I MISS THE OLD SUMMONER!

I shall try to keep this short...

I have played XIV since the PS3 beta back in 2013. I wanted to play the 1.0 version before this point, however the lack of a Summoner class was the deal breaker for me. So naturally once it was announced as one of the new jobs for 2.0, I jumped straight on board! I have been a Summoner main ever since.

Naturally I have experienced every version and rework of Summoner and each version has had it's pros and cons. However, when I look at them all side by side I have to say the original version comes up on top! - Or rather a version akin to it comes up on top..

The original Summoner had a unique gameplay style that really helped give it a true identity - We could command our summons in the form of true pets whilst casting DoTs to keep a constant flow of DPS - When I played as this version of the Summoner, it really felt like my summons (Egi) were fighting alongside me and the ability to issue them commands added to that feeling because I was interacting with them!

However, if we look at the current Summoner - All of the unique gameplay/mechanics have been stripped away - We no longer have the Egi engage in combat (it just sits there doing nothing....) and we can no longer issue commands or interact with them in any way. Furthermore, the DoT's have been removed also, meaning there is quite literally nothing left of the traits that made Summoner unique and gave it an identity!...

The current Summoner is all visuals and nothing more - Sure when you cast a Demi/Gem summon and see it fill the screen looks super cool!...But, there comes a point where you've seen those same animations so many times now that the visual element just isn't enough!...Summoner truly needs something more than just visuals!

I honestly believe that the community would have fully embraced the original Summoner had it's visuals matched closer to the current Summoner - So have the Egi look closer to their Primal version and actually look like a living being, and have the DoTs be Primal element based!

I do however think Demi-Bahamut was a great addition and is what the 3.0 Summoner should have got instead of Dreadwyrm Trance! - So I guess I believe the ideal Summoner to be something more like it's 4.0 version, but retaining a focus on the Egi being a true pet that fights alongside you!

I agree. I agree

Most of new summoner is flash and ruin spam. People hated the idea of ruin spam. Strange all it took to make some people love it was call it titan mode etc.

If it wasn't easy, I don't think people would defend it. People seem to care more about the idea of an easy class to play with your brain off than having a good class fantasy of summoner and to me that is sad.
Sometimes I have done a mechanic and thought wow that would been much harder using old summoner. But then I remember I found old summoner much more fun too so I would have had the motivation to figure it out.

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Originally Posted by Milea

I agree. I agree

Most of new summoner is flash and ruin spam. People hated the idea of ruin spam. Strange all it took to make some people love it was call it titan mode etc.

If it wasn't easy, I don't think people would defend it. People seem to care more about the idea of an easy class to play with your brain off than having a good class fantasy of summoner and to me that is sad.
Sometimes I have done a mechanic and thought wow that would been much harder using old summoner. But then I remember I found old summoner much more fun too so I would have had the motivation to figure it out.

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I agree with this also - When the Summoner rework first came in 6.0, I was initially all for it because I was enthralled by the new visuals and full Primal summons. However after playing it for two expansions now those pretty visuals are simply not enough!...I've grown bored of them and now wanting something more from the job that it no longer brings! - At least with the older Summoner we had that in the form of pet management and DoT upkeep. It was fun to play and kept me engaged because we had to actually do stuff and pay attention!...Now with the current Summoner it's just, sit back and press one or two buttons and watch the pretty visuals play on a loop...That's it, literally nothing more!...

I agree the old Summoner would have difficulty with current fight mechanic trends - However, I think this method of trying to make content more engaging is a lazy attempt on SE's part...Boss fights now have essentially become a form of bullet hell game, where you have to be constantly on the move and dodging none stop, otherwise you die....It's literally to the point now where in order to successfully dodge a mechanic we have to move before the telegraph even appears!...Which defies the entire point of a telegraph!!...It also means players who are new to a fight are essentially being punished simply for being new and not knowing a telegraph would appear before it appears!!...This design is beyond moronic!!...It would be fine for the odd battle, but not as a foundation to the games combat as a whole!...It just doesn't work in an MMO or RPG setting because in order for jobs to have any kind of identity or unique gameplay, they need a slower form of gameplay in order to achieve that!...There's literally no other way! - So until that happens all the jobs will continue to be homogenized and continue to lose there unique identities...

