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

[Malamasala]

It was quite typical in my opinion that the class that needed the most testing (Summoner) was the class that got least testing. They should have KNOWN that if their previous FF11 Summoner got complaints for a decade, you don't just throw together a new version without major tests. In this case they actually did pretty good, just that if they had allowed for the 6 months of testing other classes got, they would have fixed us some real pet design.

But I'm not the least surprised. At FF14-1 without summoners I said "Good, because they can't design the class at all". For FF14-2 I said "This will never work out because they still haven't fixed FF11". And with all facts on table, I was right. They screwed up again, and it will not be fixed for over a decade because SMN = lowest priority.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

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.

It's not true.
I played blm and bard and definitely the summoner (my MAIN job) is a BRAINLESS job.
You just have to keep up your debuffs which do the biggest part of your damage and cast Fester when possible.
Pet buffs are just "use when you can (and mobs won't jump/become invul)"

Yea you may need to cast ruin 2 if there are less than 2 seconds left on the fester cooldown (instead of ruin 1), you can recover mp with energy drain if you are low on mana (but in a raid, you'll have a bard).
BUT we don't even have a rotation, just keep up all debuffs and cast fester, based on boss you can choose how many debuffs you should cast (you may add shadow flare), but that's all.

BLM have a really nice rotation with the consume all mana/regenerate mechanic and adding an ether in it changes it entirely, how is it supposed to be easier than summoner ?!

The rotation of a BLM changes completely after reaching level 50, the rotation of the summoner is always the same since level 1: cast bio II, miasma, bio: THAT'S ALL
80% of damage comes from "passive" damage output skills: 3 debuffs and 1 pet!

We have a class where 80% of damage IS PASSIVE, how is it even supposed to be fun.

NEED TO WAIT FOR LEVEL RAISE?!
We have 5 skills as a summoner and we got 2 arcanist skills (the core!) removed, is it a troll or what?

The pet has a lot of spots for new skills, and again why on earth the chocobo has a skill tree and my summon does not.

"Pet based classes are bad endgame": They are professional designer, I expect they will find a way to make those powerful.
And in any case, summoner is actually one of the greatest dps available damage-wise.

[Engineer]

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.

SMN has 5 skills and 2 aren't pet based, Fester & Tri Disaster. It's not impossible, all SE needs to do is switch some stats around and the way some skills work.

Fester has nothing to do with summoning and should be changed. I think Fester would be good if it involved the pet. I mentioned this before but upon use Fester should act differently depending on what pet is out.

Using Fester should command the pet to attack.
Garuda = Single target, Ifrit = Cone, and Titan = PBAOE.


This would be great for strategy since you would have to play differently depending on what egi is out. Can use Bane before Fester if Ifrit is out which is good for trash mobs, or use Garuda + Fester for bosses, and titans aoe bane + Fester for improved tanking.

stats can be changed upon equipping a job stone. Most of the Dps should come from the pet, while dots should do way less.

other point a class that rely only on pet in an mmorpg is bound to be useless in endgame .

Not true, any good pet class user will learn the Ai pattern behaviors and work around that much like a real pet.

FFXIV pet mechanics are pretty solid. Just keep it on obey and hit the actions yourself, or switch it to sic if you want it to go all out then Obey again afterwards.

It's very easy to control a pet.

[Duelle]

Also, affliction warlock has much more mechanics (and more funny) than the summoner actually, we have a really boring gameplay

Affliction also has existed for close to 10 years and has gone through continued evolution as WoW's gameplay changed (Warlocks as a whole received at least two major changes throughout WoW's history). Summoner has been out the gate for two months. Nevermind the fundamental design differences between WoW and FFXIV.

The spells are not a minute long

You're right, they're longer.

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.

You're willfully forgetting Summoner is designed around the base of Arcanist. What you have is a version of Summoner, much like Yuna deviated from Dagger who deviated from Rydia who was an entirely different animal from FFXI's Summoner.

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.

Even with faster combat you'd have a job with a crapton of gimped abilities and little to no use outside of Astral Flow (by the way, the only time SMN was ever useful was after getting Alexander when your alliance leader called for Astral Flow+Alexander => Perfect Defense to cheese whatever poorly-designed high damage mechanic the devs would conjure).

Pet classes in general seem to be the ones that get the most bad press in MMO communities, they are admittedly difficult to balance.

Even more so when the majority of the damage is on the pet rather than the master.

Again, what you guys should be asking for is better pet AI, a better pet UI, better response times with pets, better control over their abilities (having everything on auto-cast is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen done with pets) and a bump on pet mitigation taken from AoEs (I doubt egi's have a 90% damage reduction like WoW pets, for one).

