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

[Miiu]

The job is still fresh and there is tons of room for improvement. Focusing everything on preserving summoner's "image" is a waste of time and resources. The balance between the summons we have now should be looked into.

I agree but given how SE ignored almost all requests about the Summoner class in ffxi puts some dark clouds on the horizon. So I think it's better to at least make our concerns known as early as possible. But from what I have heard people where already complaining during beta which I didn't participate in.

[Ardan]

snip.

Summoner in FFXI was purposely held back, like every other pet job, due to the crippling fear that they would actually be good. Tanaka was mostly to blame because, y'know, BALANCE.

As far as our current summons go, the only thing that needs to be changed is Ifrit and Titan. Garuda has a one-up on them because of contagion and benefits from our primary stat: INT. Honestly they just need to make it so Ifrit and Titan get the STR boost they need from our INT since all of their attacks, except enkindle, are physical.

[Warlyx]

Summoner in FFXI was purposely held back, like every other pet job, due to the crippling fear that they would actually be good. Tanaka was mostly to blame because, y'know, BALANCE.

yeah thats why in FFXI bst pets "nerfed" exp in partys.

thats why Avatars drained MP like crazy (never understood why , was a retarded idea)

and thats why Automatons were "random" , and casted in a particular order based on Puppetmaster Man. ICE ICE ICE...........pet start casting silence.....COME ON? cast blizz IV!

Took how many gears until SE added some SMN gear that was worthile? oh elemental staffs and the crappy lvl 50 set (that looke like crap ) , until u got AF1 (that wasnt that good but all AF1 sucked but some pieces) , AF2 was "ok" .....and then the MNK robe......that u needed to kill a flee + invis mob in one of the worse zones for agro ~~

[KaosPrimeZero]

.....and then the MNK robe......that u needed to kill a flee + invis mob in one of the worse zones for agro ~~

Name: Yingyang Robe
Zone: Ro'Maeve
NM: Shikigami Weapon
NM information: Shikigami Weapon spawns 21 to 24 hours and 15 minutes after it last died. It has an innate invisible effect and it cannot be targeted until it is aggro'd via spellcasting. This is a RDM type weapon, that can't be silenced.

I miss those days Matsui ruined FFXI for good /cry

[Borfin]

As a fresh SMN, I want to add my voice to the throng.

I would much rather each of my dots be a command issued to my pet (with maybe some iconic exceptions we've seen in prior games, like Bio) rather than a dot I apply; or even summon-themed. Something as simple as changing a name; Primal Fire (or Ifrit's Something) would make more sense than Miasma.

ACN (and SMN) spells scream death, decay and disease. This isn't a summoner's theme - it's a warlock theme. In addition to playing like one, even thematically I AM a warlock, I just summon Egis of Primals instead of demons (and, given their respective universes, aren't they the same thing really?)

I'm unsure if they did it because they want us to be non-elemental minus egis, but cmon.

Cmoooon.

I really like the game and it's not enough to make me quit it, but god damn I wish I was in command of the Primals - or at least their essences - more than I was a dealer of disease.

[Duelle]

We also keep garuda out because she doesnt have to run after the mob every time it decides to relocate. She can just continue dps'ing unlike ifrit and titan who have to follow the mob everywhere it runs losing dps

This is a matter of thematics. Would you rather Ifrit-egi and Titan-egi stand with the SMN spamming long range spells, despite the primals those are based on being melee?

The main issue is really that if you're going to do the parallel of imp/succubus/voidwalker for Garuda/Ifrit/Titan-egi, then Ifrit's damage needs to be bumped up and he needs to be given a channeled CC. The succubus could DPS via Lash of Pain spam and could use Seduction to incapacitate a target so long as the succubus was channeling the ability.

That's not even getting into the wonky pet mechanics this game suffers from (bad AI, bad pathing, terrible UI and command options, as well as the inability to truly control what your pet uses on cooldown individually).

add to that she also lives longer so you dont have to resummon every 5-10 minutes cause they die to a big attack or something, thus resummoning and losing both player and smn dps.

This is more because SE chose to not copy one of the more crucial aspects of pet gameplay from WoW - the greatly reduced damage taken from indirect damage sources. If I recall, indirect damage (AoE, line attacks, ground targetted attacks, incidental raid damage) taken by pets is something like 10% of what player characters take.

The funny thing is that this was done because prior to implementation pet classes whose DPS was reliant on the pet would get shafted in raids because dead pet made that DPS a liability (Demo warlocks and all three hunter specs know this quite well). That is also most likely the other reason why egi's relation to SMN's DPS works the way it does, specially when taking into account that egis do not have that native damage reduction and can die easily.

ACN (and SMN) spells scream death, decay and disease. This isn't a summoner's theme - it's a warlock theme. In addition to playing like one, even thematically I AM a warlock, I just summon Egis of Primals instead of demons (and, given their respective universes, aren't they the same thing really?)

Doesn't the bold pretty much justify the approach SE took with FFXIV's SMN?

[Borfin]

Doesn't the bold pretty much justify the approach SE took with FFXIV's SMN?

It would if every Final Fantasy from 3 to 13 hadn't set a precedent for the Summoner class (and summon-users in general) thematically being based around... yknow, summons... instead of death and decay

BLM still casts Fire, Fire II, Fire III, etc. It's still thematically the destructive spells that, for the most part, are recurring in the series.

The same could be said of WHM, PLD (remember Cover?); admittedly I haven't looked through all classes, but those are examples that support it.

It's a large thematic change, which I take issue with. I still have a ton of fun with the class, I just wish it wasn't a WoW warlock carbon copy.

[Kevee]

Summoner in FFXI was purposely held back, like every other pet job, due to the crippling fear that they would actually be good. Tanaka was mostly to blame because, y'know, BALANCE.

As far as our current summons go, the only thing that needs to be changed is Ifrit and Titan. Garuda has a one-up on them because of contagion and benefits from our primary stat: INT. Honestly they just need to make it so Ifrit and Titan get the STR boost they need from our INT since all of their attacks, except enkindle, are physical.

Ifrit and Titan DO scale off of INT.

[Crescent_Dusk]

Ifrit and Titan DO scale off of INT.

Just miserably so, as I'm sure your thread outlined.

The fact that a ranged pet with the only good pet ability for raids does more damage than the melee pet you have to micro more to keep alive and has crap abilities is absurd.