Honestly I think SE have some nerve calling the current Summoner a complete job because it's quite clearly missing any semblance of a coherent role/purpose and identity...All of which the job had in it's older forms! - What proved this to me was when I decided to create a fresh alt character and level Summoner again from scratch - I hadnt done this since the rework so wanted to see how the new Summoner would play at the lower levels...As soon as you get out into your first battles you can instantly tell the job is totally missing any kind of glameplay or abilities...Your Carbuncle just sits there and no longer fights and you only have Ruin to cast...That's it!! - By the time you get to Sastasha you have access to the other Carbuncles and the Gemshine ability...but each one is just a slightly different version of Ruin, also Carbuncle will now go in for a single attack when you summon it then go back to doing nothing...This is pretty much Summoners entire gameplay loop all the way to 50+...The Carbuncles get replaces with Egi, but they function exactly the same and the gameplay is exactly the same! Meaning we don't see any significant change to the Summoner gameplay until 60+....That is insane to me and clearly shows it's a broken incomplete job!!

I agree with this. I love how our summons would fight, kinda reminded me of FF11 summons. FF11 summoner is so much fun for such a old MMO. Perhaps if Yoshi-P played FF11 and try the jobs there and maybe improvised it in FF14 it would be wonders!

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Originally Posted by Painx

I agree with this. I love how our summons would fight, kinda reminded me of FF11 summons. FF11 summoner is so much fun for such a old MMO. Perhaps if Yoshi-P played FF11 and try the jobs there and maybe improvised it in FF14 it would be wonders!

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Yeah, the FF11 Summoner was incredible! - Looked and played like a true Summoner, with fully commandable pets and each with their own individual purpose! - I'd love to see something like that for FF14's Summoner!...Though I guess the lack of an elemental wheel in this game would make that difficult - This is why I was fully on board with the Egi glamour system because it would give us access to a ton of different Egi that would function as one of the 3 pet types - You could just set up individual macros for each Egi glam so that when you summon, it also applies the glam assigned to said macro. That way you essentially have a whole host of summons to swap between at any time, even in battle!...Of course having each summon be truly unique would be the ideal though.

I 100% believe they would have been golden had they just made the Egi look like living beings - They don't even need to be the full Primal...Just something that resembles them in some way and actually looks like something that is alive, similar to the Carbuncles! - So essentially just make the Egi look like more realistic looking Pokemon. I think it really could be that simple, rather than constantly reworking and gutting the job, whilst awkwardly shoehorning in some random Solar Bahamut into the rotation that totally janks up the gameplay flow and doesn't really add anything that the original Demi Bahamut didnt already add!

I like the current Summoner (conceptually) but I liked the old Summoner too.

That said I’ll be the first to admit they’ve absolutely dropped the ball of the job completely. They’ve done literally nothing to develop the concept or gameplay since the rework happened - it’s still identical, just with a slightly different flavoured Bahamut every 120s. And it’s ironic that despite the entire point of the goddamn rework was ‘to make a traditional/classic style ff summoner’…which they do by making us summon a lazy TEMU Bahamut reskin?? Wtf? Where are the flashy ff summons you promised us, Yoshi? It’s like they want us to hate them. We’re still missing so many potential Summons but they think we need another Bahamut?

Can’t wait for 8.0 when we get reskinned Lunar Phoenix

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Originally Posted by Connor

I like the current Summoner (conceptually) but I liked the old Summoner too.

That said I’ll be the first to admit they’ve absolutely dropped the ball of the job completely. They’ve done literally nothing to develop the concept or gameplay since the rework happened - it’s still identical, just with a slightly different flavoured Bahamut every 120s. And it’s ironic that despite the entire point of the goddamn rework was ‘to make a traditional/classic style ff summoner’…which they do by making us summon a lazy TEMU Bahamut reskin?? Wtf? Where are the flashy ff summons you promised us, Yoshi? It’s like they want us to hate them. We’re still missing so many potential Summons but they think we need another Bahamut?

Can’t wait for 8.0 when we get reskinned Lunar Phoenix

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Agree… I think new Summoner is better conceptually. SMN isn’t really a pet class, and while I sympathize with those that miss it, the pet controls were so clunky! The only thing I really miss about old Summoner was DOT spreading; it felt satisfying!

Mostly Summoner just needs to have more summons. I don’t expect it to get to the level of older titles where you had like 30 to choose from. But they should utilize the gem buttons to give us as many triads as they can. Honestly I’d be satisfied if we just got the other 3 elements with Levi, Shiva and Ramuh. There are ways you could arrange things to allow for low skill floor/high skill ceiling, like an Astral/Umbral split for instance. But the long and repetitive rotation needs something other than just Titan, Ifrit and Garuda in between. There’s been enough little things in the lore, especially in EW, that could justify it on that front too.

