No new SMNs for SMN?

[Hustensaft]

Sorry I like sitting back and letting my pet do the work?

Botting is a bannable offense in most MMOs.

[Averax]

Sorry I like sitting back and letting my pet do the work?

So you just want to stand there an maybe cast a few pet buffs while your summon does everything...

Okay, so... I cant see that happening in foreseeable future

Why not just play FFXI's summoner, then?

I'm genuinely curious on how you get enjoyment from a game where you just stand there while someone else does your killing for you. I mean, i play games because i like to, you know, play them.

Summons should exist to bolster the Summoner in his/her attack. Whether it means to distract an enemy while you attack from afar, to cast alongside you, or to damage it up close. Not to just come in and go "you have a seat, get a drink maybe, i'll just do this for you"

[SirDiscoFrog]

Summons should exist to bolster the Summoner in his/her attack, not to just come in and go "you have a seat, get a drink maybe, i'll just do this for you"

And I feel that's the direction this SMN was trying to avoid. The Summon is a vital factor in your dps, but you as the Summoner still does most of the work keeping you as a player more so actively in control of your damage. Many already complain about keeping pets alive and there are some who find it cumbersome to control their pet. If pets were to be the primary source there would be huge issues when pets actually do die or if a summoner just had their pet on (Sic) vs now where SMNs who cant/wont manually control their pet abilities can get by and when a pet does die, it is a DPS loss but its not the end of the world either.

The amount of "OMG SMN, YOU'RE PET IS DEAD HURRY AND SMN IT UGH GARBAGE." would go through the roof lol

[Jasmine_Aurelia]

I don't play FF11 is because you can't solo for crap in XI, I also didn't like the MP drain for having a smn out.

but we can disagree Averax. No hard feelings.

[Spiritreaver1217]

Sorry I like sitting back and letting my pet do the work?

To be fair, not everyone liked that aspect of SMN in FFXI. I loathed it.

1) Summon <insert avatar of choice> and put it on mob(remember to put up favor!)
2) Pop Rage Pact.
3) Pop Ward Pact.
4) Wait the rest of the min until Rage is back up.
5) Repeat ad nausea.

Sorry, but that was just boring beyond tears. And with as slow as fights were in that game, that is REALLY saying something. Say what you like about SMN in XIV, if you are doing it passably well, you always have something to do. Which obviously isn't everyone's cup of tea, but meh.

Also sitting back and letting the avatars stay out was not even an excepted practice until FFXI was 7 or 8 years old-well into the last half of its life cycle when SE gave SMN favors and turned the job into a flashy-er BRD. But then that is a whole other conversation there.

[Peachy]

Clearly some of you didnt play smn in XI. You cant leave the pet out and just let it attack for you in most situations and when you were it was carbuncle for some soloing, using gear that reduced the mp cost per tick for having it out. Im sorry some of you are not creative enough to see how the old concept of summoner could be put into an MMO but there is no reason to be rude about it. XI was on the right path with party buffing, some spikey dmg, even debuff, it could change roles in the party as needed, but it needed some serious work, XIV smn is certainly better from a gameplay standpoint, but they got the concept all wrong and you cant really argue that by saying you just summoned and watch the hit then go back to what you were doing. I can say that about every old job thats been converted into MMO trinity format, especially blm.

[Jasmine_Aurelia]

Well said peachy, I just wish they had worked on the path 11 was on to refine it instead of redesign it for XIV.

[MiniPrinny]

As someone who has been playing MMOs for over a decade and Final Fantasy games for almost two decades, I am... conflicted on the vast opinion of Summoners. I'll tackle the Final Fantasy part first.

Summoners do damage. They've always dealt damage. Usually insane damage at the cost of consuming more MP. This would never work in an MMORPG. At the core, Summoners are spell casters who call upon creatures from another realm to fight either alongside them or for them, this is the core feature of the job. They never really have ever had a set skill set outside of "Summon Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, Bahamut." And even those four summons have taken turns not appearing in games. Here, Summoners have "Summon Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit" and are gaining the ability to take up the power of Bahamut. None of this goes against what Summoners have done in the past. I think where the confusion is coming in, is that Summoners in FFXIV aren't the Summoners we saw in FFIII and the games between FFIV and FFIX. They aren't completely reliant on their pets. And despite the idea of Summoner doing nothing but Summoning, more often they are Black or White Mages who can Summon. Rydia, one of the most famous offensive Summoners is a Black Mage who also can Summon. In fact, she is better as a Black Mage. Even in the oft-referenced Final Fantasy XI, Summoners weren't purely Summons. They often had sub-jobs that allowed them to heal, buff, or do damage alongside their pet. So the concept of a Summoner who uses magic to fight with their pet is far from a foreign concept in the series.

As for their abilities in terms of MMORPGs, Summoners fill a niche that I don't see any other mage in the series being able to except a vastly different Black Mage. Summoners, while never being know for poison and shadow magic until now, happens to have the best basis for a DoT mage. And this sort of play-style isn't that rare nor is it unpopular, and it often benefits the player-base to have this role instead of just "more damage style A" and "more damage style B" for their mage choices. As for the setting itself, it is also justified that Summoners do more than Summon. Final Fantasy XIV's world would not tolerate the summoning of Primals in their full form to fight with the Summoner, nor would a lone Summoner be able to preform this feat. Scaling down the summons to a reasonable size as well as giving the Summoner something to do outside of managing their pet is a masterstroke in world design. Summoners here, like in many games, are mages who learn how to summon, and they use their basic magic to assist them. It's why you don't start with Summon I, you start with Ruin. A basic black magic spell. And as you level up, you learn two other styles of summons, but the magic you draw from is vastly different than that of a Black Mage. This leaves you being a sustained damage dealer, and often the more powerful against singular targets and gives Summoner a defined role at long last, rather than just "Black Mage, but with magical creatures." In the end, what would you want? A poison and shadow magic wielding tamer of Primals or a poor knock-off of the original? I know what I'd choose.

[TruebladeNuke]

Final Fantasy XIV's world would not tolerate the summoning of Primals in their full form to fight with the Summoner, nor would a lone Summoner be able to preform this feat.

This is the part most people seem to be forgetting about in their constant complaints about how SMNs work in this game. The lore of FFXIV dictates that summoning a full primal would effectively be an act of treason and what not. And lets not forget that besides Ramuh, all the primals in this game actively hate you and want you dead.

But nope. Lore be damned to those people. Props to you on that post, I know what I'd pick too.

[Lemuria]

This is the part most people seem to be forgetting about in their constant complaints about how SMNs work in this game. The lore of FFXIV dictates...

Just thought that I'd point out that lore is a terrible reason why the mechanics of a job should suck. The funniest part about Summoner is that if they robbed us of our avatars we'd notice virtually no difference with regards to how the class plays. With the exception of Contagion, there's not a single pet skill which requires any kind of forward planning to use.

Maybe they should just get rid of the Egi's entirely and rename the class to Ravager or something.