SMN pet redundancy

I never understand why developers always make the same mistakes with pets throughout every game:


- One pet is made a tank pet. This pet becomes obsolete in endgame.

- Between the two remaining pets, we have the ranged and melee pet. The way people decide between these should be utility, but it always comes down to damage because damage is the greatest utility of all. So of these two pets one always ends up neglected.

We have Titan Egi, which has no use in endgame because of the cost to switch pets (swiftcast is a 60 sec cd saved for a quick rez or resummon), it cannot taunt and cannot keep aggro against geared DPS, so you can't use this pet to offtank.

We have Ifrit Egi, which is overshadowed by Garuda because a) its survival in melee range sucks, cleaves seem to hit it for full damage, and b) it's utility skills are worthless. This is not a tank pet, but it has a skill that does damage when hit. Why? It'll rarely see any benefit in usage.

We have Garuda egi, whose use over Ifrit is contingent on Contagion and its survivability/mobility advantage over Ifrit egi. At any point if Ifrit egi's survivability and utility is fixed, it might end up replacing garuda egi because people will choose the summon with the most damage.

Titan has a useless niche, Garuda and Ifrit step on each others' toes and don't distinguish themselves enough.

I also don't get why the summon cast times are so long and mp costly. What that does is it discourages you from using your full toolkit. If cast times were instant or very low, the summoner could have the added dimension of gameplay of using different summons for different needs as the fight goes on instead of feeling compelled to stick to the single summon that does the best overall because switching summons to fit a single situation is impractical.

Please reconsider your approach to the summons.

I agree with you except that summon cast times SHOULD be high.

There is a high cost to ripping open the world and imposing your will on a shard of a primal...thats got to be a cost in there somewhere.

We already have swiftcast (which could be lowered cooldown maybe), as a panic resummon, much like soul shards for a WoW warlock (which also has staggering cast times for summoning).

It would be nice to have a way to swap pets on a cooldown (like our own version of swiftcast which uses aetherflow for a quick swap), but again it needs to have a cost (like aetherflow) or a cooldown (or both).

But again, this isn't even an issue until they add in abilities (other than contagion) that are neat to swap back and forth with to do maximum damage.

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Originally Posted by pandabearcat

It would be nice to have a way to swap pets on a cooldown (like our own version of swiftcast which uses aetherflow for a quick swap), but again it needs to have a cost (like aetherflow) or a cooldown (or both).

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I like the idea of having more uses for Aetherflow other than just Fester. Sure, you can use it for Bane on the occasions you need to spread your dots, or Energy Drain if you're mana starved and the CD on Aetherflow isn't close. But my only issue would be that if you add more uses for Aetherflow, we would need to be compensated with 1-2 more stacks of it.

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Originally Posted by Terk177

I like the idea of having more uses for Aetherflow other than just Fester. Sure, you can use it for Bane on the occasions you need to spread your dots, or Energy Drain if you're mana starved and the CD on Aetherflow isn't close. But my only issue would be that if you add more uses for Aetherflow, we would need to be compensated with 1-2 more stacks of it.

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I can see them adding this with a level cap increase. After all, we're only at lvl 50 out of a future 99.

Idk what you're smoking but Titan can definitely hold aggro against well geared DPS, I've used it to hold aggro on boss fights in Castrum speed run groups, you just have to give it an initial 10 seconds where you burn rouse, spur and enkindle on the boss while throwing sustain up and giving it a chance to gain that aggro and cycle through enmity skills. All I can say is, you're doing it wrong.

However I do agree that Ifrit is useless and Garuda is a one-skill-trick pony with the most dps assist.

But Titan still does have uses, especially when soloing / grinding groups of mobs... Titan can quite easily hold aggro on 3-4 targets while you bane-dot + SF the lot of them.
Again, if you're struggling to do this, you're doing it wrong and not using your class to the solo potential it has (I was soloing equal level fate bosses while levelling up with Titan and myself alone).

This is absurd. If it needs 10 seconds to build aggro, it's no use.

And please just stop. Castrum is not endgame content. It's a stupidly easy tutorial dungeon.

Who cares that you can solo fate bosses during leveling? Cingrats on wasting time you could have used to finish 3-4 fates in the same time window with a group.

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Originally Posted by Crescent_Dusk

yawn

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It's an example of the utility provided by Titan, not my e-peen.
Titan can offtank many things in dungeons, i've found many uses for it throughout my levelling experience, including level 50 dungeons such as Amdapor Keep for off-tanking bees on the demon wall etc to prevent group paralysis, obviously this was early when nobody had even really cleared AK, but still it had its uses at the time.

Most tanks ask for 5-10 seconds before burst damage is applied, it's not just Titan.


Judging by your character snapshot btw, I'm assuming you're still in your evoker gear.
You don't know enough about the game / end game content yet to be able to call out what the class is useful against, perhaps you should reconsider your demeanor.

LOL I've been gearing both a scholar and smn, you think because you just blew your tomes on AF2 and got an AK mask to drop for you you know more? Get real. I did my character snapshot in evoker because the point of showing with a relic is to look like the job. I didn't go straight ahead and dumped myth on AF2, while now I can consider relic +1 for my glow while you'll sit here for months complaining about how underwhelming your lack of relic glow is ;)

If you're using titan to hold bees instead of killing wall before bees become a concern you've just discredited yourself. Most importantly, if your tanks ask for 10 secs for aggros I'm not sure I can take you more seriously than a guy who just farmed amdapor.

I also see you've got no other single class to 50. Just stop. Seriously, a good tank should never lose aggro if he does his rotation. Not even with raging strikes on and a firestarter+thunderhead+swiftcast flare burst will I pull aggro off tank.

