A Summoner's woes

Hi everyone out there and especially to my fellow SMN mains and by extension SCH mains. I hope all of you are doing well.

I'm sure we all have seen the Mr. Happy interview that talked about how egi glamours are being "reassessed and delayed" due to SMN reaching a breaking point in design.
We can pretty much assume a SMN rework is coming next expansion. Whether that be the gutting of egis all together or a change in design for the SMN kit is anyone's guess. But either way it's worrying...

The SE team, while usually does a great job in producing content for FFXIV, really dropped the ball in designing and balancing jobs for this expansion. For example, DNC/MCH/NIN either came out or received some form of a rework this expansion. While the jobs do play well and work properly, I wouldn't say they are really fun to play consistently.
They are very one dimensional imo. NIN is really only fun when during your burst window and MCH is a snooze fest at best.
Almost forgot about the travesty of BRD this expansion.

Well what I'm getting at is I'm honestly afraid that they will take away everything that makes SMN unique and fun to play. I didn't like the Storm blood expansion really but I will say they nailed what SMN should be in that expansion. Everything in the kit meshed so well and you had so much variety in your rotation. Now nothing really plays off each other. Aetherflow feels like a relic of better times, DoTs l/TD are literally just there and feel tacked on because SMN used to be the DoTs job.
While I don't care about it, but what if they did get rid of SMN pets. That would get rid of carbuncles by extension and I know a lot of people are attach to it.

I don't know I'm just rambling, but let me end with this. I was an ACN the moment you could pick the class. I was even probably one of the first SMNs on my server. All I ask SE is just don't destroy SMN and make some generic and stale job like you have been doing this expansion. That's all I ask.

I wrote a lot more than I thought I did. Sorry

I get what you’re saying but I have to disagree. Summoner has always had pet issues. Stormblood was not a good iteration of summoner either. The job doesn’t flow well now and it didn’t flow well in SB. My opinion. Now it does hit like a truck but to say the job was at its best in SB is a bit exaggerated. Can’t even use pets in pvp. I mean the job is just a mess. It needs to be reworked. I’m fine with the pets staying as long as they update the code so no more ghosting and such. Or I’m good without the perma pets and actually make summoner feel like the actual fantasy of a summoner job.

The job has been needing a rework for years now. Glad it’s finally happening. I guess we will know in End walker if SE will be praised or booed for this rework.

Just my opinion.

It needs a rework, but it would be sad to see sparklebutt bite the dust. Let's hope he stays, removing him would remove a 7 year companion for me.

I am personally fine with just carbuncle, no variants...but lots of color choices.

Classically the summons need not “stay out” but just be glorified spell animations.

Were it up to me it would be:
Just carbuncle as permanent summon.
All current spells become summon spell animations (ruin = ifrit punching someone?)
Bigger summons possible via job gauge, these last x seconds like mechanist pet.
Some of your spells being cast (eg ruin) cause summon to also do some action (eg bahamut punch)
Your bigger aetherflow abilities trigger bigger summon things (eg bahamut does ahk mourn)

Summon just does what it does based on your rotation, no need to specifically order it to do anything. (Alternative explanation , doing your rotation is itself what orders your summon to act)

I feel like SMN was a job built to be so feature complete at level 50 that the devs had too few options to grow the job. Between being the pet DPS, a DoT mage, the aetherflow system, and keeping the pets themselves balanced, and the SCH sharing skills, it was a ton of half baked systems and ideas slapped into one. I truly believe the choice to build off of Aetherflow for the Dreadwyrm Trance mechanic instead of going harder on the pets themselves was what damaged SMN’s future potential. The Aetherflow system works many times better on Scholar.

Frankly, EVERYTHING on summoner should be about the pet, as right now you barely want to use the standard egis since everything is focussed on the trances. But, I still prefer that to maintaining Enochian, so I do want Summoner back as a fun caster.


