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

[Exstal]

Peolple want sweeping and dynamic changes to the way Summoner plays because 3.0 is coming soon. An Expansion is a great time to separate and add polarity between Classes and Jobs.

I disagree based solely on the fact on when this thread was started.

[Deliciou5]

I agree that forums can be influential. That's only if there is an outcry of enough of a magnitude (pre 2-1 WAR). That's what I replied to. I can only read English and a fair amount of Japanese, and out of the 2 languages only the English forum has constant complaints about Summoner and it's always by the same few people.

The one Summoner thread was created by the same person on the English forums (Spellbinder) and that's the only thread the Japanese people even looked at. A little note is that Japanese don't create 2000 new threads for the same topic, they find the old topic and upvote it if they like it. So, as interesting as your post is, it didn't really relate to what I said.

On a side note; how many people would you turn off by changing the dynamic of Summoner? There's no way to know. It's a gamble. Make Summoner more pet based (50/50) and gain some people, lose time, lose other people or leave Summoner as is and devote time into a different pet class?

Not everything in my post is a direct response to you, i sometimes get off track brainstorming things and end up ignoring certain aspects of your post. My apologies.

However, my post directly relates to what you said more than you think. You talked about how only a small portion really matter to the developers and even only a smaller portion than that(25% arcanists) even matter according to their decision.

On one hand they tried to accommodate players pre 2.0 and tried to keep players characters in tact because they did not want to mess up what was already there but still wanted to rework everything. They were worried that FFXIV would still be unsuccessful so they were less willing to take risks. A lot of the design choices mirror popular mmo's instead of building mostly their own system.

However, now that they achieved massive success and they seen what works and what doesn't it is pretty reasonable to think that they are willing to take more risks. It's a gamble but only a small one, even if some of the players do not care for changes and quit summoner..classic jobs system for 2.0 proved that aesthetics/fan service alone can take you far in such a classic and nostalgic series like final fantasy. Whenever summoners were in any game regardless of how they played, they always seemingly had the ability to summon more powerful creatures than they do in this game. Therefore it's a disappointment to many who haven't tried the job due to lack of interest.

SE knows that fans were expecting more from the class...yoshida himself talked about a system were primals were more of a group summon so they can keep their powerful "image". So at the very least when they first made summoner it was actually on the table to include these summons as an ability, even it was only a limit break...or a group spell. I guess they scrapped the idea because of the way they built party finder in this game and most dungeons and whatever else require the same types of classes and they didn't want multiple summoners in every party. Maybe it would work fine for fates, but we all know how easy 80% of fates are even without a solid party.

It's not such a huge gamble to add more balanced well built fan service into the game, because in the end they are guaranteed to get more players because many have expressed disappointment, maybe not enough for you but they did have to at some point respond to the criticism which is why people keep bringing up the developers answer. Summoner was added because it was a requested class, they added carbuncle into the base aracanists spells and according to the website when it was first announced the description mentioned not just beast tribes but also others have the power to summon the primals themselves as well as their essence(egi). Now it is part of the lore where summoners have a hard time controlling the primals, but combined with the fact that there were summoners who could summon them in the past and the fact that yoshida wanted a specialized system for controlling them suggests that it was at planned for primals to be a part of their power more directly than just simple egi's.



Egi's were an addition on top of being able to summon the primals themselves.They may not add primals directly in to summon, but they were planning for them to play a much bigger role in the job than simply egi's.


What my other post was trying to say is that i said that you need to consider more than just arcanists and what you want out of the job. SE's mentality is nowhere the same as yours. It's reasonable look at things from the business perspective and the fan service they tried to provide and already provided as more credible mindsets of what they could be planning.

Rather than just narrowing your view to only people who already played the job to death...who may very well try a new job when it comes out or quit the game entirely when they get sick of summoner.Their lifespan is much shorter than people playing the job for the first time. Hardcore players will always go back when new content arrives, but it's also true those players will be excited for new abilities that change the job up...not condemn it. There is only so much fun in playing the same raids over and over again with the same job/abilities.