Then you can start improving pathing, damage, utility and so on. Ifrit should be notably faster to make up for its melee limitation. Garuda should aim to stay next to the caster when not specifically placed somewhere on the field. There definitely is room for improvement, but some of you are barking up the wrong tree.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Affliction also has existed for close to 10 years and has gone through continued evolution as WoW's gameplay changed (Warlocks as a whole received at least two major changes throughout WoW's history). Summoner has been out the gate for two months. Nevermind the fundamental design differences between WoW and FFXIV.
You're right, they're longer.
You're willfully forgetting Summoner is designed around the base of Arcanist. What you have is a version of Summoner, much like Yuna deviated from Dagger who deviated from Rydia who was an entirely different animal from FFXI's Summoner.
Even with faster combat you'd have a job with a crapton of gimped abilities and little to no use outside of Astral Flow (by the way, the only time SMN was ever useful was after getting Alexander when your alliance leader called for Astral Flow+Alexander => Perfect Defense to cheese whatever poorly-designed high damage mechanic the devs would conjure).
Even more so when the majority of the damage is on the pet rather than the master.

Again, what you guys should be asking for is better pet AI, a better pet UI, better response times with pets, better control over their abilities (having everything on auto-cast is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen done with pets) and a bump on pet mitigation taken from AoEs (I doubt egi's have a 90% damage reduction like WoW pets, for one).

Then you can start improving pathing, damage, utility and so on. Ifrit should be notably faster to make up for its melee limitation. Garuda should aim to stay next to the caster when not specifically placed somewhere on the field. There definitely is room for improvement, but some of you are barking up the wrong tree.

I'm ok with what you are saying.
I don't need a huge complete redesign of the class, I need improvements.
Well, for me Fester should be moved to something pet-based, but this is not a requirement (and tri disaster is useful but as a spell for summoner is quite sad).

The pets are the problem: they don't have any customization (like chocobos) and you can't control well their AI (now you can tell them action to do while casting, which improved the thing), I expected something similar to gambits for pet.

Secondary, no we are not arcanists: where is our carbuncle? I felt really disappointed when I've lost the ability to summon carbuncle and even more sad, titan and garuda skills are the same from carbuncle... This is not even "design", this is just a recycled design in one of the worst way possible: graphic change and nothing else.

The biggest problem with pet AI actually is that "it stucks" sometimes. For example, on demon wall after repel I have to tell to my pet to attack, usually ifrit sits backward waiting for who knows what.
Autocast on pet is the worst part obviously, is what makes you feel "have another debuff" instead of a pet.

Pet UI is required, we don't have one actually (at all, that's only an actionbar with actions taken from my "spellbook", I can do the same manually).
Anyway, being the arcanist main trait the ability to summon a pet and being the summoner the focus of the arcanist on it's pet, it's still a big design flaw that we are not pet-centric.

[Engineer]

You're right,They're Longer

lol, at first it was said Minute long Incantation which means "Casting Time" . In the video you posted here, your counting the attack animation and the length the summon is out. If i was going by that then the summoner in XIV has 24hour+ Incantations since the pet can be out indefinitely.

So again, no... There is no Minute long incantations, its roughly 6 seconds.

You're willfully forgetting Summoner is designed around the base of Arcanist. What you have is a version of Summoner, much like Yuna deviated from Dagger who deviated from Rydia who was an entirely different animal from FFXI's Summoner.

Scholar is also designed from the Arcanist base, but still has healing as its main. Why cant Summoner have Summoning as its main and dots 2nd?

Even tho Summoners were implemented differently in each game, they still retained the Traditional Summoner gameplay which was all about the Pets, and using the Pets to deal the Damage

The pets were the Main focus of the class, and should be since its called Summoner.

Even more so when the majority of the damage is on the pet rather than the master.

The majority of the damage should be coming from the pet.

Think about it, Black Mage performs through black magic to deal all its damage. Makes sense right? its called a black mage after all.

While Summoner (XIV) doesnt perform through its Summoning to deal all the damage. Instead deals its damage through Dots that comes from the master.

Something is wrong here.

[Citizen_Thom]

What I would like to see with summons fro SMN and SCH alike, is at least two skill trees for each summon... but being that skill trees aren't really a part of this game (yet?) I'm not sure if the pets will ever be customizable.

[Engineer]

What I would like to see with summons fro SMN and SCH alike, is at least two skill trees for each summon... but being that skill trees aren't really a part of this game (yet?) I'm not sure if the pets will ever be customizable.

Yes even if its done Simple.

Magical Attack (0/30)
Physical Attack (0/30)
Phys Defense (0/30)
Mag Defense (0/30)
Action Speed (0/30)
Accuracy (0/30)
Critical Hit (0/30)
Determination (0/30)
Healing Potency (0/30)
Hp Regen (0/30)

Let us have 100 points to allocate per pet.

I would love this, simple and fun.

It's not really a skill tree, but this can easily be converted to a skill tree form

[Duelle]

Scholar is also designed from the Arcanist base, but still has healing as its main. Why cant Summoner have Summoning as its main and dots second?

