SUMMONER, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE OR ADD? (EVOLUTION & STAT ALLOCATION)

[Arcari]

I've seen these "I HATE HOW SUMMONER PETS LOOK" threads pop up more than any other criticisms. There were a few "SMN don't have any burst -- this is stupid" threads during the first week... I guess until people realized we have ways around that and SMN sustained damage is more than enough to make up for our lack in burst when killing adds ASAP. (Fester charges are more than enough to pull your weight on Titan heart, for example... and planning to Bane and spreading DoTs as soon as adds spawn on Garuda will make up for the lack of burst there.)

People also complain about Egi damage without actually parsing to see how much damage the pet actually does. I can't give an exact estimate, but a pet definitely does more than 10%. A summoner's damage is already pretty high... it's usually the pet that sets a summoner's full damage over other players with equal gear. Keep in mind that your pet's stats SEEM to increase with YOUR gear. (Or at least the HP from your VIT does... I haven't strictly parsed pet damage with gear on/off.)

The most legitimate complaint/criticism that I hear involves the fact that summoner operates VERY similarly to an Affliction (DoT spec) warlock in WoW. It's true... although the lore is different... but I can't think of a great 'fix' to this since this is a game that encourages you to ALWAYS be doing something (very rarely do you just 'stand still' like in FFXI). If anyone can think of a great fix to the "Summoner = Warlock" complaint that actually works with this game, please speak up now. Saying, "I wish our pet did more" isn't enough because standing there and commanding a pet just isn't going to work in a fast-paced game like this. We aren't playing FFXI anymore. =/

Agree 100%.

The Summoner fanboys need to first get it through their heads that this is not FFXI, nor any other FF in the series. You simply do not have the time to stand there and do your minute long incantation or draw your summoning circle to call out a massive pet of doom. You would go up against the very core of this game.

I can understand egis not looking "cool" enough, because that's mainly an opinionated viewpoint.

You want to know something funny? For whatever reason, it's always Summoner that always gets all the job fanatics up in a bunch. No other job seems to be able to accomplish this (well except maybe Red Mage, and I still remember some stupid rage about Scholar and the fairies in the beta forums, but people have shut up about it since). Saw it in FFXI, and it's reared its ugly head again here. Is the "reputation" of Summoner truly that important that people are willing to make 9001 topics on the "cool" factor? How about just having a job that gets what it needs to done? Aside from UI issues, Summoner is good at what it needs to do in this game.

Also, more opinion: I like the fact that Summoner can hold its own in a fight if for whatever reason your egis are disabled. Self-sufficiency is awesome. Personally, I wouldn't want too much focus on the pet. 50/50 split at the very most.

[Engineer]

Give us a proper summoner lvl 3 limit break instead of pawning us off with blm meteor!!

Yes as should all jobs. I know yoshida said he didn't want every job to have their own limit break to prevent discrimination, but that doesn't mean each can't have their own unique LB Animation

Like bard should pull out its Harp and play a paeon to heal or revive everyone. Same LB, different animation.

Now, Summoner should have a LB animation of a summon appearing, attacking, then disappearing.

The perfect summon for this , (I think) Is Valefor from FFX. Each level limit break can be a different attack making level 3 his signature. Same LB as BLM different animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9r3...e_gdata_player

SE make this happen.

[Zantetsuken]

The Summoner fanboys need to first get it through their heads that this is not FFXI, nor any other FF in the series. You simply do not have the time to stand there and do your minute long incantation or draw your summoning circle to call out a massive pet of doom. You would go up against the very core of this game.

Yeah, because that doesn't already happen with Meteor LB...

or Raise/Resurrection...

/sarc

Most gamers understand that having the actual primals as pets dont make sense for the XIV lore, but SE could have made the look of the Egi more Full & Detailed.

I wish SE would have gave us actual summons that they werent going to use as Primals (Ixion, Valefor, Belias, Mateus, Fenrir, Quetzalcoatl ETC.)

Yes, yes, and yes. If primals are too powerful, just give us other summons.

We've already seen ARR art for many of them already. Chupon, Siren, Cait Sith, Fenrir, etc. And we currently have Carbuncle. Using those would have been a FAR more authentic SMN design than the "Egis"...

/sigh

We discussed your feedback about the design of the egi with the development team. As was mentioned previously during the Beta test, the design planner reiterated that egi were designed to be a manifestation of a percentage of power taken from the primals and are intentionally designed to appear differently from the primal. As such, we aren't planning on changing the look of egi at higher levels.

We will however continue to take in your feedback when creating new egi that will be added in the future.

