Summoner - What it needs.

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Originally Posted by Valmaxian

I disagree with this - most of the criticisms I read and hear about from players is that new SMN is too easy, repetitive, and mindless. And former Summoner, despite its power level, was quite convoluted and played more like an Affliction Warlock than a true Summoner.

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I will not take this insult to Affliction Warlock, an actual DoT class, to compare it with the random hodgepodge of non-fitting vestiges of class design that was the old Summoner. Ugh.

Jokes aside, that alone should already convey why old Summoner was a bad design though: Where does "I'm the DoT DPS" fit "Summoner", especially comparing how summons work in FF games in general? It just doesn't.

That’s the entire problem, beyond vague “they generally summon stuff” SMN is one of the series most diffuse job descriptions. Let’s ignore that 3 4 5 and 9 can’t even agree whether SMN’s learn white or black magic alongside summoning (a VERY important distinction if you are going to import it into 14) old and new FF can’t even agree on how long the summoned thing stays on the field

3 4 5 and 9 they are basically glorified raidwides, 10 11 12 type zero and arguably 16 they are more permanent and the ability to summon is diffused around the party rather than sitting in the hands of a person who’s job is called “summoner” and all have different costs, hell type zero kills the party to summon something.

Do you see a singular coherent job identity here? I certainly don’t. Even if you think that the newer games are “wrong” and that a true summoner is a 3 4 5 9 style “summons are glorified raidwides” they still don’t even agree on what “else” a summoner can learn besides their summons. 3 uses both, rydia uses black 5 arguably uses neither, 9 specs them into pseudo healers and it’s arguable that yuna can also be played as a pseudo healers

What here precludes the idea that a SMN could have their secondary aspectation be virus mage? There seems to be very little rules for the summoner archetype. I’m not even saying old SMN was good but people seem completely set on the idea that old SMN has to be wrong when SMN is barely a coherent archetype throughout the game anyway

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

That’s the entire problem, beyond vague “they generally summon stuff” SMN is one of the series most diffuse job descriptions. Let’s ignore that 3 4 5 and 9 can’t even agree whether SMN’s learn white or black magic alongside summoning (a VERY important distinction if you are going to import it into 14) old and new FF can’t even agree on how long the summoned thing stays on the field

3 4 5 and 9 they are basically glorified raidwides, 10 11 12 type zero and arguably 16 they are more permanent and the ability to summon is diffused around the party rather than sitting in the hands of a person who’s job is called “summoner” and all have different costs, hell type zero kills the party to summon something.

Do you see a singular coherent job identity here? I certainly don’t. Even if you think that the newer games are “wrong” and that a true summoner is a 3 4 5 9 style “summons are glorified raidwides” they still don’t even agree on what “else” a summoner can learn besides their summons. 3 uses both, rydia uses black 5 arguably uses neither, 9 specs them into pseudo healers and it’s arguable that yuna can also be played as a pseudo healers

What here precludes the idea that a SMN could have their secondary aspectation be virus mage? There seems to be very little rules for the summoner archetype. I’m not even saying old SMN was good but people seem completely set on the idea that old SMN has to be wrong when SMN is barely a coherent archetype throughout the game anyway

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I think lore wise, FFXIV summoner had dots because it branched from Arcanist which was a dot class.
I think the problem was everytime they tried to make the dot synergy work, it ended up being cluny and was ultimately amended.

For me i think summoner is a just a class that summons. The debate between dot smn and Summoner SMN (for want of a better term) was lost in EW with the later winning.
Personally i would have liked them to make a new dot focused class without the constant to and fro between "not being a true summoner"

For Summoner - i think it just needs to be a bit more like Demonology warlock. It just summons things, or empowers those summons. Has a targetable pet to manage or at the very least that attacks with the summoner. Whether it can summon 6 or 20 entities doesnt really matter, as long as mechaniclly the job is interesting and flexible. It is good to use past final fantasy summoner design as a starting point, but i dont think that should be presecriptive.

Personlly i think the issue is everyone has a different idea of what it should be so whatever they do, its always going to be divisive. Which is why i think they should take the decision in endwalker as a line in the sand and focus on a summoning summoner over a dot summoner. That doesnt mean it cant have dots, techically it currently does with the garuda puddle. I just dont see dots being the focus again.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

What here precludes the idea that a SMN could have their secondary aspectation be virus mage?

