Summoner Class needs a serious revamp

I know it has been said many times before but wanted to give my 2 cents and this is just my personal opinion on the summoner class, you can agree or disagree, everyone has there own opinion.

When I first learned that we would have a Summoner class when 2.0 went live I was very happy as I always loved summoner classes in many games I have played and to be able to summon in a Final Fantasy game (my favorite game series) I was ecstatic, However what I wanted and what I got were 2 completely different things.

I was not expecting to get a class that deal with not only dots but disease and poison based ones at that, these are the spells that you associate with a Necromancer or Black Mage.

Summoner's are Supposed to be 100% about the pet with spells to support the pet only such as Haste / Healing / Dmg Shields / Def buffs etc etc but at the same time make the pets stronger 3-4x more since the summoner isin't dmg'ing the mobs themselves. Have your Mage pets huge on the aoe or single Nukes you control, dps and tank pets comparable to dps and tank classes as they are your class just controlled though you.

IF that option is to complicated then have it done similar to say FF 7 and don't have a pet at all but a summon you do and it comes in does an attack and leaves and keep the spell types summoners have but get rid of some of the dots and trade them in with nukes, Summoners need some serious burst dmg. Summoners are the least played class and not wanted in higher tier stuff such as coil, but Like I said this is just my opinion.

My smn is well loved in coil and every other manner of high level dungeons.

That said. I will agree the concept of the class seems off. A summoner should simply not be a dot class, it makes no sense.

Still love my smn though. :)

I dunno, I always play my WHM for high lvl stuff and talk amongst the group or LS's is they simply do not want a summoner over a BLM, just yesterday alone in the turn 4 group I was in they wanted a BLM only as a summoner is no good on the bugs and later on in my LS another summoner was asked kindly to leave and was upset cause the group rathered a BLM cause there aoe's are better.

I just seem to see this sort of stuff all the time.

From what I've parsed blm destroys bugs but smn destroys dreadnoughts. My static consists of me (smn) and a blm for that reason.

I am envious of their aoe output though.

I find SMN a ton of fun personally. And in terms of coil my DPS is close to the top if not very top (still missing quite a bit of gear)

I think it's perfect the way it is. And as for Burst damage, Fester is the most we really need (especially with 1.1k crits at my gear level), but SMN is more built for sustained DPS, similar to Monk.
And as for using the pets, I'm using Aerial Blade, Enkindle and Contagion (duh) quite often, During serious boss fights I have Spur and Rouse always on Cooldown, I'm constantly telling the pet to change targets or re-positioning the pet. It may not be 100% but I'm not leaving the pet on Autopilot and focusing ONLY on my DoTs (unless it's Atomos or Demon Wall, then I use Ifrit and have it go buck wild)

Final point I'll be making: Not wanted in higher tier stuff? SMN is very wanted in T5 for the extra pet, SMN is high ST DPS close to if not next to MNK, SMN has utility like Eye for an Eye, Virus and most importantly, a Battle ress spell that a DPS class can use. I'm sorry to say but to say it's not wanted is pretty foolish

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Originally Posted by Siren

I dunno, I always play my WHM for high lvl stuff and talk amongst the group or LS's is they simply do not want a summoner over a BLM, just yesterday alone in the turn 4 group I was in they wanted a BLM only as a summoner is no good on the bugs and later on in my LS another summoner was asked kindly to leave and was upset cause the group rathered a BLM cause there aoe's are better.

I just seem to see this sort of stuff all the time.

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Originally Posted by Jamez82

From what I've parsed blm destroys bugs but smn destroys dreadnoughts. My static consists of me (smn) and a blm for that reason.

I am envious of their aoe output though.

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It may not be as good as BLM, but if a SMN knows what they're doing they can parse higher then Bards in terms of AoE damage. It takes getting used to but I've done many large AoE pulls in AK and Haukke HM as practiice

Again with this "smn is not wanted in high tier stuff like coil"...