SE knows that the hardcore are here to stay but at the same time there won't be as many hardcore players a year from now without a constant stream of new content to continuously challenge them.However how many of those 25% are hardcore? That 25% number you used is even less significant than you think since that has to do with duty finder from across all levels. Meaning that among that 25% there may very well be 10-15% who simply level arcanist to try it out, or to get all their classes to 30 for cross class ability, or to get obsolete gear out of their armory and just have all their mage classes at a certain level(my brother who plays the game with me leveled all his mage classes for this reason) My point is even among that 25% there a lot of people who play the game with no intention of continuing to play it in the future. I wonder what the % would be if they only took a census of the level 50 players who used duty finder for end game would be. Maybe it would still be like 15% but from what i understand classes like BLM and bard would be much higher since they are in more demand for endgame than a summoner would be.

If you have a good blm you don't need to worry about them running out of mp. Summoner is good at what it does, but other jobs are better. As level cap increases and summoner only remains the same and gets more dots to add their rotation or doesn't really become significantly more powerful due to more of the same(like ramuh or shiva egi)...that divide will become even bigger and much more noticeable. Unless pets become incredibly badass at higher levels and offer insane utility i don't see summoner keeping up with more of the same when blm's can just do direct burst damage and only need to cast one DD spell to do the same damage in even less time and be more efficient with spell combo's(not to mention convert for mp)... instead of summoners multiple DOT rotation that cost the full amount with no way to regain MP efficiently or to increase ability to cast spells more efficiently outside of contagion or shining emerald which is only limited to garuda and carbuncle. What is the point of adding more like shiva and ramuh when people are still going to being using only garuda at 50SMN all the time anyways since the job is based on mostly DOT damage? They need new abilities that make each pet more useful to balance their job a bit better.

Summoner is a damage dealing class...and it is out-shined by others unless you are really good. Damage dealing is a overcrowded spot already it needs something to separate itself more from other DD classes than just DOT. It's plain as day that SE seriously needs to do something that has more to do with summons and less to do with direct casting, summoner already has those rotation abilities that become a full time job in themselves. So how does summoner become better without sacrificing what they have? By making the pets play more of a role instead of adding more spells for you to directly cast. You don't need MP for pets to do more abilities automatically on their own, and you already have more than enough spells to do decent damage.

I see summoner falling into a role of bard in the future more so than becoming a premier damage dealing class like everyone else. Doing less damage than others at level cap 60 (BLM/NIN/DRG/MNK) but setting themselves apart with more necessary utility that increase their usefulness in parties like bard already does. More DOT would only burden summoner's rotation even further, unless they made DOT's last a lot longer you would feel pressure to stack even more of them. Where as other classes are constantly doing burst damage directly and 5 of their abilities do far more in less time than 5 of your spells in more time due to the nature of DOT and rotation. They are more efficient in dealing damage and ending fights more quickly and 90% of them don't have to stop for tp or mp throughout the entire battle. They are all built to be more responsive in fights with more utilities and that gap between those classes and summoner will only widen considerably at higher levels.

The only way i see SE adding more to DOT damage and not burdening summoner further is if they:
A:Make new tiered DOT's that cannot stack with other tiers and are more powerful than the others combined.
AND/OR
B:Add a passive ability to arcanist that significantly increases duration without contagion.
C:Add a passive ability that make all their dot spells instant cast and the new ones take 2.5s to cast like the old spells did.
D: Add a ability to combo DOT's together to save on mana
E: Idea B+make ruin spells have a third tier and have all three combo with each other for mp efficiency

However....what does any of those new abilities have to do with summoning?

In the end they made this class a pet job and it doesn't seem unreasonable that pets are going to become more focused on in the future.

You don't need to overhaul the job completely to change the way it plays. Just add in new abilities and utilities at higher levels.

