Returning Summoner question

I just picked up Summoner again after not playing one for ages. I last played a SMN when it had DoT skills and Fester spread them to other enemies... But it has changed big time it seems. What bothers me though and I wonder if I am just missing something, Carbuncle no longer attacks AT ALL.

Despite having steady and Guard (of which Guard says no attacks until attacking or being attacked) it just stands there doing nothing. When I check it says I already have Guard up, but then Carbuncle should do attacks when I am attacking or being attacked...

The only Carbuncle that seems to do ANY attack, is when I temporarily summon Ruby. So what gives? am I missing something, or was the first Carbuncle rendered useless?

Carbuncle is now just emotional support.

So...pointless. Since I am not having any emotional issues at this moment o.0 Poor Carbuncle!

Yes.. pointless. The pet haters won the battle.

Dangit, I like the extra attack power... Not to mention I miss my DoTs

SMN has been ruined.

Removed auto-attacks from all pets. They can't be targeted, they can't tank, most skills are replacements for others. I think it's currently the job with less buttons in the game. They have literally destroyed it and the worst part is that they want to to the same to every job.

I'm surprised that a PVP'esque version of every job is not a thing yet. I'm sure that level of simplification is the goal game-wide.

literally sqe has seen fit to keep the pet bar unusable as if it were an alpha game

The only thing Carbuncle does is Radiant Shield (when endwalker released it also has Searing Light, but that's now a regular action summoners do themselves), otherwise the job is now about summons and getting spells from them. It's a real shame. I don't expect them to go back to the old system but there needs to be a point to it being there, which is why in another thread I suggested it should at least do ranged auto-attacks and have a purpose in the rotation, like a buff it would give (automatically when it disappears or something) depending on which summon was just used (example: spell speed increased by Garuda phase, which would be useful when going into Ifrit phase), to make it so phases influence each other and Carbuncle is at the center of it.

It's really dumb the old pet commands are still here if they don't do anything though. I'm guessing they'll be reused by Beastmaster or something.

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Originally Posted by Ryskim

I'm surprised that a PVP'esque version of every job is not a thing yet. I'm sure that level of simplification is the goal game-wide.

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Yeah no it's not. Let's not needlessly extrapolate out of disappointment.

Summoner is now much more like what it is in traditional FFs. Calling summons to do a big flashy move and disappear.
In a game relying on GCDs a pet job will always end up feeling like an illusion of control tbh. The pet would either become your main rotation or a fancy oGCD.
It does feel stupid that carbuncle is out doing nothing on the field aside from looking cute, at that point they could just rework it to either be an auto attack or just make you summon it every time you use a barrier or something.

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Originally Posted by Sigiria

Summoner is now much more like what it is in traditional FFs. Calling summons to do a big flashy move and disappear.
In a game relying on GCDs a pet job will always end up feeling like an illusion of control tbh. The pet would either become your main rotation or a fancy oGCD.
It does feel stupid that carbuncle is out doing nothing on the field aside from looking cute, at that point they could just rework it to either be an auto attack or just make you summon it every time you use a barrier or something.

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The current Style of Summoner does have validity but its also rather hollow especialy when we consider its a class that starts on level 1.
Its not even realy flashy till close to the max level and it would need to be there way way ealier.
The rework would also have been a good time to add leviathan, ramuh and shiva.

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Originally Posted by Sigiria

Summoner is now much more like what it is in traditional FFs. Calling summons to do a big flashy move and disappear.

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Nobody tell her about FF10. Or 12. Or 13.

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Originally Posted by vetch

Nobody tell her about FF10. Or 12. Or 13.

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https://c.tenor.com/uKnqHMcRsxkAAAAC...-wont-tell.gif

People just mean it has bigger animations now when they say "it's a REAL Summoner now", ignoring the mechanics completely or the fact those big flashy effects aren't mutually exclusive with any other iteration of the SMN gameplay.

SE could have given even the old SMN those animations, changing little about how it plays, and they'd praise it just as much. But because absolutes, anyone who doesn't like the lack of substance of the new job, must also be trying to take away the new flashy animations as well.

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Originally Posted by vetch

Nobody tell her about FF10. Or 12. Or 13.

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I mean, I get your point, but I'm pretty sure she used "traditionnal" to refer to the way summons were in most FF games before FFX started to switch things around a lot more. You know, how they mostly were from FFIII to FFIX.
I don't even think that really reflects the job as it is now anyway, since Phoenix and Bahamut don't work that way, but let's be charitable here.

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Originally Posted by AlphaXXI

I mean, I get your point, but I'm pretty sure she used "traditionnal" to refer to the way summons were in most FF games before FFX started to switch things around a lot more. You know, how they mostly were from FFIII to FFIX.
I don't even think that really reflects the job as it is now anyway, since Phoenix and Bahamut don't work that way, but let's be charitable here.

