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

[Ardan]

I think I stopped using summons shortly after I got them in almost every FF. They just lost their usefulness after the characters that use them get better spells. I pretty much spammed Holy with Eiko and primarily used Garnet as a healer. Same deal with Yuna, although the Aeons served as a decent meat shield.

If you took away their secondary abilities they have nothing left. FFT went this route with the summoner class. It was somewhat useful until spellcasting became worthless... unless you put on the Arithmetic ability and just Holy'd all the things on the screen.

[Borfin]

If you took away their secondary abilities they have nothing left.

Actually, in every iteration I can think of up to 10 (except perhaps Evokers) summons have been on-par (or slightly below - in other words competitive) with other sources of damage - so long as you progressed in the story and achieved the "rare" summons. Tier 2 summons rivaled tier 2 spells even single target - generally slightly less, but not always. And the difference wasn't all that massive. In order to be competitive with Tier 3 spells' damage you generally had to have the higher end summons - the ones you don't get normally progressing through the game.

Summons in Tactics were absolutely deadly. Perhaps not the MOST deadly (calculators are just flat-out broken), but you definitely don't want to get caught in a Titan during the game's progression. The positioning requirements and vulnerability of the summoner was primarily what made summoners weak, not the summons themselves.

(This has absolutely nothing to do with my issue with the theme, just something I felt needed clarifying.)

Um...I think Holy.

I think I used Holy like, all the time, cause its always been the best thing ever.

EDIT: ps a lot of the summoners had white mage backgrounds too.

Would be neat to steal some white mage abilities (though I guess with Physick and stuff we're kinda stealing).

Only Eiko and Yuna got Holy and that wasn't until they'd fully progressed through their levels/grid - roughly 90% of the normal game.

Not to say it wasn't good - once they got it it pretty much outshone everything they had. But there was barely any of their games left at that point, unless you include optional content.

Even then Madeen was almost as powerful, while Magus Sisters just...

Jesus, Magus Sisters and Anima, what a joke the normal storyline progression becomes with either of them.