One other detail I’ve noted is that while we have a mountain of evidence that the Scholar’s fairies and Arcanist carbuncles have some level of freewill and personality, Egis do not, despite the requirement of exposure to the primal the egi is based upon. I feel like the concept of Egi would be far over summoning actual primals would be easier to swallow if said Egi had some animation and sounds that made them feel more like the mini primals they’re meant to be.

I suspect the "breaking point" is just that SMN's rotation is so bloody long. Slapping another demi summon on the end of that would just make it worse. So in that regard, it does need a rework.

Summoner is definitely a job that didn't have a clear direction after ARR. When it turned from getting more Egis to getting a Trance, it was definitely SE shouting, "Hey, we based the pets on roles instead of flavor! They're done!" And the pets went unaltered for a long time, and it was an awful long time until Garuda's Contagion wasn't seen as the superior choice vs. Ifrit, and Titan was for soloing (or ridiculously hilarious things that they nerfed, like tanking Ramuh :3c).

It really showed again in Stormblood, where the addition of a Demi-Primal was very welcome, but then the fact that it replaced your current pet in its entirety inherently snubbed Titan Egi, which was already snubbed because it was only a microwave Banquet level chicken nuggie.

With SHB they naturally gravitated towards getting the Demi-Primal out more often, and even introduced a new one, with its own unique burst phase that transformed SMN's attacks into ones based off of Phoenix's signature mechanic spells. Very cool, love this direction, but the Egis, again fell to the way side. It's apparent that they don't really know what to do with them. Of course, all of the early SMN quests rely on you going and fighting these Egis after drawing them out of the land, so if they get rid of them it will make those early quests either need a rework OR it'll be even more awkward than Astrologian's rewrites.

With where they've taken the Demi-Primal system, I think it would be cool if they essentially transformed all of the Egis into Demi-Primals, more or less, at least in function. Hit button, bring them out, they attack when you execute globals, and your Ruins change aspect/shape to become primal based spells. Of course, if it's not separate from the current Demi Trances, then this means an even longer rotation >_>; so... <_<;... I'm sure they're pulling their hair out trying to design it in a pleasing way, but we're likely going to get something that is bad in some ways, good in others, yet again. Lol.

I feel the big problem is that ARR SMN was not the SMN people expected. What they did design, however, was still a great job, it was a DoT mage with pets and I feel like there was a place for it. Though in a way, I felt DoT mage was more appropriate for SCH because it was a big DoT damage dealer in FFXI and it'd have been a FFXIV evolution on that, and then add all of the plague elements that would probably suit some of SCH's plague doctor cues, like in the SCH storyline and the fact it used to have a spell called 'Leeches'. But it seems in their trying to differentiate the two, they cut off SCH's DoT mage aspect completely (and whilst crunching down on healer DPS) and let SMN keep it.

But when people think of SMN they don't think of DoT mage, they think of big summons, and it looks like they wanted to merge two together and it feels like a mess without direction.

So in the end we have a SCH stripped of flavour and identity and a SMN that is confused about its identity. But I am generally of the view, unless it's broken, when you create a job with a certain design philosophy you stick to that philosophy, because the people who make it their main end up loving it for that approach and tend to have the expectations of a consistent evolution and growth because it's the job they like. With how they're approached it, we now have people who prefer different versions of different jobs with people who want their preferred version accommodated for. EG. I'm like "bring back an evolution of 2.0 SCH", somebody else might be like, "eww no, I liked ShB SCH, don't change it".

You're gonna get that with SMN too, the people who liked a DoT mage with pets are going to dislike SMN if it gets reworked to only be demis, as an example. And if they push more towards it being a DoT mage & emphasizing its egi side, those who love the demi system will dislike it. At the moment it feels like they're on the knife edge of both, but it's a mess.

If you completely got rid of Summons, it wouldn't be a summoner class :P

What I would be more inclined to suggest, if not getting flat out FFXI summon styles... is making us the DoT mage and the animations of casts or combos being of particular summons.

For example, all our DoT spells having an animation next to us or from the book or w.e of Shiva egi casting the DoTs for a second. Or for Painflare having Ifrit cast it. Etc.

Little of a best of both worlds and would allow a lot more design space.