Another Upset Summoner

[Sequora]

Honestly if they had added more egi's the only thing that would have happened is that ifrit/garuda would have either been replaced or the new egi would have been useless.

[Sequora]

New Egi will come in some form, trust and believe.

Yes in the form of glamours. They've already said that they've thought long and hard about it and that they think the best idea is to rebalance the current egi's. They said they're planning on adding a system where you can basically glamour your pet into a new egi. Shiva for instance would replace your summon II for the tank pet, or you could use topaz carbuncle.

[pandabearcat]

Is shiva gonna be a featureless blob? Cause all the egi's are featureless blobs. Its like a jello. Not necessarily saying its bad, but I'd rather have chibi Shiva than play-doh Shiva.

Anyway I'm not disappointed. Akh Morn is shiny, and the only reason I liked BLM more than SMN were the animations.

Dps matters little to me, because dps always changes and is rebalanced. Its much harder however, to change rotations and mechanics in the middle of an xpac, so I'm hoping new skills/cd's make that exciting. That's all I need.

[SoloWingMetatron]

Yes in the form of glamours. They've already said that they've thought long and hard about it and that they think the best idea is to rebalance the current egi's. They said they're planning on adding a system where you can basically glamour your pet into a new egi. Shiva for instance would replace your summon II for the tank pet, or you could use topaz carbuncle.

Yeah I think that sounds like the best way to tackle the Egi issue. I'm happy for the new Egi to be just glamours especially if it means they will be better balanced and therefore more useful. It also means not every SMN will have the same trio of Egi in play at any given time, adding a level of customization to the Egi. One SMN in a duty could be using Titan, while another is using Topaz Carby, or Alexander, Shiva, or whatever.

[Judge_Xero]

You're right it is definitely something amazing. However not everyone has to agree on that, just coz people find the new Dreadwyrm Trance/Bahamut Aether stacks amazing, doesn't mean others will. It's all about personal taste and people who would rather see this new system be channeled through an Egi are not wrong in that view point as Egi are part of a SMN's repertoire.

No, not everyone has agree on everything, but that will never happen regardless. Look at it this way though:
- Egi's getting new skills, already have Rouse/Spur, Enkindle. Each current Egi has a specific role. Tank, Melee/Single Target, Ranged/AOE.
- SMN has Dots, Aetherflow. (stemming off Arcanist)

Then you have a couple of different camps for what people wanted out of SMN
A More Focus of SMN being able to summon primals power
B Not wanting Egi's to have so much effect on SMN's performance
C Wanting the Egi's to seem more powerful.
D Not wanting SMN to be a poison dot class
E More variety of Egi's and Larger Size/More detail to make them appear more powerful
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So we get to keep the Base SMN playstyle that a lot of SMN like. As far as I can tell, SE has given players A, B, C, and E. Partially D by combining all 3 Dots into Tri-Disaster, and if they add a Egi Glamor system we could see more of E.

For B and C, you can picture the Bahamut system as a pseudo Egi that we channel power through, so it's still part of the SMNer and it's performance, but visibly you get a powerful Primal to command.

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Since no one can say yet how SMN will play it's hard to say how much SE has tried to please everyone who enjoys SMN. But by looking at the diversity of what people are looking for out of the class, I believe they have tried to touch on each aspect that makes up a SMN.

[Edellis]

The funny part about all the summoner rage is that what they're asking for is basically what Black Mage would be if it was bound to an elemental wheel. like 9 summons, tons of attacks, all expected to be useful...huh?

There is really no need to bog the class down with even more summons when the current 3 have issues. And SE is rebalancing the entire class to fix these issues, on top of moving forward with the 60 job/class abilities.

[SoloWingMetatron]

No, not everyone has agree on everything, but that will never happen regardless.

Oh I agree with you. I just thought your initial comment was based on the notion of Trances being the new thing and the Egi getting phased out, a notion which I find totally unfounded. I personally don't identify with any of the camps you describe. I am happy for whatever new abilities SMN may get, as long as they stay true to the job (which I believe Bahamut Trance does) then I'm happy. However for Trances to totally replace Egi is a bad idea and won't work on the whole, since it will be faced with the exact same issue of there being no elemental wheel. So that is why I doubt we will see any new trances beyond the Bahamut Trance. Not only that but to expect new Trance moves to be the SMN's staple in terms of new moves from this point on is ridiculous. What every new level cap all we can expect is SMN to get a new Trance that works exactly the same as the last forever more until the game ends and the servers close?....don't think so some how people. Egi will still be a thing.

