(Un)Official Summoner Feedback Thread [3.0 Edition]

[Dyvid]

Egi Glamours and 3.0 Changes
With glamour on the table, the ability to change summon I, II, III to different pet appearance, I think it's time for SE to reexamine pet skills, appearance, and function. Sadly MCH pets are dumber and better than Egi. MCH know when and where to use either rook and bishop. SMN need a reason to use each summoned pet in specific areas of game play. With glamour the abilities need to more standardized so any Egi can fill that roll.

Summon I : AoE Focus: Cast time 2.5s
Main attack is a 3s AoE hit
Secondary attack is a 30s AoE hit
Lower defense to all targets in the area by 5% so all dps jobs can help with AoE hits. 90s cooldown
Increase DoT duration to all targets in the area include Miasma II
Enkindle: 250 potency AoE hit.

Summon II: Tank Focus: Cast time 2.5s
Main attack is a 3s single target hit with enmity
Secondary attack is a 15s AoE hit with heavy debuff
Provoke action and stun. This is required if any hope to use Egi as an emergency tank.
Decreases damage suffered by pet by 20% for 20s.
Enkindle: Deals 200 potency to all nearby targets. Additional Effect: ground effect damage for 15s

Summon III: Single Target Focus: Cast time 2.5s
Main attack is 3s single target hit
Secondary attack is a 30s single target hit. Converts 50% of the damage dealt into pet HP
En-Spikes = Basically renamed radiant shield
Single Target DoT hit. Should help with pet dps as main target moves around.
Enkindle: 200 potency with DoT

Based on Forum feedback Egi needs an appearance update. Over two years I've heard people want a slight size increase and design closer to actual primal. Not saying they need to be exact replicas of Primals, but need more design ques from the original.

As for pet glamour themselves. Carby (Blue, Brown, Red), Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Leviathan, Ramuh, Shiva, and *Fenrir, *Diabolos, *Catoblepas

[wertykelpie]

Considering how the story Summoner ended at 50, I can easily see something like this happening. Not completely removing Egis as pets mind you, but absorbing them to give you temporary Primal like powers.

that would be a blue mage not a summoner

[waifugenerator]

that would be a blue mage not a summoner

Blue Mages learn spells/abilities from different monsters traditionally. They're talking about something like an Evoker (which is basically what we are now, because DWT)

[IlSire]

I wouldn't really expect major gameplay changes at this point, however I really hope that new egi model will eventually make it into the game since being stuck with only three after having defeated so many primals at this point it's rather dull.

It could be something like this:
Caster Pet: Emerald Carby - Garuda Egi - Ramuh Egi - King Moogle Mog Egi
Tank Pet: Topaz Carby - Titan Egi - Shiva Egi- Bismarck Egi
Melee Pet: Ruby Carby - Ifrit Egi - Leviathan Egi - Ravana Egi

They would act in the same way our current egis do with just different skin/attack animations, SMN would get to summon something else without altering game-balance.

[FeliAiko]

Moving SMN towards an Evoker direction was a good move, but I think the 'trance' concept should've been the foundation of the job's overall skill set for HW, instead of it being tacked on as it was towards the end. For example, if we take and rearrange the skills SMN got, it could've been like this:

52 - Trance: Increases magic damage dealt. User gains Aethertrail Attunement when using certain abilities while under effect. (Basically SMN version of Defiance)
54 - (Ruin III): Same properties as current, except with less MP cost (so replaces Ruin as post-50 filler spell); name and spell graphics resembles a Ramuh ability. Only available under Trance.
56 - (Painflare): Same properties as current, but name and spell graphics resembles a Leviathan ability. Only available under Trance.
58 - Tri-Disaster: Same as current.
60 - Deathflare: Only available with 3 stacks of Aethertrail Attunement, which are lost when used.

Something like that. So instead of ignoring the other Primals as they did, you have them represented as skills which fits the SMN archetype without having to add new Egi's and stuff.

[Dyvid]

Moving SMN towards an Evoker direction was a good move.

Shame they didn't carry this trend over into SCH too, so instead of having a pet you would just the aspect of the fairy.

[FeliAiko]

Pet dynamic works fine with SCH (part of the reason the job is too good right now). It's just with SMN where it feels... disconnected somewhat, so it's in that job's best interest to phase away from the pet dynamic.

[Morningstar1337]

My opinion, In the event that SMN were to move form the pets, then it needs a mixture of Trance and Dissipation, a way to absorb the Pet and take on the form of the original primal.

The only issue with that (besides balance) is Lore, For this might be seen as Summoning in the Game's general context and with it a risk to tempering your allies, and the canon has only 1 WoL at a time AFAIK (There's also the Crystal issue and the fact that thus far actualy summoning a bona fide primal would way OOC), so I don;t think we are gonna move away form the pets for quite some time now.

