[Pole] Do you want to see the summoner class reworked?

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Originally Posted by Iamapathy

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Ok, I think this proves this is your first MMO. The basic design of this game is that every class fulfills one of 3 roles - tank, healer, or damage. In that context, all classes must operate equally well. The summoner class, while iconic in FF, is just the "mage pet" archetype that has existed in MMOs since the necromancer class in EQ. Given all that, please provide details as to why the summoner class AS IMPLEMENTED goes against the core design of the game, and is either over or under performing as compared to bards, monks, and black mages. Then, please explain how your recommendations will fit the overall design of the game and restore balance. This is an MMO, not a console game.

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Originally Posted by Sen_Terrechant

How about you go back to page 1 and see the same terrible points being brought up again and again, and the same counter points being used. At this point its not a discussion, even if you want it to be. Its beating a dead horse.

Please stop beating said dead horse, its dead.

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So what you are really saying is you havent read my posts, you decided to quote me and then call me part of the vocal and (bad) minority, then justify doing this with what others (others that have nothing to do with me) have said? I dont really think your arguments hold much credence now.

People are discussing this at the moment, maybe becuase there are a lot of player who have just started the class for the first time etc and want to be involved in the discussion. I fail to understand your problem, and more concerning, you seem to want to cencor those who want to talk about this, or attack them without justification (which evidentally you have just done).

Delily players have no clue on balance no matter how well they try to fit their recommendations into overall design of the game take a look at the Black Mage threads to see how op their suggestions are. Player's aren't responsible for fitting their suggestions into the overall game design that's the developers job because don't have the expertise to balance a mmorpg. Players want the Summoner to be a Pet job so SE might balance it by splitting it from the Arcanist so it won't affect the Scholar or just rework the class/job system so the jobs becomes primary.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

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Fair enough, but I wouldn't bet on SE drastically redesigning the class like that. I can't think of any instance of a company doing that. To my knowledge, the most extensive redesign of a class was the warlock revamp done by Blizzard in Catalysm, and even then they didn't change anything about the core of the class.

I think if they'd change the Summoner class to the point where summoning midfight is beneficial, that would probably make the Summoner class feel more like a summoner again. Right now it's just Summon and be an Arcanist. Maybe some kind of Enkindle when you summon an egi or passive party DPS boost for a while. I mean 800mp + 5s cast time have to be worthwhile. Or a skill that shifts the Egi for that desired effect.

At least for me that would make it pretty cool, especially once the new summons come out.

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Originally Posted by Iamapathy

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I said you were projecting onto the rest of us, due your claim 80% of players play FFXIV because of FF nostalgia. A statement like that is projecting. It not saying that you're alone in your feelings, but rather that your assuming others share your feelings without knowledge of it.

Balance is important because if an idea needs to be changed so much it vaguely resembles the starting point, what good is it to use that idea. That isn't an attack on the reason for suggesting the idea, only the idea it's self.

I'm not going beyond my own anecdotal experience. I've played since beta, had several statics, across 3 servers. I've chatted ARR in several mediums and this thread is the only example I've come across requesting radical changes to Summoner. Truthfully I feel the burden of proof would be on the group requesting changes to prove why such changes need to be done, and how they would actually benefit the game.

yes for sure the dots are fine but the egis themself are so not egi wise all the egis should be lvl 15 including new ones coming out also personaly id like a specalization system for summons

for example u specailze in Ifirts abilitys (him as a egi) then you using ifirt would be better than you using Garuda and so on

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Delily players have no clue on balance no matter how well they try to fit their recommendations into overall design of the game take a look at the Black Mage threads to see how op their suggestions are. Player's aren't responsible for fitting their suggestions into the overall game design that's the developers job because don't have the expertise to balance a mmorpg. Players want the Summoner to be a Pet job so SE might balance it by splitting it from the Arcanist so it won't affect the Scholar or just rework the class/job system so the jobs becomes primary.

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You of all people shouldn't be telling who has a clue about balance and who doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Delily players have no clue on balance no matter how well they try to fit their recommendations into overall design of the game take a look at the Black Mage threads to see how op their suggestions are. Player's aren't responsible for fitting their suggestions into the overall game design that's the developers job because don't have the expertise to balance a mmorpg. Players want the Summoner to be a Pet job so SE might balance it by splitting it from the Arcanist so it won't affect the Scholar or just rework the class/job system so the jobs becomes primary.

