[Pole] Do you want to see the summoner class reworked?

[Dwill]

I would like:
-blizzard II to be removed from the cross class abilities. We really don't need it : we already have tri disaster to bind.
- give us manaward: black mage Can protect themselves while summoners can't.
- improve tridisaster
- remove the limit of 3 mobs affected by bane.


And of course smn is no more the best dps, now blm is op in single and multi target. This is wrong. We need a smn rebalance.

First off, Blizzard II is not used for its bind put for its damage potency in an AoE situation when we have DoTs/Shadowflare rolling. It is much more effective that the disaster of a spell that Tri-Disaster is (High mana cost, ridiculously damage output).

Secondly, removing the Bane target limit would be much too broken. Contagion'ed full duration dots (Bio II (525), Bio (440) and Miasma(475) at full duration each would be approximately 1405 potency (Including one tick of Bio II before Bane'ing). That's equal to 3 Flares done under Astral Fire III, which is impossible to do unless they pop a Mega-Ether and use Convert which has a 3 minutes cooldown while we rely solely on having Aetherflow stacks and having Contagion up. That's also excluding the fact that there is the possibility of Shadow Flare running, Miasma II that is going to run, pet AoE and Blizzard II spam in between.

By the way, Black Mage and Summoners are even on single target damage. Black Mage bursts harder, Summoners have much better utility and mobility. For AoE, Black Mages are better but Summoners' AoE is nothing to laugh at either, if done correctly. And honestly, AoE means next to nothing in raids, it'll just help you shave off 2-3 minutes in your dungeons speed runs and trash pulls in ST.

I wonder if you people ever think of the suggestions you propose or you just think this is awesome and should be done but don't even bother looking how it would affect balance as a whole.

To be honest, I don't really mind the fact that we use dots spells and such, that doesn't affect anything really, what does affect the Job to me is that the warlock aspect is about 75% of the job, which I think is mostly because of the fact that jobs aren't very prominent in your character build right now, with such few skills attained, it's mostly the class abilities. As the one and only pet dps job,especially the summoner, the Egis and other pets should make up at least 40-50% of our dps and mechanics, it's kind of lackluster lore-wise to just bring out the pet and then let it do it's thing, which is not much most of the time, the case should be that we put our heart and soul into summoning those things, we should be able to do something like boost them in power in exchange for our own life force (hp etc.) Make them important, make them the power behind the summoner!

The pet is already between 25-30% of our damage. Do you understand the implications of having the pet do half of our damage ?

[Spellbinder]

The pet is already between 25-30% of our damage. Do you understand the implications of having the pet do half of our damage ?

It would mean that a Summoner needs to...summon to do full DPS. Heaven forbid we do what our job title implies.


But in all seriousness, in answer to the question of this topic:
Would I want to see the summoner class reworked? It depends on what you mean by "rework."

Summoner gameplay as it is right now is "okay," in the sense that it functions as the developers intended, but there are a number of problems (or at least what I think are problems), that, if addressed, would make the job better overall. Examples:

- DoT mechanics
Originally, an enemy could only receive the effect of 30 status effects at any given time. The problem with this design came to light during initial encounters with enemies such as Odin, Behemoth, and bosses in Crystal Tower, when the application of several debuffs and DoTs from a multitude of players would remove the DoTs of summoner, dropping our DPS to 0. This could be confirmed when Summoners used the ability Fester and it whiffed, reading "No effect" on the screen.

Long story short, our main source of damage was invalidated by the application of 30 status effects by other classes. This limit has since been increased from 30 to 60, and although this alleviates the problem, no class or job should have to deal with this limitation. On paper, the liklihood that more than 60 debuffs will be applied to an enemy is low, but it can still happen, and I'm sure many players would be at ease knowing that their DPS doesn't suddenly hit 0 on the off chance the rest of their alliance is doing what they're supposed to do.

Another change they made, I forget when, was to have any debuffs initiated by a player always appear before any others on an enemy's status bar. However, this is still bugged. I can't count the number of times I've fought an A or S rank elite mark, and none of my DoTs can be seen on the enemy's status bar. The only reason I know my DoTs are still active is because Fester still does damage to the enemy, but I have to guess when the DoTs need to be reapplied.