SMN is one of the better dps to have in coil, period. Downright near essential for turn 5. Wins DPS races on quite a few of the endgame fights, while also throwing random res's to the table when needed.

I love the summoner job. I like that we can summon primals, and would love to see more come as a result of more primal battles being released. But I'm very disappointed with the job as a whole.


First of all, all primals (and scholar pets really when you think about it, fairies are from the wood) follow an elemental schema. Where Scholars and Summoners deal damage more akin to a warlock or a necromancer in most games (death and disease). Where's the logic in that? It makes absolutely zero sense, but I guess it is what it is.

Second, as far as the egi for summoner go they are not at all impressive. Your fight the primal fights and they're these huge powerful awesome creatures. Then you get your egi as a summoner and they're these miniscule little things that take nothing more than a common mob running around Eorzea to bring them down. Meanwhile their AI is terrible, even in comparison to Scholar fairies. (You mean to tell me you script AI for a summoned pet to heal, and actually heal very well. But you can't see to get a dps pet to stay on target or prioritize threats? Sad.)

These egi are also your replacement pets from your Arcanist pets. The result? Ifrit is unimpressive but ok. Garuda is meh once you accept her retarded AI. Titan however is a horrible replacement for Topaz Carbuncle. Topaz does it so much better and easier than Titan and this should really be the other way around.

I'm not saying the egi should be as powerful or even close to as powerful as their full fledged primal version but, a little more oomph couldn't hurt. Bigger models would be mice for one, these are PRIMAL GODS we're summoning, not carbuncle or minions which is exactly what they appear to be. More functionality and better AI scripting would be great and some more survivability as well.

Which speaking of survivability. Summoner is NOTHING compared to a scholar. In normal pve as a scholar you're damn near invincible and not too worse off in dungeons and the like either. Summoner you're more made of glass than a thaumaturge should be. Part of that has to do with the fact that you have a very well scripted fairy backing your ass, while your egis as a summoner tend to not really seem to care if you live or die.

Summoners should be a featured class of this game as their entire concept plays so much of a role in not just the main story of this game, but other FF titles as well. This is a staple job to the franchise. So why then does it seem more like something that was just thrown together on a whim out of old parts and duct tape?

Overall this job is marginally fun. But no where near as impressive or interesting as it could've been.

Summoner's as a sepearte job was a good start but it does need to be reworked
-remove blizzard 2 and give us blizzard
-give Summoner's the ability to summon the Primals.
-Each attack should cost MP
-The Primal should automatically use there signature ability once they are out of MP and leave.
-The Primals signature ability should be in the Primals attack bar
-allow us to make pacts with the Primals to reduce the cost of attacking with them.
-allow us to buff the Egi for 30s with a 60s cool down and summon a mini primal.
-Enkindles recast time should be instant and cost an aetherflow stack.

Summoner should be a Pet Class not a Dot Class plan and simple. Summoner has always been a pet class. Yoshi P needs to stop acting like Summoner is a warlock like in WOW i wish he never played it now.

It is unlikely to be changed, since it's functional and potent. Saying otherwise is not truthful, period

My disappointment with the class is that it's an entirely unoriginal lift from World of Warcraft, only not nearly as creative and fun as the Warlock actually is. I would love Summoner to be about the Summon like it traditionally has.

I haven't been playing smn for very long but I would love to see a pet lb of some sort.

Summoner's fine, it's the egis/pets that are lackluster. At the end-game, you use Garuda most of the time, and she's pretty much just walking turrets that you occasionally use to blast Contagion at things. Ifrit suffers from being a melee that you have to constantly place in order to dodge attacks, having a spike-damaging move when he never get's aggroed, and has a stun-fetish that is very detrimental to your tanks. And poor Titan rarely sees any play at end-game because end-game is a team sport.
I mean, if SE got rid of the egis and gave us Contagion, Summoner's gameplay wouldn't change at all, which is kind of bad, considering the "summons" are suppose to be the selling point of the class.
They don't need to be primals or anything, just make them more then just another one of our DoT, maybe give them some utility or better offensive attacks that we can throw into our rotations.

