Anyone miss the old pet jobs from ffxi?

[Mimilu]

In otherwords, Summoner DPS is not focused on the summons; it's focused on nonsensical geometry magic that somehow translates into poison spells.

That's because SE learned from their past mistakes from XI. In XI, Summoners couldn't do anything by themselves, they needed an avatar out and either WHM or BLM as their side job to be able to do anything. Add in the 7 second cast times and 30 second cooldowns for each avatar, no Swiftcast, and all their best spells being spread out through out several avatars, Summoners were in a lot of trouble when their avatar and/or when their MP ran out.
Don't get me wrong, Summoner was pretty to look at (I prefer XI's monster and avatar design) and it did feel interesting when you first started out but it had huge design and balancing problems and I completely understand why SE went this route with it in XIV.

[Blitzace]

I dunno what alot of people here are claiming that SMN sucks, it wasn't favored in PTs nor was BST/PUP for that mather but one thing they didn't do is suck. They could solo quite well in a mather of fact.

Solo'd my SMN up to 75 solo'd alot of stuff killed, one thing that i did enjoy was soloing stuff, so please do not tell me they don't solo well.
And with the MP issue, You're right. MP was being drained but you could get alot of stuff that gives you regen or -perp cost, they even added aetherflow(I believe it was called that can't remember LOLZ :P)

But then again, Now a days we have these little whiney people who like to complain the second a different job does a little bit better than them. Or am i mistaken here?

[SoloWingMetatron]

I dunno what alot of people here are claiming that SMN sucks, it wasn't favored in PTs nor was BST/PUP for that mather but one thing they didn't do is suck. They could solo quite well in a mather of fact.

Solo'd my SMN up to 75 solo'd alot of stuff killed, one thing that i did enjoy was soloing stuff, so please do not tell me they don't solo well.
And with the MP issue, You're right. MP was being drained but you could get alot of stuff that gives you regen or -perp cost, they even added aetherflow(I believe it was called that can't remember LOLZ :P)

But then again, Now a days we have these little whiney people who like to complain the second a different job does a little bit better than them. Or am i mistaken here?

I agree with this statement. SMN itself is not broken, it's the only job I play and I enjoy playing it. The only thing that sucks is the Egi's appearance, they are in dire need of a redesign. I would love some more skills for the Egi in a future expansion also, but right now, those models need replacing with something more polished and well thought out.

[Trespar]

The real problem is that the balance of power is completely out of whack between summoner and egi.

In the quests, egis are portrayed as a big deal, but in reality they are weaksauce.

Their damage sucks, their utility sucks(except contagion), the way they look sucks.
I'm seeing a pattern here, and that pattern is that egis just SUCK.

Meanwhile us summoners on our own are almost on par with our black magic cousins eventhough we have no right to be that close.
And the only reason for that is because egis suck. They can't pull their weight, so we have to.

This isn't a pet job. It's a DoT/incidental nuke job with a walking DoT that needs extra babysitting so it doesn't fall off.
As someone who came here to pretend to be like the summoners of old, this doesn't feel very satisfying.

It's true that summoners of old could do more beyond just summoning critters, and I think that should be the same here, but right now it feels like the summoner is 80% and the pet is 20% while it should at least be closer to 50-50.
Also, we need more pet commands, particularly one that fits into our regular rotation so losing our pet should disrupt our rotation someone decently.

It's almost like the devs don't want this to be a pet job anymore.
In that case, just go ahead and cut off the cancerous blight that is egis and rename us into arithmeticians. I'm 99% certain that would be better for everyone involved.

Maybe then when they're feeling frisky, they might actually release a summoner job that actually feels like the summoners we know and love.

In a vacuum, yes, SMN is fine.
But it really, really doesn't represent the Summoner archetype of the older games at all. And that's a lot more important to me than anything else.

TL;DR: Summoners rule, egis drools = Pets need to be a greater portion of the job's potential. (in this case, dps, because it's a dps job)
The SMN job doesn't represent the Summoners of older games, for a game claiming to be "final fantasy online" this is a problem.

[Geardagas]

snip

Actually they updated ffxi smn a bit. Astral burn parties became quite popular.

Regardless, that's not the point. The point is that ffxi summoners are actual summoners, but ffxiv summoners are geometry mages with lame pets. The gist of this thread is that people want the playstyle to focus more on the summons and less on shapes that become dots or whatever the heck is going on there.

[Blitzace]

Lets put it this way,

Who here has played FFXI, Oke scrap that. Who here has played any final fantasy with a summenor or summon in it?
Weren't they always big and powerfull? Lets for a second forget how puny and small they are in XIV but just purely look at the DMG input they give the SMN. compared to the SMN they don't even reach 25% of their total DMG i believe they deal around what? 100-200 DPS ?

The point is, I do not feel like a SMN. Even if the class is fine and plays fine it does the summenor name no justice.

[AylmerOfFamfrit]

I loved astral burns. Awesome exp, well pre-Abyssea.

[SoloWingMetatron]

The real problem is that the balance of power is completely out of whack between summoner and egi.

TL;DR: Summoners rule, egis drools = Pets need to be a greater portion of the job's potential. (in this case, dps, because it's a dps job)
The SMN job doesn't represent the Summoners of older games, for a game claiming to be "final fantasy online" this is a problem.

Very true, as I have said here before it is the Egi that are the crux of these SMN debates, and if SE would simply address these issues then people would finally be happy. However I would hate it if SE just simply removed the Egi and turned the job into an Arithmetician or whatever. I am a SMN exclusive player, the reason I never played 1.0 was not because it was poor, but because there was no SMN. I would most likely unsub if SMN were to disappear. It would be extremely foolish of the devs to remove SMN or the Egi. I do enjoy it's current incarnation for what it is, and there are a number of ways the other issues could be fixed without removing either.

There is nothing wrong with SMN having DoT based skills, or having skills outside of the Egi. But what is an issue is the ratio of damage output between the SMN and the Egi. That is something that could be addressed without the job being totally reworked. The next lvl cap could easily be used as the perfect opportunity for the devs to give SMN a new rotation that has the Egi at it's core, or at least something that is incorporated into the DT/Deathflare rotation. None of which is really a big ask and would solve the identity crisis just fine.

Everything else is just cosmetic that again could easily be altered without removing the job or Egi. All the Egi need in that regard is just a model rework and more polish.

Though I would like to point out Ifrit has great utility now with the changes to Radiant Shield. He is just as viable as Garuda now.

[Saggo]

Summoners were in a lot of trouble when their avatar and/or when their MP ran out.

That wasn't a problem. That was a great feature. SMN could attack with abandon, never worrying about damage or enmity. If your pet died, you just summoned a new one! No pesky weakness timer or waiting for a raise. Set your avatar to Bloodpact and the only enmity the SMN worried about was cures and buffs (you dont /BLM on SMN except to warp home).

That's awesome. That's a trick XIV could stand to have.

If you bring up solo, well yeah, it's a trade off. But SMN stopped having to solo for XP since long before ARR. And everyone was constantly "in trouble" if they were solo. Every mage was "in trouble" if they ran out of MP, too. But now every mage has Convert, so not even that's a problem. The only problem that was SMN specific were the annoying Bloodpact timers. It's a problem, but not of the huge variety.

[Ammut]

I miss the true solo beastmaster, not the jug bsts now running amok. Soloed to 75 as bst, led all bst god, divine might, and kirin fights. LordsoftheBeasts was, and in my opinion remains, the gold standard for pet job linkshells to emulate.