[suggestion] Summoners feel off.

Okay so here I go. Summoner's feel off, they just don't feel like summoners if you ask me. When I think of summoner I think of someone that summons a monster to deal a big attack and deal burst damage, but what I see is a class that just uses Damage over Time [DOT's] the egi's don't really feel as epic or powerful as they should except for en-kindle. I was so excited for the summoner being a fan of final fantasy I was so excited to see what you [SE] would do with them but what I found was a warlock from WoW who uses DOT's as primary damage and the summons are just a side thought when it comes to actual damage which should not be the case if you ask me. As a summoner I expected the summon to be the major damage part of the class but the egi's barely deal as much damage as my basic spell, I know it's a lot to ask I know you probably can't but please Square Enix I ask that you make the summons more like they should be heavy burst damage not an auto attack warlock pet.

[I welcome anyone else to add or tear this apart I'm just putting out my thoughts and feelings about this I love summoners and I just want to feel like a summoner not a warlock.] I'm adding this as a separate post because my original was to long >.>

I understand what you are saying. I was a little bit surprised by the mechanics of the class too, but at the same time, we do have a different style than BLM. I was mainly disappointed by the " epicness" of the summons, like you said: Ifrit / Garuda and especially Titan are giants. Yet, we summon little creatures (not to say cute).

I might add a few feedback:

- Summoners need an update to view correctly their DoTs: During 8-man fights, or FATEs, our DoTs get lost in the middle of all the other debuffs. Increase the size of only our DoTs, put them at the beginning of the debuffs list would be a good solution.
- Allow us to control which spells our summons auto-cast: Allow us to right click, for example, on the pet skills to trigger auto-cast on/off.

When people hear you can be a "summoner" in FFXIV, they expect it to be like the summoner class in other Final Fantasy games. They expect to call in a 30 foot demi-god that fills the area with a flashy cinematic and nukes the entire zone with 99999 damage to all enemies. Summons, as they existed in offline FF games, have no place whatsoever in an MMORPG, however.

I can empathize with feeling underwhelmed by the less-than-amazing "egi" creatures, but you can't have twenty full-size Ifrits stomping around in front of the market boards. Heck, I've heard complaints about the number of tiny little carbuncles running around.

I suppose they could have gone a different route and simply not made summoner a pet-centric class. But, then you just have another offensive caster, with brief spell animations that look vaguely like monster shapes. I doubt anyone would be happy with that either.

@Fyrebrand: Yeah I get what you are saying and I understand that you can't have cool CS like cinematic's and I don't mind the pet system but they feel like an after thought. They don't hit that hard and each only have 4 skills plus the enkindle I was hoping that the summons would be the main damage point not DoT's.

So, what does this have to do with the website? You may want to report this in the correct forum if you want anything to happen...

It appears SE missed a few details when literally copying WoW's warlocks class. Anyway, don't expect your pets to do all the damage for you on auto attack since it's not like that in WoW either (quite frankly I don't understand why you would even want that...)

If you're about to say "OMG IT'S SO DIFFERENT" do the following:

Compare these spells;

Both use 3 dots and 1 filler
Aetherflow 3 stacks - Soulshards 3 stacks (same principe, 1 stack is used for special abilities)
Fester - Drain Soul (x amount of damage based on the quantity of active DoTs)
Virus - Curse of Enfeeblement (weakens target)
Ruin II - Fel Flame (instant on-the-move filler that consumes more mana)
Bane (1 AF charge - SS: Seed of Corruption (1 SS charge) (spreads dots on enemies around the main target)
Energy Drain - Drain Life (Transfers health from the target to the caster)
Sustain - Health Funnel (both sacrifice own HP to heal minion)
Tri-disaster - Hellfire (melee range AoE)

So SE carbon-copied Summoner's from Warlocks and Black mages from Mages (blms and mages are even MORE similar. It's ridiculous actually).

Summoners need more powerful summons (to be clear I don't mean bigger, I just mean that the rate of damage they deal is not very high and needs to go up.) and Shadow Flare also could use a power increase(and duration increase) to make it more useful during longer fights as it is really the only consistent way of dealing some AOE damage which is quite low compared to Black Mage spells. Also, I want Ruin 3 as a AOE spell!

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Originally Posted by Furio

It appears SE missed a few details when literally copying WoW's warlocks class.

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Many of those things are the kinds of things that you would need/want with a proper pet class though.

Let's face the facts here. If too much damage and potential was shifted to the summon, then all arc/smn would be would be an underpowered healer that spends the fight standing around while their pet auto attacks (occasionally using skills). If, like warlock, our summons were made less powerful, it wouldn't fit the idea of a summoner, and would play too much like a standard mage class (glass cannon nuker).

Instead what we have is a happy medium. We have a class that has:

- A summon that is reasonably capable of holding its own, both as a damage source and as an off-tank (and as healing for sch).
- A grouping of buffing skills to make that summon more powerful.
- A grouping of healing skills to support that pet and other party members
- A grouping of debuff skills to aid in survival
- A grouping of damage skills that are not reliant on standing still to do continuous damage.

Although summoners "could" have been pushed into a more of a pet/debuff role, the reality of the game however puts far too much emphasis on a DPS race during boss fights to make that sort of role even remotely viable.

Sure, it would have been cool to have summoners have a unique limit break depending on what pet they have out... And have that pet do classic summons-style damage. But as the whole class goes, I really can't find much room to complain (other than tri-disaster being worthless).

I agree that Summoners should have been a little different but not sure how they could have done it, seeing the base class is Arcanist - which feels right with all the dots etc.
Maybe they should have made another magical class like Beastmaster who uses attacks to summon monsters that perform the spell for them and vanish immediately again.
Still people would just complain how long the animation time for those skills are etc etc.
Although it would feel more like the real FF summoner - Imagine a transparent but smaller copy of the primal appearing on the field, doing their spell and vanish again (like FFTA).
Would definitely be cooler but in an MMORPG...hard to do.

But the current thing isn't that bad really, the dot's actually give you enough time and mobility to compensate the micromanagement of your pet (placement, commanding etc).

I wish Summoner limit break would be better (1) I don't know how I get the cane to do a limited break when the entire time, I use the book. Moreover, if they can let us summon a big monster and do damage attack like in other FF, that would be nice.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

Summons, as they existed in offline FF games, have no place whatsoever in an MMORPG, however.

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Can't say I agree with you. People are thinking of how Summoner worked in Final Fantasy XI (which was a MMORPG btw) and other games, such as 4Story. What people dislike is when a class has a weak pet and your only abilities appear to be DoT. Another complaint of most people is that the class feels pointless compared to playing anything else and summons, the way they are currently designed, don't do much damage and have no/few support abilities. Nobody wants them to be OP but they do want a little more functionality.

Btw, here is a list of abilities that Summoner used to have in FFXI after obtaining everything. You'll notice it gave them a lot of options and focused more on the pet than the individual.

I wish Summoner were at least 1/4 of what they used to be, I grew up with Final Fantasy games and what they did with the summoned creatures is horrible!
Is so frustrating playing with the micro Egi-primals -.- (Mega face palm)
Even my chocobo is way better summoned creature than the Egis :/ (Gysahl greens)

Absolutely! Once I can get my hands on a modding tool I will FIX my Summoner and his micro-Egis.

I wish SE would listen

I have done Summoner and Blm and I can see a huge difference in attacks and think also I have to agree you think of Summoner you think of someone who cast a big bad mofo who deals serious damage to compensate for the low end damage you deal but to be honest you get a cute little pet who is like ehhh I guess.

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Originally Posted by Engineer

I wish SE would listen

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That'll be the day lol xD