To summarize:

・The use of debuffs and DoTs from other classes has the potential to nullify Summoner's main source of damage.
・The use of debuffs and DoTs from other classes has the potential to make our DoTs invisible on enemy status bars, making it impossible to manage our main source of damage properly.

- Eye for an Eye
Who doesn't love Eye for an Eye? Apply it to a party member, and enemies striking them receive a damage debuff. Except, there's a catch. Enemies attacking targets affected by Eye for an Eye have a 20% chance of being debuffed each time they attack. This means there's an 80% chance that they won't be debuffed. My problem with this? Mathematically speaking, there is a chance that, even after applying Eye for an Eye to a target, enemies will not be debuffed. I've experience this myself, on several occasions, and it's a waste of a 180 second cooldown when this happens.

- Rouse and Spur
This is just a personal gripe, but the effects of these two skills seems a little backwards to me.

Rouse, the level 42 skill, has three effects: Boosts cure magic potency, boosts damage dealt, and makes pets immune to status effects. 90 second recast.
Spur, the level 45 job ability, has one effect: Boosts damage dealt. 120 second recast.

Again, just a personal gripe, but I think it's odd that the ability that requires a higher level, unlocking a job, and has a longer cool down is inferior. How should this be addressed? I'm not a developer, so I can't say, but I'd like it if they looked into it.

- Pet roles in general
The devs have already said they're going to look into the balance between the pets, but yes, I feel that something should be done about it. I'm going to nitpick the piece of Estevo's quote that Dwill dismissed a little further to get at my point.

...As the one and only pet dps job,especially the summoner, the Egis and other pets should make up at least 40-50% of our dps and mechanics...

Do I think pets should count for 40-50% of our DPS? I don't think they necessarily should, but even if they did, I don't think it solves our real problem as a pet class. Do I think pets should count for 40-50% of our mechanics? Yes, Yes I do.

The bread and butter of the Egi is Garuda. To be more specific, Contagion. A lot of people have said "Well, take Contagion off of Garuda and put it on Summoner." Hypothetically speaking, if they did do that, what would the roles of our Egi be?

Titan:
- High HP
- High Defense
- +Enmity to keep attention off the Summoner.
- In my opinion, titan is a tank, through and through.

Ifrit:
- Average HP
- Does damage
- Uh...does damage.
- Ifrit does damage, but doesn't bring any role-defining traits to the table.

Garuda: (without Contagion)
- Average HP
- Does damage
- Uh...can knock enemies back, angering tanks and melee DPS.
- Garuda also does damage, and also doesn't bring any role-defining traits to the table.

What will happen when they add Ramuh-Egi? Leviathan-Egi? What will be special about the five Egi that will make summoners say "Oh, for this battle you'd definitely want to try using X-Egi." or "At the start of the fight I like to use X-Egi, and then when Y happens, I switch to Z-Egi." or have a meaningful discussion about "Which Egi abilities do you prefer to use in battle."?

As it stands now, Ifrit and Garuda are just DoTs with uninspired abilities and poor aesthetic designs (although poor aesthetics is a personal opinion), and it saddens me that players can be satisfied with such simplified pet mechanics.

[Estevo]

Couldn't have said it better Spellbinder!

Regarding the aesthetics I'm pretty sure at least 70% of the Summoner population wouldn't hate a more interesting egi design

With that said the devs apparently said they would take our feedback into consideration for future egis, this will not do. If the Leviathan egi looks incredible and then the Ifrit egi remains the same I don't think anyone would be happy, especially fans of the current three primals.

[Dwill]

Snip

Or the fact that having the pet do half of our damage/mechanics is a terrible idea for anyone who cares about balance.

It's quite hilarious though that people want a summoner more like the "Final Fantasy summoner", states the lack of abilities for summons in this game yet forego the fact that summons in nearly every other Final Fantasy games have one attack (their Signature Ability). Or they want it like FFXI, where summoners wanting to do damage (which was terrible compared to everyone else's) were Garuda bots using Predator Claws when it was available and going back to be sustandard healers waiting for Blood Pact Rage to come back up or in rare occasion, they could use Fenrir's Eclipse Bite (which was when you had a terrible party to begin with so you'd have to have Fenrir out for Ecliptic Howl).