But yeah we probably will get Lunar Phoenix… or some “dark” counterpart to Sol’s “light.” I’d almost bet money on it. Which would be fine IF we first got more gem triads to stick in there. They need to stop adding Demis and take advantage of the gems to give us more summons with their own actions/abilities without adding to button bloat (which is one of the perks of the rework). I liked the rework, but that was because I thought they were using it as a launchpad to give us more summons, and they just… didn’t.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Agree… I think new Summoner is better conceptually. SMN isn’t really a pet class, and while I sympathize with those that miss it, the pet controls were so clunky! The only thing I really miss about old Summoner was DOT spreading; it felt satisfying!

Mostly Summoner just needs to have more summons. I don’t expect it to get to the level of older titles where you had like 30 to choose from. But they should utilize the gem buttons to give us as many triads as they can. Honestly I’d be satisfied if we just got the other 3 elements with Levi, Shiva and Ramuh. There are ways you could arrange things to allow for low skill floor/high skill ceiling, like an Astral/Umbral split for instance. But the long and repetitive rotation needs something other than just Titan, Ifrit and Garuda in between. There’s been enough little things in the lore, especially in EW, that could justify it on that front too.

But yeah we probably will get Lunar Phoenix… or some “dark” counterpart to Sol’s “light.” I’d almost bet money on it. Which would be fine IF we first got more gem triads to stick in there. They need to stop adding Demis and take advantage of the gems to give us more summons with their own actions/abilities without adding to button bloat (which is one of the perks of the rework). I liked the rework, but that was because I thought they were using it as a launchpad to give us more summons, and they just… didn’t.

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Yeah the pet controls were clunky - That was definitely one of the drawbacks of the older Summoner, especially when trying to use Garuda's Contagion in certain situations...However, I think if a version of the old Summoner was to return, one way to mitigate that would be to remove important skills like that from the pet and put them into the Summoner's core skillset - The visual could still be of the pet doing an ability, but from a coding/mechanic view it's actually from the player and therefore not reliant on any pet programming. But the main thing about what felt good/satisfying about the job for me, was having that pet fight by your side - Even if it was just a simple auto attack, it still gave the Egi more presence than a flashy animation that appears for a couple seconds then disappears - I just prefer having something permanent on the field.

I agree historically Summoner hasn't been a pet class - With FF11 and FF14 being the exceptions. However Summoner initially came to FF14 via a community vote that asked the playerbase what job type they would like to see added next and the one that won was a pet class. So in FF14's case Summoner was very much intended to be that! FF11/14 are also the first two times an FF has been an MMO - I believe this is an important difference because all the other FF's are single player RPG's where you have control of a whole party of different characters. This allows for the game to add a character/job who's entire purpose is to constantly play a short cutscene of a summon coming in doing an attack and disappearing - This doesn't get boring because you have another 2 or 3 characters/jobs in the party that will do something completely different on their turn and thus keep the battle and gameplay engaging - However if we look at FF11/14, as MMO's we only ever have one character/job at our disposal at any given time and I believe the reason the current Summoner is so boring now is because it's trying to replicate that constant "cutscene" style summon of a single player game - Which does look cool for sure!...But again, after a while of constantly seeing those same animations over and over, it starts to get very boring when it's the only thing the job can do.

At least with a pet class Summoner there is a level of interactivity and complexity to the gameplay that is still focused on the summon and commanding it, which works very well in an MMO setting usually...Perhaps SE could just simply invest some proper time/money into developing better pet coding - If FF11 could do it and all these other far older MMO's then FF14 definitely can!

Oooff I wouldn't be surprised by a Lunar Phoenix either at this point tbh - But I agree that if at least a new triad of Gemshine summons separated these new Demi's then the gameplay loop would flow far better! and the job might be able to bring some satisfaction back! - If that were the case I'd at least like the Demi's to have more time on the field because at least those are still akin to a type of pet and at least visually appear to fight with you - One of my bigger issues with the current Summoner is that you barely get to see or take in what you are summoning because it's already left the field practically before you realize it's even there!...

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Agree… I think new Summoner is better conceptually. SMN isn’t really a pet class, and while I sympathize with those that miss it, the pet controls were so clunky! The only thing I really miss about old Summoner was DOT spreading; it felt satisfying!

Mostly Summoner just needs to have more summons. I don’t expect it to get to the level of older titles where you had like 30 to choose from. But they should utilize the gem buttons to give us as many triads as they can. Honestly I’d be satisfied if we just got the other 3 elements with Levi, Shiva and Ramuh. There are ways you could arrange things to allow for low skill floor/high skill ceiling, like an Astral/Umbral split for instance. But the long and repetitive rotation needs something other than just Titan, Ifrit and Garuda in between. There’s been enough little things in the lore, especially in EW, that could justify it on that front too.

