ACN/SMN should be unlinked from SCH entirely

Though I doubt it will happen, I feel the most ideal approach to "fix" SMN would be to make SMN evolve from ACN (as now), but separate SCH entirely but making them a special job you unlock similar to the new 3.0 jobs like DRK. Basically, a special job you unlock and start at level 30. It can require ACN 30 if you want, but should NOT draw abilities from ACN.

With that in mind:

-ACN should lose Resurrect; it should go to SCH
-ACN should lose Eye for an Eye; it should go to SCH
-SCH's dps line-up of skills should be completely rewritten to account for no longer being a branch of ACN, which is why this will probably never happen

What should NOT happen:

-SMN pets shouldn't get bigger, become "real summons"; there's nothing wrong with egis, they look fine, no one needs a screen full of 25% size titans blocking everything as far as the eye used to be able to see
-How SMNs generally work should not vary greatly, just relatively minor tweaks. Should still have most dps come from the SMN proper, still be a DoT class, etc.

What I'd like to see happen, regardless of any of the above:

- Make normal pet attacks like Garuda's Wind Blade an AUTO ATTACK that can be freely interrupted by any other action (like, if I use Aerial Slash, Garuda should use it instantly, instead of ignoring me because she's busy "casting" Wind Blade). This would be one of the biggest QoL changes possible for SMN.
- Contagion should become a SMN action, and no longer a Garuda pet action.
- Pets should be given more purpose and identity.
-- Enkindle damage should be bumped up to account for the long cooldown, and instead of stuff like Wind Blade, pets should get a lower cooldown "big attack" that doesn't require something like Enkindle to trigger (like Predator Claws for Garuda or something - these attacks can have special attributes if you want). This would help give SMN better burst damage besides Energy Drain (I mean, when you need to kill a mob from 100% to 0% really quickly... not everthing lets you roll 3 DoTs and Fester it away... it may have already killed you or wrecked the PT by then.)
-- Pets should get some kind of buff skill to really differentiate each other, like Titan be able to Earthen Ward the whole PT, Garuda Haste the PT, Ifrit give damage buff to PT, etc. The buff can be relatively light -- it will still result in a raidwide buff, even if it's not super strong, giving SMN more of a reason to care about their pet and what it's doing.

Seriously, SMN burst damage is pretty garbage. The complete opposite of BLM. If you're at around appropriate iLVL for something and it requires you to kill adds quickly, good luck if you're rolling double SMN or something in there. Can only Energy Drain so many times before you run out of Aetherflow. It's like no one on the dev team even plays SMN...

Speaking as a SCH, get away from my base class, or I will cut you.

SCH has more to do with ACN than SMN does besides the carby summon which you can't even use after you get the SMN job which sucks. Also Egis suck, I don't want huge summons but mini versions of their full versions would be great even if changed a little. No reason a titan summon cannot be the size of a Roegadyn etc.

:confused:

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

Though I doubt it will happen, I feel the most ideal approach to "fix" SMN would be to make SMN evolve from ACN (as now), but separate SCH entirely but making them a special job you unlock similar to the new 3.0 jobs like DRK. Basically, a special job you unlock and start at level 30. It can require ACN 30 if you want, but should NOT draw abilities from ACN.

With that in mind:

-ACN should lose Resurrect; it should go to SCH
-ACN should lose Eye for an Eye; it should go to SCH
-SCH's dps line-up of skills should be completely rewritten to account for no longer being a branch of ACN, which is why this will probably never happen

What should NOT happen:

-SMN pets shouldn't get bigger, become "real summons"; there's nothing wrong with egis, they look fine, no one needs a screen full of 25% size titans blocking everything as far as the eye used to be able to see
-How SMNs generally work should not vary greatly, just relatively minor tweaks. Should still have most dps come from the SMN proper, still be a DoT class, etc.