You mean aside from it being based off a DoT class? SCH doesn't use some of the ACN spells since their role is healing, not DPS, and they need to focus on that in the content that matters. SMN, as it turns out, is DPS, and as such the majority of the ACN abilities do play a bigger role for SMN than SCH.

the Traditional Summoner gameplay

Which doesn't work in an MMORPG. Much less in a modern MMORPG with a faster combat system.

which was all about the Pets, and using the Pets to deal the Damage

False. Rydia had black magic with fancier graphics. Garnet had black magic with fancier graphics that lasted close to two minutes before the damage was even calculated. Yuna's aeons replaced the party until the end of the battle or the aeon died. FFT's summoner was once again black magic with fancier graphics. FFXI's summoner had gimped pets that were laughably weak and had costly upkeep.

There is some variety in interpretation, and much like Blue Mages you don't lose ANY of the job's identity so long as the elements are there (Monster skills as magic for BLU, Ifrit, Titan, etc. for SMN).

The pets were the Main focus of the class, and should be since its called Summoner.

You've already admitted that pet classes are hard to balance, and I supplied the other half of that equation because the more you put on the pet, the harder it is to balance said class. You'd go back to throwing darts on a board and hoping you end up with something not broken and not OP.

While Summoner (XIV) doesnt perform through its Summoning to deal all the damage. Instead deals its damage through Dots that comes from the master.

Because it is built on the framework of a class that is focused on DoTs with a pet providing additional firepower. Given the design philosophy and the correlation between classes and their respective jobs, the design makes sense.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

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.

You mean aside from it being based off a DoT class? SCH doesn't use some of the ACN spells since their role is healing, not DPS, and they need to focus on that in the content that matters. SMN, as it turns out, is DPS, and as such the majority of the ACN abilities do play a bigger role for SMN than SCH.
Which doesn't work in an MMORPG. Much less in a modern MMORPG with a faster combat system.
False. Rydia had black magic with fancier graphics. Garnet had black magic with fancier graphics that lasted close to two minutes before the damage was even calculated. Yuna's aeons replaced the party until the end of the battle or the aeon died. FFT's summoner was once again black magic with fancier graphics. FFXI's summoner had gimped pets that were laughably weak and had costly upkeep.

There is some variety in interpretation, and much like Blue Mages you don't lose ANY of the job's identity so long as the elements are there (Monster skills as magic for BLU, Ifrit, Titan, etc. for SMN).
You've already admitted that pet classes are hard to balance, and I supplied the other half of that equation because the more you put on the pet, the harder it is to balance said class. You'd go back to throwing darts on a board and hoping you end up with something not broken and not OP.
Because it is built on the framework of a class that is focused on DoTs with a pet providing additional firepower. Given the design philosophy and the correlation between classes and their respective jobs, the design makes sense.

Ok let's stop this "it's hard to balance the pet".
They are PROFESSIONAL designer so they will make sure that this is possible, I'm sure they can.

In FFX summons replaced the entire party and they were entirely different entities (special action, limit break, spells, stats and I don't remember what else), that was GREAT.
Summoner is just as you said "a dotter with additional firepower from pet": LOL this is just the most horrible thing out there.
I have a SUMMONER, I repeat, a SUMMONER: something that summon things, and their main focus are... DOTS! Call it a DOTTER next time -.-'

The summoner "hard to balance if pet-focused" IT'S NOT AN EXCUSE, this is a game done by professional, paid monthly so I expect TOP SERVICE here.
The summoner design IS FLAWED and MUST be fixed, the pet are merely some fancy graphics there, you have no point in having a pet outside.

Yuna when not summoning had all healing spells + holy for some additional damage, but basically without summons she wasn't dealing good damages.

AND NO THE ARCANIST IS NOT FOCUSED ON DOT!

Adepts of the art of arcanum derive their might from symbols of power born of geometric techniques hailing from across the southern seas. Held within occult grimoires, these symbols lend shape to the arcanist's aether, thereby allowing him to produce myriad powerful spells.
Using the selfsame symbols to unlock the latent power contained within gemstones, arcanists are also able to summon forth the familiar known as Carbuncle to carry out their bidding.

They are mentioning spells (random) and summons. NO DOTS.

But now here it is the most interesting part, summoner description:
"The beast tribes of Eorzea worship and summon forth beings known as primals, among which are Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan. Yet what is a god to one man is a demon to another, for the city-states of Eorzea see these beings as a grave threat to their collective survival.
In times immemorial, there lived mages who had not only the power to summon the primals, but also the means to transmute the primals' essences, thus binding them to their will. Known simply as summoners, the existence of these men and women and their arcane art have been all but lost to the ages."

Not only they don't mention ANYTHING ELSE, they are basically describing the summons as the CORE of this class! NO DOTS, again.
This is what I expected from the job.

And again "Which doesn't work in an MMORPG. Much less in a modern MMORPG with a faster combat system." it's speculation, they can make a good pet-based class now that you can move your pet while casting, it will be HARDER to handle, but that's not bad.

I would have preferred a "black magic with fancier graphics" instead of the ugly thing we have today. The summoner is nice only because of their quest (you have to defeat the egis).
So stop saying "summoner is good as is", there is a 25 pages topic about a class that is OK in damage, everyone stated that, but we are still complaining because IS SO BORING that we can't survive this gameplay.