But yeah we probably will get Lunar Phoenix… or some “dark” counterpart to Sol’s “light.” I’d almost bet money on it. Which would be fine IF we first got more gem triads to stick in there. They need to stop adding Demis and take advantage of the gems to give us more summons with their own actions/abilities without adding to button bloat (which is one of the perks of the rework). I liked the rework, but that was because I thought they were using it as a launchpad to give us more summons, and they just… didn’t.

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Dot spreading was so satisfying!

And while it is true that pets were clunky, that doesn't mean the right thing to do was gut and remove them.
Why not, make them not clunky and feel good?

Like they did fix Bahamut when we move. And we basically are still a pet class. Why do we have Carbuncle?
Why do I need Carbuncle out to summon Bahamut? To do certain skills?

We are an even worse pet job now cause the pet doesn't attack but is still required.

I do, and I don't miss it.

I've been playing Final Fantasy from the beginning. I still have all of my carts from growing up. Summoners in games before XIV (with some exceptions to XI, considering the Job system) were pretty much static, with the inclusion of black magic.

However, something always felt missing from summoning. Example: Rydia from IV - being able to summon the Mist Dragon or Titan momentarily was, in my opinion, a much-needed change.

I will admit I do miss casting dots and spreading them out amongst groups like a plague. I feel like they could bring that casting mechanic back in the form of a new casting DPS or something similar to that effect. But I enjoy cycling my primal summons the most.

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Originally Posted by Milea

Why do we have Carbuncle?
Why do I need Carbuncle out to summon Bahamut? To do certain skills?

We are an even worse pet job now cause the pet doesn't attack but is still required.

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In the old games, Carbuncle was a summon in its own right. Its abilities were mostly defensive, so things like Ruby Light that gave the party Reflect, as well as teaching things like Protect and Shell. We have a cute little nod to that in XIV with things like Aegis.

But in XIV, as I understand it, Carbuncle isn’t really its own being: it’s a magical construct formed by our aether, kind of like a familiar or a focus for our energies, which is why Carby disappears when we summon an egi: our aether is shifting to that form and calling upon that energy and the residual energies of primals we’ve been exposed to when we defeat them when we summon. So neither Carby or the primal egis are really pets, but more like magical thought forms we create. So in a way it makes sense that it’s just sitting there waiting for us to cast our next summon, even if it seems odd to how it worked before. I do feel like it could use an auto attack though when it’s not busy turning into our summons! lol

I want carby to do something not just stand there because well all the carby skill could be use by the smn instead making him well useless

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Originally Posted by Nero-Voidstails

I want carby to do something not just stand there because well all the carby skill could be use by the smn instead making him well useless

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Agreed! - This is my biggest gripe with the current Summoner...The Carbuncles/Egi need to do something! Even if it's just something simple like an auto attack. But ideally something more substantial, that is key to the jobs core rotation! - I hate seeing our OG pets being slowly stripped of everything...To the point that they are now essentially just glorified minions...

This is a problem that is very blatant in the earlier levels of Summoner (1 - 50+) where we don't have access to Demi's or Gemshines - Without these core job components and the Egi just sitting there, over half of the jobs leveling journey is super jank, broken and boring because it has almost nothing till the later levels!...

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Originally Posted by SoloWingMetatron

Agreed! - This is my biggest gripe with the current Summoner...The Carbuncles/Egi need to do something! Even if it's just something simple like an auto attack. But ideally something more substantial, that is key to the jobs core rotation! - I hate seeing our OG pets being slowly stripped of everything...To the point that they are now essentially just glorified minions...

This is a problem that is very blatant in the earlier levels of Summoner (1 - 50+) where we don't have access to Demi's or Gemshines - Without these core job components and the Egi just sitting there, over half of the jobs leveling journey is super jank, broken and boring because it has almost nothing till the later levels!...

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I think all smn should act like baha stay for 15 second while attack turning tri disaster into volcano/vortex/tremor depending on with one you use ruin should turn into blaze/stream/rock smash. inferno and all those take the inkledle place the other move could be change for hurricane a weak aoe with a dots that old for 15 second ifrit could be a eruption doing like 500 potency and 25% less to all other target. titan could make a 300 potency shield to everyone with a dots AOE on the ground like doton? not sure if it is doton.


carby could do a slap for 100 potency one move he have is a reflect for 5 second for half the damage people would have taken and well the DPS buff.