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Balance in the suggestion is part of the suggestion being heard, and taken seroiusly by the developers. It's not about doing the development work load for them so much as it is about not adding to the work load they already have.

The only real changes I want them to do to Summoners are improving their burst damage. Not by much, mind you, but making it less sustained and a little more burst. For me, I'd actually cut Bio II and stick its 35potency of damage into Ruin, make Ruin II an AE spell with a cast time (it'd still be 80pot and that plus DoTs plus pet would be 'a bit' more AE), then unrestrict Bane and call it a day.

(For those doing the math, you'd have 75pot from the DoTs + 80pot from Ruin II = 155 sustained which competes with Fire II with a full Astral stack, as well as a combo Ring of Thorns and GS3 Rockbreaker.)


What I'd really like them to do is make abilities change/improve based on what Egi you have out. Something like:

Ruin
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 80.
Ifrit-Egi Bonus: Increases potency to 95.
Garuda-Egi Bonus: 10% chance to increase the duration of your damage over time spells by 6 seconds.
Titan-Egi Bonus: Heals your Titan-Egi for 100% of the damage dealt.

Buuuut, that gets craycray long to read (data smog!) the more Egis added, and you have to memorize all of it, and so on.

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Originally Posted by dvoraen

then unrestrict Bane and call it a day.

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Unless they do a blanket DoT nerf, this would make Summoner AoE basically overpowered. Black Mage AoE is good at burst, SMN AoE would be good at killing everything with more efficiency. Summoner isn't supposed to be able to compete with Black Mage for AoE potential, so I greatly disagree with this (along with the Ruinra buff).

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Garuda-Egi Bonus: 10% chance to increase the duration of your damage over time spells by 6 seconds.

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If this was the case, there would be 0 places in the game where you would use any other Egi. Not a single one.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

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Yeah sorry but I have to agree with Exstal, the only way you could remove the bane restriction would be 'baned' dots were nerfed via a trait or something.

However it would be nice if they introduced ruinga, I mean we can use blizzard 2 but meh xD
Egi bonus would be good but can't be anything to with DOTs passively, would be OP, maybe a bonus more in line with Titan egi bolsters your def very slightly like MNK fists.
Would also be good if titan Egi could get a provoke, or a way to entrust your aggro to an egi.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

Unless they do a blanket DoT nerf, this would make Summoner AoE basically overpowered. Black Mage AoE is good at burst, SMN AoE would be good at killing everything with more efficiency. Summoner isn't supposed to be able to compete with Black Mage for AoE potential, so I greatly disagree with this (along with the Ruinra buff).



If this was the case, there would be 0 places in the game where you would use any other Egi. Not a single one.

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Hypothetically speaking, having only Bio and Miasma spread via Bane (see above about Bio II damage -> Ruin) wouldn't be super overpowered (75 potency, compare to base Ring of Thorns, Rockbreaker, Fire II, and so on), especially if Ruin II had a cast time attached to it before becoming AE. If anything, you could argue BLM AE is way overpowered because of the ability to quad-Flare.

The "egi bonus" thing was an example of what they could do, not a request. ;) If anything, I'd move the DoT extension effect to Tri-disaster as a % chance of happening.

Short answer, no. Do you have any idea how much time and money it would take to redesign and re balance a single class from being DoT based to Pet just because people don't think it's iconic. Class names, some spells, LB names, and cameo appearances are all that is a throw back to FF. BLM has abilities it didn't have have previous games and is missing some that were iconic to it in other games, oh well. It does its role. I cast spells and do damage.

They start a redesign on summoner, be prepared to see content development take a huge nose dive as resources are allocated away from content teams and teams working on the expansion to be pulled away all to make summoner sit there and summon a new pet every 30 seconds for whatever reason everyone thinks it will be so interesting.

It's been a year. Let it go. SE has more important things on its plate like trying to get a surplus of content out so they don't have to make everything else in the game a mind numbing RNG grind so players have something to do til they can get the next batch of mind numbing RNG grind content into the game. I'd much rather them work on interesting and rewarding content than redesign a single class because people think it isn't nostalgic enough. Grinding Atma, Two-star nodes, materia, Zodiac Brave trials, etc isn't fun. Or rewarding. It is tedious.