[Akiza]

SE could add new abilities to the Jobs by leveling the Job Soul Stone to 60 that way SE can eliminate the Base Class. With leveling the Summoner Job stone SE can increase the number of Summoning abilities without re building it from the ground up.

[Deliciou5]

SE could add new abilities to the Jobs by leveling the Job Soul Stone to 60 that way SE can eliminate the Base Class. With leveling the Summoner Job stone SE can increase the number of Summoning abilities without re building it from the ground up.

So summoner would be the only job with a job stone that you can level up? Interesting. However, it is very inconsistent with the rest of the game...but i guess so is dark knight.

The only problem with this that i see is that summoner be would be overloaded with abilities from arcanist and summoner both...would be better to just have summoner as a class by itself like dark knight is rather than a leveling up job stone.

[Shikiseki]

At 3.0, we better get a 5th Pet-Attack slot because we have to sacrifice our Job-Ability slots for the 2 new Summons (god knows when we'll get Shiva, if we ever will).
I wonder, that Website description could be a hint for the upcomming skills I mean, we're still level 50 - who knows what we'll get at level 60+ (probably Shiva at 65 and MAYBE Odin at 70 or the new Primals Bismark 70 and Ravana 75). Yet, having to waste a job skill for every new egi... others will gain such OP skills, we'll definitely fall behind.

And I actually wouldn't mind having more utility in our spellkit as we're not dealing the highest dps anymore but with Arcanist as base class, chances are good that we'll see nice unique buffs/debuffs.

[Akiza]

The reasoning behind SE making the Dark Knight a Baseless Job was to maintain the iconic image of the Dark Knight. I'm guessing in 3.0 SE will overhaul the Armoury System by finding a way to remove the Base Classes and simply have Jobs so they can properly represent the Iconic Image and Identity of the Summoner.

[Akiza]

At 3.0, we better get a 5th Pet-Attack slot because we have to sacrifice our Job-Ability slots for the 2 new Summons (god knows when we'll get Shiva, if we ever will).
I wonder, that Website description could be a hint for the upcomming skills I mean, we're still level 50 - who knows what we'll get at level 60+ (probably Shiva at 65 and MAYBE Odin at 70 or the new Primals Bismark 70 and Ravana 75). Yet, having to waste a job skill for every new egi... others will gain such OP skills, we'll definitely fall behind.

And I actually wouldn't mind having more utility in our spellkit as we're not dealing the highest dps anymore but with Arcanist as base class, chances are good that we'll see nice unique buffs/debuffs.

I'm guessing we will get Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva Egi in the 3.0 expansion.

[Bishop81]

At 3.0, we better get a 5th Pet-Attack slot because we have to sacrifice our Job-Ability slots for the 2 new Summons (god knows when we'll get Shiva, if we ever will).
...

Speaking of expansions ... Are they going to add abilities to the base Classes or just to the Jobs?

And here is the catch with adding more Egis. They aren't really adding anything because the Egis are mutually exclusive.

Not to mention, just what are the new Egis going to do? Right now we use Garuda for DPS and Titan for tanking. That about covers it all.

[Bishop81]

The reasoning behind SE making the Dark Knight a Baseless Job was to maintain the iconic image of the Dark Knight. I'm guessing in 3.0 SE will overhaul the Armoury System by finding a way to remove the Base Classes and simply have Jobs so they can properly represent the Iconic Image and Identity of the Summoner.

Well, it's something they should do ...

That said, they could have done it with 2.0 but they didn't. Why? Beats me.

[Delily]

The reasoning behind SE making the Dark Knight a Baseless Job was to maintain the iconic image of the Dark Knight. I'm guessing in 3.0 SE will overhaul the Armoury System by finding a way to remove the Base Classes and simply have Jobs so they can properly represent the Iconic Image and Identity of the Summoner.

Yeah, no, that reason is both subjective and baseless, and again redesigning the class would require much rework. I believe the more mundane reason is the current class/job system isn't giving them any real benefits, so they want to change it, but first test it with a new class. Similar to how WoW tested out "hero" classes with the death knight.