Being a Summoner can be disheartening these days :/

[Areayea]

Dmg on weapon should increase dmg of avatars.

Do something SE, tell us if you are going to fix smn soon or not!

FIX ******* SMN SE!

wel... thay gave us an answer O.o THANK YOU OKIPUT, he seems like he's been posting on a lot of Pet jobs lately, so maybe they're going to finally increase the base damage of pets ; ; (that's been long overdue X.X); TYYYYYYY OKIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

[Jerbob]

While I appreciate the post from our esteemed forum rep, I can't say I'm filled with confidence knowing that developers have "plans" for us. Avatar's Favour was and is an absolute atrocity, Odin and Alexander were the worst letdown in FFXI history, the blood pacts on the road to level 99 are, on the whole, terrible (save a few situational gems) and now we have to contend with avatars being made of astral polystyrene and holding hate worse than a box of elementally-aligned kittens. Even the wonderful let up on perpetuation issues we've enjoyed since level 75 is not so much a buff as the removal of a deliberate weakness. I'm not even going to rant about the number of pieces of gear we're able to use (and, given the trend, probably assumed to be actually able to make good use of) with the ubiquitous "INT+X MND+X CHR+X", which are even ridiculous for every other casting job for a whole different host of reasons, let alone us. Let's also not forget that a lot of summoner's "major updates" have actually been bug fixes.

Summoner is in need of a significant overhaul to make it relevant - and in some scenarios, even remotely usable. I consider it one of my two main jobs, I love it to bits, and even I freely admit that it is lacking in so many areas that it's become sort of a joke. I hate to be one of those people who start demanding things, but something needs to be done here and we need more information than a "maybe at some point", as "plans" in the past have been disappointing at best and borderline insulting at worst. There needs to be some proper communication going on, lest something as hideous and malformed as Avatar's Favour surfaces from the murky depths at some undefined point during 2015 as if it were the pallid corpse of some sort of horrific giant squid.

I'm pretty sure that every summoner worth their tuning fork has an idea in their head for how to resurrect our job - perhaps I'm just a bit obsessed, but I've certainly got an overhaul modification written down somewhere. We have lots of ideas and lots of experience that we're all eager to share - please let us contribute, and please listen. I mean, after all the uproar with Odin and Alexander not being actual avatars, you propose to release Atomos in the same way? It does somewhat boggle the mind.

As a pre-emptive comment, I do understand that the development team have said in the past that they have a lack of resources and a lack of manpower. This is, however, not an acceptable excuse. I expect a certain level of support for the game when I pay my subscription fee, and delaying promised content for literally years is not that level. As Genoxd has said, I'm sorry if that seems rude, but it gets a bit much hearing the same excuses over and over.

[Mokeil]

While we can't give a specific time frame, please rest assured that the development team is receiving your feedback and they do have plans to adjust avatars.

Oki, I know you're trying to be reassuring, I know you're passing on what you were asked to pass on, and I know there's a lot of complaints in other areas of the game right now... But do you understand what this sounds like us?

It's insulting.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. We're still waiting for the avatars we were promised nearly two years ago. Since the time they were promised to us, the only major news we've had about them is that they've been indefinitely delayed. With that sting still rather fresh in our minds, you come to us again with vague promises of "plans" that will be implemented who-knows-when. Really?

Right now, we have nothing to go on. No hope that things will get better anytime in the near future. Give us something - anything! - solid to go on. Insight into what the plans are, a timetable on when the changes will be made... Nearly anything will do, but it must be solid.

[Mirage]

Yeah man. I'm sorry, dev team, but you really are running out of time here. You shouldn't promise things you don't know if you can deliver.

[Edyth]

While we can't give a specific time frame, please rest assured that the development team is receiving your feedback and they do have plans to adjust avatars.

Acknowledgement that you have a problem is the first step! This is big. Although now that I reread the post, they don't directly admit that there is a problem.

[Cahlum]

I really do not care about new avatars at all.

We need to fix our current ones and make them more relevant to the modern day FFXI (SMN has been irrelevant since 75)
So many suggestions are made on a daily basis on how to easily fix this job.

Increasing pet dmg output and lowering their attack delay.

Fix avatars favour so it does not reset when we use a BP and get rid of the negative attributes to it, heck make it so it increases our perp to use it if you have to have a negative attribute on it

Take the bloodpact delay cap to 30 seconds!

New Physical bloodpacts for 99

[Alhanelem]

I'm sorry, I'm going to be quite rude here.

You've been receiving our feedback and making plans for summoner for the past 8-9 years yet all we've gotten is Fenrir (decent concept no longer relevant) Diabolos (worthless other then Netherblast for Kirin years ago) Odin/Alexander (2hrs that were suppose to be actual avatars)

Now you told us Cait and Atomos would be avatars but we've gotten nothing.

