So you've given SMN a role, but...

[Dualblade]

snip

This is basically what I've been thinking would be good for SMN since they announced Dreadwyrm, except without the ability to put it in words, and obviously the fact that it needs to be balanced still and not hella OP. But it would be awesome and very much in the lore of how Primals and Summoning in FFXIV work.

Hell, we've beaten 14 people who basically do this but on a much bigger scale, WoL summoner could totally pull off a lesser varient of what Ysayle/the Heavesward were able to do!

I'd rather it more about the pets what it is now. The job is fine but it is not a "pet class" which we voted for in the 1.x days. Remember the player polls? Pet Class won..well, sorry but this doesn't feel like a pet class at all.

This could be another reason to have Summoner change over to Trance instead of pets, and have a new pet class/job instead that lets the team start from scratch and come up with a better system for said new class/job. Like, say, Beastmaster.

[MagiusNecros]

Summoner to me feels like a half baked necromancer. I don't recall Summoners spreading famine and disease. Yet here we are. Debilitating enemies...like a necromancer would.

[Delily]

I've honestly seen summoner's lose their pet in dungeons and forget to resummon it the entire run, that's how little the pet actually matters to SMN anymore. In FFXI, if your pet died, you knew it, your pet was basically everything to you, without it you were just a gimpy version of whatever your subjob was. That's the kind of importance I want to feel for my pet. But the changes to SMN in heavensward takes away from that feeling when it should be trying to add to it.

Losing 30% of your damage is not insignificant.

However, did you bother to even search the forums? This topic has been argued about since the class was first introduced. Given that we've gone several content patches and a full on expansion with the core design of DoT + pets, it's unreasonable to expect them to redesign the class like this.

The issue is that people are so fixated on summoning meaning a pet. In this game, summoning refers to drawing upon the power of a primal, which is what the class does.

[Delily]

Summoner to me feels like a half baked necromancer. I don't recall Summoners spreading famine and disease. Yet here we are. Debilitating enemies...like a necromancer would.

Where's the ninja's throw? Why does drk have an aura that draws enemies towards him? Why is bard more an archer and less a singer. Seriously, some jobs are different throughout the series, why would this game be any different?

[MagiusNecros]

Where's the ninja's throw? Why does drk have an aura that draws enemies towards him? Why is bard more an archer and less a singer. Seriously, some jobs are different throughout the series, why would this game be any different?

Ninja's throw is a skill in PvP content. Dark Knight's Grit is very similar to "Draw Attacks". Although I still have problems with Drk in general. They combined Ranger and Bard together. Summoner is a more extreme example of them trying something dynamic. And IMO betrays the very namesake of the iconic class. Not to mention they split the BLM's usual spell list into 3 sections shared by BLM, WHM, and SMN/SCH.

Warrior aka the Berserker was able to do it's own thing since all it ever had was Equip Axe and Berserk so everything else is original.

[Dyvid]

Ninja's throw is a skill in PvP content. Dark Knight's Grit is very similar to "Draw Attacks". Although I still have problems with Drk in general. They combined Ranger and Bard together. Summoner is a more extreme example of them trying something dynamic. And IMO betrays the very namesake of the iconic class. Not to mention they split the BLM's usual spell list into 3 sections shared by BLM, WHM, and SMN/SCH.

Warrior aka the Berserker was able to do it's own thing since all it ever had was Equip Axe and Berserk so everything else is original.

Well BLM's difference stems from 1.0 jobless design but we won't get into that. My problem with SMN/SCH is they didn't really build upon the original design any with 3.0. SE wanted a pet class and made ACN which meant DoT/pet dps and Barrier/pet healer. Heavensward didn't add anything too that design other than fixes people asked for for over 2 years. When you look at BLM, it's still stance dancing between fire and ice just differently. SMN main game changer was un-nerfing Bane and changing Tri-Disaster to something useful.

Ironically the biggest complaint in the forums is something SE didn't even touch, Egi's.

[Blueyes]

Summoner to me feels like a half baked necromancer. I don't recall Summoners spreading famine and disease. Yet here we are. Debilitating enemies...like a necromancer would.

That has actually been my thought as of late. Earlier I starting pondering how a Necromancer would work in this game, thinking they could have plague and poison effects while commanding a weak undead minion... and then I realized that's exactly what a Summoner is in the game, minus the undead part. Ever since making that realization I started wishing they hadn't released Summoner and instead gave us Scholar and Necromancer branching from Arcanist which would have been a great way to play with the concept of life and death.

[FaizeD]

Not this again. There is nothing wrong with the current iteration of SMN simply because it does not align to your personal vision of what a SMN should be. For one, you don't own the rights to the class. Second, all this talk of how upset "the fans" are wrongly implies that every single player shares your disappointment with how the class works - they do not.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, pet classes in MMOs are notoriously difficult to balance. You speak of XI, but parties of SMNs/BSTs just throwing pets at something until it fell over was hardly "balanced". Placing greater importance on the player than the pet is a sensible compromise because it means people have to rely on themselves and not good/bad pet AI, and don't have the option to fall back on disposable/sturdy pet bodies to cheese mechanics.

[Xaeth]

First, lets please stop with the "not this again" comments. The forums is the place for the fans to express their opinions so if you can't handle people having different opinions than yours then you probably shouldn't be here. This place is to express your opinions and to debate your difference in opinion in an orderly fashion. Please don't try and make other people feel unwanted here just because you don't like their opinion.

Second, there are a lot of fans who are dissapointed with the current situation.The fact that this debate keeps popping up on the forums is proof enough. However, that is not all of the fans. I don't think it's proper for either of you to speak like you represent all of the fans.

[FeliAiko]

Never understood the desire to make SMN a full fledged pet class. With the way the majority of people play this game, a more complex pet system would be a waste, since ppl would most likely leave it alone to do everything when it wants (like they do now).