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

[Camalott]

Well, one idea I can think of is to have summons be temporary.

• summon one when you get into combat
• it drains your mana while it's out and about
• you spend most of your time managing it's abilities and your mana reserves
• all your attacks are via your summon.

What you described is pretty much exactly how they worked in FFXI. Which I would honestly be all for.

On the note of the ACN and DoTs, I only say keep them because they fit the theme of essentially using disease as a weapon. That seems to be the ACN 'theme.' I don't agree with it. It doesn't seem as tactical as it does more so seem like biological warfare.

Honestly, ACN always felt more like it should be a utility class that helps enhance battlefield effectiveness and controls the flow of combat. Just like how the BRD did in FFXI. Maybe throw in some trapper abilities for tactical flare.

[Bishop81]

What you described is pretty much exactly how they worked in FFXI. Which I would honestly be all for.

On the note of the ACN and DoTs, I only say keep them because they fit the theme of essentially using disease as a weapon. That seems to be the ACN 'theme.' I don't agree with it. It doesn't seem as tactical as it does more so seem like biological warfare.

Honestly, ACN always felt more like it should be a utility class that helps enhance battlefield effectiveness and controls the flow of combat. Just like how the BRD did in FFXI. Maybe throw in some trapper abilities for tactical flare.

Actually that's the odd thing, nowhere in lore does it say anything about "Biowarfare".

It's a magic using class that relies on tactics and calculation. "Setting things up for the desired results."

I can understand the use of status effects but Bio and Miasma are normally used by "toxic" monsters.

[Deliciou5]

Actually that's the odd thing, nowhere in lore does it say anything about "Biowarfare".

It's a magic using class that relies on tactics and calculation. "Setting things up for the desired results."

I can understand the use of status effects but Bio and Miasma are normally used by "toxic" monsters.

That is pretty much one of the reasons why arcanist doesn't feel right for summoner and why the class/job system is fundamentally broken. It's like how conjurer has aero/stone/water and why conjurer feels more akin to geomancer than to whm. Arcanists abilities feel more like cross class abilities than summoner's abilities. They are already starting to feel the strain of the system when they make classless jobs like dark knight just so they can make it the way they wanted.

That is why it's even more of a shame that they probably won't change the nature of summoner's relationship with arcanists so easily without adding brand new abilities to summoner without making arcanists abilities completely redundant. Tri-disaster is an example of failed ability to make summoner and arcanist sync together. It could easily just be a arcanist ability by itself and they would have called it ruin 3 and it would have nothing to do with summoning at all.

So when summoners get new abilities at level 60 that actually have to do with summoning capability they will either just add new summon(s) in that are not used over garuda due to contagion thus falling behind other classes due to wasted ability slot(s),or the new pets will be incredibly badass and they will form new strategies that have nothing to do with DOT's or at the very least very little to do with DOT's and they will be backseat to new forms of damage or utility. Like shiva making burst damage abilities more potent so ruin/tridisaster become the primary damage like blm's nukes thus competeing with blm for same slot and/or ramuh could easily add powerful utility like enthunder that stuns enemies special attacks and does extra damage per hit for whole party that outweigh anything any other pet would do because the combined utility and damage between all party members would outweigh one jobs damage capability therefore it would be useful to have buff up for whole party.

The best solution would be to switch between multiple pets between garuda and ramuh, if shiva is not more powerful than both. So in the end if garuda is still best with contagion then other pets still are useless and summoner becomes gimped, or new abilities become even more disappointing and SE AND players ends up hating the class/job system even more due to the fact its even more abilities that feel useless at max level.

Most people say we are disillusion to ask for sweeping changes or overhauls to the job when in fact just 10 levels of new abilities for summoner would more than make our case no matter what way it went. It is extremely ironic that they insist that we don't know what we are talking about or that we won't eventually get our way.

It's funny that garuda and carby both have abilities that exactly mirror each other...Shining emerald and contagion. Do you think all the new pets are going to receive ANOTHER copy of this same exact ability when ifrit and titan don't even have it? Titan is good for soloing, and who really uses ifrit during end game and is not gimped? Will shiva/ramuh/levi egi's be any different?

It's why they only want to talk about QoL changes when they KNOW other jobs won't just receive QoL changes. It's like they are trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Who is delusional here?People who expect the job to remain DOT focused without the new abilities becoming near useless like ifrit/titan/tri disaster for endgame OR DOT abilities to become significantly less important due to new pets or abilities outshining older ones like garuda's contagion? Gaurda becoming less important would make the DOT rotation that much harder to keep up and be viable. DOT's will not be obsolete but summoner will have more than one way of maximizing damage than just outside of DOT and you would have to choose which way you would want to go in order to maximize damage potential.

DOT's would be become secondary casts instead of primary focus so summoners would cast spells that are either DD or Buffs and good summoners would be able sneak in DOT's that are essential rather than all of them.Kinda like how good whm's can sneak in Aero I and II in without sacrificing cure's.

