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

[Akiza]

For a game that people "love to hate" it has 7.4 million subscribers. For a game that is almost a decade old, that's pretty good. The reason FFXIV drew a lot from WoW is simple: It works. Claiming people "love to hate it" is nothing more than confirmation bias. Reading commentary on WoW on forums for other MMOs will of course give you that belief, since those people who aren't playing WoW probably don't like it.

The reason WoW has 7.4 million subscribers is because they decided to overhaul their class system, character models and graphics. WoW also had other cosmetic updates and redesigned their character models during expansion. Also players tend to live in WoW as opposed to other MMORPGS. The one thing Blizzard does with WoW that sets it in another league compared to it's many WoW clones is constant polishing and tweaking of the game. WoW is a game where they would overhaul one class if it would draw more people in.

[Kaze3434]

That actually would help a little in extended encounter.



He/she won't. Akiza just goes with what whatever he/she reads and deems that as fact. Remember, he/she thought Summoner single target damage was terrible when we had access to Thunder but then later on got upset that they removed for Blizzard 2. He/she never makes up their his/her mind.

but smn ST dmg was bad when we had thunder :v (in akizas hands) . honestly, i dont expect an answer. i expect "iconic image to x but smn got chicken nuggets".

[Delily]

The reason WoW has 7.4 million subscribers is because they decided to overhaul their class system, character models and graphics. WoW also had other cosmetic updates and redesigned their character models during expansion. Also players tend to live in WoW as opposed to other MMORPGS. The one thing Blizzard does with WoW that sets it in another league compared to it's many WoW clones is constant polishing and tweaking of the game. WoW is a game where they would overhaul one class if it would draw more people in.

Considering the amount of work that went into bring FFXIV up to version 2.0 from 1.X, as well as the work that goes into each patch, Square is aiming to do the same. However, WoW has never really overhauled their class system. They have refined it, but the specs all are very similar to day one.

[Dwill]

The reason WoW has 7.4 million subscribers is because they decided to overhaul their class system, character models and graphics. WoW also had other cosmetic updates and redesigned their character models during expansion. Also players tend to live in WoW as opposed to other MMORPGS. The one thing Blizzard does with WoW that sets it in another league compared to it's many WoW clones is constant polishing and tweaking of the game. WoW is a game where they would overhaul one class if it would draw more people in.

Well, at least you just showed there isn't only Final Fantasy XIV that you haven't a clue about.

[MMRV]

I am okay with the core gameplay. I am very dissapointed with the visuals for my summoners and to a degree their abilties. Honestly i dont even realize they are there most of the time. I just feel like a "blackmage light"

So a visual upgrade to my pets and their abilties would really go along way to make me feel like a summoner, I'll be honest even making the visuals of my spell effects to look like i am dropping summoned creatures onto/into monsters type of effects would really make me feel alot more like a summoner.

[Akiza]

Ninja has the speed of a Monk and hit like a Dragoon because they can weaken opponents with DoT status effects and Direct Bursts Damage like Dragoon's. That's the equivalent of combing the Arcanists and Black Mage together.

[Hagen]

I am okay with the core gameplay. I am very dissapointed with the visuals for my summoners and to a degree their abilties. Honestly i dont even realize they are there most of the time. I just feel like a "blackmage light"

So a visual upgrade to my pets and their abilties would really go along way to make me feel like a summoner, I'll be honest even making the visuals of my spell effects to look like i am dropping summoned creatures onto/into monsters type of effects would really make me feel alot more like a summoner.

Like Fester animation changing to Summon Bomb? Considering Fester is a SMN job skill it would actually make more sense, but bombs are voidsent though...
You do summon stuff with Bio, Bio II and Virus, you summon microscopic monsters lol.

[Akiza]

I am okay with the core gameplay. I am very dissapointed with the visuals for my summoners and to a degree their abilties. Honestly i dont even realize they are there most of the time. I just feel like a "blackmage light"

So a visual upgrade to my pets and their abilties would really go along way to make me feel like a summoner, I'll be honest even making the visuals of my spell effects to look like i am dropping summoned creatures onto/into monsters type of effects would really make me feel alot more like a summoner.

The Summoner is Black Mage light. SE looked at WoW then looked at the Black Mage and took the Poisoning line of spells form the Black Mage gave it a Weak Pet and called it a Summoner and that's why Summoner is half a Job.