Actually i always wondered this. Why didn't Summoners have their own limit break like summon the full fledge form of what ever egi your using and then do their special attack like Hellfire for Ifrit. That would have been awesome.

IMHO I came to FF with the goal of having a summoner, after leveling to around 15 I was depressed and changed to BLM (and so happy to have done it) once my BLM was 50 I gave the summoner/scholar a try and ended up leveling the class with the scholar which I found more fun to play and more rewarding (experience wise, not xp, but player experience)

In the end the summoner class should have been a corner stone of the franchise, just as the BLM and the DRG are. But the mecanic missed it all.
We need BIG ASS MUTH%^&( Summons that are cool... no some minion that doesn't impress anyone.

The main issue with the job is that it is not a Summoner it's a Warlock dressed as a Summoner. They need to have the pets take center stage and the dots take a back seat for Summoner's. They need to add more skills that buff the pet. Also they need to add a skill that buffs the pet so it take on the form of their parent primal for 30s draining all the Summoner's MP and 3 aether flow stacks with a instant recast time.

The main issue I have with Summoner is the fact that the Ifrit-Egi is worthless, Garuda does the same thing as Ifrit but is ranged, has contagion, and doesn't stun. If your soloing and worried about taking damage you will use the Titan-egi who also has a stun. Ifrit also has his Thorns/Damage reflection ability that never does anything because he never has threat.

Honestly I'd be happy if they would just re-work the Ifrit-egi, make each egi have a specific role like...
Garuda can be the "Ranged single target dps Egi" which it pretty much is.
Titan can be the "Tank egi" which it is.

Ifrit can be the "AoE Egi" change his stun attack to not stun but and AoE DoT instead, change his worthless thorns shield into another AoE/Gap closer(Ifrit charge anybody?) maybe even make his basic attack cleave? more or less just have Ifrit-egi be a giant AoE damage ball, no CC, no worthless buffs. this would at least give him some situations were he is useful.

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Originally Posted by Amarathval

The main issue I have with Summoner is the fact that the Ifrit-Egi is worthless

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Ifrit is FAR from worthless, he just requires more micromanagement than Garuda. I actually prefer Ifrit in T4 (when I get to DPS; I'm normally the resident SCH) since most things die so fast in there that Contagion isn't super useful, and Ifrit has a nice AoE attack (that I've macroed to Bane). I actually come close to matching our BLM's damage, and my SMN's ilevel is slightly lower.

1st. They should redesign the Egis so they look like smaller scale versions of their parent primal instead of giant sprites because as of now Carbuncle and Topaz are more detailed than the Egis.
2nd. Add more pet buffs and add a buff so the Egis become their parent Primals for 30s.
3rd Add more pet abilities
A. Ifrits Egi remove radiant shield and add Incinerate. Add radiant plumes, eruption and a passive ability burning dots
B. Titan Egi add weight of the land, Bombs, goal, geocrush and passive ability Stone skin on Summoner
C. Garuda Egi add summon tornados, down bursts , wind gust and passive ability which increases skill speed and movement.

Since Summoners aren't gonna change I don't see why it's so hard to implement some sort of system where the limit break gauge can at least do Summoners justice in terms of visuals by allowing the job to summon the full form of said primals for the level 3 limit breaks. Those animations for Garuda, Ifrit, Titan, and Odin already exist. Ramuh is already in and we'll be getting more summons later such Leviathan in 2.2. We can have level 1 and 2 limit breaks stem from the lower level summons such as Demon Wall, Diabolos, Moogle King, Siren, and maybe Doomtrain and Alexander if they are gonna be introduced soon.

There really needs something that give the iconic summoner something to stand out and with the whole "strategy" being the lore behind Summoner at least having the limit break customizable to meet that situational need I'd say it would be a big bonus.

