SMN - Why it is not a very interesting job and not a good upgrade from ACN

[Feidam]

At this point there is really no point in lamenting over what you think the summoner should be and how it should play. If they were to change it now while a lot of people would be happy I would wager an equal number would be unhappy. Personally, I love my Summoner. I love dot classes and you do get some of the iconic attacks. Really, all they need to do is make enkindle do fire 3 level damage and auto crit. I mean it is a 5 min cooldown. Then summoners would have a massive attack coming from the pet a la classic summoners but a bit more balanced for a mmo setting.

[Crevox]

I LOATHE pets in mmos mainly due to retarded AI and other such issues.

Then you shouldn't be playing Summoner. That's the problem; the entire DoT concept you enjoy and they wanted should've never treaded into "Summoner" territory.

The summoner "everyone" wants and desires would not have worked. We already saw one mess in FFXI which tried to be true to the concept and ended up with a job they grew fearful of being overpowered to the point of intentionally gimping it, which only got a sliver of actual use when Alexander and Perfect Defense were introduced.

That being said, a buddy of mine who was not pleased with SMN being the way it was in FFXI hasn't shown any issue with the way SMN is designed here. Then again, he did play a warlock in WoW as well and had no trouble making the connection.

Just because the balance in FFXI was off doesn't mean it would be in this game. Furthermore, anything can be tweaked and changed to make it work in this game, but the summoner in this game is nothing like a Final Fantasy summoner at all.

[laeusnb]

Great post. Agree completely. I would love it if Fester were tied to the pet, much like Enkindle (without the bugs), and also get a slight damage bonus based on your dots. So have some significant base damage, maybe 2 dots' worth, then scale up to the current max with full dots. But your pet has to be in position to use it somehow. This would also help with the horrendous add switching; you could switch targets and unload a Fester or two into that target instead of trying to uselessly ramp up some dots that will fall off soon or spamming Ruin.

[Shouta]

I think the job is fine as it is. Speaking mainly from a design standpoint, it's very good. It's a bit more DOT related than expected but that's fine as it meshes well for the player allowing them to deal damage and still have the chance to manage their pet. It lacks the historical pizzazz of the job and the crazy looking avatars but is a small concern, but gave us the XI iteration of the job. It took years for it to be really playable and not situational.

It could be adjusted to make using the pet a bit more active for the player but the DOT design is quite nice. The idea of having the Enkindle CD be 10 sec but having charges for the Summon's abilities would be a pretty cool idea. 3 charges at slightly reduced potency to allow more use but not overpowered. It'd give SMNs more direct AOE damage and would help bring back the feel of the job while keeping the current design.

I also dig the Ruin gaining a buff based on pet idea. It'd be a reason to use it over Ruin II besides lower MP.

[KoujiGeki]

Why cant SE just switch the pets to undead and call us Necromancer? Really it is Nec without the undead pets. We branch of of Thm which its old lore was Necromancy, ressurecting dead soldiers to fight for them. Every single game with a concept of Necromancy is life drain (energy drain), Diseases and poisons, (Bio, virus, and Miasma). I mean come on SE you shouldve given us a Bogey as a caster, a skeleton with a sword and shield as a tank. The lvl 3 summon couldve be a Shade like in 11 a Caster looking one,a DD one with a Great axe or GS. I mean its all there already but somewhere along the line some one at SE went "Her dur lets give them elemental pets and glue summoner on it except the pet is nothing like a summon!"

Hell even the way you go about getting the pets are lazy there is literally no reason you should look Carby as a Summoner, had they made the cutscene of Carby dying to save youi would get it.

[Conradus]

What about the fact that the SMN's pets look completely uninspiring. As a comparison, consider FFXI's SMN pets. The artwork for FFXI's SMN pets is far superior to the ones in FFXIV. When I saw one in FFXI for the first time I thought "Wow! I can't WAIT to play SMN!". Seeing FFXIV's SMN pets for the first time did not inspire me to play SMN at all.

I have to agree. The first time I saw SMN pets I thought they were minions. When I realized what I was looking at, my reaction was, "This dinky thing is a summon??"

[Yamo]

Also dont forget that Aero (dot) can be used by Scholar which is a healing class but not by Summoner. this ppl are retarded...

[TraeSnow]

You need to consider the scenarios as to why Summoners can't use CNJ skills.

If a Summoner had access to Protect, Stone Skin, Cleric Stance, it would make them more overpowered. Titan is already a beef cake, most people can tank a majority of bosses with him - imagine if we had Stone Skin...that would make him even more stronger. Protect ontop of that and Cleric Stance would basically break the gap between Scholar and Summoner. As it stands, a 50 Summoner can go get a 15 CNJ and get access to a free 50 Scholar without having to lvl it up because they share the main class being Arcanist. So far the only thing that limits this is the fact they share the same attributes. Summoners put theirs into INT and Scholars put theirs into MND. If Summoners had access to Cleric Stance, then they would put all their points into MND and just switch INT and MND with cleric stance to become DPS. Then when they went scholar they would have a MND build

[Vashous]

The thing is while it may not be wise to have smns be huge 1-shot abilities, you could build off of this. They could be something you smn that does a good amt of damage to the target or target area on smn, but then stays and fights for a short period of time or until it dies (and could have degrading hp to prevent you from turning your summon into a "pet"). These smns could have different effects and be much more than just different damage (stun, agro pull, etc). I would imagine they would have mid-range cds and would vanish if a different smn was casted.

You would have skills that would more compliment your smn like buffs, maybe a DoT or 2, a smn heal to maybe increase the duration it is out.

The main problem I have with SE's new version of the smn is you are turning smns into pets. In what FF have any smns been pets. It is degrading to the smns and makes me sad for them

Let arcanists be the pet class and let Smners be actual smners instead of just and upgraded arcanist.

[Aleksandr]

I wish they had made Summons a little larger as originally intended, I wish the primals we summon were other elementals rather than the ones the Beast tribes used. I would have liked our magic to been black magic as Rydia used in FF 2/4jp. I would like the creatures we summoned to be the main focus rather than over shadowed by what we do.