SMN Weapon / Identity

Just a quick thought on summoner hope some people agree.

So as a smn main since release I love how smn has evolved in 6.0. The only thing I'm still not quite in love with and never was is the expression of weapon, the book, which is only what it is due to being tied to sch.

Really surprised this never changed or they didn't just make smn a job separately that can just start at lv 30 removing any archanist dna.

Since we are stuck with the books, which have the worst available glamours imo compared to other jobs, why not change the expression of how they represent the job?

In the most recent iteration of smn carbuncle does nothing but stand there lol. It's only interaction is with Radiant Aegis. This i'd argue is where expression could best take place.

Instead of some rather basic looking design to the book why not have carbuncle take on design changes like a weapon would. Just decouple the only skill he is connected to and it is basically just a signifier that you are a smn and not a sch at a glance. Make it so when the class is equipped carbuncle is auto summoned. Then carbuncle is technically your weapon and not the book. Then you can get glamours for the pet, for example - Titania would drop a grimoire that summons an faerie inspired carbuncle when equiped (maybe faerie wings, different colorings etc). Or Omega would be a grayscale carbuncle with tech inspired limbs.

With primal related fights you would actually get a scaled down model of the actual primal (not an egi).

This concept can work for sch too just everything with a faerie base. Which would mean a scaled down Titania for that specific fight! No need to decouple abilities for them though as they would always have a faerie and not disrupt the disbelief that each skin/glamour could use the skills of the original faerie.

I'm not suggesting a change in how the skills work or interact or even how the pets switch out on ability use. Just that the base pet that follows you around and shows that you are a sch or a smn be what gets the cool glamours versus the books if we have to keep them. There are only so many ways you can dress up a book.

While an awesome idea and one that I would be completely down for, there is just no way they would put that amount of work on the development team just for glam purposes. Fun idea though!

Honestly that's a great concept and would make me like the book much more.

I hate books because there's only so much you can do with it's design and most of the time it ends up being some sort of cumbersome spike-plated cover that makes absolute zero sense for a spellbook. Not even that as a book user SMN collectively with SCH gets less unique appearances than other jobs, because half of them are shared models.

Honestly, this is the best we can reasonably ask for:

It needs to be something that is similar to the book (held in left hand,) it can use separate animations, maybe, but if it needs new animations, it's harder to implement. In that sense, I would look at it this way. A mace/whip/scepter/wand in the right hand, and a glowing focus in your left hand. You could reuse every single animation with minimal touchup and still allow books to exist. If it's a glowing hand with them holding a magical rune, then you can differentiate it from books while still functionally being a book.

Also, if any class deserves to be yoinked off of Arcanist, it's Scholar. Especially now where it shares only 2% of skills instead of the original 80 or 90%. But it might cause more problems yoinking scholar off than leaving as is, but removing books from the class that makes no sense to still have books is a good choice. Doing it in a way that is as minimally expensive as possible for the dev team to do is the best way to handle it. Especially since they'd need to still be able to use legacy books as glam. And, since I'm not certain if you can have animation sets changing based on the weapon skin you're holding, it makes the most sense for it to be something that can fit in place.

Arcanist, Scholar and summoner all revolve around using magic geometry to cast spells. It is such an ingrained concept in the world building that replacing the weapon is a silly idea. Carbuncle changing sounds more like the egi-glamour system that was promised in 3.5

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The update includes glamours for Emerald Carbuncle, Topaz Carbuncle, and Ruby Carbuncle, with more scheduled for future patches

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Realistically the best decision is to simply delete summoner. It is an utter abortion that no longer has relation to the base class. At least scholar still pretends to be tactically minded. The monkey’s paw fulfilment of bringing sch and smn closer by granting smn a new-healer style rotation is nothing short of insulting and symptomatic of just how much more they now value pandering over quality.

while i agree books are boring.

brd has the worst weapon glam imo

Really would just be happier if they would quit just making the SCH and SMN weapons different colors and actually design different weapons

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Really would just be happier if they would quit just making the SCH and SMN weapons different colors and actually design different weapons

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I hate that too, it gives me the impression that I have a more limited array of options with the cloned examples.

What I would hope the most with the given situation, is more 'out of the box' weapons, like the Ktisis book or the recent SCH painting set. I think more books could have projected glyphs or something like that to compensate. They always go over the top with the spiky and bulky designs and to me all it does is just making the book uglier and really impractical.

It would be cool if the next SMN artifact weapon had their gemstones floating above the book.

Contracts are done with blood .., maybe use some kind of knife or stylized tool (looking a bit like a knife) that cuts into your own hand when summoning (but self hurting might be like forbidden in some countries??)
...and ehen casting, use it a bit like wand, when auto-attacking (some Snm still do that xD), thrash it like a knife?

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Originally Posted by Raikai

They always go over the top with the spiky and bulky designs and to me all it does is just making the book uglier and really impractical.

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BRD bows as well.

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Originally Posted by vetch

BRD bows as well.

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Oh, for sure! Even the Harp bows, which for me are the saving grace there, they are really 'over-designed'. The number of spikes and cumbersome parts make them look really janky.

You know, thinking about it... Books would be way more desirable if, for the most part, they had really simple designs, but the effort went towards special effects when you have it open: more sigils, floating elements like animated illustrations, etc.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Oh, for sure! Even the Harp bows, which for me are the saving grace there, they are really 'over-designed'. The number of spikes and cumbersome parts make them look really janky.

You know, thinking about it... Books would be way more desirable if, for the most part, they had really simple designs, but the effort went towards special effects when you have it open: more sigils, floating elements like animated illustrations, etc.

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Or interesting artwork on the pages...

Think about it, I find a raggedy bestial grimoire in Sohm Al and you're telling me the barbarian sage who owned it before me didn't so much as doodle in the margins?