So in recap you either:
1.Keep DOT's a focus and make new pets useless you have abilities like contagion/shining emerald a standard for every pet.(which honestly seems unlikely due to developers not adding them to titan or ifrit)
OR
2.You have more pets like ifrit or titan but give them new abilities that outshine contagion and make DOT's take a backseat to more Buff's or DD abilities.

No matter what level cap increase means changes on the scale of close to an overhaul. The job either remains exactly the same due to a bunch of useless abilities EVERY summoner will hate and feel screwed by, OR brand new abilities that will change main focus of job.

[Delily]

What you described is pretty much exactly how they worked in FFXI. Which I would honestly be all for.

From what I have been told, the the design team actively decided against because, partially, it was too passive. They wanted the focus to be on the warrior of light, not his pets. Also, there's a problem whereby once the pet is gone, you're useless. The FFXI version would not work here because there are not subjobs that provide skills that can be used when pets are either not summoned or on cooldown.

[Bishop81]

From what I have been told, the the design team actively decided against because, partially, it was too passive. They wanted the focus to be on the warrior of light, not his pets. Also, there's a problem whereby once the pet is gone, you're useless. The FFXI version would not work here because there are not subjobs that provide skills that can be used when pets are either not summoned or on cooldown.

But as a summoner ... the focus is supposed to be on your summons.

FFX's Aeons are huge awe-inspiring powerful creatures while their summoners are just people with weird dress sense.

The "no pet = useless" is easy to fix. As I suggested in #983, have the summons be "temporary", i.e. they are instantly summoned with no CD and are active as long as the SMN has mana to maintain the summon. The SMN player's job would be to manage their mana, balancing the use of mana-draining abilities of their summons and their mana restoration abilities.

[Delily]

FFX's Aeons are huge awe-inspiring powerful creatures while their summoners are just people with weird dress sense.

When you summoned them, the entire party disappeared. That wouldn't quite work in FFXIV. Also, Yuna herself was a white mage, and ultimately, the only thing the summons were good at was burst damage in boss fights when Yuna was in Overdrive. Once she got Holy and her ultimate weapon, there was almost no reason to summon unless you needed sacrificial lambs. So much for awe-inspiring.

Summoner's summoning huge Demi Gods to aide them in battle for us is the one constant in the Final Fantasy series. I don't think the Summoner and Arcanist should be based on the Warlock model because it's flawed and unpopular at higher levels look at what happened after WoW Cataclysm Expansion the Warlock got destroyed and their population declined because other classes became vastly more powerful and easier to use doing the level cap raise.

The issue is DoT based classes at higher levels require an insane amount of skill to even get close to or the same amount of damage as other dps classes which happens in every MMO.

The only time a summoner's summons have been demi-gods has been FFXI.

And have you ever played a warlock, much less WoW itself? Warlocks have never been a popular class for a myriad of reasons (namely in 1.0 they were bad), but the core design of both Affliction and Destruction is solid. Demonology was unfocused until the devs settled on Metamorphosis as the key mechanic for the spec. The roller coaster warlocks are on has always been the fact that WoW strives to balance the game for both PvE and PvP. The legendary "Fear + DoT" combo is great in PvE, but not so much in PvP because people lose control and /ragequit.

[Soralis]

delily don't look at it literary, when someone says like yuna, they probably mean summons that yuna has, not her entire character and battlefield things, so no he probably ment for party not to disappear, like they don't disappear in ffxi, and warlock was good in wow, but personally i don't want summoner to be compared to warlock, yes they both are a dot class, but i would want summoner to be more final fantasy-ish and not a plain warlock class from other games

[Delily]

delily don't look at it literary, when someone says like yuna, they probably mean summons that yuna has, not her entire character and battlefield things, so no he probably ment for party not to disappear, like they don't disappear in ffxi, and warlock was good in wow, but personally i don't want summoner to be compared to warlock, yes they both are a dot class, but i would want summoner to be more final fantasy-ish and not a plain warlock class from other games

When people say they want an FF summoner, what they really mean is they want an FFXI summoner. Other than summoning, the role and abilities of summoners have changed from game to game. Also, when people say warlock, they really mean Affliction warlock, completely ignoring Demonology and Destruction. DoTs play into a warlocks spec, yes, but the accurate description of them would be the "enemies of all life" since they are the only class that uses all 3 of the "forbidden" spell lines in WoW's lore.

[dday3six]

...personally i don't want summoner to be compared to warlock, yes they both are a dot class, but i would want summoner to be more final fantasy-ish and not a plain warlock class from other games

Summoner is rarely represented the same in any FF though. However the biggest hurdle is; how could a single-player version of Summoner work in an MMO with fast paced, dodge heavy, and mechanic-driven combat.

[Bishop81]

When you summoned them, the entire party disappeared. That wouldn't quite work in FFXIV.

No need for anyone to disappear. The summon will just be how the SMN does damage/tank.

However the biggest hurdle is; how could a single-player version of Summoner work in an MMO with fast paced, dodge heavy, and mechanic-driven combat.

The SMN dodges as normal with various abilities given to him to keep the summon alive.