Arcanist/Summoner Abilities and Traits

I like speculation and theorycraft. I am also excited about a pet class (especially Puppetmaster, but arcanist will do). I will switch my main class over to Arcanist simply because I love pet classes.

So I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on how pet classes will/should/could work in XIV. I vaguely remember a thread back when Arcanist was announce where I speculated that instead of summoning primals, the Arcanist would summon their essences and meld them with Carby. So you could get like a red, firey Carby with Ifrit's essence, and so on. Unless I misunderstood, that is pretty much how Yoshi said it would work in this last letter, right?

So for anybody who is excited about arcanist/summoner, what abilities do you think might work in XIV. I played Pup in XI and never touched Sum, so i don't have much experience in that arena.

It sounds like DoTs will be the primary shtick for ARN. I wonder if those DoTs will originate from the player-character like spells, or if most of your abilities will be channeled through Carby. I also wonder how much control we will have over Carby's actions. You had limited control over your puppets actions in XI through use of maneuvers, but for the most part they just did their thing and you kind of influenced their decisions a bit.

Thoughts?

SMN in FFXI.. not a pet class >.> lol

(They are.. but how they were used was usually not the way it was originally made for XD *When I was playing* (stopped before WotG)).

I think that Arcanist is going to get the DoT's that were removed from THM early on like scourge. (Ones used by the enemy still)

Were we told if the summons will drain mp while active?

Frankly I'm most excited about the idea of whacking a friend upside the head with the book weapons in PvP (just for the amusement value, not because it would be "good"). >.>

Not much of a theorycrafter, but in XI you had a lot more control over the puppet than you're suggesting. A good PUP can get its automaton to do whatever he wants (once a few glaring issues were sorted out). I'm willing to bet that you'll give direct commands more like XI summoner just hopefully without the horrible cooldowns.

I heard that i actually summon the primals. As Summoner has no access to carby.

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Originally Posted by Renen

I heard that i actually summon the primals. As Summoner has no access to carby.

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They summon aspects of the primals and that the true primal summons are accomplished by a FC killing the primal.

was said somewhere by yoshiP that arcanist gets like different versions of carby (tankish type etc.) not much has been said about what summoner can do

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Originally Posted by Renen

I heard that i actually summon the primals. As Summoner has no access to carby.

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That's not correct, because the Job has access to all the abilities of the Class.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

That's not correct, because the Job has access to all the abilities of the Class.

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I actually heard the same thing though XD... Could be some mis-translation we read together but I'm sure I read it.

Yoshi-P was clear when he said only Arcanist will have access to Carbuncle and that Carby will have several uses , as example he mentioned Carbuncle Tank and Carbuncle Healer so in a few words Carbuncle will be FFXIV's Eve from Pokemon.

SMN will be a pet class but Yoshi-P is aiming for the old school SMN that called Primal for a 1 hit move then leaves
except this time we will do it with Primal's essence they might look like aether/ghostly forms of them not full body.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

They summon aspects of the primals and that the true primal summons are accomplished by a FC killing the primal.

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I'm only going to count this as a theory, but due to the nature of the difficulty of your FC defeating the primal so a person in your party can summon their essence sounds far-fetched. It sounds more logical that you fight primals through the SMN quest line, making them placed story events instead of trying to hunt them (Especially if you are lv.30, if they give it to you that early.). This would make more sense to me.

I forgot, I know Ifrit is confirmed, but who is did they confirm as summons? I think Garuda was the other.

summoners will not have access to carbuncle. i repeat summoners will not have access to carbuncle. that is all.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I'm only going to count this as a theory, but due to the nature of the difficulty of your FC defeating the primal so a person in your party can summon their essence sounds far-fetched. It sounds more logical that you fight primals through the SMN quest line, making them placed story events instead of trying to hunt them (Especially if you are lv.30, if they give it to you that early.). This would make more sense to me.

I forgot, I know Ifrit is confirmed, but who is did they confirm as summons? I think Garuda was the other.

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The quote is so old I dont want to find it but I assure you that there was at least official speak of summoning a "true" summon. And it had to do with finding a roaming primal and whooping it. There was only one of the true primals available so only one group could really summon it. Once summoned you lost control and it went back to the wild.

