Can smn be reworked into what Demonolgy Locks are?

Ok so before ya start foaming in the mouth with rage and hatred, hear me out.
If summoners are suppose to be this job were they summon these big primals into battle to wreck some stuff, then why cant we do so?So instead i thought what if we made the summons themselves into the dps/rotation akin to demon locks from WoW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzScZU8Mdrs

This vid basically sums up what i would hope smn could look like. The idea is basically Smn instead of casting DoT's and then spamming ruin and such why don't they instead summon carbuncles to run in and do dmg and then summon a demi ilfrit to to some dps and so on and so forth until you finish the rotation with demi-bahument.
The potential for the mini summons are a lot if we look at all the monsters and critters we could use. You can summon coerls to run in and attack

*Flame shield activate!*

I don't care for the idea of having multiple summoned primal up at once. Honestly, I would prefer if SMN wasn't even a pet class.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I don't care for the idea of having multiple summoned primal up at once. Honestly, I would prefer if SMN wasn't even a pet class.

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Well SE needed a pet class and in the FF universe, summoners are pretty much the closes thing I'D say.

They could stole something from everquest I'D say. Mage and Necromancer are the pet class having 1 pet out at a time (can be tank, DPS etc) but on top of that 1 pet they also have @summons@, pet that can be summoned an will last a couple of second dealing big damage b4 disapearing.

It would kinda feel like a real summoner from the FF franchise , a caster who call help that won't last.

There's no chance they would remake SMN from what it is. The only time we've seen jobs get changed that much is when they remade the game for 2.0.

A pet-focused class wouldn't work unless they resolved a lot of existing issues with pets, such as several AoEs arbitrarily bypassing their innate AoE damage reduction and the pet AI in general being kind of bad.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

A pet-focused class wouldn't work unless they resolved a lot of existing issues with pets, such as several AoEs arbitrarily bypassing their innate AoE damage reduction and the pet AI in general being kind of bad.

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But walking into a new boss fight was like having a minigame built into it, the "Which AoE gibs boogerbird" minigame

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I don't care for the idea of having multiple summoned primal up at once. Honestly, I would prefer if SMN wasn't even a pet class.

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So what would you even have summoner as? the name implies that they summon so why shouldn't they bring out summons to deal dmg?

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

A pet-focused class wouldn't work unless they resolved a lot of existing issues with pets, such as several AoEs arbitrarily bypassing their innate AoE damage reduction and the pet AI in general being kind of bad.

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If they just did what they do in the video (stand there and attack), they wouldn't need AI. You don't micromanage your pets with modern demo locks. Instead, it's about building and maintaining a swarm.
I don't know how legion addresses pet survivability, if it does at all.

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

So what would you even have summoner as? the name implies that they summon so why shouldn't they bring out summons to deal dmg?

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They could do what they do in all final fantasy games? Summon an actual primal(not egi versions) that show up do something remarkable and then go away.

If pets were temporary and you were encouraged to maintain a rotation of them, it would resolve these issues neatly. A 20 second Garuda has no need for positioning or survivability. She is much like a summon in the old FFs, especially if she makes a burst attack when she expires.

Summoner gameplay could revolve around rotating pets until you build enough to bring out a Bahamut out for that one big Akh Morne boom.

I would save the "legion" demo lock design for beastmaster myself tbh, if it was going to be used in ff 14. (didn't bother to watch vid but i am guessing from comment it was about the hand of guldan spawning dread...doggy...thingies....)

admittedly atm im a bit biased, did not like HW smn playstyle at all, but I am really digging the SB style of it XD In legion while i was still playing i did play my lock demo though, and overall the feel imo was similar to what SMN is atm (ie focus on pet, focus on self, focus on pets, focus on self, etc)

Since the focus of 4.0 is "every class has a nifty gauge thingy", why not let summoners cast spells that accumulate into a gauge which can then be used to summon a primal entity (not these little egi critters) which could deal different debuffs or damage to the boss according to who the primal is? Like a Ravana summon would deal a major slashing debuff for a time, etc. etc.

I like this suggestion a lot and it would get me to play SMN more!

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

I don't care for the idea of having multiple summoned primal up at once. Honestly, I would prefer if SMN wasn't even a pet class.