[Spellbinder]

Or the fact that having the pet do half of our damage/mechanics is a terrible idea for anyone who cares about balance.

Saying "No, because it's just bad" doesn't really make your case. Care to elaborate on why?

Can you provide any examples of where games have tried to do so and fail?
Putting changes to mechanics aside, do you not see any problems with the other examples I presented above, such as problems with how DoTs function? Are you really okay with faulty design like that?
Does it not concern you that Garuda and Contagion may continue to be "flavor of the month" even when new Egi are released, making them a waste of the developer's time and effort?

I'd rather discuss the issues, rather than just sweep them under the rug because you disagree with anything that might possibly make the job better.

Edit: For this particular question

Can you provide any examples of where games have tried to do so and fail?

I already know you're going to point fingers at FFXI. Please don't use that outdated game as a scapegoat for your agenda. Try to pick a game with a battle system comparable to FFXIV so we can see where they went wrong and what they could have done better.

[Dwill]

Saying "No, because it's just bad" doesn't really make your case. Care to elaborate on why?

1. It removes depth from the character since too much focus is put on the pet itself, the character just looks like a regular person controlling a powerful entity, which doesn't make you look like much of a powerful person in the first place.
   
2. Your usual PvP balance reasons (e.g. Pet needs less tankiness if their damage gets higher, pets get tunneled, summer is now a sitting duck. Other example, pet has too much tankiness, summoner can just keep it up via Sustain + Physick then said pet proceed to deal high amount of damage while being extremely durable).
   
3. The most important reason of all, if the pet dies, your dps drops by a tremendous amount and even resummoning it via Swiftcast (which isn't possible that often due to Swiftcast being usually kept for Raises, then you have to hardcast the pet back while doing mechanics which can results in cases of 10+ seconds of losing 50% of your total damage throughput) incurs a steep penalty to your damage.

Can you provide any examples of where games have tried to do so and fail?

No games to my knowledge have given so much emphasis on the pet due to the aforementioned reasons.

Putting changes to mechanics aside, do you not see any problems with the other examples I presented above, such as problems with how DoTs function? Are you really okay with faulty design like that?

I agree with you on that point and and the solution is simple: They just to remove the limits of DoTs on one target at once. Having any form of limit for DoTs and debuffs, especially in a game such as this one where everyone and their mother have DoTs and debuffs, is archaic.

Does it not concern you that Garuda and Contagion may continue to be "flavor of the month" even when new Egi are released, making them a waste of the developer's time and effort?

Everything here will depend on how Square Enix address the Contagion issue. There are two feasible solutions, neither of them includes flat out removing the ability, which is a big no-no: Either Give it to the summoner or give the other pet more damage to compensate but the latter would just be a band-aid fix because as soon as their would be two+ targets within Bane's range, Contagion becomes the winner again The best bet is to give it to the summoner and replace the ability by something else and then let us decide which summons to use and when.

For example, if in their current form, the Summoner would have Contagion and not Garuda, Ifrit would be better in group having a Warrior and Monk as they buff his damage with their respective debuffs and Garuda would be better in a fight like Titan Ex where you can just park her at one spot and she stays there and DPS the rest of the fight while not fearing to get randomly hit by Mountain Busters and Weights of the Land.

I already know you're going to point fingers at FFXI. Please don't use that outdated game as a scapegoat for your agenda. Try to pick a game with a battle system comparable to FFXIV so we can see where they went wrong and what they could have done better.

It's quite hilarious that you mention that I have an "agenda" just because I am against a rework. Do I think there are a few QoL of changes that could help the job ? Of course. The thing though is that myself and plenty of other people just so happen to like the job currently and would rather it not be changed because some people don't like its current form.

[Estevo]

[*]It removes depth from the character since too much focus is put on the pet itself, the character just looks like a regular person controlling a powerful entity, which doesn't make you look like much of a powerful person in the first place.

I'm sorry but, what!? I mean this is just ridiculous, are you actually saying that FF summoners are just normal people controlling powerful beings....???????