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Originally Posted by dvoraen

Hypothetically speaking, having only Bio and Miasma spread via Bane (see above about Bio II damage -> Ruin) wouldn't be super overpowered (75 potency, compare to base Ring of Thorns, Rockbreaker, Fire II, and so on), especially if Ruin II had a cast time attached to it before becoming AE. If anything, you could argue BLM AE is way overpowered because of the ability to quad-Flare.

The "egi bonus" thing was an example of what they could do, not a request. ;) If anything, I'd move the DoT extension effect to Tri-disaster as a % chance of happening.

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Removing Biora is one thing but that basically means SMN AoE gets nerfed in fights where there are less than 4 enemies, and pretty strong in 6+ (compared to now). I'm not entirely sure how to make it not imbalanced because I'm not keen myself to work on the ways to increase SMN "feel" while not breaking the strength it currently has.

My personal gripe about SMN is two things;
1) Enkindle is a sad move. It does some decent damage but it's pretty lackluster skill. It's not as cool as Flare, or even Freeze. Something swept under the rug.
2) Garuda for almost everything is stupid

If SE can fix this, I believe SMN will be in a good spot. Then there are other QoL changes but I don't really care about those, it's what other people want.

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Originally Posted by dvoraen

Hypothetically speaking, having only Bio and Miasma spread via Bane (see above about Bio II damage -> Ruin) wouldn't be super overpowered (75 potency, compare to base Ring of Thorns, Rockbreaker, Fire II, and so on), especially if Ruin II had a cast time attached to it before becoming AE. If anything, you could argue BLM AE is way overpowered because of the ability to quad-Flare.

The "egi bonus" thing was an example of what they could do, not a request. ;) If anything, I'd move the DoT extension effect to Tri-disaster as a % chance of happening.

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Then your solution solves nothing really in term of AoE and actually makes it worse as we would become weaker with 4 mobs (magic number for optimal AoE damage for Summoner) and we would only be good at 6+ mobs were Black Mage would win anyway (which I agree with you, they are too strong as of right now with the best potential single target, extremely high AoE and unlimited resources).

The things they have to change for summoners are (in my opinion):

• Better MP regeneration/Hefty MP cost reduction on spells due to the starvation of MP when doing our optimal damage output (Hello Ruin II between every off GCD).
• Removal of Contagion from Garuda and give it to the Summoner. This has to happen else if they just remove it without giving it to us, the first suggestion becomes a critical need.
• Making Tri-Disaster something else than ability to which there are less occasions to use it than the number reference in its name.
• Rebalance of Enkindle because as it stands right now, the power doesn't justify its cooldown. In my opinion, the best thing they could do is cut the damage by 20% but drop its cooldown to 2 minutes to be in sync with a Spur.

Well I admit that I dont have enough time at hand to come up with a concept to support my idea of pet based summoner, and not enough time to follow up this thread as much either. Simply looking at my post count I only came here to raise my voice as a Summoner player who is facing issues with the current playstyle of summon, issues which are unarguably agreed upon by (I am not going to say majority if that made some of you folks angry about) many players in this thread or in game.

Now that I have stated my vote and clarified the end result that I believe summoner players are hoping for, this leaves the rest to proactive players or game developers decide the rest. If I have got too uncomfortable with the current summoner I can simply just quit the game as I have done most of what I can do with the given free time of a game.

Peace

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Originally Posted by Dwill

...Black Mage would win anyway (which I agree with you, they are too strong as of right now with the best potential single target, extremely high AoE and unlimited resources).

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I mean, I guess if you're playing with bad Dragoons and Monks.

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Originally Posted by Adamantium

I mean, I guess if you're playing with bad Dragoons and Monks.

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Keyword is potential. I've seen two jobs break 500 which is Monk and Black Mage. If Dragoons can, then by all mean show me a picture of one doing it and I'll gladly edit my comment.

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Originally Posted by Iamapathy

Well I admit that I dont have enough time at hand to come up with a concept to support my idea of pet based summoner, and not enough time to follow up this thread as much either. Simply looking at my post count I only came here to raise my voice as a Summoner player who is facing issues with the current playstyle of summon, issues which are unarguably agreed upon by (I am not going to say majority if that made some of you folks angry about) many players in this thread or in game.