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Honestly, I feel with how Demi-bahamut works, all of the primals should have been done this way. That summons appear after a string of abilities have been done, appear to lend extra firepower, then vanish again until the next burst. Or change who you get depending on what skills you used (kind of like ninja?). Bane+Pain? Get Ifrit for the better AoE and fire DoT. Fester+Pain? Get Garuda. Summoned twice already, say hello, Bahamut.

I find Smnr to be one of the worst classes =/ The Egi's look horrible and are kind of useless. I've mained it a lot since ARR but man.. it really was just a DoT Class with a small pet on the side.

The way they did the demi bahamut seems to be a correct way.. otherwise, I would like to see FF11 Summoner returning.

To me, summoner needs to be removed and completely redone, then reintroduced in like patch 4.5 or so.

Unless demo changed significantly since I last touched WoW, it was largely hated by everyone that played it prior to Legion. The rotation was something like: cast nuke that summons pathetically weak demons -> hardcast buff to demons -> summon a pair of marginally stronger demons -> hardcast buff to demons -> hardcasted nuke -> hardcast buff to demons -> repeat. The majority of their damage came passively from Demonic Empowerment, and it had to be woven in between every single other spell or they contributed nothing but healthstones.

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

So what would you even have summoner as? the name implies that they summon so why shouldn't they bring out summons to deal dmg?

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More trances and each Trance procs Ruin to be a different spell.

At the risk of sounding like a churlish turd, SE trying to copy warlock's design in the first place is what led to SMN being the prematurely-birthed pile of convoluted slop that it is now. I'd prefer it if they just left the warlocks to Blizzard and instead focused on turning SMN into a job that is more true to its origins (summon big impressive nukes that do damage and gtfo).

Yeah making the summons appear for a big attack would really solve a lot of these issues. That's what FF summoner has always been...and it would be different than blm either way since blm is always doing big damage. Summoning the primal for one big attack would be so much fun. No need for more egis ever..

We have carbuncle minion for those people that need to have carbuncle by their side

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

At the risk of sounding like a churlish turd, SE trying to copy warlock's design in the first place is what led to SMN being the prematurely-birthed pile of convoluted slop that it is now. I'd prefer it if they just left the warlocks to Blizzard and instead focused on turning SMN into a job that is more true to its origins (summon big impressive nukes that do damage and gtfo).

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Agreed. My hope is that it'll see a big rework similar to BRD/MCH that shifts the focus from DoTs to more demi-primals and trances with egis just existing as filler or for utility.

XIV currently has 3 "pet" classes, 2 of which are from the same class. If we think about their concepts I'd say currently only SCH and MCH should have HP. MCH because for them it's no issue having to throw a turret back out if it goes down, SMN on the otherhand uses MP. As for SCH, their pet heals, so they need HP otherwise that would just be OP.

As for SMN though death to them means sacrificing a lot of MP to bring them back and even then when you get to the nitty gritty, what does a SMN's pet do that's interesting? Contagion is like the only ability that seems to do anything remotely interesting. So honestly, scrap SMN pets having HP and instead give them Aura's that effect the SMN in some way and these Aura would be the new Devotion effect.

Off top of head let's just say when you summon Titan, SMN gets dmg reduction, when Garuda is out, regen, when Ifrit is out DPS increase. When Devotion is used that AoE aura gives those following effects to all in range of the pet, so pet placement would become important for SMN, could treat it like a totem.

As for their "auto-attack" they no longer auto-attack, instead they all act like Summon bahamut, only acting when the SMN performs an action whether it be Ruin, Bio, Energy Drain, Fester etc under the same 1.5 second cooldown.

So pretty much you condense SMN pet actions to their Aura Trait, their auto-attack activated via SMN action and their Enkindle. Keep it that simple. When a pet is summoned it's treated as an effect on the SMN, they can instantly swap between pets but there is a 10 recast before being able to change pet again. Currently I'd say keep the Enkindle effects the same and maybe add a new effect to Dreadwyrm Trance that augments the Aura Trait when in said trance. Titan Trance could add dmg dealt -5% on target, Ifrit could add a DoT to target being attacked during Trance and Garuda let's say makes all Ruin spells instant cast. During Dreadwyrm Trance you wouldn't be able to change your pet, so you would need to decide beforehand which you want to use.

As for Bahamut Summon maybe keep it as is, but in all honesty I can see why SMN is a tricky beast to mess with. There is a severe lack of direction in the job, dots, pet, single target dmg, trance, summon bamaut, it just comes off as hard to syergize. I"d like to see what they do with it but honestly I do think when you compared them to the other pet jobs, they may have to remove the physical nature of the pets and just make them visible effects that add to their dmg rather than target-able creatures.