[Kaze3434]

Ninja has the speed of a Monk and hit like a Dragoon because they can weaken opponents with DoT status effects and Direct Bursts Damage like Dragoon's. That's the equivalent of combing the Arcanists and Black Mage together.

well, at least they will have great hair. ninja has two dots and a slash debuff, just like drg and mnk. they also have trick attack to boost all dps for 10 seconds. thier burst damage is completely dependant on mudras, so if you screw up and hit one twice, no burst.

[Deliciou5]

BTW, eq 2 conjuror, pet issues. D3, pet issues, DND pet issues. when it comes to advanced content, it spans games when pets are the main damage of the class. either you do too far as the 3.0/3.5 dnd did and they kill everything, or you go to short, and you can't do endgame in D3

Edit: If some of the spacing seems weird to you it's because it got all jacked up when i pasted from where i wrote it =/.

First i want to discuss Diablo 3's pet problems and how they stem from 3 problems.Then move on to discuss my main idea for summoner.Sorry in advance if this too long or i sometimes repeat myself. I am in essay mode now >=D.

1.Developers admitted that they just simply forgot to address these issues sooner, not that they are hard to solve.
2.Pets in diablo 3 are mostly automatic creatures that have limited AI and more often than not fight hordes of enemies at
once that limits their AI even further.
3. Pets always had survivability on par with players, however players can easily move out of range or dodge abilities like
lava,acid,spinning lasers,etc. so even though the player can survive for a while, they still have potions and the ability to
not take sustained damage. Barbarian had similar problems when inferno difficulty was first introduced due to the fact that they couldn't even get near the monsters half the time why every other class....even monks had alternatives than just straight up melee combat.

They planned to address these issues by increasing pets toughness here is a quote straight from the developer:

"Pets should derive their Toughness from yours, and if you skip out on it, your pets’ survivability should be noticeably lower as a result. On the flip side, they should be noticeably tougher if you've increased your own Toughness. You shouldn't skimp on Toughness just because you have pets."

Toughness encompasses all the different defense stats combined...like defense,resist all elements,dodge rate,etc. Players
will have to focus their gear to increase pet survivability so pets can do their damage properly against enemies but at the
same time players will have to depend on them more. Toughness increase will more than likely just be a general increase for pets that make them more resistant to everything rather than just mimicking your stats. So in the end depending on gear and due to the fact that each class has many abilities you could switch between. You could end up using your witch doctor abilities that do more direct damage or gimp your damage but rely on your powerful pets that can actually survive now to do their damage.

Translating this to FFXIV summoner, you can increase your pet damage and focus on that, or you can make your DOT's more powerful and gimp your pets attack. Either way you are still a damage dealer, and you will still have access to both sets of abilities. However you would need to choose which way you wanted to play the game rather than being forced into one singular role. Pet jobs i played that focused on pets usually ended being excellent solo jobs, but then relied more heavily on their own innate abilities during end game and using pets to kite/distract and take the role of a utility job more often than not and provide healing/buffs. Like how in EQ2 Necromancers can heal but usually end up lending themselves to a more DPS role despite their potential utility.

In FFXI for the longest time summoner was a poor man's whm due to summoners vast MP pool and the gain of many healing abilities through WHM sub job. Didn't change the fact though that at higher levels summoner could do decent damage and still heal through sub jobs, especially when they received their ward abilities.

Scholar in FFXIV can use carby heals with embrace and make a macro with Physick to increase potency of healing potential but still have other DOT abilities/debuffs at their command but are too busy healing/utility to use them...while summoners are DEBUFF/DOT damage focused and end up having nothing else aside from just that.

In the end EQ2 necromancer has both possibilities but people more often than not fall in to dps .Necromancers had the unique flavor of having spells like "blood cloud" and "tap life" that drained life from enemies then could turn around and use spell "transfer life" to take its own health and heal players with it.The spells fit the jobs style/lore and it added utility to a pet/dps job.The also had another necromancer spell that fit the flavor of the job perfectly called "sacrifical heart" where they could summon a item into players inventory where players would use the heart at their own convenience to restore power from their very own health. While i do not suggest making FFXIV summoners to summon items players inventory i do suggest having a unique view on the whole prospect of summoning things.

While in FFXIV arcanist ends up having to choose between the 2 roles through the use of jobs.The problem lies is that you have to choose between them as job roles that you have to devote yourself to rather than easily switching between. Having versatility for one job wouldn't be broken because of the fact that you can only do so much at once in the fast paced combat of FFXIV. Your healer would need to heal warriors like crazy to keep them alive, where paladin's are solid and require much less managing. Summoners having the ability to heal or use utility along with damage wouldn't be overpowered since summoners would be filling a hole in the parties makeup everytime the main healer(s) need to focus on other spells and summoners could focus on what was missing.Such as rezzing people with new pet ability maybe instead of allowing them to access it as a cross class skill.