What a total letdown

Why didn't the devs just call the job "Evoker" (FFIII) if they were going to deviate so far from the FF SMN tradition?

Nobody would be complaining about betrayed expectations, small egis, etc. if the job was simply called Evoker.

[Lumier]

I don't know if this was mentioned before but is there a reason why when you cast a spell.. all your hotbars are grayed out (including the pet bar)? I understand it indicates you can't use other spells but why include the pet bar. IMO a pet is a completely different identity. It would be nice to unlock the pet bar so that i could simultaneously control my pet to do other things while I'm casting a spell. Ex: when im casting physick, i always have to wait till its done before i can tell my fairy to use embrace. This is really annoying. I found a way around it but a complete freedom control of the pet would be nice...

I would also agree with some people that i became a little disappointed when i found out it was just a DoT class. I was hoping something different but all it does is remind me of warlocks in WoW and they had more freedom with their pets.. *crossing my fingers for a change* !

[Alberel]

The most legitimate complaint/criticism that I hear involves the fact that summoner operates VERY similarly to an Affliction (DoT spec) warlock in WoW. It's true... although the lore is different... but I can't think of a great 'fix' to this since this is a game that encourages you to ALWAYS be doing something (very rarely do you just 'stand still' like in FFXI). If anyone can think of a great fix to the "Summoner = Warlock" complaint that actually works with this game, please speak up now. Saying, "I wish our pet did more" isn't enough because standing there and commanding a pet just isn't going to work in a fast-paced game like this. We aren't playing FFXI anymore. =/

There's a very very easy fix to this that other MMOs have done in the past: have all the player skills actually cast by the pet. Instead of each pet having just four skills on its hotbar give it 10-15 and allows players to use them in a skill rotation like any other job. If you raised the pet's damage and reduced that of the summoner them self you'd have an active combat system and a high dependency on the pet. Problem solved.

Having said that I personally believe the reason they've avoided that is because they intend to use that mechanic for the puppetmaster when they release it... I can hope right?

[Ryuko]

Instead of each pet having just four skills on its hotbar give it 10-15 and allows players to use them in a skill rotation like any other job. If you raised the pet's damage and reduced that of the summoner them self you'd have an active combat system and a high dependency on the pet. Problem solved.

I don't see any real functional difference between me using the abilities or me TELLING my pet to use the same abilities. If anything, I don't like it because pet AI is currently very dumb. Others have said we should have the ability to turn off/on everything individually -- something I agree with. If I want to turn off JUST one of my pet's abilities (so I can manually use it), that would be nice. Instead, I'm forced to put my pet on passive, tell it who to attack (annoying when killing trash), and instruct it to use other abilities on cooldown. That said... WHY does passive turn back to Guard after EVERY encounter? I'd love if it would STAY on passive for as long as I have it that way.

Adding more emphasis to the pet's AI would really mess up summoner as a whole -- right now -- because the pet is just not SMART enough to be a large, reliable source of damage. There are times where I have to resummon Garuda-egi because she's being dumb, or because she got caught in an unavoidable Hydra fire AoE (by the time you tell her to move, it is too late. She dies. Part of the problem is that we CANNOT command our pet while casting a spell... so you are SOL if you were in the middle of Ruin spamming and you need to move her.) It also wouldn't be 'fair' in certain situations. For example... In Titan, after the first few jumps... if you have your Egi in the right position, she will never get hit by anything. Instead, she will be 'flying' in the air where the large outer platform used to be. Granted, you'll need to stay alive to keep her up... but she can keep shooting away without a care in the world. She never needs to take a break to do anything else. Also... pets take reduced damage (like in other MMOs) to 'make up' for the fact that they can't be moved as fast as players.

Perhaps they will improve the AI in future updates, which is why I'm sure there will be more emphasis on the pet as the level cap increases. Keep in mind that this game is NEW. They are forming brand new jobs (even if they are based on ones that existed in 1.0). Everything is going to get tweaked over the next few months/years. When the pet AI is fixed... do you guys really want to play a game where your pet does everything? I don't want that. I'm probably one of the few people who is more than content with summoner how it is now because I'm sure we'll get more cool pet abilities in the future. We're only level 50 right now. Summoner does GREAT damage and has a lot of utility in certain situations. I have my unique 'role'. We're not like 'any other dps'. I'm okay with how the lore works in this game. Summoner has never been about 'eye candy' for me (as someone else said).