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Nothing, other than all this would change is this (as per your "secondary aspectation" implication):

* Ruin now deals damage over 15 seconds, stacking with itself in potency.
* Aspected Ruin now deals damage over 9 seconds, stacking with itself in duration.

Done, now it's a "DoT class". Did this improve the job in any ways? Of course not. And that's kinda the basic issue here. "DoT-based" is not a differentiation except in that you get shown 10 small damage numbers instead of one bigger one. You still use a quasi-30s-CD ability to deal X damage, it's just now split into 10 instances. On single-boss fights it can mostly be replaced with a single CD-based GCD nuke at no loss of complexity. As Summoner as it is already has a fair few quasi-CD-based nukes (Ruin IV, the aspected Ruins), this concept already exist, it just shows its numbers in a different way.

And that brings to a point Anvaire also brings up: Why not have a DoT caster and a summoner? Both are distinct concepts in the context of FFXIV, so why not simply have both? FFXIV struggles hard to find ideas for the ever-expanding already-overburdened roster of jobs we have (I mean just look at the design joke that is Viper...), so hey, here's two actual concepts to use.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

Personlly i think the issue is everyone has a different idea of what it should be so whatever they do, its always going to be divisive. Which is why i think they should take the decision in endwalker as a line in the sand and focus on a summoning summoner over a dot summoner. That doesnt mean it cant have dots, techically it currently does with the garuda puddle. I just dont see dots being the focus again.

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Agreed… there are many different iterations of Summoner across the franchise. But even so, I hold to two basic opinions. One, Summoner is not a WoW Warlock. Doesn’t mean I didn’t like the DoTs; they were fun and I wouldn’t mind having more of them, but SMN shouldn’t be pigeonholed into another game’s class fantasy. (I’d personally prefer a new, almost total DoT class because I think it would be fun, but apparently the devs hate DoTs for some reason.) Two, and I’m sure some will disagree, but summons are not pets, so SMN isn’t a pet class. I think we will see BST being the true pet class, even though they went with making it a limited job. And ok, a bonus third: a caster casts spells, period. Cast time being instant, fast or slow doesn’t make a job any less a caster, and adding cast times to SMN’s kit is only going to ensure we never get any new summons, because 2 minute meta. I like that we have a range of casters from fast to slow, and I prefer the fast!

To me current SMN is almost perfect, except for the Ifrit/Garuda/Titan repeating between the Demis. Break that up by adding new gem summons. Give those gem summons some spiced up abilities to make the choice of which you want to use and in what order relevant to what you’re doing at any given time.

Id agree summoner isnt a Wow Affliction Warlock (Dots) but it probably should take a ton of lessons from Deononology Warlock which is a lot of fun to play.

As for smn's urrent design i honestly think adding more summons would amount to no change at all. Same as adding Temu Bahamut changed nothing, bar making things awakward. Im not saying redesign the whole concept, but it definitely needs some deep mechanical changes.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

Id agree summoner isnt a Wow Affliction Warlock (Dots) but it probably should take a ton of lessons from Deononology Warlock which is a lot of fun to play.

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Yeah that's true. In the 8.0 idea thread, my idea for a Ranger was based on how modern Demolock works. But the same could be done for Summoner I suppose. Sadly neither are "proper pet classes", as the last actual pet class died when DAoC reworked its Necromancer, and before that when WoW changed Demolock pets to be largely immune to b oss mechanics late in TBC (so that's a whole long time ago...).

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah that's true. In the 8.0 idea thread, my idea for a Ranger was based on how modern Demolock works. But the same could be done for Summoner I suppose. Sadly neither are "proper pet classes", as the last actual pet class died when DAoC reworked its Necromancer, and before that when WoW changed Demolock pets to be largely immune to b oss mechanics late in TBC (so that's a whole long time ago...).

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all this talk about demonology warlock "THIS ISNT WOW" I rather my final fantasy games class design have zero common with blizzard games. at all

Which just circles back to “okay then pin down a consistent design brief for SMN”

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Originally Posted by HanakoTheGoth

all this talk about demonology warlock "THIS ISNT WOW" I rather my final fantasy games class design have zero common with blizzard games. at all

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That's a weird absolute approach though, because it does not make sense to not aggressively take what worked from other long-lived MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2 or World of Warcraft, while also looking at what didn't work for them and hence not repeating those mistakes.