What normal person would be able to summon even a fraction of the Summons IN THE FIRST PLACE, and secondly, being able to use your summon to the best of your abilities is a much better, more in-depth way of going about the SUMMONER, than just DOTS. I'm pretty sure that lore-wise, if your summon is super powerful, than you are also super-powerful, that should especially be the case in this game.
If you want a summoner, than who cares about the damage that WE DO!? I want more in-depth summoner mechanics, because that should be the gauge of how powerful the player is. The "pet summons" are just sitting backstage to our DOT superiority, I mean how does that even make any sense lore-wise.

The best case scenario is, you are your summon are PARTNERS in battle, the summoner divides his power to summon and utilize his summon, the term pet in itself is kind of a disgrace to the summons in any shape or form in the first place. I'm sure a lot of the people that would want a change, including myself, want it because they LIKE what they have with the summon pets so far, and they want to see MORE of it, there is absolutely nothing negative or wrong about that, even if the words they use seem negative.

Also WHO CARES if the chance of a change is slim or not, chances are nothing more than chance, and it's better to speak your mind without doubt than to keep your mouth shut and regret. If a rework does happen, and the pets gain more focus and mechanics etc., why do you care, you're only in it for the DOTS, which will inevitably go onto another Job in the future, so seriously, there is no point.

[Dwill]

I'm sorry but, what!? I mean this is just ridiculous, are you actually saying that FF summoners are just normal people controlling powerful beings....???????

What normal person would be able to summon even a fraction of the Summons IN THE FIRST PLACE, and secondly, being able to use your summon to the best of your abilities is a much better, more in-depth way of going about the SUMMONER, than just DOTS. I'm pretty sure that lore-wise, if your summon is super powerful, than you are also super-powerful, that should especially be the case in this game.
If you want a summoner, than who cares about the damage that WE DO!? I want more in-depth summoner mechanics, because that should be the gauge of how powerful the player is. The "pet summons" are just sitting backstage to our DOT superiority, I mean how does that even make any sense lore-wise.

The best case scenario is, you are your summon are PARTNERS in battle, the summoner divides his power to summon and utilize his summon, the term pet in itself is kind of a disgrace to the summons in any shape or form in the first place. I'm sure a lot of the people that would want a change, including myself, want it because they LIKE what they have with the summon pets so far, and they want to see MORE of it, there is absolutely nothing negative or wrong about that, even if the words they use seem negative.

Also WHO CARES if the chance of a change is slim or not, chances are nothing more than chance, and it's better to speak your mind without doubt than to keep your mouth shut and regret. If a rework does happen, and the pets gain more focus and mechanics etc., why do you care, you're only in it for the DOTS, which will inevitably go onto another Job in the future, so seriously, there is no point.

Congratulations, you just missed the entire point.

[Spellbinder]

@Dwill: Thank you for the more detailed response.

It removes depth from the character since too much focus is put on the pet itself, the character just looks like a regular person controlling a powerful entity, which doesn't make you look like much of a powerful person in the first place.

I hate to disagree, but this seems more like an opinion than an explanation pertaining to game mechanics and implementation.

Your usual PvP balance reasons (e.g. Pet needs less tankiness if their damage gets higher, pets get tunneled, summer is now a sitting duck. Other example, pet has too much tankiness, summoner can just keep it up via Sustain + Physick then said pet proceed to deal high amount of damage while being extremely durable).

The most important reason of all, if the pet dies, your dps drops by a tremendous amount and even resummoning it via Swiftcast (which isn't possible that often due to Swiftcast being usually kept for Raises, then you have to hardcast the pet back while doing mechanics which can results in cases of 10+ seconds of losing 50% of your total damage throughput) incurs a steep penalty to your damage.

If I'm reading this correctly, you're saying you want pets to have a smaller contribution to your ability to fight because of a DPS loss if something should happen to your pet? The point of a class using pets (in my opinion) is to use attacks in tandem with the abilities of said pet to perform at full effectiveness in ways other classes can't. The loss of a pet during battle is the tradeoff for any advantages they give you. I may be misreading you, but it seems a bit absurd that you'd want to be able to shrug off the death of your pets because they only make a small contribution to what your character can do. It's a matter of risk and reward. With that said, it's not necessarily the damage that they put out that concerns me. You can look at my previous post and quote me if you want. I said that they could increase their damage, but it doesn't address the problems I see with the pets. And I'll get to that shortly. Case in point, loss of DPS or advantage against an enemy when your pet is defeated is supposed to be the drawback of being a pet class.