Now that I have stated my vote and clarified the end result that I believe summoner players are hoping for, this leaves the rest to proactive players or game developers decide the rest. If I have got too uncomfortable with the current summoner I can simply just quit t

Peace

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You\\'re either trolling or naive if you think anything will come of a single 60 page post on one class. Seriously, arguing about the classes on the forums is all a part of being an mmo player.

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Originally Posted by Razard

I found this on another forum, sums it up pretty well.

"FFXI's Avatar system was also crummy as hell when it came to representing the power you possessed.

What would you rather have, something that looks akin to the actual Summon but punches enemies for 2 damage, or something that has the looks to match it's usefulness?

I realize this is final FANTASY, but making the Summoner's summons full on Primal size seems a bit unrealistic. You harness a mere portion of the Primal's powers, and as such, it looks just how it should.

In FFXI your Avatars tickled the enemies when they weren't using their BP abilities. They were nearly full size, but the amount of actual control over their power wasn't nearly proportionate to the appearance they had."

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This is relevant.

Arriving to the party late here...

I think it should get reworked in a sense that the pet-skills SHOULD be more integrated into the caster's skills, like contagion for example..
so far ifrit/titan and garuda are not affected by the caster's playstyle in a sense that the dots have no relationship whatsoever with the pet-skills which singles out a pet over the others aka garuda..I would've liked to see pets having much more of an affect over the caster to enhance their casts..this way all pets would be op, and having to swap pets in 1 fight should make this class a purely summoning class for that purpose~

Also, I would like to see the summoner spells getting a mana-cost reduction because it does drain much mana on long fights, especially with ifrit..
it's sad that a summoning class being unable to re-summon other pets or replace whenever needed due to the high mana-cost being placed on summoning pets during the fight..

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Originally Posted by Minorinz

Arriving to the party late here...

I think it should get reworked in a sense that the pet-skills SHOULD be more integrated into the caster's skills, like contagion for example..
[/snip]
it's sad that a summoning class being unable to re-summon other pets or replace whenever needed due to the high mana-cost being placed on summoning pets during the fight..

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I think everyone agrees that the problem is that, at the moment, Garuda > All. Some changes to pet equality would be good. However, you're "inability" to resummon is unfounded. I admit that the summons spells all cost a fair amount of MP, however, you also have access to an ability with a decently short CD to give you almost all of that back. As a SMN, even with tossing in random miasma 2s and keeping SF up at all times I have yet to run out of MP in a fight when DPSing. Key words: When DPSing. If I'm being used for battle rez, that's another story.

Ninja retains it's iconic look from Final Fantasy and still does DoT while the Summoner looks like crap compared to the rest of the jobs. At this rate the Ninja will crucify the Summoner unless SE change it to a Pet job

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2.../Conan2000.jpg

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Ninja retains it's iconic look from Final Fantasy and still does DoT while the Summoner looks like crap compared to the rest of the jobs. At this rate the Ninja will crucify the Summoner unless SE change it to a Pet job

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Yes, people playing a ranged caster with a pet will all flock to a melee physical DPS because it's iconic. That makes a whole lot of sense :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Ninja retains it's iconic look from Final Fantasy and still does DoT while the Summoner looks like crap compared to the rest of the jobs. At this rate the Ninja will crucify the Summoner unless SE change it to a Pet job

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Akiza, sweetie, all the classes have DoTs and people still play as SMN... >A>()

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2.../Conan2000.jpg

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I want this as an egi >w>

No, I like it being a dot class. Only thing that should be reworked is the AI for pets, even when you hold their hand and tell them what to do every 2 seconds they still find ways to be retarded.

(Also it's spelt 'poll' >.>)

Unlike other jobs that have dots Summoner is a DoT job as well as Ninja which means no one will want Summoner's for Raids unless the Summoner to a Pet Job or add another dps slot

I don't mind that SMN (technically Arcanist) is a DoT based Job. It gives you quite a few free space to do stuff in between.
The only thing I don't want to see though is stripping the supportive element from them (like they suggested to separate SCH with SMN, which IMO, is a really bad idea). I'd like them to pick up more support spells that get shared to SCH and SMN alike.

I can see them having Ninja a DoT melee + debuff master while SMN retain the DoT ranged + buff master.