[Judge_Xero]

Oh I agree with you. I just thought your initial comment was based on the notion of Trances being the new thing and the Egi getting phased out...

Ahh ok I see. Yeah, I don't think or hope that Egi's will ever get phased out. IMO the Trance is just SMN getting more fleshed out just like the rest of the jobs. MNK getting Meditate doesn't mean it will lose GL, it just gives a focused direction of development.

Because SCH and SMN stem off ACN I think it will take a long time before both those Jobs are fleshed out enough that people don't think of them as ACN with Heals, ACN with Fester. I don't think we'll see the Trance become the new SMN staple and have the Pets completely overshadowed as an afterthought. But I hope we see synergy developed between all SMN pets and skills.

i.e. Trance infused SMN, Trance infused Pets.
Example - hmmm Should I Ahk Morn this set of adds, or since Rouse/Spur/Enkindle is up should I put Garuda into Enrage Mode using my Trance stacks and just obliterate everything.
Or absorbing the pet/aether to get fully charged Trance

AOE Burst - Ahk Morn -> Absorb Pet -> SC Pet -> Rouse/Spur, Enrage using Trance - Enkindle

[SoloWingMetatron]

i.e. Trance infused SMN, Trance infused Pets.
Example - hmmm Should I Ahk Morn this set of adds, or since Rouse/Spur/Enkindle is up should I put Garuda into Enrage Mode using my Trance stacks and just obliterate everything.
Or absorbing the pet/aether to get fully charged Trance

AOE Burst - Ahk Morn -> Absorb Pet -> SC Pet -> Rouse/Spur, Enrage using Trance - Enkindle

I like the sounds of this as it ties the Egi in nicely with the Trance ability without phasing out the Egi, which totally makes sense to me. I am looking forward to SMN's lvl60 abilities and I am looking forward to the Egi glamour system, hopefully it will be released in one of the post HW patches rather than a future expansion.

[Kuponutz]

As has been said, without a variety of pets to SUMMON why bother having a SUMMONER class at all? Yes the trance sounds like it has potential but it very well be yet another case where they hype an ability and give it a kick ass name then we get it and does not live up to the hype. Earlier in this thread someone mentioned BLU and they nailed it. A summoner with no pets is a glorified blue mage. For those unfamiliar a blue mage learns abilities from enemies and is able to use those abilities against mobs. Which is EXACTLY what trance sounds like. Don't get me wrong I am happy to have trance but I am very guarded about it because it would just be one more over-promised, under-delivered disappointment to add to the list.

I honestly don't care one bit about the glamours, what is the point in having garuda look like carby, titan > ifrit? It's pointless.

To those saying it would be too much work on behalf of the dev team to come up with new egis and redo the way they look I ask if you ever played XI? XI is 13 years old. At launch there were a base 7 avatars, Garuda, Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Leviathan, Carby and Fenrir (correct me if I am wrong on this). Later on they added Odin, Alexander, and Diabolos. On top of these you also had the elemental spirits you could summon (who remembers the glory of protect from Light Spirit Pact?) that I will discuss below. These summons we're some scaled down version that look nothing like the actually avatar they looked like the real deal. So, if SE had no problem being able to it with the technology they had 13 years ago (and had to be able to run on PS2) there is no reason why they should be unable to do it now. There was also no end of abilities to choose from. You had a long varied list of ability options. Each ability used mp - as did having the pet out - and each attack served a purpose. Control of you pet and management of abilities was the key to SMN, unlike in XIV where we have a pet and every so often we command it to do ONE move. I don't remember the exact timeline but at some point they split the abilities (Blood Pacts) to attack and ward. Attack being dealing damage, ward being granting a beneficial buff for party. There were of course cool downs for them and all relied on the summoner having mana. They also varied in strength based on summoning magic skill level, some couldn't be used unless your skill level was over a certain amount. If your smn skill lvl was low your pet wasn't going to even dent it. But like the EW we don't have magic skill levels either.

As for the elements that's an issue I agree on. 1.0 had the Elemental Wheel but when redesigning the game for ARR they decided the EW was too complicated for the average player. Most players have been using EW across a lot of games for an extended period of time. Even if someone had never played a game that had it before it really isn't that hard to figure out that water beats fire etc. Granted for SE to give us back the EW would be a nightmare since they gave half the elemental attacks to WHM leaving not a whole lot to work with for BLM and SMN. The aforementioned spirit summons are of zero use in XIV because of the lack EW so don't tell me they can't be utilized because I am very aware that they would be a waste of time without massive adjustments being made.

TLDR: SE lied, if they can do it in XI they can do it in XIV, fix the Elemental Wheel situation (not holding my breath)