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Originally Posted by SoloWingMetatron

Agreed! - This is my biggest gripe with the current Summoner...The Carbuncles/Egi need to do something! Even if it's just something simple like an auto attack. But ideally something more substantial, that is key to the jobs core rotation! - I hate seeing our OG pets being slowly stripped of everything...To the point that they are now essentially just glorified minions...

This is a problem that is very blatant in the earlier levels of Summoner (1 - 50+) where we don't have access to Demi's or Gemshines - Without these core job components and the Egi just sitting there, over half of the jobs leveling journey is super jank, broken and boring because it has almost nothing till the later levels!...

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Honestly having big summon and egi aren't things that should be mutually exclusive. Carby goes away and big summon goes out. Wish Ifrit egi still existed and just temporarily became big Ifrit for example. But seems their intention was to remove the pet mechanics.

Yes, it's a known constant that as MMORPGs age they either neuter or flat-out remove their pet mechanics. I guess it's something to do with the nature of mass-player network code vs fight design for MMORPGs or something.

Look how quickly WoW factually made pets immune to boss mechanics, which in turn made them nothing more than pretty graphics for what is essentially a DoT (which is btw what an egi would be, too, the way we had them before the rework). Then there's cases such as Summoner and Scholar here, or Necromancer in DAoC, where they just removed the pet mechanic entirely instead of even keeping it around as a DoT-with-external-model. But it always happens. As MMOs get older, they neuter their pets. No clue why.

What if it were necromancy back? Brought back from its digital grave and just redressed as a "new" job? The version I think it would be best to bring back is the stormblood version. Where it was both dots but also pets had health bars. As its the most different compared to later iterations. Maybe even call it Necromancer. Make ordering the pets as off the global cooldown so that it plays nicely with the dot side. Also would be easy to give a place of origin to such a job, Mhach.

Going over the various things that necromancer could summon:

Garuda-Egi would be Rajiformes (think first boss of Dun Scaith but small)
Ifrit-Egi would be Flaremancer
Titan-Egi could be Skeleton

And Demi-Bahamut could be Zombie Dragon (Actually would be pretty fitting as the FF5 Zombie Dragon as its dot-centric)

I mean, I’m pretty sure they removed pets because of the constant complaining from players. OG Egis were up there with Flash as some of the most despised and complained about abilities in the game lol.

They ghosted, they took to long to do anything, they were (are) ugly as hell, people bitched about having to manage their HP and positioning, having to cast them on resummoning (‘make it instant!’), having separate gcds depending on expansion, having shared gcds with the player lol, never/rarely any reason to switch between them, Titan-Egi was either entirely useless or you were doing Ramuh Ex in like 2.3 or whenever it was lol. Etc etc.

Just feels a bit weird for people to lament the loss of something that was universally called to be removed. Hell look at how many Scholars still complain about fairy ghosting lol; they were never going to get any better.

The thing is SCH only ghosts when the status of the fairy changes which basically amounts to only when they dissipate it or summon seraph; and summon seraph is entirely a self inflicted problem as “summon seraph” could just be a pseudo button to make eos able to cast consolation rather than summoning a different entity

SMN with the same responsiveness in its pets would still be playable because you know where its failure points would be. Ironically SMN was at its worst when it was trying to hide problems behind demis which is just recreating the seraph issue

I don't agree with the sentiments here that Summoner wasn't a pet class before;

Summons of FF10, 11, 12, 13, (until recently) 14, arguably 15 (the oddest "Summon" mechanics in the series), and FF7 Remake all had elements of pets or were outright pets (temporary party members that could be ordered to attack or continuously does so automatically rather than being a glorified long-animation Spell like in prior games). That is about 2 straight decades of FF Summons being pets.

And if you want to argue that FF14 should be following the FF3-9 Summoning model, then I would also welcome that... But where is our nuclear damage and drawn out cast times? Both should rival or be higher than Black Mage's in that case. Red Mage and even Pictomancer (in their few appearances) were much more utility focused than Summons.

Current Summoner only really resembles FF16 gameplay. And that game came out after they had already butchered this job.

PS: Summoning Carbuncle just for it to stare at me the entire fight just screams "unfinished" and "jank" to me. I can think of no feasible way anyone can defend that at least thematically and aesthetically.

One thing I want to throw into the mix is that if we're being honest, a pet class is not a pet class functionally so long as all it's pet does is the following thing:

* Have an external model.
* Autoattack a target or a group of targets.
* Use abilities either on CD or on command.