Still, there are a few things that should be changed, like Ifrit's Radiant Shield to be replaced to something equally powerful as Contagion and Tri-Disaster having alternative effects depending on your current summoned egi. Titan could use a provoke ability attached to his stun to be able to quickly tank if needed (because right now, there's no point re-summoning him once he's dead). Enkindle should be cut from 5min to 3min CD to actually see the cool animation more often while it's one of the most Summoner-ish spell in our repertoire (aside summoning itself..)
As for the future, the next egis better have their distinct role to make up a flexible DPS class. Toss in some cool support spells via Arcanist and we're cool.

I wouldn't mind having a revamped egi design just for the sake to match up the yet-to-be-released egis (because Ramuh looks cool to me).

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Unlike other jobs that have dots Summoner is a DoT job as well as Ninja which means no one will want Summoner's for Raids unless the Summoner to a Pet Job or add another dps slot

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Because Summoner is a DoT job, no one will bring Ninja to raids because Summoner does DoTs better.

Yes-
I would like there to be more focus on the summon itself, more abilities for my pet, for my pet to look better!
i understand that they are supposed to be small snippets of the primals raw power, BUT, they are very small and look very weak.
can we have more like 50% of its power and the egi is, sayy .. 80% closer looking to the primal itself and just small, like player size?

or can we have quests where we can upgrade them to look better and quests to give them new skills?
i would love that.

Summoner just doesnt feel like a Summoner, im just some kind of elementalist playing with DoTs and summoning toy versions of those majestic beasts.

and 2 hour abilities! omg yes please.
there was nothing quite as satisfying as busting off Thunderstorm, a massive explosion of lightning and it just... its a fangasm!

for short: More pet abilities, better looking pets, more control over pet.
(oh and stop them from teleporting about, thats gotten me killed a few times..)

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Unlike other jobs that have dots Summoner is a DoT job as well as Ninja which means no one will want Summoner's for Raids unless the Summoner to a Pet Job or add another dps slot

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Are we playing the same game series? The ninja has never been about DoTs; it's always been based on high evasion, dual wielding, fast attacks, using tools to inflict elemental damage and status effects. Also, this notion you have in your head about the summoner, which version is it? Is it the one in which everyone has access to the summons, the one in which the summoner is a dedicated job which summons the elemental once to do an attack? You need to look at the history of the class. FFX and FFXI were unique in the implementations, but this notion that the summoner class has always been the same in not true.

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Originally Posted by Delily

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When the Summons were used by every player in final fantasy game it was also the time where every character used FIRE and FIRGA. So does that mean a black mage identity wasnt clear in the past final fantasy games? I guess not, and same goes for summoner.

Final Fantasy Series:
Ninja - Throw, Dual Wield, Ninja Magic
Black Mage - Cast Elemental Magic and debuffs.
Summoner - Cast Summons to either buff/debuff/attack.

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Originally Posted by Delily

Are we playing the same game series? The ninja has never been about DoTs; it's always been based on high evasion, dual wielding, fast attacks, using tools to inflict elemental damage and status effects. Also, this notion you have in your head about the summoner, which version is it? Is it the one in which everyone has access to the summons, the one in which the summoner is a dedicated job which summons the elemental once to do an attack? You need to look at the history of the class. FFX and FFXI were unique in the implementations, but this notion that the summoner class has always been the same in not true.

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If you're expecting Akiza to actually have any knowledge of the Final Fantasy universe, you'll be pretty disappointed.

Ninja in this game will be a melee DoT class if you paid attention to the annoucement

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Originally Posted by Akiza

Ninja in this game will be a melee DoT class if you paid attention to the annoucement

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Just because they use poisons doesn't mean is a DoT job. DRGs have 2 DoTs, MNK have 2DoTs, Brds have 2 DoTs and neither of those are melee DoTs classes. Unless you had play the class don't assume those things and deliver then as facts on an argument

It would actually be pretty easy to make the summoner more like a summoner then like a warlock.

SE would just have to change our normal DoTs (Bio, Miasma....) into abilities that let the pet cast the spell. Then just give the pet our spellattack.
This way the pet would cast a DoT equivalent of damage to our previous versions, could do elemental damage correspondent to its own element AND we would really command our pets like a summoner should.

For the names of the DoTs just use allready known spells like rasp, burn and the like.

Not much balancing to do, not that much of a change in terms of gameplay, but the feeling would be totally different.

Just take a look at the spiritmaster in Aion. In my opinion they did a great job of creating a summoner class which really works with his pet and not just a floating/running DoT.

And they could push egis to hyur size please :)