I mentioned this in another thread but what yoshi said was "Carbuncleis arcanist exclusive". To me this means that it is like, for example, thundaga. The description for the spell (in 1.0 anyways) says thaumaturgy only. However, ablm still has access to the spell. I think what he meant is carby is going to be another such spell/ability. Lets face it, if every class and a handful of jobs could summon carby, why would people play arcanist/summoner? Its the signatureof the class and job; you dont want to have other jobs and classes to be able to do that. Not only for that reason but it would imbalance the game.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

The quote is so old I dont want to find it but I assure you that there was at least official speak of summoning a "true" summon. And it had to do with finding a roaming primal and whooping it. There was only one of the true primals available so only one group could really summon it. Once summoned you lost control and it went back to the wild.

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I didn't mean the primals themselves, I meant the SMN's ability to summon primals. It would be unfair if one job had such an extreme task to get all their abilities compared to other jobs who get all their AF/abilities by doing storyline quests that involve no competition.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

The quote is so old I dont want to find it but I assure you that there was at least official speak of summoning a "true" summon. And it had to do with finding a roaming primal and whooping it. There was only one of the true primals available so only one group could really summon it. Once summoned you lost control and it went back to the wild.

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That is just something he was thinking about tho. I think they plan to have 'lesser' elemental summons after all, and maybe do the whole primal thing as an extra.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I didn't mean the primals themselves, I meant the SMN's ability to summon primals. It would be unfair if one job had such an extreme task to get all their abilities compared to other jobs who get all their AF/abilities by doing storyline quests that involve no competition.

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Oooo Ok.
Yeah i dont think the true primal summoning has anything to do with the summoner. However the summoner can summon aspects or "portions" of the primal as their personal summon abilities. That what I meant at least lol

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...oshi+carbuncle

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^ regarding summoners inability to summon carbuncle.
I don't know if we ever got an official translation, but that is where all of this hub bub is coming from.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Yeah i dont think the true primal summoning has anything to do with the summoner. However the summoner can summon aspects or "portions" of the primal as their personal summon abilities. That what I meant at least lol

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I understood it the exact same way. I also think this is a good way of dealing with it.

On FFXI, the stuff you summoned would not actually be even remotely as powerful as the stuff you fought before. For simplicity's sake, they looked kinda the same—your summons I mean.

I'm pretty sure that even the essences will look great. It's the most important class from Final Fantasy after all.

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Originally Posted by Warlock

Yoshi-P was clear when he said only Arcanist will have access to Carbuncle and that Carby will have several uses , as example he mentioned Carbuncle Tank and Carbuncle Healer so in a few words Carbuncle will be FFXIV's Eve from Pokemon.

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yoshi p said after a question if carbuncle is the only pet for arcanist he said, that they maybe (<- big maybe) add more in the future

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SMN will be a pet class but Yoshi-P is aiming for the old school SMN that called Primal for a 1 hit move then leaves
except this time we will do it with Primal's essence they might look like aether/ghostly forms of them not full body.

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I am really afraid about concerning that.. because "one hit" spell is not a pet for me, and not even a petclass. i thought yoshi wanted to cater the petclass fanbase with the summoner.. and not an other type of spell mage.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

I am really afraid about concerning that.. because "one hit" spell is not a pet for me, and not even a petclass. i thought yoshi wanted to cater the petclass fanbase with the summoner.. and not an other type of spell mage.

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They never said SMN was going to be a pet class in the first place. The only thing they guaranteed was that it'll be based around DoTs.

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Originally Posted by Colino

They never said SMN was going to be a pet class in the first place. The only thing they guaranteed was that it'll be based around DoTs.

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thats not true... BEFORE they revealed summoner and arcanist.

Yoshi p. was talking about that he wants to introduce a petclass because we havent this in the game right now! (Hellooo, variety!). there was a poll concerning this, too. and a petclass was leading in this vote.

we didnt know at that time if it will be BST, PUPP or Summoner.. till they revealed Arcanist with carbuncle.

sorry if you dislike petclasses but personally i love these!! because they give a totally different gameplay concept in comparison to other classes. you have to control 2 alter egos instead of just one.. and thats the point. for me petclasses are much more interesting. i ever play petclasses in each MMO .
and no, beastmaster is no alternative, i dislike taming monsters..
a one hit-summon concept for summoner would mean "just an other BLM" (because summons wouldnt be different to a typical spell).

well but i believe that at least the arcanist is going to be a real petclass.

We know there will be at least 2 versions of Carbuncle to choose from for Arcanist, that of Caster / DPS, and Tank.

As Summoner you gain access to Avatars, or spiritual versions of Primals.

Logic dictates that the first 3 aspected primals we can access, will be the 3 we can earn.