Suits you sir.
*Bows*

I AM NOT WORTHY.

Thanks for stalking my post history.

You're the one who brought up the snapshot from another thread, don't get mad when your petty remarks get thrown back at you.

One pet is built for solo leveling/farming, this is the tank pet there is nothing wrong with this you just seem to be under the mentality that if it has no purpose in end game raiding it is pointless, there is stuff outside of this.

I agree however that there needs to be work on garuda/ifrit making them more distinct from one another and make one more favourable based on fight so you are switching out based on the situation, Ifrit in particular needs work as for some bizzare reason SE have made him some sort of dps/tank hybrid which is just silly.
There are lots of good suggestions floating about so I don't feel the need to put up my ideas

On a side note Cresent you need to stop going off the deep end, take into consideration that people may not be as far in the game as you and the way you belittle people for lack of knowledge basiacally makes you look like an elitist jerkwad which puts people on the defensive and you get angsty replies.

If you're going to make endgame the part where people will spend countless hours on, I would HOPE they don't waste assets on making a pet that will be obsolete for the rest of your gameplay as a summoner. It's just bad design to make one aspect of the class only good for leveling.

Imagine if any of the other classes' spells stopped having any use in endgame. Black Mages would be rather annoyed if Flare only worked in solo/leveling. The summons are a huge part of the class, and you just can't make one summon completely marginalized.

Think about it. You are removing one third of the potential from the summoner by putting it in a marginal role. That titan egi could be offering something actually useful on every situation.


Imagine that all three pets did roughly the same damage and had similar HP, but the utility was different. Garuda could be the debuffer/aoe summon. Ifrit could be the single target spike/group attack buff summon (make its stun an aoe 7 yard range cleave). Titan could offer defensive group buffs to bolster defense and an aoe 1-2 sec stun.

You then have 3 pets with distinct roles. You could make summoning be instant cast but with a 10 sec cd. Keep the mana cost.

This is another time I am going to post this. Do you know what square could do to make titan useful? The titan egi could have skills that ups the groups survivability. I wonder how many times I posted this? Since trayes idea was a good one I don't want to lose his post.

Square should of built it somewhat like this IMO. Each pet would be useful in different situations and this means swiftcast would be used ALOT to switch between the summons depending on the situation of the fight. Each one would have a useful niche within the group. If ifrit has fire dot skills or does more burst on a target the more dots that you have on a target he would be used a lot more IMO.

Here is Trayes post.

Ruin: 80 potency. Grants you and your pet a buff depending on what pet you have out.
(Ifrit: Grants the user and pet stacking buff that increases damage by 5%, stacks 2 times)
(Titan: Lowers damage taken by the user and the pet by 5% for 4 seconds. Does not stack)
(Garuda: Grants the user and the pet 3% spell speed. Stacks 4 times. Garuda gains double from this effect)

Ruin II: 80 potency. This spell and the pet do a special bonus attack.
(Ifrit: Apply a 15 potency dot for 18 seconds.) Both the player and the pet apply this dot.
(Titan: Gain health equal to damage dealt.) Both the player and the pet heal based on the damage of thier attack.
(Garuda: Deal half damage to all enemies near the target) Both the player and the pet do the aoe damage.)

Now these are just ideas of how I would have made the summoner feel closer to their pets while adding some depth to the overall playstyle of the summoner. Also this is me only changing 2 skills. I am sure I could give a huge list of ideas.

Like an aether flow spell that grants a party buff based on the summon out.
Garuda would buff move speed and spell speed
Titan would give everyone a small stone skin
Ifrit would add "Enfire" to all melee attacks

It's a shame Jobs don't get traits. It would be cool if SMN got a trait that maybe gave a proc on DoTs to make the next summon instant cast and have it do some kind of attack when pulled out, so it would be worth it to swap between Ifrit and Garuda at least. Maybe even have Titan summons with this proc give a damage reduction effect to your party. Something like that. Then summoning would be part of the rotation.

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Originally Posted by thenewzero

It's a shame Jobs don't get traits. It would be cool if SMN got a trait that maybe gave a proc on DoTs to make the next summon instant cast and have it do some kind of attack when pulled out, so it would be worth it to swap between Ifrit and Garuda at least. Maybe even have Titan summons with this proc give a damage reduction effect to your party. Something like that. Then summoning would be part of the rotation.

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Agree to the Jobs not getting Traits, if a Job is supposed to provide a specialized role then why only in the form of new spells? There should be new traits that is made FOR Summoner (or any other jobs actually) to further achieve that purpose.

The traits should revole around the Summons, like say..
- Whenever we perform a Summon, we(or/with the pet) will gain some sort of buff (+Damage/Crit?) (Not really possible to abuse due to high manacost of Summons)
- Summons will now share our damage taken? (Increase personal survivability)
- Summons will receive a portion of our heal received? (Increase summon's survivability)
- Further increase our maximum Aetherflow stacks (to allow access of new spells to interact with Aetherflow)

Enkindle to rework, to act like a "Limit Break" for our summons:
- Ifrit, real..Hellfire that deals large AoE damage with DoT?
- Titan, give some sort of Stoneskin buff to party?
- Garuda, cast "Haste" to party?

Just my 2MP thought.

Wow another summoner thread, I guess it is needed, because the other 20 summoner threads from the first 2 pages of the DPS forums were definitely not enough.

I see where your coming from I just disagree with the idea that everything should be 100% based around endgame raiding, but that's just my opinion.

Titan has a place in the summoner skill set as a solo tank pet, it isn't really a waste it is just a skill you don't use in raiding, most classes have similar skills, our own tri-disaster I have only found a use for on garudas feather phase apart from that it is totally pointless.