What I'd like to see happen, regardless of any of the above:

- Make normal pet attacks like Garuda's Wind Blade an AUTO ATTACK that can be freely interrupted by any other action (like, if I use Aerial Slash, Garuda should use it instantly, instead of ignoring me because she's busy "casting" Wind Blade). This would be one of the biggest QoL changes possible for SMN.
- Contagion should become a SMN action, and no longer a Garuda pet action.
- Pets should be given more purpose and identity.
-- Enkindle damage should be bumped up to account for the long cooldown, and instead of stuff like Wind Blade, pets should get a lower cooldown "big attack" that doesn't require something like Enkindle to trigger (like Predator Claws for Garuda or something - these attacks can have special attributes if you want). This would help give SMN better burst damage besides Energy Drain (I mean, when you need to kill a mob from 100% to 0% really quickly... not everthing lets you roll 3 DoTs and Fester it away... it may have already killed you or wrecked the PT by then.)
-- Pets should get some kind of buff skill to really differentiate each other, like Titan be able to Earthen Ward the whole PT, Garuda Haste the PT, Ifrit give damage buff to PT, etc. The buff can be relatively light -- it will still result in a raidwide buff, even if it's not super strong, giving SMN more of a reason to care about their pet and what it's doing.

Seriously, SMN burst damage is pretty garbage. The complete opposite of BLM. If you're at around appropriate iLVL for something and it requires you to kill adds quickly, good luck if you're rolling double SMN or something in there. Can only Energy Drain so many times before you run out of Aetherflow. It's like no one on the dev team even plays SMN...

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Heavensward inc., so the combat/ stat overhaul will determine the outcome of SMNs/ SCHs. That being said, I don't see the logic in wanting "fix" SMN by unlinking it from SCH (which I am in favour of), and yet you want to then remove a SMN's utility... Why..? :confused:

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Originally Posted by Kittyband

SCH has more to do with ACN than SMN does besides the carby summon which you can't even use after you get the SMN job which sucks. Also Egis suck, I don't want huge summons but mini versions of their full versions would be great even if changed a little. No reason a titan summon cannot be the size of a Roegadyn etc.

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The new SMN-specific limit break (in 3.0) will most likely be a fully sized summon. I don't want any additional player sized avatars on my screen, thank you very much -- I quite like my amorphous egi.

Ifrit and Titan are pretty much human sized in game already, except they hover. So don't really see the problem with primals the size of Lalas or slightly bigger maybe the size of a small end Roegadyn for such summons as Titan when they're already pretty big as is.

Cutting SCH off from ACN does make more sense than cutting off SMN which so many people are suggesting, first off SCH has no business with those intelligence traits that come from ACN, especially if you removed SMN from the equation. Secondly, ACN is a DPS class. Think of the new players (like myself, last year.) that start playing the class as a DPS and actually want to continue doing so instead of being forced to stay as ACN or become a healer at 30+?
To the people suggesting just that, quit being so selfish.

I don't think it really matters if they stay linked looking at the big picture. Don't forget we have only branched off into our jobs since lvl30. So we have only had 20 lvl's worth of progression with each job (that's not a lot) and ARR itself is still a young game. It's a safe assumption that as our job's further progress they will start to become more removed from the base class and truly gain unique identities with only a few similarities.

I'm fine with SMN remaining a DoT class. I think elemental DoTs would make more sense. They can have the same effect or a similar effect as the current dots.We go from a poison wielding caster to a caster who channels the power of the primals into an egi who is a portion of the primal. I know I'm not the only person who thinks this way. There isn't any other job in the game that has so many posts about people being unhappy with the way the job is. SE has said that the reason they haven't added BLU or RDM is because they don't want to ruin the iconic image of those jobs. What about the iconic image of SMN? Traditionally SMN is a powerhouse with very flashy offensive and defensive magic in the form of these impressive summons. In FFXIV we're a poison wielding caster with a tiny pet that we have very little control over. I do want new designed egi's. They look extremely rushed. I want more abilities like enkindle. I want to feel like a summoner. Our pet feels like a small part of the job.