Because, at no loss of gameplay or output, this can be replaced with a stronger autoattack from the player + making the player use the abilities directly. In fact you could pretend either way, just based on who you assign as the originator of the damage on the server.

Two really really really important parts that have to happen to truly elicit a "pet class"-feel are:

* The pet must be vulnerable. It is your obligation as the pet controller to care for it / heal it / move it around danger / replace it as needed (specifics depend on class and game).
* The pet must be a significant portion of your total power, or ideally the majority. This means having your pet be healthy + attacking is far more important than you doing so. As a result the previous point gets priority, and since you provide a smaller portion of the output, you are "free" to do this, and focus mental time into it.

So at a very basic level, pets need to not be immune to AoEs, and in particular ground AoEs and effects. Moving them around these has to be a constant effort on the part of the controlling character. They also must be perceptible to full room AoEs (minor mitigation is alright, but not major one, or do it like in WoW where for a long time the Felhunter was the only pet with significant resistances) and the controller must have a way to invest time + resources into healing the pet and as per point #2 above, this is a damage gain to do compared to losing the pet.

That is to say, a pet controller's gameplay must be, well, "controlling the pet" for it to feel like a pet class. If the pet just exists on top of playing like any other caster there is, factually, no reason to have it in the first place. It's just window dressing, a DoT with an external model, might as well, well... neuter it. Which is what ~all MMORPGs do, as evolutions in both player class and boss encounter design gets too restricted by the nature of pet classes. However, I will say FFXIV is unique suited to complex pet classes compared to other games.
We already had/have jobs suited to being the DPS and healer pet classes (they never truly were as per the above, but eh, doable), and we know from previous work with the combat potato that tank pet classes can work in a combat system as slow and methodical as FFXIV. Even boss positioning could work!

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Originally Posted by SoloWingMetatron

I agree with this also - When the Summoner rework first came in 6.0, I was initially all for it because I was enthralled by the new visuals and full Primal summons. However after playing it for two expansions now those pretty visuals are simply not enough!...I've grown bored of them and now wanting something more from the job that it no longer brings! - At least with the older Summoner we had that in the form of pet management and DoT upkeep. It was fun to play and kept me engaged because we had to actually do stuff and pay attention!...Now with the current Summoner it's just, sit back and press one or two buttons and watch the pretty visuals play on a loop...That's it, literally nothing more!...

I agree the old Summoner would have difficulty with current fight mechanic trends - However, I think this method of trying to make content more engaging is a lazy attempt on SE's part...Boss fights now have essentially become a form of bullet hell game, where you have to be constantly on the move and dodging none stop, otherwise you die....It's literally to the point now where in order to successfully dodge a mechanic we have to move before the telegraph even appears!...Which defies the entire point of a telegraph!!...It also means players who are new to a fight are essentially being punished simply for being new and not knowing a telegraph would appear before it appears!!...This design is beyond moronic!!...It would be fine for the odd battle, but not as a foundation to the games combat as a whole!...It just doesn't work in an MMO or RPG setting because in order for jobs to have any kind of identity or unique gameplay, they need a slower form of gameplay in order to achieve that!...There's literally no other way! - So until that happens all the jobs will continue to be homogenized and continue to lose there unique identities...

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THIS!! it is all dodge dodge dodge then cast if we can before dodging again. And I too miss the old summoner.

Yeah the new Summoner is a damn awesome framework actually, it's just annoying they didn't do anything with it since implementing it. We don't need more major summons, we need sets of 3 minor summons being added, one each expansion, and pull them randomly with minor differences that are consistent between each set so the gameplay is about adapting on-the-spot to whatever set you got.

Examples:

* The current set becomes the "mobility" set, the first one you get.
* One new one is all casted. No exceptions. No ways around it except that one Swiftcast. Ramuh/Shiva/Leviathan maybe. "Caster set". Highest possible damage.
* Dawntrail adds one which has too few casts, fast casts but 2.5s GCD so good but not perfect mobility. This is the "delay" set. What happens here is that these 3 minors are weak, but each of their casts gives you a stack of some modifier that applies to the next Ruin or Tri-Disaster you cast, and one is removed for each Ruin/Tri used. Hence having "too few charges", you need time to cast Ruin in the second half of this set. This is a bit of a gamble set, damage/utility is high in the second half, but very low in the first half, depending on what the fight is like at the time this is either good or bad.
* Next expansion could add a "utility set", PBAoE heals, group runspeed buff, stuns, etc. This one could even disable in raids to not clog up the invocation queue.