Stop sugar coating it. You don't like SMN because it requires too many resources to create new content for and it's such a unique class that it also requires specific gear that you don't feel like spending time on.'

Your "plans" to adjust avatars are likely in the
-"oh hey Jim I think we should fix avatars they seem broken"
-"oh yeah you're right bob, lets do that some day"

Save for maybe a random mention at a meeting, I doubt you've done crap.

And that Cait video you posted? Honestly I could swap some dat files and I'd have what you showed us, and I'm guessing that's all you actually did.

I really want to start cussing at the dev team for even attempting a post like this, too bad it's not allowed. I honestly find it insulting.

You're right, this is a rude post. for one, because you're leaving out tons of adjustments made to summoner over the years, and instead focusing on the one thing they've agreeably slacked on, which is releasing the newer avatars (both most recent and future)

Save for maybe a random mention at a meeting, I doubt you've done crap.

seriously, way to shoot the messenger. Okipuit is a member of the community team. They aren't developers, they can only tell you what the dev team tells them.

While I agree with the notion that they should "hurry the heck up and give us what they said they were going to give us", the official comment was in relation to fixes/adjustments, not to new content.

[Karbuncle]

IDK, I think I'll just stay optimistic here. I mean this new guy is literally Pooing on all forms of Balance ever, Maybe he'll ungimp SMN finally.

[Glamdring]

Sorry An, I gotta disagree again (and normally I'm on board with you). The rude post was not (except to Oki-don't shoot the messenger). I play pup now, quite a bit, and I was a latecomer to the job. I could "lolpup" witht he best of them, especially as a top-flight career beast myself. I was a latecomer because the "lol" people were right, but I levelled it once aby came out to let me fight magic-based mobs and found it had utility as long as you used your atmas for the pet, not yourself. So, I didn't have to suffer through the 4+ years of empty broken promises that so many did, I only had about 18 months of it.

Genoxd is letting the devs know that summoners won't stand for it-and you know what? they shouldn't. don't get me wrong, smn is nowhere NEAR as weak as all the complaints would leave you to believe. I know a couple great summoners that have put the time in on the job to be good, they are among the most productive players on Ragnarok because when they are around things happen-and not because they just popped Alexander during a sch Embrava-fest-it was because they were good players on a good job that they knew how to use to the fullest.

But they have been promissed new tools and expanded utility. The players have kept their side of the bargain, they keep coughing up their monthly fees and keep playing the job, finding the limited niches their capabilities allow them to be productive in. Noone has boycott the job, nor are there massive rage-quits like there have been from career rdms. SE has not. Sure, they adjusted spirits-I never see a smn using them for more than Siphon even post-update. They made a few other tweaks, but they were minor. In fact, only the recast time reduction has been a major improvement, and if anything that just pissed off the other pet job players with their up to 20 minute recall timers.

No, I think it's about time someone called the devs on their own bogus statements and I applaud Geno for doing so. If the devs can't handle the workload necessitated by their promises... well, I learned many lessons in the workforce about making promisses I can't keep, and that was just to the boss. If I started doing that to customers I might as well just take up permanent residence on the unemployment rolls. If it REALLY takes this long to create new avatars that's FINE, but for god's sake, tell people BEFORE you get their hopes up. This is just bush-league.

[Genoxd]

You're right, this is a rude post. for one, because you're leaving out tons of adjustments made to summoner over the years, and instead focusing on the one thing they've agreeably slacked on, which is releasing the newer avatars (both most recent and future)

seriously, way to shoot the messenger. Okipuit is a member of the community team. They aren't developers, they can only tell you what the dev team tells them.

While I agree with the notion that they should "hurry the heck up and give us what they said they were going to give us", the official comment was in relation to fixes/adjustments, not to new content.

Please insert all cussing and bad language as you see fit:

You sir are not intelligent. My post is obviously directed at the developers not Oki. However I have no way to quote a developer so I have to quote what was translated.

Yes I left out some changes. Let me list them for you.

They added MB to summoner, something that should have been there from day one since all other magic can MB even enfeebling spells. They also made it so accuracy increases after using a physical BP Rage.

They NERFED summoner by capping damage so you could no longer 1 shot all lower level content.

Am I missing something?

So we got 1 addition that really should have been there and required honestly no thinking and a couple changes to the code. A semi-buff assuming you actually keep avatar out. Then we got a nerf because we were too OP on content that was lower then level 70.

What am I missing? What other changes have we gotten?

I'm not seeing any fix. And the changes they did make were to content and play styles that are no longer relevant to the game nor have they been for the past 7-8 years (When did ToAU come out?)