Definitely some interesting ideas in this thread. I seriously doubt SE will EVER give SMN the kind of overhaul that most of them require, but it's fun to dream! I particularly liked the idea of SMN summoning short-lived pets as part of a DPS rotation. To me, that'd make SMN feel more like a Summoner than even the so-called classic Summoners were.

Because, frankly, those old-school Summoners were little more than BLMs with a pretty coat of paint. I was pretty darned disappointed when it dawned on me that Rydia's summons, while pretty, were basically identical to Black mage nukes, just with bigger damage and a bigger MP cost. Given that Blizzard III would take care of trash mobs just as effectively and much more cheaply, late in the game I found I was hardly ever summoning at all. I feel like summon->boom->leave would make for a pretty bland job in a MMO.

That said, the pet-style Summoner in this game just isn't working very well. They are difficult to maintain, lack variety, and don't do anything particularly interesting. I wouldn't mind a change of some kind. SO not gonna happen, though!

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Honestly, I would prefer if SMN wasn't even a pet class.

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"Hey, you're a summoner? What do you summon?"

"...disappointment"

Real issue I think is that there are too many mechanical themes put into it (dots, pet, direct damage) that I think in the long run, devs just need to pick one theme and focus far more on it than any other in the job, even if it means having to completely scrap them if deemed necessary. BRD and MCH I think have this struggle as well, but I think that problem with those two jobs haven't been as bad.

Also feels like I have to point out that the 4.06 adjustment tells me that either more fixes can't be brought in until 4.1 or devs have just gotten fed up with consistently whiny SMN players.

Yeah, I suppose it'd be a step up from what SMN's do now by being able to summon tiny imp dudes and a couple dogs, but demo locks have such a boring rotation. Summon, empower, summon, empower, etc

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Originally Posted by Nezia

They could do what they do in all final fantasy games? Summon an actual primal(not egi versions) that show up do something remarkable and then go away.

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Then what would the summoner do afterwards? just spam ruin spells like they are currently doing? With this they actually are summoning the big primals to do a attack then weaving in spells that summon other beings to do dmg as well.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

SMN

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wasn't even a pet class

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http://i.imgur.com/lH5ExZq.gif

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Originally Posted by Verlyn

If pets were temporary and you were encouraged to maintain a rotation of them, it would resolve these issues neatly. A 20 second Garuda has no need for positioning or survivability. She is much like a summon in the old FFs, especially if she makes a burst attack when she expires.

Summoner gameplay could revolve around rotating pets until you build enough to bring out a Bahamut out for that one big Akh Morne boom.

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This is exactly what SMN should've been from the start.

Demo lock was crazy fun when I played it. It was all about increasing the power of your direct damage spells by having as many demons out as possible.

The bigger your swarm, the more damage you did, but each member of your swarm only showed up and attacked for ~12 seconds or so, meaning you had to seriously get the lead out in order to maximize your damage, getting the biggest number of pets out there as possible before using your strongest abilities.

And every 3 mins or so, you summoned a bigger demon that was the pinnacle of your rotation.

SMN could work in exactly this fashion: repeatedly summon smaller primal egis until you can summon the Bahamut egi for a big burst of damage.

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

Then what would the summoner do afterwards? just spam ruin spells like they are currently doing? With this they actually are summoning the big primals to do a attack then weaving in spells that summon other beings to do dmg as well.

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Personally I would like to see SMN broken off from Arcanist entirely.

Then give them spells with a thematic that fits the primals under their command that fill up the gauge to summon the related primal for a big attack on the target. So that they are effectively rotating in build up for a sustained chain of primal summons that build up to a Bahamut finisher.

The "pets" are disappointments anyways, and when they go down the slow down everything the SMN can do at the moment and rob them of emergency utility.

I (personally) really liked SMN's 2.x/3.x incarnation and would much rather it moved back towards that than in the apparent 4.0 direction.

SMN has never actually been a Summoner until DWT was a thing and became more of a Summoner with Bahamut even though his autos are a hot mess lol but honestly that should have been the direction they went from the start...SE doesn't deserve pet classes until they learn how to actually have a pet class I mean why does pets die from like a couple aoes lol and this game is all about raid dmg and unavoidable stuff *face palm* and we all know pets don't respond to anything :/