If we want any jobs to bring back the pet type mechanics, I believe we'll have better luck with Beast Master being the limited job to go whole hog, while Puppeteer would just be one entity to manage while doing your other stuff. Maybe they could have the weapon or secondary weapon change the puppet's appearance?

But some people complained about summoner not being thematically "flashy" like in other FF games, and this is the result we got. No now I can only hope that YoshiP will actually add other primals as summon options. FF14 devs, you already have a mode via subtractive pallet for being able to condense and create "modes" for what 3~5 summons you'll go through in a rotation.

I miss old summoner as well, but I've gotten most likely over it. At this point, after playing this job for years, I really don't believe adding more primals will make any difference in how it functions. The rework needed to go beyond Summoner and more into Arcanist, but it would have been super unlikely seeing how reworked Summoner ended up. So much was removed from the job to point where the job just works adequately enough where the risk of failure is very low and people loved that. Do I have a problem with that? Nope, but I do have a problem with how that feedback was taken as the job did not have problems with it, so the only thing ever mentioned about the job is whether or not Resurrection stays on Arcanist for the next expansion that was DT.

What I mean, by problems, is that the current rework has a quirk in its rotation where if, any point, the job is unable to continue its rotation when you have a demi-summon available, it throws the entire rotation off an encounter (it can realign at times, but you're still playing around it). The job lags behind if it is unable to have its demi-summon within its own and party's raid buffs ... and usually if you're ready to use your demi-summon, you should not have any primal summons available, which creates another problem because using your demi-summon is what gives you your primal summons to move your rotation along. Yes, you still have Ruin/Tri-disaster, but considering those are your weakest spells with cast times, it is to your detriment to actually have to use them more than you need to be.
The point is, why is the job being actively punished for being played as the rotation intended just because of the encounter and what can be done to help Summoner avoid this issue? One suggestion is to allow the job to attain primal summons outside of demi-summons, be it an ability or spell. Another suggestion is to add an effect to a pre-existing trait that increases the potencies of Ruin 3/Tri-disaster temporarily by a certain amount (and/or reduce their cast times) when all primal summons have been used, rewarding the player for taking advantage of their main job resource instead of playing around it. Anyway, it would be remiss to say these are solutions so I won't. I just want feedback to be fairly considered, that's all.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah the new Summoner is a damn awesome framework actually, it's just annoying they didn't do anything with it since implementing it. We don't need more major summons, we need sets of 3 minor summons being added, one each expansion, and pull them randomly with minor differences that are consistent between each set so the gameplay is about adapting on-the-spot to whatever set you got.

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They also used it as a vehicle to help justify the destruction of caster DPS as a role.

To me, the reworked summoner has exactly 2 things making it awful compared to ShB summoner. 1, it has no cast bars. The cast bars it does have are so long that it doesn't fit in modern fight design, and it only has ~10 seconds of them if it doesn't swiftcast one of those.

2, there is no tangible difference between demi-phoenix, demi-bahamut, and demi-nothamut. It was such a minor thing, but having a 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 on DP versus an ideal 1-1-1-1-2-2-2-2 on demi bahamut did a lot to emphasize the one thing that made summoner interesting. The class had 4 distinct phases. DWT+DB, front half rest, DP, back half rest. All 4 phases played differently because you were optimizing slightly differently. From ruin 4 building to eventually spend during DB if you could spare it to ruin 3 spam and casting bio/miasma literally once each every 2 minutes while trying to recover ruin 4s to use on DB and spend old ruin 4s from the rest of the rotation that are excess.

This isn't that much removed from ordering ifrit, garuda, and titan in any optimized rotation, and the feel between them is rather fun.

I do like the idea of having the pets be randomized in summon time, and have suggested as such in the past, though not a lot on the forums. My only issue with it is that the devs need to make each variation of any pet both similar (only red crayons have a lot of casting, green has limited, yellow has none) and literally identical length. The entire rotation needs to cleanly loop or it fundamentally breaks down. And that is a huge issue unto itself. One that Bard can offer a lot of feedback on.

Unfortunately, the removal of cast bars is the bigger issue. The beauty of the modern summoner design at an archetypical level is completely lost when the class is no longer a caster. Hell, at this point, it's more fair to say there isn't a single caster left in the game. The devs want movement more than they want gameplay and job variety. Turning casters into rphys is one of the worst decisions the devs have ever made, esp. when paired with lag-sensitive fight design. "Oh, you have to sit still and cast some. By the way you also have less time to dodge things than designed or intended because we in Japan don't understand netcode or pings above 10 while designing a game that exposes how little we understand netcode or pings above 10."

