Summoner gets no new pets in expansion

[Wizarus]

SMN really has no more utility than other mages and will do more on anything not saturated with trash adds. While SCH does have the upgrades virus as well, there are times where healing is pressured to the point that you have to do it yourself. Just because another class has the ability doesn't make it any less useful, there IS a reason you have it after all. There really isn't more interaction you could add to the pets currently (Without more skills obviously) outside of making Titan useful as Garuda and Ifrit already have their uses (Make him cover someone, least someone will actually use him then).

And the buff to SpS does give "oomph" since dots scale poorly, they always have.

To add to this, we are getting a new Healer AST, which will not have access to Supervirus and Enhanced EFE. The chance of not having a SCH in the party is greater, which means these SMN tools get stronger by default.

[Saggo]

I want to see a thread that is more in depth than that, that focuses on the actual game and it's development (models, animations, abilities, mechanics) Not a history lesson on past FF trivia and then trying to prove each other wrong on said trivia....it's just pathetic at this point. Need to move past it people.

History informs this game, so it's never going to go away and it can be quite useful for mechanics in the right context.

Bottom line is it doesn't make sense to give say, 8 summons, when only 1 can be used at a time, and possibly only 2-3 of them are used regularly.

That is 32 skills that have to be balanced, while only 4 is ever used at a time, basically an entire class's worth of skills being completely unused.

Glamours make a whole lot of sense - there simply isn't enough reason to have 8 different niches or whatever.

Maybe not 8. Maybe just 5 or 6. Maybe 10! You're always going to have that go-to pet you default to, that's a niche to fill. The summons just need better niches to fill. The fact that our choice can be distilled to "Do I want Contagion. Yes/No" is quite frankly a boring design. Hell, even another healing pet with a basic auto-attack would be fine without stepping on healer toes.

The biggest issue with this game is that they streamlined so much they reduced the usefulness of crowd-control, debuffing, buffing, off-healing, anything that isn't strictly DPS. Even so, there are enough shades of DPS that we can fill out a pet roster more.

It really bothers me that their current response is "It's too hard."

[pandabearcat]

Because it is too hard to make pets appealing.

Noone cares about your debuffing/buffing pet, or your healing pet, because it isn't needed.

WHY isn't it needed? Because any situation that doesn't require a summoner will never require it, thus having a summoner can't possibly make it enough of a difference to take one.

Your job is dps mate, you pick the one with the most dps.

Perhaps each summon provides a different passive bonus (like WoW's hunter pets do), but their functionality is more damage and that is the only niche they can possibly fill (along with a cc/utility pet for pvp and a tank pet for soloing). This is the "utility" that hunters bring, and it is a good utility. Your raid lacking a DRG? Okay your pet glamour provides the piercing debuff for your MST/BRD. Missing a MNK? Bring the blunt debuff. Etc. But the primary role and attack abilities of your pet will not change. It will be your "damage" pet and you will use it.

There are not "enough shades of dps" it is just "for this fight, X pet is best".

So you can either make 8 pets which are each best in one fight, because of some bogus mechanic, or you can make one pet that is the best for 8 fights.

[SoloWingMetatron]

History informs this game, so it's never going to go away and it can be quite useful for mechanics in the right context.

Very true. When used in the correct context, history of a job can help inform a concept. However in most cases in this thread and many other SMN threads, it loses it's context, going off on a tangent and just merely becomes a way for one poster to "one up" another, over something totally trivial and irrelevant to the initial point.

[Waliel]

Wasn't there also something about Ruin III dealing increased damage during Dreadwyrm Trance? Or only being available during trance?

Yes. I've heard both and got no idea myself which is the right one. Usable during trance sounds more logical to me, though.

[Saggo]

Very true. When used in the correct context, history of a job can help inform a concept. However in most cases in this thread and many other SMN threads, it loses it's context, going off on a tangent and just merely becomes a way for one poster to "one up" another, over something totally trivial and irrelevant to the initial point.

All I can think of is "Welcome to the internet, it likes tangents."

WHY isn't it needed? Because any situation that doesn't require a summoner will never require it, thus having a summoner can't possibly make it enough of a difference to take one.

Let's just take this argument to the logical extreme and say there should only be 3 jobs, period.

So you can either make 8 pets which are each best in one fight, because of some bogus mechanic, or you can make one pet that is the best for 8 fights.

If you want to exaggerate, sure. You don't need 8 DPS pets. You make 3-4 DPS pets and 2-3 utility pets and now you have 6ish pets to choose from. 6ish pets is not hard, especially since one skill is always their auto-attack of some degree of potency.

Maybe a player only picks one summon. Maybe they're not interested in the game that much. Maybe that's no different than a player that sticks Ifrit on Sic and calls it a day.

[pandabearcat]

We have 3 pets right now, and we use 1 of them.

We can have 6 pets, we will still only use one of them.

It is fallacious to really expect increased pets with having other classes...

But if you really want to make that argument, lets break it down

Why other classes/pets?

1. Different rotations. Classes have different rotations. Pets CAN'T have different rotations because the vast majority of your skills don't change. At best they add one tiny thing on a cooldown. Whoopee.

2. Thematically different. Obviously people will want to play melee, ranged, caster, etc. This is why diff classes exist. Obivously people like different egis. This is why glamour will exist

So...yea.

You also seem to have misunderstood my "ubiquity" argument.

It is not so much that classes are homogenous. It is that no class can provide such extreme utility that you cannot down things without it.

Okay? We're agreed there?

Alright. So, then comes the real gist of it. Why then, if you can sub your SMN for any other job, would you bring an SMN? Because of dps. Because it is a dps class. So you will pick the pet with the most dps. Your pet's utility won't be enough to save the raid. Your offtanking will be useful in 1 out of 1 million encounters. Noone needs your healing if the healers don't suck, etc.

*Cue the anecdote where titan egi saved the day*

[Saggo]

We have 3 pets right now, and we use 1 of them.

We can have 6 pets, we will still only use one of them.

You may use one. Other people don't.

I didn't think I would really have to explain why I sometimes choose Garuda over Ifrit and vice versa, and that little choice has more potential than SE is willing to give or people here are willing to admit.

You also seem to have misunderstood my "ubiquity" argument.

It is not so much that classes are homogenous. It is that no class can provide such extreme utility that you cannot down things without it.

Okay? We're agreed there?

Hardly. It's called argumentum ad absurdum. If all jobs are interchangable then logically there is no need to devote resources to more then the 3 jobs. It's, like the name suggests, an absurd argument, just twisted for SMNs only.

*Cue the anecdote where titan egi saved the day*

Oh, but he did.

Don't act like fights never go south, or PUGs don't exist, or that dungeons are just a boss fights.

[Akiza]

The only way I see Summoner going with the addition of Dreadwrym Trance is Incarnate Summoning. At level 70 Summoners should get the ability to summon Primals by having a massive amount of Aether form around their body taking on the appearance and abilities of the Primal they want to summon as well as the Summoner acting as the soul of the Primal. The Primals Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Leviathan and Ramuh are op elementals since they are a mass of Aether with the collective will of the beast tribe that summoned them and Shiva is the essence of the land fused with Yasyle soul. So either way no one is really Summoning the Real Primals at best they are summoning something that looks and acts like a Primal.

[Shadowsun]

LB3 confirmed to be Megaflare. You even grow Bahamut wings
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...aunch_trailer/