Summoners as a tanking class

A few times now, I've been in a party where we've been left without a tank and waited endlessly for another to come, since there clearly aren't enough. Occasionally, though, instead of quitting, we've had the crazy idea of tanking with Titan. Nearly every time we have, we've been fairly successful and were able to complete it without one.

Currently, Titan isn't an ideal tank; but as a last resort, he can be okay. With slight increases to defense and ability to hold hate and some new commands to give more control over his actions, SMN could easily tank.

Of course, that doesn't mean SMN should only be a tanking class. Their main role should stay DPS, but having the option to tank would not only reduce wait times, but allow for some more diversity, allowing a magic job to fulfill a role that has traditionally been reserved for melee characters.

In case anyone is curious, here's Titan finishing Neverreap:

http://i.imgur.com/DlzvY7k.png

What do you guys think?

I think that the Titan-egi does have an identity crisis (outside of solo content), but I dont think making summoner be able to queue as a tank is the right step. You are correct in saying that it would reduce wait times, but it would be catastrophic for high level content. There are various reasons for this, the first being that the damage output of a summoner is much higher than a tank, and secondly, if Titan-egi was made viable, their survivability would be far too strong (if titan egi dies, you are still alive, and just need to swiftcast, resummon).

There is also the fact that this would make Arcanist the single best class in the game, with the class evolving into a Tank, Healer, and DPS, which could possibly hurt the diversity of jobs that are played.

Edit: If you want an example of why this is broken, remember that in 2.3 Ramuh could be tanked by the egi

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

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Well to be fair, if Titan dies and you resummon him, he'll never ever get aggro back, because he doesn't have provoke.
Still, speaking as someone who's Titan-tanked many MANY times for my FC, the reason why it's not a more viable idea is twofold:

1. The way you tank with Titan is incredibly goofy and awkward. Using his cooldown abilities, putting him on guard and intersecting yourself at strategic points to make him take different enemies, specifically targeting foe after foe... it's a circus. And,

2. Tanking effectively requires very precise timing at a lot of critical moments. Pets in this game do not respond quickly, ever, at all, under any circumstances. Barring a re-write of the netcode (which I hope is coming anyway for the sake of the game's health), the nail in the coffin of pet-tanking in any serious fashion is latency. It's sad, because the idea is awesome, but reality doesn't bear it out... at least at the moment.

Titan egi's defense doesn't scale with the increasingly spiked attack power of Heavensward's mobs starting from 50+, making him really weak to solo boss-type fates while leveling SMN to 60, you have to spend a lot of time healing him. Titan egi only have 1 mitigation skill, which also isn't very useful, only a few seconds durations I think.

Overgeared SMN with Titan-egi I think can tank all bosses in lv 60 dungeons, well I've done some neverreap and fractal with only my titan egi as the tank because the tank really wanna be a dps. Have to be really careful with trashes though. If you really wanna do it the healers and the dpses must be really skillful, knowledgeable and careful to do it.

As mentioned for the reasons above, I just don't see how the Egi can be a viable tank without a complete rework of the pet mechanic or the summoner job.

Pets are never going to be as powerful as a paladin, warrior, or dark knight. And I don't see how many people would like the thought of turning Summoner from a caster to a tank. People already complain enough that SMN only has 1 nuke and pets instead of traditional FF summon spells. You will have riots if you change the Abilities and stats of Summoner from a caster to a tank ; or even worse responses, make SMN the only job that fills 2 roles at the same time (SMN would probably beat WAR in terms of combining tankiness and dps potential if SMN dps is kept as is and made a viable tank).

I think tanking with Egi is something people do as an emergency measure. It is sub-optimal, but it beats sitting in a dungeon waiting for a tank. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but there's a difference between an improvised party tactic and intentional gameplay design. A healer could tank simply by having enough VIT Accessories and heal spamming, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good way to design a party.

Adding tanking viability to the Egi will break the Trinity and this will have to be done for every other job/class as well. Some classes obviously already push boundaries, but it can still be considered power creep at the moment.

Nobody is consciously destroying the Trinity as your suggestion would do. If that is your intention, that's fine. Just plainly state that is how you want to play. Otherwise, we applaud your work and your diss of the tank in your party.

Due to the word limit, I had to cut a lot from my original post, but I wasn't meaning that SMN should be made from DPS into a pure tanking class. I also acknowledged that currently, Titan doesn't have the skills or stats to function as a solid tank, and even if it did, there would need to be changes made to SMN's spells, to ensure that its tanking abilities are equivalent to that of the other tanking classes. Implementing something like a stance change that would allow for jobs to change their roles could alleviate this problem, however, by altering the effects of certain skills and allowing/disallowing the use of others. Furthermore, by making it so that these stance changes could not be changed in duties, it could be ensured that players couldn't abuse them by rapidly changing back and forth between roles. In this way, a party would still consist of one tank, one healer, and two DPS. The only change would be that there would be more options for how people can tank.

Considering that, I also don't see a reason why the same couldn't also be done for other jobs either. If you look at how WAR or DRK function in traditional FF games, for example, allowing the two to be able to function as either DPS or a tank would not be that extreme of an idea. So, even though I was specifically suggesting it for SMN, the same could be applied to the other jobs as well.

Dont think they would make smn a tanking class but that doesnt mean I personally am against it!

Pet control in this game is terribad and extremely slow and clunky. One of the wost I have ever seen

Wows hunter class as an example, was awesomee, fast, efficient, pet held hate NO MATTER WHAT..and the pet would almost insta regained hate if pet died and had to be revived etc, they did it 100% right. ffxiv has a long long way to go to make any pet job smooth and fluid like that.

In ffxi bst was no better, the job itself was ok..and fun!!! but again the control of pet was painfully bad.

Would love your idea IF they learned from wow about pet control, ability to adequately and quickly heal pet AND pet hate generation.

I always thought the same thing on every job would be great If square would focus on each jobs secondary role. As much as I would love new classes or jobs I would like square to focus on roles. Would be great if each job could queue in the dungeons in either role. Example would love if square added more healing spells for PLD or make DRG secondary role as tank and give it a few defensive skills. I remember in a live letter or something that it was a possibility that jobs would have a secondary role.

Often had titan egi tanking or tanking with him in dungeons... even when at level - Sohm Al comes to mind. Tends to do a better job than a lot of DF tanks...

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

Would love your idea IF they learned from wow about pet control, ability to adequately and quickly heal pet AND pet hate generation.

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Sadly, this. Going from one MMO where I could command my pet to slash at four specific enemies and have him complete those orders in a mere couple seconds before sending him off to kite them while I debuff to the other where Contagion likes ti wait not only to complete the current Windblade but also the next one queued (not as bad anymore)... well, one feels like having two in-sync players at your command and the other would leave you bereft of hope for pet classes.