Namely:

Ifrit (confirmed) --- Melee DPS?
Garuda (confirmed) --- Mage?
Titan (only other existing stronghold) --- Theorized as logical tank avatar.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

thats not true... BEFORE they revealed summoner and arcanist.

Yoshi p. was talking about that he wants to introduce a petclass because we havent this in the game right now!. there was a poll concerning this, too. and a petclass was leading in this vote.

sorry if you dislike petclasses but personally i love these!! because they give a totally different concept in comparison to other classes. you have to control 2 alter egos instead of just one.. and thats the point. for me petclasses are much more interesting. i ever play petclasses in each MMO ever.

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I never said I dislike pet classes. I'm aware of the poll but that doesn't mean this is the petclass they wanted to implement. It takes a LONG time to design and implement a class, I'm fairly certain they were working on ARC/SMN long before that poll went up, we all knew a DoM was coming before anything else because there's only 2 right now.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

We know there will be 3 versions of Carbuncle to choose from for Arcanist, that of Caster and Melee DPS, and Tank.

As Summoner you gain access to Avatars, or spiritual versions of Primals.

Logic dictates that the first 3 aspected primals we can access, will be the 3 we can earn.

Namely:

Ifrit (confirmed) --- Melee DPS?
Garuda (confirmed) --- Mage?
Titan (only other existing stronghold) --- Theorized as logical tank avatar.

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thats also false. Arcanist has 2 versions of carbuncle, melee and mage type.

Summoner will have access to 5 powers of the primals (ifrit and garuda - fire and wind etc) are the only 2 which are confirmed right now.

could have been soo aussum NOT to use Ifrit, Garuda etc.
they could have used alternative summons instead (non primals)

Belias for fire:
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__...as_artwork.jpg

Ixion for thunder

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__...onXConcept.jpg

you gain these lesser summons by obtaining the essences of the real primals of the specific element when fighting the easy version of the primals. (there will be different difficult options for instances in ARR)

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Originally Posted by Colino

I never said I dislike pet classes. I'm aware of the poll but that doesn't mean this is the petclass they wanted to implement. It takes a LONG time to design and implement a class, I'm fairly certain they were working on ARC/SMN long before that poll went up, we all knew a DoM was coming before anything else because there's only 2 right now.

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i really doubt it. arcanist is the reincarnation of a petclass.. very obvious. and yoshi p. was thinking all the time to introduce a petclass. but well we cant ask him about that.

yeah and thats why there is no summoner directly at release just arcanist.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

i really doubt it. arcanist is the reincarnation of a petclass.. very obvious. and yoshi p. was thinking all the time to introduce a petclass. but well we cant ask him about that.

yeah and thats why there is no summoner directly at release just arcanist.

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Uh what? Reincarnation? Bard is a "reincarnation" of a ranged DPS class, but they're not really a ranged DPS class are they.

And there's no summoner at launch because it's not finished, not because of some weird pet class conspiracy theory you're going on about.

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Originally Posted by Colino

Uh what? Reincarnation? Bard is a "reincarnation" of a ranged DPS class, but they're not really a ranged DPS class are they.

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well you didnt even know about the poll where a petclass won...

i was following the slightest statements for a petclass since the beginning.. so i think some of YOUR conclusions are wrong

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And there's no summoner at launch because it's not finished, not because of some weird pet class conspiracy theory you're going on about.

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no i mean summoner isnt ready at launch because you said implementing new classes take a long time.. so its obvious that it was not planned "long time ago" like you have said

"I'm fairly certain they were working on ARC/SMN long before that poll went up"

i didnt mean that SMN is going to be a petclass (very unfortunatley)
if we are receiving a summoner like that

inflationary summoning shit

im going to kill myself ^.^ :) yes in the offline FF's the summons are one hit attacks. but it wouldnt work for me in an MMO.. especially when a summoner would summon a specific power about 20+ times in a boss fight... wouldnt a summoner lose some of its epicness?


but a wandering Belias for example with a Limit-Break "Astral flow" like that:

Belias Deathblow

would be aussum ;)

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Originally Posted by dbrewer225

summoners will not have access to carbuncle. i repeat summoners will not have access to carbuncle. that is all.

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Bcause it is an Arcanist skill?
It only say it is an exclusive skill. Arcanist can use it, Summoner can use it because he is still an Arcanist, but Pugilist can not use it.

They did say summoners would have avatar summons replace those of carby.

I dont know where he got the "5" avatar number from. Titan is confirmed at launch; That's 3 elementally aspected primals.

