SUMMONER, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE OR ADD? (EVOLUTION & STAT ALLOCATION)

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

We discussed your feedback about the design of the egi with the development team. As was mentioned previously during the Beta test, the design planner reiterated that egi were designed to be a manifestation of a percentage of power taken from the primals and are intentionally designed to appear differently from the primal. As such, we aren't planning on changing the look of egi at higher levels.

We will however continue to take in your feedback when creating new egi that will be added in the future.

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I think the issue people have with this is FFXI uses the same concept. The avatars specifically offer you a fragment of their power, but what you get is a pet that lookx exactly the same as the prime avatar, just smaller.

I don't mind the egi looking different, but they should share more features in common with the primal they are associated with- For example, Garuda-egi only has two wings when the primal garuda has 4 - a significant design difference.

Departing from reality for a moment: I kinda wish SMN had been implemented more as a WoW druid than a WoW warlock, with each summon being your forms. You do your summon, Titan for example, and the camera swaps positions and you're controlling Titan directly while your character is basically just a minion to Titan; intangible, following it around, doin some finger wagglin to coincide with the attacks you use. Each "form" has it's own set of skills to allow it to perform whatever role it's intended for. If "you" die the summon vanishes, perspective shifts back to your actual character and you suffer 50% health loss and are stunned for 5 seconds, or somethin. All enmity your pet had generated is transferred back to you, and if you survive long enough to resummon, is again transferred back to your summon. That's probably incredibly broken.
This wouldn't work under the current game systems anyway and would probably be considered ridiculously OP being able to be a melee(Ifrit), ranged(Garuda), tank(Titan) and healer(Fairy) all in the same class.

Back to reality: I'd settle for current SMN/SCH to just let my pets behave properly... the fairies especially. If you try to manually use a fairy ability it snaps back into free-for-all mode and rattles off all its abilities at a rate that seems faster than should be possible -_- I can't even get it back into Steady before it just completely unloads at times.

like some people have said the job does not seem to be a summoner, you could have called this job something else and I would have no problem with it.
as summoner being a FF staple I don't know why they made it what it is right now but the fact that they think its what a smn should be is very disapointing

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Originally Posted by ParanoidHobo

Departing from reality for a moment: I kinda wish SMN had been implemented more as a WoW druid than a WoW warlock, with each summon being your forms. You do your summon, Titan for example, and the camera swaps positions and you're controlling Titan directly while your character is basically just a minion to Titan; intangible, following it around, doin some finger wagglin to coincide with the attacks you use. Each "form" has it's own set of skills to allow it to perform whatever role it's intended for.

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That's pretty much how they did it in FF X.

SMN right now doesn't have a lot that makes it unique from SCH. It's got fester, a rouse clone, and pets that do damage and... that's it, really? You just cast your DoTs and hit fester when it's off CD while your pet does its thing. Which, minus fester, is also what you do when soloing on SCH and ACN. It's just not very interesting or fun because it's just waiting on DoTs for the most part.

What I'd personally like to see SMN doing is gaining primals as actual attack skills that call out the primal(albeit at a reduced size) to do an attack then vanish, like the way Ultima uses them and like how they were in FFTA. Bring Carbies back as pets, maybe add lesser elementals as pets they can summon, and change their LB from meteor to carby or the primal corresponding to the summoned elemental's element coming out and using their signature attack.

I dunno, the armory system is really dumb and limits what can be done with jobs and skills and gear to make things fun and unique

Summoner will never change. The End. =(

I honestly just would like controlling egis to be easier.
Like macroing the pet abilities and commands (like having heel and steady in one macro together so im not mashing the heel command to get my egi to come back without trying to attack something while on Obey/Sic).

Also a customizable gambit system would be awesome even if it was just for a few attacks or only for 'Obey' command or even a completely separate command where you can choose when to use certain abilities and when to just have them AA.

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Originally Posted by Engineer

I like the idea of summoning the right summon for the right situations.

Leviathan egi - Best at single target damage. Only has single target dps attacks
Shiva egi - Best at aoe damage. Only has aoe/cone dps attacks.
Ramuh egi - uses dots every attack. Stacks up to 12. Does most damage in long fights.

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And this. Making each summon for a specific situation would be perfect for making the SMN more fun and prevent a bunch of only one type of summon floating around at specific levels and would encourage switching things up depending on the enemy/team comp. No BLM/BRD? Shiva. No MNK/DRG? Use Leviathan? Like doting all the things? Ramuh! Monsters are mostly physical/AoE based? Garuda! Monsters with defense? Ifrirt!

Also a support egi would be cool, like ones with dmg/debuffs or even time/demi magic...unless they're saving that for another class/job :D

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

We will however continue to take in your feedback when creating new egi that will be added in the future.

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Thanks although I am a little disappointed in the response. I remember the post on the Beta forums too. I honestly think it just comes down to detail and power of the egis. I dont think anyone would mind the egis looking less powerful than the primals because that does make sense for story reasons. And now that the game has been released it seems there has been a lot less complaints about primal size. I think the main complaint is the detail and overall look of the egis and how they aren't the major dmg from SMN.

Ifirt seems okay(but once you get Garuda becomes pointless) and Titian gives a slight feel for his respective primal but is very simplified and situational but thats not so bad. Garuda however just seems way too simplified. She barely resembles the primal and has nothing that makes her stand out which is disappointing as shes the most powerful one so far. Hopefully the other egis have more detail to them to make them stand out and look interesting as well as giving them more presecence. I'm excited to see Shiva's and Leviathan's. I really hope its like what Engineer is proposing because that would be just great for making all the egis viable.

Ok, I get it... Yoshi-P still doesn't like the designs we had in XI. Fine, I'll live, but you better make Shiva-Egi beautiful then!!!!!!!!!! Or heads will roll.. Moogle heads... I'm looking at you Good King Moggle Mog >.>

Any who... how about a comment from you guys on stat allocation? Could we please separate stat usage for SMN and SCH? I want to actively play both as my mains SMN1st SCH2nd, I really hate the idea of farming constantly for scrolls just to be at my best on both jobs. Could you please look into this?

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Originally Posted by Synra

I am sorry, but that is not acceptable. Summoner is an iconic FF job, and their summons have always been awesome. Getting them right is very important. In FFXIV, my summons should be a whole hell of a lot cooler than they are. They look like muppets.

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I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that I was really looking forward to in XIV was seeing how breathtaking the summons would be with a modern graphics engine. For an fan of summoner and the summons through all the FF games I have played this was a letdown. I started out thinking I would be a main summoner, and I ended up a main scholar instead. It's a lot more fun to play.

I'm not trying to fault the design team of the Egi either. They did a fine job with what they were tasked to do. I just think the overall game concept for summoner was wrong.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

That'd be like FFXI and people would hate that.

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So you'd rather them just disappear and have to be resummoned?