No games to my knowledge have given so much emphasis on the pet due to the aforementioned reasons.

Let me first say, that example I'm about to give would never, ever, be implemented here, but in my opinion, City of Villains had the best pet based class I have ever seen in a game: the Mastermind.

Your character was given three minion level pets, two lieutenant level pets, and a "boss" level pet. You could enhance them all with two abilities, each giving your pets additional moves to use. The game also had a very impressive system of macros you could use to control each of the six pets individually, or as a group as you saw fit. You had about four attacks from your primary class (think Arcanist/Summoner) and a secondary set of nine offensive/support abilities to compliment the pets. Your primary damage was, without question, from the pets, but you could still hold your own in a pinch when necessary. But again, pets doing 50% of our damage is not my issue.

I agree with you on that point and and the solution is simple: They just to remove the limits of DoTs on one target at once. Having any form of limit for DoTs and debuffs, especially in a game such as this one where everyone and their mother have DoTs and debuffs, is archaic.

Ah, a point of agreement. The people out to destroy the Summoner job aren't all so evil after all, eh?

Everything here will depend on how Square Enix address the Contagion issue. There are two feasible solutions, neither of them includes flat out removing the ability, which is a big no-no: Either Give it to the summoner or give the other pet more damage to compensate but the latter would just be a band-aid fix because as soon as their would be two+ targets within Bane's range, Contagion becomes the winner again The best bet is to give it to the summoner and replace the ability by something else and then let us decide which summons to use and when.

For example, if in their current form, the Summoner would have Contagion and not Garuda, Ifrit would be better in group having a Warrior and Monk as they buff his damage with their respective debuffs and Garuda would be better in a fight like Titan Ex where you can just park her at one spot and she stays there and DPS the rest of the fight while not fearing to get randomly hit by Mountain Busters and Weights of the Land.

Now we're getting somewhere. Would you agree, then, that the utility of Contagion is a potential balance issue? Just to be clear here, although I do come into these threads from time to time talking about changes to Summoner, I am by no means advocating radical changes (except maybe for their appearances, but that's a horse of a different color). Going to work through your quote piece by piece to make sure I'm understanding you.

You say that no solution would include removing Contagion, which I agree with 100%. I also agree that giving the other pet more damage to compensate is a band-aid fix, and I facepalmed quite hard when I saw they increased the potency of two of Ifrit's abilities by a measely five or ten points. You then finish by saying the best bet would be to give Summoner Contagion and replace it with something else on Garuda.

Now, let me ask you: If they really did do that, would you be okay with that sort of change? If you are okay with that sort of change, what type of ability would you like to see in place of Contagion on Garuda? Your idea for addressing the balance issue with Contagion is something I and many others have offered up, which brings me to my main point.

When I say I want to see changes to Summoner, I'm not asking for an overhaul that changes the way we play. In my previous post, I did indeed say I'd like to see more mechanics involved with the pet. What I meant by that is possibly what you alluded to with your suggestion, assuming your suggestion isn't actually something you're against.

Returning to my previous post, what would happen if they gave Summoner Contagion? What kind of skill would fit in its place for Garuda? My only true complaint with Summoner is that the three Egi do not all have clear-cut incentives to use them in different situations.

Titan is obviously a tanky pet, and I wouldn't change it for anything. My concern lies with the disparity between Ifrit and Garuda, and the problems that may arise when we receive more Egi. If every Egi had at least one interesting skill like Contagion (but obviously not that overpowered) that people would actually want to use regularly, I would be happy. If you can understand that concern, then honestly, I have nothing to argue about with you.

It's quite hilarious that you mention that I have an "agenda" just because I am against a rework. Do I think there are a few QoL of changes that could help the job ? Of course. The thing though is that myself and plenty of other people just so happen to like the job currently and would rather it not be changed because some people don't like its current form.