Maybe there will only be 1 "Summon" ability. Arcanists get Carby when they use it. Summoners get primal essences. It could work.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

I didn't mean the primals themselves, I meant the SMN's ability to summon primals. It would be unfair if one job had such an extreme task to get all their abilities compared to other jobs who get all their AF/abilities by doing storyline quests that involve no competition.

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I took it as carbuncle will be an action that can not be cross classed. Guess I'll find out soon enough

I also understood it to mean that Carby wasnt a cross-class ability. but the post in the translation thread seems to say that summoned will specifically not be able to use Carby. Seems odd to me. Suppose I will have to wait for official details to clear that up.

It also seems that I got hung up on the "dwells" thing, like having a pet be a vessel for primal essences. I thought it made sense to have Carby for arcanist, and then as summoner you let ifrit's aspect "dwell" in Carby. Carbuncle being the vessel pet in question.

While summoner traditionally does the whole "check out my badass spell that hits everybody and usually has some pretty slick accompanying graphics but essentially functions exactly the same as a normal spell" thing, in an mmo it is generally better to diversify the functions of classes as much as possible. So it makes sense that the class that can summon these unique creatures should get to keep them around and play as a pet class. This makes summoner more than just a black mage with flashy DoTs instead of mean elemental burst spells.

I don't recall who said it, but yeah you could control puppets pretty accurately. You could activate attachment abilities pretty much on command. But you really could only set up priorities the rest of the time. That still afforded quite a bit of control but it was still only prioritizing things like enfeebles over heals. I typically played support/offtank pup/sch with a valoredge head and frame. Valoredge was pretty easy to control because his only abilities came from attachments, but when i decided to mix it up bit and roll with stormwaker, i was pretty much only making suggestions (granted, that was all it needed to be a badass little puppet).

As far as XIV arcanist is concerned, I imagine that our pet (whatever that may ultimately be as summoner) will be "stronger then our player character. At least that's how i like to play pet classes. Send the pet, sit back, eat a samich, profit.

Ps. Sorry for any errors. My phone doesn't play nice with limestone forums. Lodestone either.

As for ability speculation:

1) If damage is dealt with DoT spells, then ACN could cast some pure debuff spells without losing dps. Instead of the current "damage+wimpy debuff" spells, arcanist could get debuff spells that do no damage, but have a good chance of hitting and long durations.

2) A spell that lowers the target's physical evasion/defense is lacking in the game so far and would probably help Carbuncle tank.

3) I like the idea of stealing the astral/umbral DoTs from the original Thaumaturge build. Whatever the damage type, though, there should be a combo bonus that makes the target vulnerable to the DoT damage.

4) There should be an ability on a 1 or 2 minute cooldown that dispels existing DoTs to do burst damage.

5) A similar ability could dispel all the buffs and debuffs on an enemy, and add stacking "vulnerability to debuffs" for every trait dispelled.

6) How about a "Rage" spell for hate control, forcing the target to use only melee attacks, and only generate hate for players that hit it with melee attacks. It would be nice to have an 8-10 second window where healers and mages could go wild.

I just hope that SMN doesn't get a 15m that consumes all MP. That's pretty much the only thing I hated about the job in XI. When you used astral flow and the mob moved an inch and you lost all your MP.. it was just a feels bad man situation.

I dig these ideas.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

They did say summoners would have avatar summons replace those of carby.

I dont know where he got the "5" avatar number from. Titan is confirmed at launch; That's 3 elementally aspected primals.

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please what? its only confirmed, that Garuda and Ifrit types will be available to the summoner...
Not only titan will be at launch available as raid primals, ramuh etc. as well.. where do you have those infos from?

sorry i was wrong.. its 4 different types of summons for the summoner and not 5... like they say exactly here (that live letter was too long ago^):

Live-Letter Inerview [00:54:45]

they really talk about -pets- a one hit time summons would not be a pet for me personally. and then it makes sense that carbuncle will be unavailable to the summoner.

because the 4 different avatars for summoner are going to have also different functionallities/roles (like carbuncle). so there will be most likely a summon for dps, for tanking, and a mage or whatever as well.

so it does not make sense to carry carbuncle (tank/mage function) over to the summoner, when the summoner is going to be an advanced version of arcanist.

watching that video makes me think again that summoner is also going to receive perma pets. (they talk about different roles for all of each of the 4 pets)

FF X summon style? upon summonning, your carby will be "replaced" with the primal avatar, and it will up until timer/summoner mp runs out/ use signature moves