If they did split. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a year before we can play a job that had its base class ripped out of it. So, it doesn't matter if Sch or Smn lose acn, it's going to be a year before we can play as either.

I disagree with giving summoners more burst directly. They aren't meant to be bursty like a blm, it's a dot and summon job.

One thing I would REALLY love to see though, is a way to put all of your dots on a target with 1 GCD. It could have a CD, or not, idk, but something like this would be pretty awesome imo and would buff smn burst, but not directly.
With this, you could use 1 gcd to get your dots, then fester(which is off gcd, so we're still on the same global)

Edit: More on-topic, I also disagree with splitting smn/sch.
They both work just fine right now, I don't think splitting them up would be worth what effort it would take because at that point their basically going to resign an entire job, and for what? Because people think smn is weak?

Wake up call people, just because summoner isn't god tier like they were before fcob doesn't mean they are bad by any means. Summoners can do good dps in all content in the game right now, they got a buff to ease the mp issue, just because blm is pulling ahead doesn't mean it needs to be buffed.

You can play a summoner in any content in the game and excel. Could the job use tweaks? Maybe, yes, but you could say the same for any other job.

and do note of the change on how SpS will affect DOTs. that's something to ponder upon

You leave my Resurrection alone, god damn it. One of the best parts of being a Summoner is being able to resurrect people, allowing the heals to continue during tough spots in combat, and the fact that dots and Egi damage means doing so doesn't even reeally hurt overall dps that much.

Summoner and Scholar do not need such deep reaching changes.

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Originally Posted by Bombast

You leave my Resurrection alone, god damn it. One of the best parts of being a Summoner is being able to resurrect people, allowing the heals to continue during tough spots in combat, and the fact that dots and Egi damage means doing so doesn't even reeally hurt overall dps that much.

Summoner and Scholar do not need such deep reaching changes.

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With the direction of the game, I disagree. Yoshi-P said himself that SCH / SMN was a failure. DRK was originally supposed to be the other gladiator job. SMN and SCH have been hard to balance so they have abandoned the dual job idea. Yoshi said that the latest SMN changes were difficult to implement because they couldn't do anything that would be a buff to SCH. The jobs need to be split up.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

Yoshi-P said himself that SCH / SMN was a failure.

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That keeps getting thrown out, and people keep asking for a source, and yet, I see none.

I have no doubt that Yoshi-P said something about dual-job classes being tough and undesirable at this point, but quit throwing the word 'failure' around. Nothing failed. No class has been withdrawn, or nerfed so bad its unusable, or buffed so heavily its broken. It was, perhaps, a failed experiment. But the jobs themselves are not failures.

I really hope they do split the two...got my fingers crossed. >.<

no need to split the two. they just need to implement job skills that will define one from the other. the base class is just there. what needs expanding are job skills.

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Originally Posted by rawker

no need to split the two. they just need to implement job skills that will define one from the other. the base class is just there. what needs expanding are job skills.

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This.

It looks like they are completely abandoning class abilities for Heavensward. So we will get several new job abilities for both SCH and SMN, which should be enough to "separate" the jobs and make them stand out....

I would like to see some improvement on SMNs burst damage, but not necessarily make it much higher, just give them some better options than wasting Aetherflow on Energy Drain or something.

DRG is good a burst damage, and they totally outshine MNK in that department (for example), but MNK have higher sustained DPS, so they balance each other out. Same could be done with SMN and BLM.

As for the egis... They wouldn't have to take up more space than another player. Titan could be the size of a Roe for example(like someone mentioned).

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Originally Posted by Craiger

It looks like they are completely abandoning class abilities for Heavensward.

As for the egis... They wouldn't have to take up more space than another player. Titan could be the size of a Roe for example(like someone mentioned).

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This is exactly why the jobs don't need to be split. Going Heavensward it seems pretty obvious any new abilities will be unique to that job, so SMN/SCH will no longer be treading on each others toes. All SCH would need is some abilities that increase it's healing repertoire/potency. Perhaps in the form of a third fairy that is dedicated to AoE healing as well as a single target Reraise spell, which could work similar to Enkindle allowing the SCH to select which target the fairy will cast it on. So when that target died they would be instantly raised.

