack are literally worthless in trials and dungeons for a Rogue, the job has a grand total of 5 skills it can use, its 1-2-3 combo, its shade shift, and its death blossom. Its actually the lowest of the jobs with potential skills while showing up without natural progression. The second lowest is Lancer at 6 skills if it doesn't do its job quests.

I found this so funny, I went and checked the maths. Such a Rogue would have their 123 combo do 180p, 260p, and 340p (assuming they hit the positional). That works out to an average GCD potency of 260p per GCD.

BLU, with just Water Cannon, would have a potency of 220p. However, BLU gets Maim and Mend traits, while Rogue does not get any such traits (they're all locked to NIN). The final Maim and Mend trait BLU learns at level 50, boosts the damage of all actions by 50%, taking Water Cannon from 220p up to 330p.

It's officially 'more griefing' to have the Rogue, than the BLU in such a scenario

[RedLolly]

This reminded me of that one player that streams that did Valigarmanda on a Thaumaturge.

With friends, mind you, and he WAS messing with them. He's never unlocked Black Mage.

[Chasingstars]

It's Showtime! - Trait
When in a party comprised entirely of Blue Mages (including a party of just yourself), It's Showtime!
While It's Showtime, certain actions are enhanced to incredible levels of power.

LV5 Death - 120s CD - Spell - 500MP - 6y Radius, 30y Range
Deals 1200p damage to enemy, and 50% less to all enemies near it.
It's Showtime!: Instantly kills all targets hit by the attack, if their level is a multiple of 5. Has no effect on enemies within 5 levels of your own.

White Wind - 300s Recast - Spell - 3000MP - 10y Radius
Restores HP to self and allies, equal to the caster's current HP.
This action's recast timer is separate from other actions, and is not affected by stats or gear.
It's Showtime!: Recast timer reduced to 2.5s

Which might need some slight tweaks in terms of numbers but otherwise yeah thats fine for a "limited" job.

I found this so funny, I went and checked the maths. Such a Rogue would have their 123 combo do 180p, 260p, and 340p (assuming they hit the positional). That works out to an average GCD potency of 260p per GCD.

BLU, with just Water Cannon, would have a potency of 220p. However, BLU gets Maim and Mend traits, while Rogue does not get any such traits (they're all locked to NIN). The final Maim and Mend trait BLU learns at level 50, boosts the damage of all actions by 50%, taking Water Cannon from 220p up to 330p.

It's officially 'more griefing' to have the Rogue, than the BLU in such a scenario

Yep, and from what I can personally tell, the least griefing of the starting jobs, at least for potencies, is a level 100 pugilist if they are doing their rotation properly and have their self-buffs rolling. As usually they have a potency above the water cannon 330p except for Dragon Kick at 240p, meanwhile highest is True Strike at 460p. Also helps that their gcds improve at level 20 with their enhanced greased lightning.

This reminded me of that one player that streams that did Valigarmanda on a Thaumaturge.

With friends, mind you, and he WAS messing with them. He's never unlocked Black Mage.

Which yeah is fine among friends. And to bring this back to Summoner and Beastmaster, I feel this little conversation about limited vs stoneless kind of shows that there is all sorts of anomalies going on when players either purposefully or accidentally choose to show-up to endgame content while missing certain abilities that might as well be a blue mage missing most of their spells. As my original question really was "I don't understand what makes beastmaster limited" as I was comparing it summoner.

[-Xenia-]

Doing great! I love summoner, been my main basically since I started this game and have no regrets about it. It now plays just like summoner has always played in every FF game I've played that had a summoner. Simpler is good - reliable for doing dps and not failing mechanics. But no, it's not 'braindead' (what an awful term).

Very glad it's not a pet job anymore, that was very janky and not fun to deal with to me (ghosting, the issues from it moving, clunky controls, and so on), though I still liked the summoner aesthetic the best of the jobs. And I'm really glad it's not a dot job, as that has nothing to do with summoning and is not interesting to me.

Beastmaster seems neat as well, will be happy to play it. Doesn't change anything about how I feel about summoner. I will say, though, that I am very interested in this new evolved mode that was talked about for 8.0... maybe they'll figure out a way to get summoner doing proper dps again.

[Aidorouge]

That is a problem that is in players' own minds, and doesn't actually exist.

