New to the game. Do summoners become actual summoners later or in the expansion?

[ServerCollaps]

~70% of the smn dmg are dots and ruin spam, the other 30% are autoattacks of the summons

its more like a dot cls with an egi gimmick

[Altijacek]

You mighty like monk or one of the tanks, and white Mage is pretty true to white Mage. Monk is unique, but I can get where it's coming from. It reminds me of FF1 monk. Starts the game kinda meh but by the end they have the highest combos. In this game they have a trait called greased lightning, and when you complete a combo your damage and speed go up. You keep doing this up to 3 stacks and then the Class revolves around maintaining this and other buffs and fitting in other attacks before you need to refresh them. There's a rotation sure, but it's more dynamic than the dragoon one, and there are more options and decisions to make on the fly. Plus they bring good utility to a raid and are currently highest single target damage dealers if played perfectly (the gap is very small though). It just feels epic playing monk, and it DOES remind me of classic monk classes that were about raw Attack power with a few healing anilities (mantra/second wind)

[rawker]

as i have replied in another summoner thread, we may see greater egis but in later expansions. we cannot really just end there that they can draw a fraction of the primal's power? there must exist a point where the lore will allow them to summon a more potent version of the egis having unlocked more of its power.

[Dextro]

as i have replied in another summoner thread, we may see greater egis but in later expansions. we cannot really just end there that they can draw a fraction of the primal's power? there must exist a point where the lore will allow them to summon a more potent version of the egis having unlocked more of its power.

Maybe.

The game is basically still in it's infancy right now; it wasn't until 7(?) years after XI's release that you were able to summon the really significant shit like Odin and Alexander, even though the lore made the players think it'd forever be impossible.

The 2.0-2.5 primals are a big deal right now, but maybe in 5 years time SE won't have any lore issues with letting you summon something a little more in their likeness. I wouldn't expect it soon though, and definitely not in 3.0

[Dyvid]

I don't believe summoner is going to be the right job for you either.

[Pyroclastic]

I wish they would completely rework SMN so that the class is an ACTUAL smn, and just make a new magic class/job for this dot+disease system..

[Akiza]

Maybe.

The game is basically still in it's infancy right now; it wasn't until 7(?) years after XI's release that you were able to summon the really significant shit like Odin and Alexander, even though the lore made the players think it'd forever be impossible.

The 2.0-2.5 primals are a big deal right now, but maybe in 5 years time SE won't have any lore issues with letting you summon something a little more in their likeness. I wouldn't expect it soon though, and definitely not in 3.0

I don't think SE will ever let Summoners summon a greater Egi but in Heavensward I think SE will let us summon the 2.0-2.5 Primals and have the Egis be the focal point since the last Summoner job quest and Lady Iceheart alluded to it.

[SoloWingMetatron]

No, summoners in the traditional single player JRPG FF games use summons as a limit break sort of skill.. This is an MMO, you can't have such powerful spells at your arsenal every time you cast

The Summoner job in FFXI (also an MMO) played very much like the "traditional" Summoner without hindering the balance of the game. You were able to summon a full size Avatar at any time and command it using a series of macros. Each Avatar would have a set of utility abilities (buffs/debuffs/healing), offensive elemental abilities as well as their Blood Pact (signature) move, like Diamond Dust. So the play style was very much focused on summoning large, powerful Avatars. However the job in FFXI was one of the hardest to unlock and the Avatars once summoned would constantly drain your MP pool, meaning you could never have them constantly summoned like in ARR. So I think it is pretty safe to say that one day the ARR Summoner will get something more than just the standard Egi.

[Nutz]

FFXI SMN...

Maybe people liked the FFXI SMN, but I don't think it really worked very well. They could probably modify it a bit to make it work and that might be something that they do with one or more of the egis that will be released in Heavensward.

The biggest problem with FFXI's SMN was that all abilities were on a significant shared cooldown so a SMN could buff the party and use an attack and then sit around doing nothing for a while. Those attacks weren't exactly so spectacular to warrant all the downtime either, so they became backup healers (or main healers in some circumstances) due to their large mp pool, auto-refresh, luke warm healing ability, and typically low (overall) spike damage output.

For the new egis it seems like it shouldn't be too difficult to give them more impactful attacks (like judgement bolt) that have a longer cast time and/ or cooldown. I don't see them removing bio, miasma, etc. (I don't actually play SMN) but the egis should be fairly malleable, and it would be nice to have some bigger differences between them. I suppose they already do this to some degree (enkindle) but they could certainly push it further in that direction.

[Akiza]

In Final Fantasy XI Summoners gained the ability to summon the firsts six full sized Avatars in the 1st Expansion Rise of Zilart.