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

I don't mind current SMN being DOT specialists, but their spells (all poison/disease-based) make it seem that they'll be better necromancers.

I think casters should also receive the melee dps treatment when it comes to gear. Have SMN maybe have lower spell speed, but higher crit than BLM

I believe that balancing pet classes is a nightmare.
But I also believe that just because one job functioned a certain way in previous games doesn't mean it will function the same now.

However if you are going to implement summoner in the coolest and most iconic way. Summoner should be a spike damage pet class just as it was in most FF. This should take precedence over lore or current systems. Change the lore, separate summoner from arcanist if that has to happen. My friend thought it was stupid and sad she couldn't level summoner from level 1 anyways.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

However if you are going to implement summoner in the coolest and most iconic way. Summoner should be a spike damage pet class just as it was in most FF.

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No please, I'm fine with sustained damage and a permanent pet, what I don't like much is this pet looking like a flying potato.

Also, when are you going make food affect pet SE? How SMNs cannot reach the accuracy cap with food at the moment while the rest of the classes can is freaking beyond me.

For a complete overhaul here.

It doesnt really feel like a DOT(having one DOT more than others, and just doing more damage with DOT's is not really the best design) class , and neither does it feel like a real pet class.

Instead I'd like them to completly redo SMN. Make it a reverse BLM , and half Melee/half Ranged.

Kinda like this (even if its from a figthing game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO3s4nscy2g&t=8m27s

First , why melee: I believe its more interactive - and it doesn't really change much, since currently SMN pretty much have to be melee to get those AA in.

Fighting with a Book is fun too. And looks more stylish then Ruin-Spam

How it would work ? Kinda like a reverse BLM. The class has an empty Mana box by default.
Summonless Melee attacks (weak part of the damage) FILL the Mana bar.
There would be several "stances" like on Monk, just corrosponding to the different Egis.
On Button for Summon/Unsummon (Instant) - summons pet According to the stance.

Pets dont autoattack and cant be repositioned , instead they wait for input from the summoner - they also cant die and have no HP (not that they really die now anyway).
The current Pet bar would have actual Skills, that do cost quite a lot of Mana, and also having a Summon out would drain mana by default once empty Summons would disappear until resummoned.

Fixes some problems:
Makes piety useful for having a the pet out longer.
Spellspeed for filling the Mana bar faster. -> less downtime on pet.
Pets not dying to mechanics - really its just annoying, not really hard , since they are immun to pretty much everything anyway.
Solves the Mana problem. And there will be no DPS caster in the expension , so it kinda equalizes the caster classes.
People complaining that the pets feel weak - you order them to, and they do the HARD hitting stuff.
No real interaction between pets and player - right now you set them somewhere out of harms way , and forget they exist , except for the occasional Rouse/Spur/Contingation command.
Makes stats useful for pets, since like this they are basically an extension of the summoner.

Oh and I guess PS3 Limitations in town, since SMN, wouldnt stand with thousands of pets in town, only in combat, and even then , not all active at the same time.

You could even get creative ... let the Garuda-Stance, change the attacks of the SMN to ranged/wind. Titan Stance, a bit more Tankiness, and some CD's to protect yourself - could function as an an Mini-Offtank for a short time.
Add elemtal attributes to the melee attacks corrosponding to the egi.

I just think this way, alot more would be possible.

But lore ... why should summoners suddenly smack things with fists and stuff?
Just get creative: Summoning was banned by the GC'S since it was found out, that havin countless MINI-Primals out, was comparable to one big one sucking the land out of ether or whatever.
So what to do if you are a Summoner ? Provide all the Mana yourself .... nonsens.
But wait, we have Aetherflow - thats where we get it from! - But it does the same, gathers Aether around us - aka from the land. So well ... how about extracting Aether from the enemies by contact? - Solution found.
Now we can use resources from things we want to see dead anyway to sustain those mini primals!

Or something like this.

Well I was kinda bored. And something on this scale will NEVER happen anyway.
I just hope SMN gets more ... interesting in the future. :p

SMN is just a lazy after thought of arcanist SE tacked on top of it along with SCH. But at least SCH is useful in their main role, and can dps. SMN just is a lot of micro-management with very little output and long cool down times to even try to compare with BLM.

I'm rather sad to see SE not doing anything about it this patch as well. Oh well, maybe next year???!

Just pure laziness if you ask me. If they spent half the time on SMN than they spent on cash shop items....

I'm actually loving alot of suggestions about Summoners here.
I really would like the EGI's to become stronger when you clear the HM and maybe even EX versions of the Primals. As the EGI's are just manifestations of the Primal's power, wouldn't increasing the power of the Primal's through crystals ALSO power up the EGI's due to them being manifestations of their power?
Also, I hope there is a complete revamp in the EGI's looks, manifestations or not, the current ones look TERRIBLE. I'm not saying they should be exact replica's but only Ifrit EGI is the only one with some similarity to the actual primal. Titan EGI only got the rock part right and Garuda just her body shape, and it fails even at that.
There also needs to be variation between them and enough so that all 3 and future ones can get more use. One of the ideas of DoTs ticking has a chance of Ifrit going nuts works well enough, but I believe there needs to be more of a divide like with Garuda helping out with DoTs already.

Console limitations and SE just being too lazy to make egis look good :^)

I am fine with how Summoner is, but if I could change some things... then I would.

I have seen some suggestions in the past, like taking Contagion and making it a Summoner skill rather than being tied to Garuda so that Garuda isn't one and only go-to dps pet. I would be okay with this, if it would give them another higher damage AOE skill in it's place. Solidifying Garuda even more so, as the "AOE pet". Where as Ifrit would be the "Single Target Pet", and of course Titan is already the "Tank Pet".

I would give Ifrit a better shield, as it has no easy way to avoid enemy aoe damage and in general has the least survivability out of all 3 pets. Would also make it so when on Obey, it would also use said shield whenever the cooldown was ready automatically, just as it uses it's basic attack automatically.

Also, would have Summoner pets be added to the bottom of the Party list so that healers can target them more easily. In other words, how we Summoners see our pets at the bottom of the party list would be applied to the whole party and not just us Summoners. I wouldn't have them added to Alliance lists though, that'd just be too much clutter.

Hmm that's really all I can think of. As far as possibly doable changes.

I don't want to heal your pets. That's your responsibility.

First thing I would add is the pet's visual evolution, the current look of the pets is completely unsatisfying. They don't have to be really big but they should look less like glowing crystal and more like actual creatures (Like Carbuncle. Carbuncle is great. WTF were they thinking with these Egis?)

The method I would use to evolve them would be via 1v1 trials a bit similar to the way you could get the summons in FFXI. I think it would be absolutely epic to have to battle a full primal 1v1 as a summoner.

A more debatable thing to do would be make the battles raid-level difficult. Then only the more dedicated summoners could get them which would add a little bit of mystique back to the job which could be neat.

The other thing I would do is add more abilities to each Egi. Depending on which Egi is out the Summoner's entire mechanic could change. The Egi that you summon could change your abilities or the abilities could just be pet skills. Summon Garuda to go all-in DoT. Summon Ifrit to become more of a burst mage. Titan would still be a tank for soloing probably, but you could come up with other mechanics for Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh such as Control, Debuff, and AoE.