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

[Applejack]

I always say that I feel like a Red Mage with this kit. Just take away the summons, give us a saber, and a few strong melee attacks an d call that good.

[KingBerry]

Sadly summoner is a warlock which is boring and it ruins the whole summoner concept. Yeh you can say this is XIV and not XI blah blah blah but this is still a Final Fantasy game and all of the final fantasy titles the summons were strong and appearance wise they were incredible. Comparing XI summoner to XIV summoner XI>XIV because summoner actually feels like a summoner and XIV summoner feels like a warlock and nothing like summoner.

[SmileyFace]

Finally caught up! This is a fun discussion, but I felt the need to respond. Was going to post a response to the whole "What is a summoner?" question and ended up with this huge wall of text that looked at all the FF games (that I've played) and brought examples and pointed out mechanical and lore consistencies and all that, but decided no one will probably read it anyways. Now I'm just going to respond to the whole "Summons were always weak!" statement... Short version. XD

Summons, like any other special skill, were as strong as how well you used them. Taking some one elses example and expanding it: Ifrit was essentially Fire 2.5. This was actually pretty significant considering that casting any of the Black Magic spells on a whole party (except endgame AOE only stuff like Ultima) meant you were doing less damage per target. So casting Fire 2 on an enemy party would equal to roughly casting Fire 1 (single target) on all the enemies. Ifrit did damage roughly equal to Fire 2.5, whether it was one target or multiple.

Secondly, Summons as a support were useful in the sense that they could cast White Magic spells on the entire party at once. Spells that, while White Mages normally have, are forced to cast one target at a time. Stone Skin used to be Summoner exclusive until FF11... I think.

Thirdly, Summons bypassed Reflect. Not an important trait, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

So if anything can be said, Summoners were the best AoE'ers.

Conversely, it can be claimed that any of the special skills of the FF Universe are essentially useless. Except maybe White Magic and Martial Arts. I have a few arguments, but none of them are really that convincing. The most obvious example would be the Dragoon jumps. When a Dragoon jumps and lands with any weapon other than a spear, they do exactly the same damage as if they were just attacking normally. If you equip a spear, then they do 2x damage, but jumping and landing takes just as long as if the Dragoon didn't jump and attacked twice instead. So yeah, Dragoon jumps were pretty useless unless you wanted to be tricky and can time the jumps to avoid enemy AoE's. This is excluding the Tactics and MMO games 'cause of the overall difference in philosophy.

Honestly, if you played the FF games as efficiently as possible, you'd only be using Attack command and healing with White Magic occasionally as needed. Maybe you'll occasionally pop a Black Magic spell to take advantage of an elemental weakness (which made things only slightly faster and could also be replaced with Summons) and maybe you'll occasionally use Alchemy (not the crafting MMO style) during boss fights to use some of their really awesome buffs, but none of the special skills can be considered "strong" in the big picture of things. Except for FFV's Blue Magic. Holy crap, Death Claw was amazing! :P

Anyways, I've said my piece. Feel free to ignore it and continue the discussion.

[Crevox]

bumpage required

[Dagr81]

don't thin they will change this job at all
personally this job should have been call something else
that job is fun job but like people said does not feel like a smn at all

[Dean86]

would of been better if could capture monsters or some other mechanics. Summoner is awful.

[jlewiss]

What I wanted was a class that would have me summon pets around my size maybe a little smaller. A class where I would cast buffs on my pet , a class that would use combine attacks with my pet. I hate to be one of those people but the main reason i wanted this game was because i was going to have the ability to play a cool summoner. Had I known this was the class I wouldn't of bothered.

It's their game and they have the artistic license to call any class whatever they want but they were extremely misleading when the common accepted job for a summoner in mmorpgs is a class that uses summons. It would be like having a black mage have only one offensive spell and the rest were buffs.

The same way rockstar games has artistic lisence to make gta whatever they want. but wouldn't you be pissed if you bought gta 5 expecting to do missions and drive cars and it just ended up being a nursing home simulator?

[Vevi]

Summoner just makes me feel like a Warlock and never a Summoner.

[Kiokin]

would of been better if could capture monsters or some other mechanics. Summoner is awful.

Had I known this was the class I wouldn't of bothered.

This is completely off-topic, but it's "have," not "of." What is wrong with you people?

[Merceus]

I feel like Summoner in FFXIV is not really what I was hoping for at all.

Summoners are interesting for what they are but leave me wanting way more than any other class I've ever played in a game. I don't feel epic and wonderful or like I get to fulfill that wonderful sense of "A Final Fantasy summoner". I feel like some guy was ugly minions running around DoTing things up and sometimes reviving people. Aesthetically the summoner is epic but the summons are not. Mechanically the summoner is epic but the summons are not. Spiritually the summoner does not live up to the title of summoner in a Final Fantasy title.