All SMN needs is a slight increase to DPS output via new abilities and tweaks to Enkindle/Egi.

In Heavensward SE is just adding multiple new Job actions so there is no need to split the Scholar from Arcanist.

What is this going to accomplish?

People already complain that summoner is just an arcanist with fester. Removing the Scholar job from arcanist is NOT going to fix summoners. The issues with 'how a summoner feels' is much deeper than the job that also branches from the base class.

First of all, we have what is essentially death magic (poison and disease) coupled with elemental based pets. It's like taking an elementalist class from any other game (or even blm) and slapping it together with a warlock or necromancer but then doing nothing to try and fuse them together so it makes sense, but that is what it is. It's not going to change. Moving on.

Second summoners aren't just basically arcanists with fester. The job gets spur and enkindle too! Oh and of course tri-disaster which is a disaster of a spell. (the ratio of potency to mp plus the time it takes away from your regular priority/rotation makes it a detriment)

The problem I see with the job is that it never really gets anything of it's own.

There's the extra summon spell, but it's summoner so I'd think having more things to summon would be a given. Plus consider that summon and the trouble it can get you into with certain encounters and you'll see some of it's steam taken away real fast.

Tri-disaster is essentially a much weaker long range version of blizzard 2, and save for a couple of rare instances is not worth casting period.

Spur and enkindle are 'ok' they're not really job defining and enkindle on it's long ass CD isn't exceedingly useful. It's certainly not as useful as say fester is.

Fester is really all summoners have that is a constant variable in how the job is played. But really when you think about it, fester is just a continuation of the base class's playstyle. So except for essentially 2 minor spells and one useless one, nothing really changes between arcanist and summoner. So I kind of have to ask.. why even have summoner? Why not just give fester to arcanists and call it a job?

Look at scholar and how drastically it changes, Adloquim, Succor, Leeches, Sacred soil and Lustrate. Of course they're all healing oriented spells and of course that'll change how the job is played. But notice how lustrate and sacred soil operate off of aether flow stacks. Summoners get one extra spell that works with this mechanic, fester. Why couldn't something be tied into aether flow for the egi? A decent increase to spur perhaps and something flashy while spending a stack?

But it's not just scholars vs. summoners on their post job abilities that are defining characteristics. Dragoons get their jumps which are varying degrees of useful (granted SE dropped the ball on damage negation or even reduction when using them but.. ) blms get more defining spells, as do monks, bards, ect... Hell Blms get freeze which is a big increase to blizzard 2, summoners get tri-disaster? A weaker version of a level 12 spell at... level 40... :-|

So where are the spells that define summoners?

Also aside from the horrid graphics of the egi. (Which by the way you can't tell me their graphics were lowered to reduce distractions or for any sort of hardware capabilities, that's bullshit. Look at carbuncle, look at fairies. Both have nicely detailed models and good texturing and they work just fine. I'm not saying we need a titan or garuda as big as the primals themselves, that would be stupid, but some more detail or better models wouldn't be impossible now would it?) Anyway aside from the graphic hideousness. There's very little interaction with the egi after they're summoned. Sure you should cast spur, rouse, enkindle but its never anything more than just hitting off gcd buffs just like every other class does, which aren't taking up two of their job specified abilities.

So maybe instead of saying "Oh this class needs to just be completely remade" (because that is not going to happen at this point), or "Summoners should be split from this or scholars split from that (which won't fix anything.) Try thinking of smaller things that could be done to spruce the job up. Maybe shift its focus a little more from dot dot dot to pet pet pet. Or maybe replace or rework some of the more useless spells, tridisaster would be a good place to start. How about arguing for an extra spell to make up for the one that is lost for Summon III (summoning spells shouldn't count, it's a summoner job. Plus scholar pets don't count against their 5 job abilities between 30 and 50)