Other more likely changes I would suggest are:

• Chancing the Icons of Summon and Summon II to match (this goes for SCH too, Selene even has 2 icons that could fit for Summon II, but I digress) only keeping the Carbuncle icons for ACN (they did it for Cards and Jutsu, this should be similar IMO)
• Have Garuda-egi get a new ability and let the player use Contagion without a pet (Same foes for Carby as well) It seems like Contagion gives Garuda an advantage to SMNs that fail to manage their DoTs (those that keep the DoTs I think use Ifrit-egi instead or keep Garuda for her other abilities), plus it makes Bane a little more powerful, especially if Contagion is given to ACN (and by extension SCH)
• Have Titan-egi work like the paladin's Cover, only on the Tank, taking all the damage in their stead (may be mutually exclusive with the "Give the Player Contagion" thing)

These are my ideas for SMN, but TBH I liked the DoT aspect of the job, so I'm not gonna complain if they don't bring it more in line with the traditional ones

[Xaeth]

I've asked people from the two other Summoner threads to move to this one since we have three Summoner threads at the moment.

[Grimoire-M]

My main issue with SMN's pets is Contagion. It shouldn't be on Garuda. Instead it should be an ability SMN gets innately, or not at all. The whole reason Garuda 'does more damage' is because that ability extends your DWT dot uptime. That change would make it clear that Ifrit is for Single Target DPS, and Garuda could have another AoE nuke/dot skill in its place to solidify it as an AoE pet. The same thing would have to be applied to Emerald Carbuncle as well, since they're directly linked. Ifrit's mobility problem can be solved with a movement speed adjustment. He's not tied to a carbuncle, so it should be easier to fix. Titan is also fine as is. He is the solo vit mcnugget pet. Let him do that. Giving him provoke is begging for him to MT things he shouldn't be MTing, even if it's only for a few moments.

SMN's kit overall is fine as it is. Arcanist is the base class, after all, and the DoTs fit their flavor just fine.

For 4.0, though, there are some things I'd like to see:
Give us more Aetherflow
- Add another way to generate Aetherflow (an extra 2-3stacks/min would go a long way. Might require adjusting aethertrail to compensate. More than that would open up the option of adding skills that use two stacks as well, but they aren't strictly necessary).
- Allow us to stockpile Aetherflow over the 3 stack cap during combat only (make it an extra buff that stacks to some unreasonable amount, like 24, because of this). SCH could use this too, to be honest, so they don't need to spend stacks on Energy Drains until their MP is actually struggling. It would make dissipation more useful, though it would have to put the fairy in stasis or something instead of getting rid of it entirely to truly shine.

New DPS options
- We need a single target only DoT. Likely a 1 minute DoT Ability with at least 50 potency/tick on a 1 min cd to enforce this. It could be the thing that generates aetherflow. If it did, killing the target should give you the remaining aetherflow stacks instantly, to prevent nerdrage. Maybe make it boost fester as well, given the next idea.
- A new aetherflow using CD that boosts the potency of the next few ruin spells temporarily. Add 300 potency to the next spell, 150 potency to the next two, or 100 the next three. This is equal to a fester with varying degrees of speed/control, and is meant for short-term burst purposes where setting up DoTs for a fester isn't viable and painflare won't hit two mobs (add phase in a3n or adds in the bosses of SaintMA/PSHard in general come to mind).
- A magic vulnerability CD (Not strictly necessary in combination with everything else, but again, Imperil would be nice to have).

Rescale old DPS skills
- Rework Tri-Bind to be our filler AoE spell that's better than Blizzard II in some way. Some combination of slightly more potency (60-70. On par with Miasma II or slightly below it) and/or lower MP cost (somewhere between Blizzard II and Ruin II. The mana cost for Esuna seems about right).
- Give us a minor potency increase to Ruin (20-30) to make it equal to or better than Ruin II book smacking. Maybe increase the MP cost to compensate for that. Increase Ruin III by the same amount or more as well to even things out. SCH has Broil and BLM has Fire IV so I don't see why we can't have this.



Utility
- A personal defensive cooldown (Either a manawall/ward for everything, or an adlo shield cd that scales on INT) is something we lack compared to other DPS. Make it work on the pet as well.
- Give us a way to use Physick effectively in emergencies. Something like a 20% healing potency increase, that adds attack magic potency to healing magic potency for 15s, on a 3min cooldown. This could replace Sustain on Arcanist, giving SCH access to their own Divine Seal as well as letting SMN use it in combat.

Quality of Life
- Combine Supervirus into Virus. BLMs and WHMs will thank you.
- Turn Sustain into a trait, or give pets innate drain on their main dps skills. Either way it shouldn't be something we have to manage.