Perhaps "agenda" isn't the appropriate word, but you do seem very defensive, almost abrasively so, whenever a thread appears on the forum asking for a change or adjustment to Summoner. You've stated here that you believe QoL changes could help the job, and on that point we're in agreement. If you also, at the very least, understand my viewpoint in my statement above, then I see no reason for us to continue with this back and forth.

Pleasure discussing with you all the same.

[Dwill]

@Spellbinder: Since your post was massive (and well detailed, kudos to that), I won't quote in its entirety to not make this post even bigger that it's going to be but will nevertheless respond to its content.


Here's what I meant for lack of depth. You say that you want our pets to be around 50% of our mechanics while their damage, which represents about 25% of our total damage, not needing to necessarily go up. What happens then is that for the other 75% of our damage, we have the remainder 50% of our mechanics. That creates a huge disparity from what we have with the pet as of now so to achieve the aforementioned goal, we would need to remove need to remove certain of our current abilities to make room for the new pets abilities, seeing as with the current pace of summoner, keeping everything would only create a huge glut in our abilities in which that even keeping everything we have, we'd have to prioritize what to use and what not to use. That would leave us with less choices for the character to achieve its damage just so that people felt rewarded for actually making the pet do its 25% that it's currently doing right now.

Your assessment about my thoughts on pets was partially correct and I wholeheartedly agree with you when you say that the goal of a pet class is to work in tandem with your pet to achieve optimal results. However, even though I recognize that the survival of your pet is an inherent part of the job and a risk vs reward system, your pet surviving is never a guarantee no matter how hard you may try to keep it alive. And if that occurs, yes there should be a penalty. But if the pet becomes the main focus of the job, the penalties will be much steeper and then it becomes a debate on "Are the risks vs the rewards justified ?"

On the matter of Contagion, you are pretty much correct. My reasoning in not wanting to remove Contagion is that as of now, people have grown too accustomed to it and at this point, it could almost be considered a Summoner ability due to people manually controlling when Garuda uses it. The only way I'd see them remove Contagion completely would be by giving a duration increase to the initial DoTs, which I frankly do not see them doing. Which lead me to conclusion that giving Contagion to the summoner and giving Garuda something else in its place, it would open the room for possible adjustments in Egi balance.

You brought up an interesting point when you mentioned that Egi could all have one interesting skill that would make them all attractive depending on the situation. A possible example for the scenario would be to give each Egi (current and future), a Full Party-wide buff that would be different for each pet, for example:

1. Ifrit: Burning Resolve: Increases the Determination of your party by 15% for 20 seconds. 80 Seconds Cooldown
2. Garuda: Tempest's Fury: Increases the Spell/Skill Speed of your party by 20% and Movement Speed of your party by 10% for 20 seconds. 80 Seconds Cooldown

So depending on the encounter and your party's composition, you could change which Egi you use.

Perhaps "agenda" isn't the appropriate word, but you do seem very defensive, almost abrasively so, whenever a thread appears on the forum asking for a change or adjustment to Summoner. You've stated here that you believe QoL changes could help the job, and on that point we're in agreement. If you also, at the very least, understand my viewpoint in my statement above, then I see no reason for us to continue with this back and forth.

Pleasure discussing with you all the same.

While I won't disagree on the fact that I sometimes sound abrasive in these types of threads is that they always come up and it's always nearly the same old drivel of people claiming the likes of: Summoner doesn't exists in this game, This job is an affliction warlock, FFXI summoner was better, put even more damage on pets! and after quite some time, it gets kinda irritating reading that stuff. Contrary to popular belief though, I am quite open to change, if it's done correctly.

In-depth discussions about the job is extremely rare so even though we don't share the same point of view on certain topics of the job, we both share the same goal of wanting the play a job we enjoy so it's a pleasure discussing this with you all the same.

There wasn't a point to miss, only an opinion, which is what I responded to. There is no such thing as a "can't" when it comes to things in this mmo, hell, Yoshida is even thinking of making a pvp system similar to the new Evolve pvp coop game, so there isn't anyone that should say whether they can or can't do something.

There was an obvious one and you still missed it. But don't worry, I explained it above so that the obvious doesn't go unseen, for a third time in your case.