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People say this, but prior to X the only FFs with a dedicated summoner job were IV, V and IX.
In IV, Rydia can learn like 20 summons has uses a lot of Black Magic (she even learns Meteor).
In IX, Garnet has like 10 Eidolons and also uses White Magic. In V, they're exclusively about summoning magic only (barring some RDM dualcast specs) and have 15 summons too.
Only Eiko can be somewhat compared to XIV in that she has five summons who are also the bulk of her offense.
If you compare XIV summon to Rydia or Garnet, it surprisingly still lacks both in summon variety and even in skillset (in XIV, when you're not summoning, you're using Ruin and... Fester. I'm not sure what you're festering, since your disease dots are gone).
I really feel that even compared to historical FF summoners, XIV fares really badly.

The worst part about all this is that despite the complete rework, they left Fester and Energy Drain in place, even though they don't fit with the new system at all. The summoner rework doesn't even have proper resource management; it's just pressing Energy Drain every 60 seconds.

They didn't even bother to remove the egi coefficient, so all the attacks that are commands to Demi such as Enkindle Solar Bahamut/Bahamut/Phoenix or Aerial Blast, Earthen Fury, and Inferno don't have the actual power displayed.
All these attacks still suffer from the egi coefficient, which reduces the total spell potency by about 10%. For example, the displayed potency of Enkindle Solar Bahamut is 1600, but its actual pot is more like 1440.
Enkindle Phoenix and Bahamut drop from 1300 to around 1170.

It was completely dumb to leave behind dusty relics from the past like the egi coefficient or Energy Drain, especially when doubling its cooldown from 30s to 60s for 2 Aetherflow stacks.

In Dawntrail, they didn't make any effort either; they had the chance to rename Fester to something more fitting with the new summoner kit, but they decided to call the spell Necrotize, even though we no longer have any DoTs.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

People say this, but prior to X the only FFs with a dedicated summoner job were IV, V and IX.
In IV, Rydia can learn like 20 summons has uses a lot of Black Magic (she even learns Meteor).
In IX, Garnet has like 10 Eidolons and also uses White Magic. In V, they're exclusively about summoning magic only (barring some RDM dualcast specs) and have 15 summons too.
Only Eiko can be somewhat compared to XIV in that she has five summons who are also the bulk of her offense.
If you compare XIV summon to Rydia or Garnet, it surprisingly still lacks both in summon variety and even in skillset (in XIV, when you're not summoning, you're using Ruin and... Fester. I'm not sure what you're festering, since your disease dots are gone).
I really feel that even compared to historical FF summoners, XIV fares really badly.

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It's why I didn't say "Summoner" but "Summons", despite her using "Summoner" in her own post, I was making a broad statement about the act of summoning and the summons themselves, removed from the need for a specific job.

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Originally Posted by AlphaXXI

It's why I didn't say "Summoner" but "Summons", despite her using "Summoner" in her own post, I was making a broad statement about the act of summoning and the summons themselves, removed from the need for a specific job.

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You're correct, I misread your post (probably because I read the whole thread in one go).
Either way, that's actually probably part of the problem- in a lot of FFs Summons are just magic nukes that anyone can use on top of other stuff. In the few where that isn't the case, there's another foundation.
I think XIV fails at both fronts anyway- the foundation in current SMN basically is as barebones as it can be (like... WHM level of dps foundation), and the summons themselves have very little variety (we have 5- soon to be 5 and a reskin, and, honestly, Phoenix kinda is a Bahamut reskin already). There's some interesting ideas with Garuda/Ifrit/Titan all having slightly different mechanics (long casts, ogcd weaving and rapid fire gcds). I still wish they added Ramuh/Leviathan/Odin and those had their own mechanics (some dot proc thing, some debuff/combo thing and a melee phase, maybe?). Something something "add depth later", later being never, I guess, CBU3.

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Originally Posted by remiff

Snip.

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Honestly I would not be surprised if the whole Aetherflow system was kept purely because the devs realized ‘oh crap, there’s no oGcds, every dps job needs those’ and then kept it in without bay other thought to it.

SMN as a whole really felt like the devs just cobbled it together for what little budget and time was left without giving it much thought beyond, ‘just fix people’s grievances with old SMN’.
People didn’t like DoTs? No more dots.
People didn’t like pets? No more pet system
People want it to be big flashy summons like before? Just reuse the old Pet attacks and actions and you’re all set.
People want to use all there summons instead of just Ifrit for bosses and Garuda for dungeons? Cycle through them all.
People want big summons instead of the Egis? Level 90 upgrade, hits the quota for big flashy attack.
Oops. Budget ran out for the job, ship it out anyway.

I hope for 8.0 they step back, take ShB egi assault system, and the Gemshine system and make something that makes more people happy. Instead of the objectivelyc most boring job in the entire game.

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Originally Posted by vetch

Nobody tell her about FF10. Or 12. Or 13.

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Ah, yes, nothing more traditional than good ol' FF12 summons or fans favorite ff13 summoning. Also even if both have the summons stays for a bit they're both temporary so in function not that different from demi-bahumut and demi-phoenix. You have more of a case with ff10 but then again if you just wanna be smug, what are you doing? FF11 is right here.