I miss it, most specifically the parts that let summons take aggro and tank damage for the summoner, It reminded me a little bit of the Spiritmaster class in Aion. Anyway, as soon as they changed it going into Shb with all that streamlining, I dropped it like a hot plate. I would write more but it's a waste of energy since I know it won't go back due to it devolving over 3 expansions now, I'm just grateful that I got to play it in the former state.

Summoner's new design is just abysmal. We already know CBU3 loves easy jobs, so they wouldn't discard it based on difficulty. The rotation, though, is way too strict and could get completely destroyed by downtime, which happened in FRU. Should have been vetoed before they started writing its code.

Old SMN sucked. New SMN also sucks. Wish they'd just rework it again.

The prevalent idea of adding more minor summons isnt going to make this a good framework. Adding more drills hasnt made MCH a good framework.

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Originally Posted by Mecia

The prevalent idea of adding more minor summons isnt going to make this a good framework. Adding more drills hasnt made MCH a good framework.

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Not if they'd be carbon copies, my idea would be to make Summoner a highly randomized class where the payoff is in handling whatever the game tosses at you without the usual "I can know down to each GCD what I'll do when exactly for a specific fight", as everything else is a static choreographed pre-learned exercise (even Dancer, despite being proc-based).

This is something FFXIV lacks in general, procs and randomness. It's no wonder all classes feel boring and samey, as they only use a single out of the four basic design types for RPG-y classes (static rotation / proc-based / dynamic branching / resource-based)

Suggestions for Summoner Design:
Carbuncle should remain as the default summon that keeps attacking while the other abilities are on cooldown.
For example, give Carbuncle its own combo rotation.
Allow for combo interactions with the other summons — for instance, if you summon Ifrit, you could trigger his own combo sequence and build up a mega attack gauge.
Do the same for all summons, giving each one their own unique combo and area-of-effect potential for multiple enemies.
That would be amazing and add a lot of depth to the job.
The basic book auto-attack and the Ruin spell should be removed.
This would give more importance and focus to the summons themselves

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Griphyt

Suggestions for Summoner Design:
Carbuncle should remain as the default summon that keeps attacking while the other abilities are on cooldown.
For example, give Carbuncle its own combo rotation.
Allow for combo interactions with the other summons — for instance, if you summon Ifrit, you could trigger his own combo sequence and build up a mega attack gauge.
Do the same for all summons, giving each one their own unique combo and area-of-effect potential for multiple enemies.
That would be amazing and add a lot of depth to the job.
The basic book auto-attack and the Ruin spell should be removed.
This would give more importance and focus to the summons themselves

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There's some fundamental game limitation that prevents them from having more than 2 pets out at a time. And of those, the player can only truly have 1. The other pet is the companion, that is the chocobo. They obviously can't use the companion in dungeons because it means it'd break in the overworld. The pet system is used for a number of things, including reaper's ghosty boi and MCH's automaton queen, which is part of why it always shows up. This is also why they have to desummon the carbuncle in order to summon the demis. Likewise, issues with ShB SMN's design were caused directly by this, because they have to destroy the old entity to summon the new one, which killed pet-queued actions. Hell, 99% of SMN's actual difficulty was literally trying to optimize the pet queue to prevent it from ghosting things. And from some openers I used, I had a -2 to +6 GCD on the pet queue from start to finish because of how garbage the system was.

That's ultimately why I still think new summoner is better designed as I brought up earlier, but I really need SMN to be a caster again.

For every good idea there is to save summoner by doing something interesting with the pets, at the end of the day the class should be designed around the demi summons being temporary summons as that is the core summoner identity from almost literally every FF game. If they want a class that does stuff exclusively through the pets like a DAoC Necromancer, then they should make a new class for it. And I'm all in favor of it because I still think ShB SMN had some fun pet design, it just meshed poorly with the demis. I would like to iterate that the devs can't have 2 pets out, so it instantly becomes a non starter to try to have both doing things.

As for the rest, people will figure out the best combo and we'll be right back where we started. That said, I do want more overall job complexity, just only if it's in a fun and done in a way as to not trap players or break the class.

It's what I thought the reason behind making them not-pets was, to make them able to have multiple at once as they're not actually pets any more, they are just some graphics your client renders for an effect that otherwise works the same as it would on any non-"pet" class.

i wish they just make it like yuna in psp dissidia. your skills just call the diff summons to come out and attack. no need for spamming red green and yellow ruins.