This will make players use a timer up for an ability limiting damage from pets in favor of utility. WHM/SCH would continue
to heal while summoner would throw up AOE stoneskin through titan buff because WHM couldn't cast it without getting massive hate and summoners pets would be ideal if the hate was always transferred to them for all pet based abilities. Introducing buffs like enfire/enblizzard through other pets that will be casted upon players so even if pet dies summoner wouldn't lose utility/damage since buff is already on and you would more than likely have dot's already up. Not saying dot's should be removed but the damage should probably be nerfed to prevent overpowering them.

I think having the use of different special abilities wouldn't be a bad idea if we could guarantee that summoner can treat
them like any other spell and use them at any time. So if you wanted to use enkindle your pet would automatically appear when you casted the spell. Give summoners a passive ability called "auto-summon" that will have increase mana costs for summoning the pet this way by combining the summoning process with their spells without increasing the casting time but it will always guarantee you have the right pet out at the right time without missing a beat. Allowing high level summoners switch between different pets in less than 10 seconds and then whatever pet they wanted to keep out they would simply cast last in order to not waste mana, and while other pets would be out using abilities they would still auto attack if in range for the few seconds they were out. Pets would share attack delay timers so switching between pets wouldn't make you skip an attack the pet would be ready to auto-attack the moment it comes out before you used your next ability on a different pet.

In the end summoners abilities directly tie in to their spells that make their damage and utility happen. Pets become
convenient to cast so you never have to question whether you will not be able to use them for a higher source of damage since they can easily be recasted with their own abilities.Already having your pet out will mean that you can save yourself on mana, but if the pet dies the punishment wouldn't be that severe just you would miss out on 1 or 2 auto-attacks at most.

The general consensus for most mmo's is to have pet damage to be 35-40% of the summoner himself, however if pets are guaranteed to attack every time summoners use their spells/ability i think we could get away with lower auto attack damage and higher spell damage bringing the attack split up to 55% with the remaining 45% being dot's since summoners will need to still do damage but also have utility abilities to use to fill different roles, but that means pets having higher damage output would limit summoners damage directly when they casted buffs like AOE stoneskin instead of Direct-summoning damage ability. So players would have to choose between damage and utility abilities since global cool down will be longer for summoner only abilities. Auto attack and DOT's combined would still produce around 40-50% damage output but that would be fine since most of the problems with a pets AI was making them susceptiable to getting nuked by an AOE. This new system allows that to not matter.

DOT's dmg will be lowered but only because i also suggest that they should be their time on enemies last even longer and that contagion should be turned into a permanent passive so they wouldn't need to be casted as often in favor of pet based dam/utility abilities.You can cast the three DOT's you have (aero,miasma,bio) and not have to worry about them plus a fourth ability to maintain them.In the case you are casting these DOT's on multiple enemies you will not have to make your rounds as much and instead focus on other abilities.

In this way DOT's+AUTO attack will still accumulate into decent damage even when focused on pets. However utility also has the potential to increase the damage output of party as well so no matter what summoners will be filling a unique role of being able to use a wide range of abilities without sacrificing damage that much at all. They would just have to determine what kind of damage or role they would want to play as.

The biggest issue is that players will say that since summoner can have a wide range of abilities that other jobs will be
useless. However i want to rectify that saying all Summoner buffs will be wholly unique to summoner as much as possible. This will make it so if summoner was in a party that buffs could stack with other jobs buffs , but at the same time ...limit how many summoners people would want to have in any given party since summoners buffs wouldn't stack with each other. Also like FFXI bard's limitations it might be good idea to only allow so many summoner buffs at a time, like 2 at most.This will keep them powerful but not make summoner broken.

Summoner would also gain a macro button where if they clicked on it would cycle through each summon they could cast instead of having them all seperate. Not that you couldn't make separate macros for each pet but it would be better for certain buffs if they wouldn't be hindered by the fact that the pet already needs to be out to use it and instead use my idea to summon them directly along side casting the ability.Also all buffs should have very long cool-downs so you can't keep just switching back and forth easily.