Also, my comment about pets definitely doing more than 10%. I wanted to clarify that the reason I said 'more than 10%' is because someone else claimed our pets only do 10% of our damage. It's actually much more than that. AND that's 'free' damage if you remember to hit the cooldowns. Buuuuuut... it's possible to be a HORRIBLE summoner (I've seen it). Whether or not you are good is still in your hands. I would like that to continue to be true.

[Lumier]

There's a very very easy fix to this that other MMOs have done in the past: have all the player skills .........

Having said that I personally believe the reason they've avoided that is because they intend to use that mechanic for the puppetmaster when they release it... I can hope right?

ooh ooh. i like that idea. I think summoner fans want to feel the presence and the awesomeness of their pets. allowing them to have more abilities will shift the focus more on the summon then the summoner. Besides IMO summoners are usually weaker (spell wise and hense summons). Pets have more dps abilities while summoners have support skills for pets? Could also have the two soul link. So when you summon a monster, your life will decrease or something. Having a boss kill your summon and then have to kill you too is not fair for him is it or your fellow team mates XD?

i think they should add both mechanics in to make each class unique. am i being greedy?

[TheRoku]

People need to realize that summoners are not complaining about the class being too week or something, it's a very good DPS, but its just not a summoner. I dont even care about summoners from other FF games, i understand that FFXIV is a different game with different lore, but the name "summoner" suggest that we will get a certain class, a class focused on... well, summons. Instead, we get a ranger class with a pet helping on the side, like you can see in many other mmorpgs. Its the same as we would get a class named "healer" but he wouldnt be focusing on healing and only had some small healing abilities.

1. Give us better looking summons. And no, it doesnt mean they have to be huge, Carbuncle and Scholars fairy are very small yet they look good.

2. Give us more control over our summons.

3. The focus of the whole class should be our summons. They should be dealing most of the dmg, they should have much more skills and we should be using them.

[Mireille]

I was half way through my smn relic when I realized that I was always on scholar and never on summoner anymore. I ended up canceling my smn relic and restarting on scholar. I just wasn't willing to invest all that effort into Relic + 1 for a job I never want to play. Scholar feels right and is fun to play, and the design team did a great job on it.

This actually now reminds me of 1.0 had no Chocobo's or other key parts of FF lore, and that was a big part of why it flopped. This seems like the exact same mistake. I'll say it again you took something major from FF and replaced it with something from WoW, and you're seriously expecting FF fans not be disappointed? I can understand not adjusting this if we are just a vocal minority and game stats show the majority of people love summoner, but if it's a fail own up and make it into the job we know as summoner, and not 'the job formerly known as summoner.'

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

It's not hard to make the summoner better guys:
FIRST: "delete" that terrible AI, give us something like GAMBITS for summons, it's an rpg, it's supposed to focus on strategy and tactic.
SECOND: Give summons much more spells and heavily specialized, give for example ifrit and additional debuff that works on fester, garuda has that useful skill, give something different to titan, keep carbuncle and give us some improvements to it, we were arcanist right?
THIRD: Enkindle has a long cooldown and not enough damage output, I don't mean dps is low, but from a "limit break" of a summon I expect something HUGE, it would be nicer if the egi becomes a small primal temporary, do attack, do something else and then go back to what it was
FOURTH: Why on earth CHOCOBO is much more interactive and well done as a pet then SUMMONS? Really? The chocobo has a skill tree and can change from tank to healer to dps. I can't believe they didn't do something similar for the summoner.
FIFTH: Yea, move spells from summoner to summon, the summon must be our KEY, our FOCUS.
SIXTH: Why on earth can't I move the pet while I'm casting? I've done a summoner because I like handling two "entities", and the funny part is that I have to wait to move the pet somewhere while I'm casting (which indeed is the perfect moment).
For example, I'm casting my shadow flare (long cast time) on aoe on some mobs, why can't I say to my ifrit "ehy, stun that mob summoning an add!"?! That's insane, I have to stop shadow flare, click on the ifrit skill and restart casting shadow flare.

Why Summoner = Warlock? Because I have 3 debuffs, debuff sharing spells, my main source of damage is bio + bio 2 + miasma + fester, do you see any "SUMMONER THINGS" here? I don't think pet is weak, I do an insane amount of dps, but I would like to have my main source of damage an "interaction" with my pet, instead, my pet is just another debuff on the enemy.

Only enkindle is nice (aoe ifrit debuff being the most interesting), but with a 300 seconds cooldown, makes the funny part basically not existing.
Aetherflow is our "core gameplay mechanic", why it doesn't interact with our pet?

Scholars are much better well done than summoners, but I've already the relic and a very good equipment on it so I don't want to swap right now.
But really, summoner game design is really WEAK.