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

[Duelle]

The most legitimate complaint/criticism that I hear involves the fact that summoner operates VERY similarly to an Affliction (DoT spec) warlock in WoW.

As always, I'll be the one to say "something's gotta give". You can't blame the developers for wanting to go for a model that works over shooting darts on a board and hoping things don't end up broken or overpowered in the quest to be different for the sake of being different (firstly because relative balance is a million times more important in an MMORPG than in a single-player RPG). Then again, the fact PLD plays similarly to a WoW prot warrior does not bother me in the slightest, as Prot was a pretty solid tank design and that is all I could ask for in a tank.

I'm of the opinion some need to entirely let go of XI's SMN and the ones from older games (which boiled down to being Black Mages with spells that were flashier with some extra artwork and cost more MP) and understand MMORPGs require different designs and approaches than our beloved single-player console FFs.

[Yukiko]

I guess because the lack of healer, they designed SCH first and it worked very well.
When deciding to design SMN, they just taken the same model from SCH and thought: "Great, we can skip time and just do it that way".
Result is that we have now!

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

As always, I'll be the one to say "something's gotta give". You can't blame the developers for wanting to go for a model that works over shooting darts on a board and hoping things don't end up broken or overpowered in the quest to be different for the sake of being different (firstly because relative balance is a million times more important in an MMORPG than in a single-player RPG). Then again, the fact PLD plays similarly to a WoW prot warrior does not bother me in the slightest, as Prot was a pretty solid tank design and that is all I could ask for in a tank.

I'm of the opinion some need to entirely let go of XI's SMN and the ones from older games (which boiled down to being Black Mages with spells that were flashier with some extra artwork and cost more MP) and understand MMORPGs require different designs and approaches than our beloved single-player console FFs.

You must not call it SUMMONER so, this has been a huge mistake.
Also, affliction warlock has much more mechanics (and more funny) than the summoner actually, we have a really boring gameplay ^^

The feeling while playing this class is that the design was done in hurry.

I played thaumaturge, scholar and warrior and they are much more fun then the summoner actually (notice that I'm sorry for this).
And please don't tell me "play wow", I hate that game.

[Engineer]

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.

Then its simply not "Final Fantasy" (Summoner wise)

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.

The spells are not a minute long, and are made to summon pre battle. We also have Fast Cast for emergency use. When did a Summoner ever Draw Summoning Circles?

Is the "reputation" of Summoner truly that important that people are willing to make 9001 topics on the "cool" factor?

Its an Iconic job to the Final Fantasy series, So yes. Its not just the cool factor, its the feel of it, and gameplay style.

Feels like a Warlock in a summoners costume.

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.

The job is very effective, but its not summoner. A summoner performs through their pet. since Its called a Summoner not Arcane mage, its main thing should be Summon damage.

Imagine having a Black Mage that isnt efficient with Black magic? Imagine if ninja was implemented, but it played like samurai, but was still called ninja?

Just because its efficient doesnt mean its the Job.

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.

I think 80% of the damage should come from the pet. If my Summon dies, i should Bind, retreat, then re summon instead of finishing the fight on my own and summon afterwards.

what we have isnt Summoner, its a Arcane Mage/Warlock in a Summoners costume.


I thought the Point of Jobs was having a playstyle that depicts the name of the job? Thinking of the "Summoner" job now seems really silly.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

@Engineer I agree with you obviously.
I would be happy to see all those bards do most of their damages in melee with a dagger instead of a ranged bow. Or all those blackmages doing damage through a pet instead of their huge spells.

And if this isn't enough think about this: I'll give you 5 classes where 4 are really nice classes to play while the fifth OWNS the others but to make it work is just: CLICK REPEATEDLY "A".
Would you like to choose the fifth or the others? You know what will happen? Everyone pick the fifth, they say the game is bad. If I change the fifth class is changed, games get better, otherwise game will loose all players in a bit.

Notice that this is not a random story, this happened on another well-known free to play mmorpg very recently, where one class was REQUIRED (at least 2 of them) in a party of 5 and they could have been both tank/healer and I heaered they are good dps too.

[TibTheSummoner]

SE you got your feed back. SMN isn't completely done. Do something about it. ;;

[silentwindfr]

one more time people need to think a bit more before ask for the impossible.

Summoner have 5 skill, you will need to wait a raise in level for see more of this jobs.
other point a class that rely only on pet in an mmorpg is bound to be useless in endgame content.

other point, the smn have a more complicate gameplay than blm or brd. people only see the dot cycle, but you can doo so much more than this.

[Ghalith]

(Sorry in advance for the wall of text)

You want to know something funny? For whatever reason, it's always Summoner that always gets all the job fanatics up in a bunch...

A few comments on the "fanaticism":
For a long time (in FFXI) it was only utilized as a gimped White Mage with a larger MP pool, and only a few AoE buffs gave it some sort of use of the avatars until they actually divided bloodpacts into two types.Summoner in XI was crippled for a very long time due largely due to damage output relative to MP consumption. Ironically, those mechanics would probably have a better synergy with the faster-paced FFXIV where we do not need to rest to restore our MP. Though as I understand it, Summoner seems to finally be getting some viable damage/use off of their pets, Avatar's Favor seemed like a good turning point...(continued)

[Ghalith]

BUT: FFXI seemed to fear magic in general, BLM definitely fell from its glory in the advent of TP burning parties, and last I knew they were only valued in specific scenarios to wipe monsters with small pools of HP instantly. Summoner was indeed staffed quite often, Alexander and Odin were a year late, and to date Atomos and Cait Sith are nowhere to be seen. Pet classes in general seem to be the ones that get the most bad press in MMO communities, they are admittedly difficult to balance.

But there is more to Summoner that perturbs me than my Egi's being innocuous-looking elementals. (Though, even if they were increased in size to match the Egi we fight in our mini-trial would make a world of difference!) Arcanist as a class was disadvantaged from the start because it had less window for feedback than the other classes from v1.0. We weren't even able to play the class in beta, so by launch, it seemed like we were beta testing this class and were entitled to our feedback...(continued)

[Ghalith]

I think the Dev team has been wonderful about communicating with the player base, but I am definitely disappointed with the response to this thread. There has been a vocal majority who have raised the same concerns repeatedly, and it seems issues with much less precedence from players have received attention.

At the very least, there should be a re-focus on where our damage is coming from. Since Summoner is linked to Arcanist, we simply aren't going to get rid of all the DoT mechanics of the class. But why do I have Fester? And why is Fester so much more available to me than Enkindle or other pet abilities?

Phew! I apologize again for the wall... But I definitely implore the Summoners who are dissatisfied with the class to keep vocal about it. The devs are listening to us, so keep at it!