I don't think it's a sensible idea to design the complexities of a Job out of the game, because of the potential for someone to be toxic, because such toxicity will always exist, that's why the TOS is there to catch them. Instead, we now have simplified Jobs with less staying-power, but by your own admission, we still have toxic gamers complaining that what little remains in the kit is not being utilized correctly. What's the end goal, what's the 'logical conclusion' to this path, of 'trying to toxicity-proof the design of the Jobs'? A DPS Job that has only one action in its entire kit, and whose optimal gameplay was to just press 1, over and over? No DOTs or CD timers to watch, no 'wrong choice' to make in the rotation? And we'd STILL see toxicity, because toxicity in an MMO is inevitable, that's why the TOS is there

We've had this discussion before, and it boils down to you having too much trust in the developers to make something that won't push out players and that the community at large won't help them toss those players out. Whereas I don't have any confidence in the developers or community to not take "complexity" and use it as a culling tool for everyone that isn't a hardcore player when it comes to standard content.
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At that point, why not just remove everything from a jobs kit except for 1 skill each? Anything more complex than that will either be pointless (because it is entirely "optional", it won't be optimal, and so path of least resistance kicks in and the optional part is ignored) or won't meet the criteria for being optional because people will have to think through some quick decision making to find the best outcome in a given situation (also known as, gameplay).

Same as I told ForsakenRoe, for any of this complexity to work as you want it to, the developers and community has to be trustworthy enough, and they pretty much spent an entire expansion being very "F U" to anyone below a certain skill level, and any attempt to raise the supposed "ceiling" WILL end up with the floor being raised too because people ALWAYS set the bar continuously higher with no regards to who gets filtered out. (On the contrary, the culling is the point.)
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In that game if a BLU joins a party and has no spells do you know what happens? They get kicked from the group. Same thing could easily happen here and it wouldn't even be remotely a problem. Would some players complain about this? Yeah, sure, definitely, but at a certain point we have to stop coddling and tell people to get over it and properly prepare for activities or people won't want to play with them.

Except in this case it wouldn't be because they have "no" spells but the "wrong" ones as the rest of the party is going to have VERY different and VERY strict ideas of what spells you "should" be using to make their run smoother, but while also not stepping on THEIR toes. I could just as easily see BLUs being kicked because they brought too many mits or heals for example, because tanks don't like to share and healers are starved for activity already. At best, a "standard" BLU would need to be gutted of everything until they can only be a caster DPS, because if they're going to be made to fit with standard content, that includes being narrowed down to their actual role. Same with BST, where it would have been reduced to nothing but a typical melee DPS with animations that maybe have beasts appear, but otherwise would not be allowed to deviate from the routine the others follow.

And before someone asks "wait, why do you advocate for the uniqueness of BLU and BST but balk at complexity for the other jobs" it's because I advocate for uniqueness within content where the sky is the limit, but I know damn well people will not tolerate that in content with timelines where you must perform perfectly, syncing with everyone else, or the whole team wipes. You would need these two things to happen for uniqueness or complexity to happen within standard content:

1. Square-Enix willing to radically change encounter design to account for dynamic cadence.

2. Players willing to let their current flavor of difficulty to be simplified on some level so dynamic outcomes can occur.

But good bloody luck getting either of these things to happen much less both, because it's quicker and easier for SE to continue current encounter design that can be mass-applied to as much content as possible, and players absolutely hate any attempt (or even the suggestion) that current fights need to be changed in any way that might be considered "easier". They legit think you can keep fights with this level of demand while ALSO thinking you can have jobs with a dozen spinning plates and believe that's sustainable design where everything is super-hard and only doable by a fraction of the current playerbase.

BLU works for me precisely because it exists in a "pocket" that's largely removed from the demands of standard content; Inflexible developers and other players, and where simplicity and complexity get a time to shine because even the Masked Carnivale gives you different ways to clear a fight, some cheesy, some tight. Sure I can go Ram's Voice+Ultravibrate some FATEs for the week, but that same trick isn't going to clear my BLU challenges. Hopefully BST works the same way, where even if they throw a Savage-tier fight at me akin to Stage 29, it's still something I can attempt without ruining somebody else's day, and more importantly, the ENTIRE breadth of this exclusive content doesn't play that way.

It's the same reason I'd want off-the-walls side content for the other jobs with variable kits, because I honest to god can't see jobs being allowed to be free unless its separated from standard content that the developers and community alike have turned into toxic gray sludge. Might as well call standard content "PVF" for "player versus fun" because I really can't stand to do the majority of the roulettes anymore, where I'm always there every week to punch out the BLU weekly challenges or try to clear Stage 29 again. Funny thing that... I've been trying to beat it for over 2 years now, still pushing that boulder, but I'd sooner get flayed then attempt even one Savage prog with other people knowing how they are about that sort of thing. It's almost like there's something fundamentally different about limited jobs and their exclusive content versus the standard ones with their suits and ties clocking into their standard routine at their desk they call an arena room.

[Inosaska]

The evolved combat system might allow us to have more summons which will be awesome! I'm looking forward to when they show off its abilities at the next fanfest!

[Azurarok]

The evolved combat system might allow us to have more summons which will be awesome! I'm looking forward to when they show off its abilities at the next fanfest!

or the other summons end up being action skins and we just end up with the same Garuda/Titan/Ifrit with different coats of paint

[Adin]

TBH I'm surprised anyone even plays SMN anymore after the severe dumbing down it got. It's by far the most braindead job in the game and that's saying something considering the current state of all the jobs.

Its all down hill from here