While it's a lot of summons at least 1-2 can be more unique to fit that situational stratagem except for the level 3 limit breaks where they will focus more on doing that big AoE damage at the expense of having that nice visual animation. Unless however there's a Primal that ends up having that single target animation that can stand out. From there it's just getting the static to agree weather or not the summoner should limit break over the Blm/Dps.

They combined red mage and summoner from FF11. Just like 90% of this game is just a tweaked reworded version of FF11. They even have 3 starting cities similar races, this game almost feels like its FF11 but enough random name changes main story and quest differences to make it new. It would have been a much better design to make a summoner about the pet. Give summoner minor dot power and strong healing and add the red mage class next to the blm under THM where it belongs.

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Originally Posted by zeez

They combined red mage and summoner from FF11. Just like 90% of this game is just a tweaked reworded version of FF11. They even have 3 starting cities similar races, this game almost feels like its FF11 but enough random name changes main story and quest differences to make it new. It would have been a much better design to make a summoner about the pet. Give summoner minor dot power and strong healing and add the red mage class next to the blm under THM where it belongs.

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I don't agree with giving the Summoner strong healing because that would make it a Scholar with attack pets no thanks. They need to give the Summoner all six elemental damage, strong sustained bursts, minor dot power and minor healing and the ability to summon full fledge primal. Summoner should really have it's own base class anyway called an Evoker.

I have a lv50 SCH, but I haven't tried SMN yet. Sadly I'm just not interested in it like I was in FF11. I really miss the detailed and impressive summons and the hard ass single summon fights that they had in FF11. Alas; this is not FF11 at all so you can't really expect it to happen. I've heard that they made the egis small out of fear for over crowding the battle field during huge fights and FATES which is completely understandable IMO. But they should have at least done them justice as summons and given them their own limit break gauge that would allow them to perform their finishers after a certain duration of being on the field. Maybe even keep it separate from the group's limit gauge and maybe make it not hit as hard just for balance purposes. I probably won't touch SMN until it gets a face-lift unfortunately :(...

as weird as it seems for smn to be like... "poison mage", if all the damage was from the pet, then summoner would be unwanted and suck at anything where you had to dodge a lot since pets don't dodge and you would be constantly resummoning. That and I think it's kind of late for a complete overhaul of the summoner this far into the game. this seems like a concern that could only have been addressed at beta.

The Summoner wasn't in the Beta so players could not make suggestions to improve upon them that is why these thread keep popping up

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Originally Posted by Dohati

as weird as it seems for smn to be like... "poison mage", if all the damage was from the pet, then summoner would be unwanted and suck at anything where you had to dodge a lot since pets don't dodge and you would be constantly resummoning. That and I think it's kind of late for a complete overhaul of the summoner this far into the game. this seems like a concern that could only have been addressed at beta.

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But pets takes less damage from attacks and the player could set the pet to follow them.

summoner class is a disgrace as of now I'm level 37 going as Arcanist because I do more damage then the advance so called summoner class even with the so called ifrit and titan they want us to to believe they are avatars from final fantasy series lol

http://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acci...106ed05f0a.jpg

ifrit is like a staff you can hold and say lol
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/VlaiBeLrntQ/maxresdefault.jpg
https://communities.netapp.com/servl...-not-pass.jpeg

you feel me lord of the ring has made ifrit that looks more like the dam ifrit avatar

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/f...ps275ce12b.png

All the summoners pet look more like beastmen pet in final fantasy xi.

Titan is like pail of rock molding together.

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Originally Posted by Jediman

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You literally copy-pasted this from a thread you made in the DPS forums. =A=()
Why are you using LotR as a comparison when the FF franchise has more then a dozen examples of Ifrit to choose from? >n>

The issue with Summoner is it's using Disease spells from the Black Mage instead if Summoning Magic to summon all elemental damage and Primals. The problem that the developers created with the Summoner job is its a Affliction Mage not a Summoner.
Black Mage's use Black Magic
Whit Mage's uses White Magic
Summoner's uses Summoning magic

Summoner's should be able to summon thunderstorms, blizzards, earth quakes, tornados, fire storms and flare as well as Primals.