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

[Katlyna]

Direct damage spells:
Ifrit's Rage (only available when Ifrit is alive): standard 2 second cast with a 2 second recast. Deals fire damage with a potency of X. If Cinders is present deal Y additional damage to all nearby targets. If Coldfire is present deal 10% additional damage for 10 seconds stacking up to 3 times.

Shiva's Embrace (only available when Shiva is alive): standard 2 second cast with a 2 second recast. Deals ice damage with a potency of X. If Frostburn is present deal Y additional damage and 20% slow for 5 seconds. If Coldfire is present gain 5% mana back.

[Katlyna]

Ultimate:
Dual Summon: standard 2.5 second cast with a 5 minute recast. Ifrit and Shiva are summoned simultaneously. All dots on your target burst in freezing flames causing X damage per dot (some higher damage number). All dots are consumed and replaced with Coldfire: a 20 second dot with a potency of 60 x each dot consumed. After 20 seconds your summon with less health despawns.

The idea would be that your summons would still be summons but they would be tuned to do less passive damage themselves and the damage would be swaped to the active direct damage when they are summoned, the dot applied from consuming other dots, and the following direct damage spells. This would make for a much more summoner oriented class and would bring in some interesting interaction between their unique skills.

After thinking about it a bit I would imagine if I removed the dot consumption interaction so each summon is a DD + dot on cast they would be very easy to understand and work with.

[Katlyna]

Your gameplay would be essentially starting with one of your summons out (since they still persist after their dots or whatnot falloff). You start dotting your target up with your arcanist abilities and then you summon based on the need for AE or direct damage. Your summon does a neat direct blast, converts your dots into their elemental dot and then you follow with a balance of dots and the direct damage.

Also the 1000 character reply cap is idiotic.

If anyone else finds this kind of summoner interesting let me know and I'll start a new post with the details to argue about.

The damage would have to be tuned appropriately (specifically I would reduce the summons damage that they do and perhaps reduce the dot damage to balance with the direct nukes). But its quite feasible and would make for a fun design. And fun is what were after.

[kiraan]

Its hard to imagine a proper SMN when they aren't really any bonus for elemental damage type. Meaning you either pick only the most powerful one you will have ( with maybe a distinction on ranged or melee summon) or you absolutely don't care which one and its purely cosmetic.

I didn't really like the ffxi version but at least you were summoning different avatars depending on which buff you wanted. Thats the part i liked, being a subpar healer was not.

The future of SMN is not very clear for me at the moment but i'll stick to it anyway

[mountaindew]

Your gameplay would be essentially starting with one of your summons out (since they still persist after their dots or whatnot falloff). You start dotting your target up with your arcanist abilities and then you summon based on the need for AE or direct damage. Your summon does a neat direct blast, converts your dots into their elemental dot and then you follow with a balance of dots and the direct damage.

Also the 1000 character reply cap is idiotic.

If anyone else finds this kind of summoner interesting let me know and I'll start a new post with the details to argue about.

All of your suggestions sounds good. That is the problem.

Your suggestions pretty much screams 'make Summoners OP', it will NEVER get implemented.

You need to tone down the skills a lot and make it a lot more simpler.

[Crevox]

[Crevox]

Your suggestions pretty much screams 'make Summoners OP', it will NEVER get implemented.

A lot of things could be balanced if the numbers are tweaked right. Everyone doesn't want FFXI summoner in FFXIV because "they were weak" but that's just because of poorly tuned numbers.

[Duelle]

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.

"Off" does not even begin to describe the clusterf*** known as FFXI's summoner.

And you're right, it's not like a console FF summoner. As I mentioned, those are basically black mages with spells that have prettier effects and artwork by Amano Yoshitaka. And can sometimes turn into vehicles.

The sad thing is that if SMN played "like a (console) FF summoner", you'd probably be complaining about how it is a straight out nuker with more heavily-graphical nukes.

If it played like XI's avatar system we'd end up with a weak class that wouldn't even fit into the armoury system. You can toot the "they never should have implemented it" horn, and in part I may agree with you, but then you'd be crying at the lack of summoner.

It's a lose-lose for SE, and they went with something that fits the armoury system, makes sense for a pet class and helps fill the DoM roster.

A lot of things could be balanced if the numbers are tweaked right. Everyone doesn't want FFXI summoner in FFXIV because "they were weak" but that's just because of poorly tuned numbers.

It's not poorly-tuned numbers. It's a poorly-designed concept they tried to pass off as a summoner. Barring a handful of gimmicks like Fenrir making everyone blurry in FFVI, summoners have always been about destructive power. Big damage, one-use nukes that cost a crapton of MP. XI tried to go the versatility route because they knew the big damage route would not work (adding to this, XI's devs had an obsession with niche gameplay and SMN would step on Black Mage's toes if it had actually been designed like the summoners of past FF's), which gave Tanaka & Co. that irrational fear they had for the job since it was introduced. Not to mention the concepts behind certain summons is OP as hell in the context of an MMORPG, and was easily proven when Odin and Alexander entered the game.

As I've repeated numerous times in hopes of people getting some actual perspective, a concept that doesn't translate well into a new genre (console RPGs and MMORPGs are different genres that call for very different designs) more often than not gets heavily altered or dropped altogether.

[Inosaska]

I was honestly hoping for FFX summons style gameplay but sadly they decided to go the route that no one likes at all.

[Arcana]

this image hurts... and makes me sad i'm feeling like a pokemon master now ><