Why are summoners so neglected?

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

Yeah it is O.o. Remember going to Xelphatol to stop the Ixal from summoning Garuda? Garuda, who was only summoned for 5secs then poof? It was dangerous for the environment.

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So you mean to tell me that a summoner cannot use their aether for a burst attack rather than consistent summon is dangerous and a big no no yet a ninja and their mudra magic can do it all willy nilly just cuz they can?

Crystal summoning yes that is confirmed to hell and back in lore as bad. The summoner's current method is arcanima which is mathmatic symbol summoning which is not bad. They can easily write the lore that summoners trade a persistent entity for a strong burst attack without killing themselves.

Please just stop with all the lore straw man debate. Lore is used to explain game play mechanics, not the other way around.

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Originally Posted by Rysir

So you mean to tell me that a summoner cannot use their aether for a burst attack rather than consistent summon is dangerous and a big no no yet a ninja and their mudra magic can do it all willy nilly just cuz they can?

Crystal summoning yes that is confirmed to hell and back in lore as bad. The summoner's current method is arcanima which is mathmatic symbol summoning which is not bad. They can easily write the lore that summoners trade a persistent entity for a strong burst attack without killing themselves.

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You're comparing a split second summoning to do 1 attack to a job which is capable of keeping a pet out for an indefinite period of time and attack with them.

Actually let me add to that, if you haven't done the lv 50 NIN job quest, or was it 45, can't recall, but spoiler, we do see aspects of "Summoning jutsu" being performed by the antagonist which causes them to summon voidsent to attack us. So the lore has been there since they were released in the 2.X series to have some form of summoning.

Re: Contagion delay.

Not in game currently to check, and I usually run Ifrit on sic since I do dungeon content mostly so longer duration dots are less important, but macros that force the egi to stop their attack to use Contagion don't work? On my scholar I use a macro that instantly uses guard followed by steady before the pet command I want to use, e.g. Whispering Dawn. This forces the fairy to stop Embrace (or any pet command really, but usually its embrace being interrupted) and immediately start casting the ability I want them to use. This method doesn't work with garuda to interrupt its gcd spam ability and force the one you want? I'll test when I get home from work later, but was just curious now.

Edit: I got home from work and completed testing. The below macro works to interrupt whatever Garuda is doing and force it to cast Contagion immediately. Gardua doesn't move, although it briefly turns to face you if you're far away from it, and resumes auto attacking its target once it is cast. The only potential downside I can see is if another macro is used in the 1 second window before the obey command is given then Garuda won't immediately start to auto attack until you manually give it the command or you cast a spell on your target yourself. This would be a very rare occurrence, especially if you are smart and only use macros sparingly.

Code:

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/pac Steady
/pac Guard
/pac "Contagion" <t>
/wait 1
/pac Obey
/pac Guard
/macroicon "Contagion" pet

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Notes: Both the opening steady and the guard are needed to interrupt in case your pet is in one or the other stance to begin with. The wait is required in order for Obey to have time to fire. The obey is necessary or your pet just stands there, potentially for a long time if set to Steady. The second guard is there to make sure you're reset to Guard mode in case the Obey misfires. This makes sure that the pet will start to auto attack on your next cast, regardless of what the macro does.

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Originally Posted by Airget

You're comparing a split second summoning to do 1 attack to a job which is capable of keeping a pet out for an indefinite period of time and attack with them.

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Im comparing a summoning attack to a job that summons an auto attack. Which is the key issue since we didnt get summoner in the fashion of: Summon this big creature to do an attack because it was "too hard" along with other excuses and then they proceed to give a non summoner job that very type of attack.

What we could have had:
Summon garuda- wind elemental attack that deals damage and applies bio
Summon ifrit- fire elemental attack that deals damage and reduces damage dealt
Summon titan- earth elemental attack that deals damage and reduces defense

Or even if they were bent on keeping a persistent summon we could have carbuncle at all times but reduce its potency and have summons I listed and more as traditional call in summons.

With one move ninja performed a more classic summoning that summoner itself cant do.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/fina...lood-expansion



I mean, how hard is it to add some pets? WoW hunters has several. My elementalist in GW2 can summon more stuff than my FFXIV summoner. My warlock in WoW has more pets than my FFXIV summoner. Why is this allowed?

It wouldn't be acceptable for black mages to never get any more new spells, would it?

You neglect the job so much and then get surprised that people say that it shouldn't have been added at all. You know what? People would say the same thing about black mages if all they could use was Fire I, Blizzard I and Thunder I. No Flare, no Fire III, no anything else.

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any suggestion u make to yoshi be the reply is always "oh but this isn't FFXIV"

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Originally Posted by Rysir

so NIN can summon frogs?

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Exactly because as far as we know the toad isn't a Primal. Primals, crystals or not, sap aether. Summoning a Garuda like the Xelphatol boss absolutely does.

Trances and Egis don't. That's literally why you use those instead.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Please just stop with all the lore straw man debate. Lore is used to explain game play mechanics, not the other way around.

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Or how about we not and also not change a class that is the current most popular job in the game because a minority can't accept it for what it is?

SMN isn't a joke like the adamantoise. You don't just say "screw lore". Or else nothing in this game would ever make sense. Screw lore? Okay. Let me use an axe as SMN. And Dual Swords as DRG.

Also the game mechanics are fine. Hence, most popular job in the game

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

Exactly because as far as we know the toad isn't a Primal. Primals, crystals or not, sap aether. Summoning a Garuda like the Xelphatol boss absolutely does.

Trances and Egis don't. That's literally why you use those instead.

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forgive me, but so summoners couldnmt... summon like golem, sylph, etc? theyre lesser summons in the ff qoeld, but theyre not primals in this game

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

forgive me, but so summoners couldnmt... summon like golem, sylph, etc? theyre lesser summons in the ff qoeld, but theyre not primals in this game

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In FFXIV summoners are Primal related. A golem is sentient life so it can't be summoned unless it's a Primal golem. Sylphs are people. They can't be summoned.

Voidsent can be summoned but not by summoners. They aren't Primals. Not the same effect. But you know? We could summon voidsent. It won't be Primal or Primal related though.

I sometimes wonder exactly what playstyle Summoners are after. Is it a burst playstyle which huge damage bursts with wide down times between? Is its a pet class where the damage is done by the pet? I think the Egi's appearances are rather underwhelming but one of the core issues I see with even having a Summoner class is balance.

Ignoring lore (that can often be worked around), the question really is how a Summoner would play and how it would be balanced. At its best it wouldn't have more burst than say with Wildfire on a MCH because otherwise it would potentially be open to either breaking mechanics or struggling with them. It would also make Summoner completely broken in PvP. Further, the issue with high burst is it means SMN would have long periods of down time where they would have bugger all to do and that would be boring. Burst dps isn't hugely feasible.

If we are looking at a controlled pet class there are two factors that come into it. The pet AI and how independent the pets actions are. The more independent the pet the less the class actually requires skill to play and the worse the AI the more problematic the class is. Can the summon be killed? Is it effected by AoEs. Can it ignore mechanics which player can and continue attacking. Is it susceptible to status effects and is it smart enough to get out of the way when it is.

Making a 'traditional' Summoner class has plenty of issues that limit how easy it is to implement into the game without causing issues. You can point to the NIN frog summon and that is a valid point but likely that summon is either a CD or not much more powerful than the traditional Mudra skills the NIN already has. They could probably solve that by just making the Dreadwyrm stance animations more interesting with a bit more Bahamut.