Unique summoner buffs could potentially include:

Earthen Ward- AOE-Stoneskin(not that unique but not very sought out to be casted in battle due to waste of mana, and the fact that it will gain considerable hate when casted.It also doesn't last very long during battle but if summoner could hit everyone at once very frequently then it would be something worth considering.)

Aerial Armor-Blink-Allows players to have a 25% to dodge any attack completely but are still susceptible to AOE attacks.(% chance might need tweaking)Also using this with eye for an eye would boost tank's potential up alot, however i am keeping blink to single target cast only for potential balancing issues.

Spring Water- Gives all party members the effect of HP regen and makes party members 25% more resistant to status
ailments.This could be stacked with WHM's regen.

AOE- Elemental Spikes=Depending on pet you can get different elemental defense that will do elemental damage whenever player gets attacked physically by enemy.

AOE-Enspell-Depending on pet you can get different elemental damage added to your physical attacks.Elemental damage could either have DOT after effect instead of burst damage + a debuff to go along with it. It would make it more than just another increase damage buff. Burn aftereffect could lower damage, ice could slow enemies casting/attacks down, lightning could add paralyze, etc. However the effect would only last so many seconds so players would need to hit the boss consistently to keep dot+buff on.Instead of making it powerful from one single hit you could have the effect stack up to 10 times to achieve full potency so it wouldn't be OMGUBER from the start and if you don't hit again within 2 seconds then the debuff would disappear forcing you to start from 1 stack again. Magic spells wouldn't be affected by this ability, melee buff only.

Arise-Allows all or one party member to gain the ability re-raise.This will mean you have to sacrifice a slot of a summoners
buff for safety net however i think this ability would fit very nicely and give summoners a unique niche. Players raised
through arise cannot be raised again for 1-2 mins after coming back on top of normal weakness.

Mighty Guard-A classic FF ability adds protect and magical resistance onto party members.This can be stacked on top of normal protect and this will simply be known as M.Guard when mousing buff.

Some of these were taken from FFXI, however i think a lot of them fit very well and could give summoner some unique ways to support the party without stepping on other classes toes too much.I am not saying all of these abilities are perfectly balanced either...just brainstorming ideas.Feel free to add/remove any of these if you think this combination is underpowered/overpowered.

Pets direct attacks can be Enkindle+Ekindle 2 for combo effect. AOE attacks can be limit break exlcusives and be very
powerful.Having 2 types of enkindles would offset the damage loss from lowered DOT and auto attack damage.Enkindle would also be the ability that the passive "Auto-summon" be used most with since it will allow the pet to be summoned back right into the fray as they use their attack.

Also giving summoner a unique summon raise would not step on WHM's toes or paladin's since neither of them more often than not can really raise during higher level content since it will take almost everything you have to keep players alive if something goes wrong. Its the utility of not having to cast raise and let your backup meat shield who is now getting munched on by boss (even though he is a rogue/monk/dragoon)will take a lot more focus for the main healer to keep him alive.All the while your tank will be recovering quickly from arise.

So in recap:

Summoners can now buff/attack with their pets at any time since all spells will automatically summon pet while casting the spell itself so players wouldn't have to worry about losing much damage. Auto attack and DOT are lowered in damage(but increased in duration) so players will have to spend less time casting these abilities while still maintaining damage in background even when casting buffs and pet attacks.Utility abilities could potentially make up for lost DOT damage through enspell or spikes spell. Also summoner won't fit healer role but can help keep party members alive and make the jobs of healers easier instead of replacing them. There is always Physick summoners could cast but i highly doubt they would be even be bothered casting it unless absolutely needed as a last resort. Like how EQ2 necro's could take a more primary role as healer but don't since they can only cast so many spells at once and they usually don't have higher teirs of healing like main casters do. Physick is basically cure 1, without freecure or cure 2.

Avoided posting this idea for a while now since i was trying to refine my ideas as much as i could and then dragon posted
about D3/EQ2(never played DND). Diablo 3's witchdoctor and EQ2's necromancer had the essence of the summoning abilities built into their natural attacks and abilities...such as witch doctor summoning jar spiders as a main attack that costed nothing but still acted as mini pets for a second..it was such a unique idea, and necromancers being able to summon items into inventories and being able to draw blood from enemies to heal self then share with allies. They embodied the style of their jobs and made it their business to incorporate their essence of who they were into almost every spell.

They both have multiple ways to play, but they both had to sacrifice something else in order to achieve that. In a mmo you can't cast every spell at once when its needed, so versatility, when done right can add to a party and not take away from it, while having a lesser backup role in case of emergencies.