Point is, out of 16 main entries FF, 9 have summons that show up only to do one attack, 2 don't have summons, 2 have summons temporarily out on the field, 2 have persistent summons that function as a pet and 1 is FF16.

I'm not gonna argue with how the gameplay feels, I can understand people not liking it. But honestly I think the current summoner feels thematically way closer to what summoning has been in FF history rather than coughing on a monster to give it the flu then give it an infection while a little deformed aberration sometimes gives a hit in between two pleas to be put out of it's misery. The previous summoner felt more like the mad scientist job.

Oh and also it's "him"

I mean, the lack of controllable summons before PS2 was mostly due to technical limitations. And I'd say FF10, while not my favorite, was pretty iconic and defining as far as Summoners in the series go. There's a reason the subsequent mainline games never went back to summons being just big spells.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

I mean, the lack of controllable summons before PS2 was mostly due to technical limitations. And I'd say FF10, while not my favorite, was pretty iconic and defining as far as Summoners in the series go. There's a reason the subsequent mainline games never went back to summons being just big spells.

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This. It was the most logical route to take for summoners to have their own identity apart from being glorified black/white magic spell casters.

And also, if you do want to have them be just big spells... Actually make them feel like big expensive nuke spells. Not something you spam every 8 seconds ad nauseam until it feels like you aren't actually doing much anything. Even WHM Holy spam feels more powerful.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

And also, if you do want to have them be just big spells... Actually make them feel like big expensive nuke spells. Not something you spam every 8 seconds ad nauseam until it feels like you aren't actually doing much anything. Even WHM Holy spam feels more powerful.

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Indeed. Aside from removing the pet mechanics, making it instant cast spells lost the impact each summon have.

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Originally Posted by Sigiria

Ah, yes, nothing more traditional than good ol' FF12 summons or fans favorite ff13 summoning. Also even if both have the summons stays for a bit they're both temporary so in function not that different from demi-bahumut and demi-phoenix. You have more of a case with ff10 but then again if you just wanna be smug, what are you doing? FF11 is right here.

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Summon Ally is as 'traditional', in the strict sense, as Summon Cutscene is -- insofar as it's a facet of the series that's been present for several iterations. That's really all you need to be a 'tradition'.

This does get in the way of invoking the word 'tradition' as a talisman.

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Point is, out of 16 main entries FF, 9 have summons that show up only to do one attack, 2 don't have summons, 2 have summons temporarily out on the field, 2 have persistent summons that function as a pet and 1 is FF16.

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8 cutscene summoners, 2 non-summoners, 5 ally summoners, and then FF16. Counting both old and new versions of FF7, and not counting FF14 since it's the subject of argument (and also it uses both types of summons, lmao).

Also I don't really consider the distinction between temporary and permanent allies to be relevant here, since there are equally large distinctions in the cutscene varieties that you're ignoring to make your argument.

Like, FF6's 'only once per battle from an item you choose and equip beforehand' magicite system has as much or more conceptual distance from FF14's spam rotation, as temporary allies do from permanent ones.

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I'm not gonna argue with how the gameplay feels, I can understand people not liking it. But honestly I think the current summoner feels thematically way closer to what summoning has been in FF history rather than coughing on a monster to give it the flu then give it an infection while a little deformed aberration sometimes gives a hit in between two pleas to be put out of it's misery. The previous summoner felt more like the mad scientist job.

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Couldn't disagree more. You spend most of your time rapid-casting weak Magic Missiles, and when you do get to summon, everything's instant so you don't get the visceral experience of a charge-and-release cast, plus your main 3 still look like deformed digimon for the whole leveling experience and whenever you get synced down.

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Originally Posted by vetch

You spend most of your time rapid-casting weak Magic Missiles, and when you do get to summon, everything's instant so you don't get the visceral experience of a charge-and-release cast, plus your main 3 still look like deformed digimon for the whole leveling experience and whenever you get synced down.

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Them looking deformed is more of an issue with old summoner than new summoner if we're being honest, and they're not going to change when you obtain the full forms. As for the weak magic missiles, yeah, that's an issue. And that could be fixed by giving each elemental phase more unique actions with specific effects instead of a (barely for the most part) recolored ruin. As for the act of summoning needing a "charge and release", if anything the demis should get a cast time, since they're the culmination of the rotation (and you get the most instant stuff from them). Because the elemental summons are there as fodder to get your rotation going, and as you said prior to level 90 they're nothing to write home about, it wouldn't make thematic sense to make such a big deal out of them.

I also think Solar Bahamut needs to have buildup, like a gauge of umbral aether that's required to shift Bahamut from astral to umbreal. THAT would create a "charge and release".

And aetherflow being linked to Energy Drain is just weird, when it has a different effect for Scholar. Would make more sense and honestly feel less vestigial to get it directly from trances. Especially when the low-level carbuncle-themed equivalent to bahamut trance does almost nothing. And give SMN the old energy drain back (along with shadowflare if you're not going to go back to the other DoTs).