Dear Yoship, HUGE thank you from a SMN

[Ryans]

It's still taking away what the player can do for themselves (the player can run around like a headless chicken, spamming this ability and that for their pet to do). Able to dodge AoE's without spells getting interrupted and not worry about their pets taking a lot of damage due to them not being targets to mechanics, as well as reduced magic damage and immunity to persistent ground AoE's.

So instead they take the name of the Summoner job and create something entirely different. "Why?" is the only question that comes to my mind. They could have made Summoner function the way it had in previous iterations and created a dot job that is called something else. Having iconic jobs in the game is cool, but it is meaningless if they don't feel like the iconic jobs.

Now I haven't had the opportunity to play Summoner in 3.0 and it sounds like it is a lot of fun. I actually enjoyed it in 2.0 even though I considered it an abomination to the title. But no matter how fun it was, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't a Summoner.

[Valsh]

It's still taking away what the player can do for themselves (the player can run around like a headless chicken, spamming this ability and that for their pet to do). Able to dodge AoE's without spells getting interrupted and not worry about their pets taking a lot of damage due to them not being targets to mechanics, as well as reduced magic damage and immunity to persistent ground AoE's.

The spells have cast times and use the players current target? When the player dies the summon dies with it so there's no need for the pet to be targeted by mechanics. I mean, it's a fairly simple concept to grasp. If the devs were to try and replicate FFXI Summoners in FXIV that's how it would work.

[Nestama]

But why would the player need to cast a spell that their Summon is going to use? Wouldn't that remove the entire point of having a summon?

[Valsh]

But why would the player need to cast a spell that their Summon is going to use? Wouldn't that remove the entire point of having a summon?

Think of it as 'Commanding' them, like enkindle but in various flavours.

I don't speak for everybody but most players that want a more pet focused summoner do so for the aesthetics, you can shift most the damage to the pet as long as the player has to initiate it in some form without breaking balance.

[Luvbunny]

The spells have cast times and use the players current target? When the player dies the summon dies with it so there's no need for the pet to be targeted by mechanics. I mean, it's a fairly simple concept to grasp. If the devs were to try and replicate FFXI Summoners in FXIV that's how it would work.

I played summoner in FFXI, and I like FF14 summoner way better. The FFXI version is much more passive, as player you are out of range, away from AOE and do a lot of kiting. Your offensive ability also being timed 20-30 seconds activation. It's a more passive style of playing. You rotate your avatar for buffs, and attack power, and they will do most of the heavy lifting of your damage since you do not have ANY spells - only from your subjob and underpowered.

Summoner in FF14 is far far more active, your pet role is smaller, and only as a help to boost your DPS, while you as the player has to make a lot of active decision. The new changes to summoner is even better, now you have to play strategically and time your charges to be able to enter the trance session. It is far far more interesting than FFXI summoner.

[Mhikail]

We don't really care. Function > aesthetics.

Who's 'we'? A lot of Summoners were disappointed in changes because...Hi, it's a PET JOB.
Meh, we've been around and again with the Summoner status.
So far, it doesn't feel like what a SUMMONER is in the FF series.
Egi's are for show now. Remove Egi's and let us, the summoner, use special attacks from stances of Shiva/Ifrit/Titan and so on.
Put in Beast Tamer or whatever you call it and that can be a REAL pet job.
I'm going to try SMN again since it seems like it's in a better place.

People are being pretty insensitive to other SMN's feel though.
If it's a pet job, you expect more interactions with the pets.
Big 'DUH' right there lol. I do say on the other side of the coin; try and be happy with what we got as of now and hope for a rework with pets later.
SMN was in a horrible spot in 2.0.

[jars]

the HWs abilities actually made me quit my summoner. the whole ruin 3 and painsurge mechanics scream annoying

[ckc22]

I still think they need to go back to the drawing board.

It's a powerful job now, but it's not even remotely a "summoner."

Because what people want out of "summoner" would never work in an mmo because they want to be objectively overpowered. XIV summoner is in a far better state and has been for the majority of its life than XI's summoner was in for years.

[ckc22]

Who's 'we'? A lot of Summoners were disappointed in changes because...Hi, it's a PET JOB.
Meh, we've been around and again with the Summoner status.
So far, it doesn't feel like what a SUMMONER is in the FF series.
Egi's are for show now. Remove Egi's and let us, the summoner, use special attacks from stances of Shiva/Ifrit/Titan and so on.
Put in Beast Tamer or whatever you call it and that can be a REAL pet job.
I'm going to try SMN again since it seems like it's in a better place.

People are being pretty insensitive to other SMN's feel though.
If it's a pet job, you expect more interactions with the pets.
Big 'DUH' right there lol. I do say on the other side of the coin; try and be happy with what we got as of now and hope for a rework with pets later.
SMN was in a horrible spot in 2.0.

This incoherent whining made my eyes bleed - remove the pets from the "PET JERB!" to make it more reliant on pets?

[Seaverin]

I'm glad they finally made Summoners a real DOT DPS, it took a yr to fix them but thank you yoshi and devs for fixing them. Their new abilities is amazing and at times can par with BLM. The new abilities made them more versatile and not be restricted by positional or stationary via use of Tri-disaster, which hinders their damage output unlike the BLM enochain which is quite troublesome as of now. I find myself often switching pets from ruda to ifrit. Ruda for normal mobs and ifrit for single target coz the shield dmg return is nice now compare to 1.0-2.0 ver. It seems now SMN feels more of AOE damager as a crowd controller and BLM single target damager which IMO should be. But its early to judge until Alex comes out for real testing.