Summoner revamp

[Cabalabob]

Before 2.0 yoshi said he didn't want a smn job because he wanted summons to feel like super powerful beings, and that having a summoner job has to have balanced summons which belittles them being powerful. But he added smn due to popular demand and went as far out of his way as he could to make summons the exact opposite of powerful to the point where they are basically nothing more than an auto attack.

So the simple reason summons in 14 are bad is because the director is spiteful!

The reason people dislike summoner in 14 is because it's just so backwards, instead of focusing on your pet as your primary means of doing damage, with casting spells being something to do in your pet's downtime, casting spells is what you do primarily and your pet is an afterthought. That simply is not a summoner. It doesn't matter if 14 wants a "different take on summoner". it's the fact that what they've produced is not a summoner that displeases people.

And no, more trances is not the way to go. Trances were a bandaid for SMN because it was so poorly designed (in 2.x SCH could out damage SMN) and they pull summoner even further away from being a summoner and even more towards the player doing everything while the pet watches and auto attacks.

But sadly, since 3.0 I'm in the camp of summoner cannot be saved. It should just be renamed to evoker and free up summoner to be a future job in another expansion and hopefully done right.

That image is so weird. VII didn't have any summoners, just summons. I guess in theory you could make your own summoner if you want, but it wouldn't be very efficient, high cost, very squish.
VIII, why is Phoenix displayed? It was one of very few things you couldn't directly summon. And also, still no summoners this game.
Summoners in IX were just White Mages with summons.
Why is X-2 Yuna next to Anima? They couldn't even get the games right on that one. And again, summoner just tacked onto white mage (although in a much more expanded role I guess).
XII had a good set of summons, too, but still no summoner. Plus I don't know of anyone that ever consistently used/relied on them in that game.

The caption on the picture says SUMMONS not SUMMONERS. The point of the picture is to show that summons in all other ff games are like stallions and then ffxiv got a shetland pony.

[Neophyte]

1. How could a SCH (which has same toolkit as SMN.. but without a pet, which deals about 30% of your dps as extra dps + damage oGCDs) out dps a SMN?
He has literally nothing (except healing) to deal more damage then the SMN, even on 50.

2. There are many things that speak against the 'usual' summons:

• game mechanics don't allow X giant creatures covering everything (imagine a 24 man raid with 6 SMN [could be up to 15])
• no elemental weaknesses: what will differentiate Ifrit, Ramuh, Shiva, Titan, Bahamuth, Leviathan, Garuda?
• no crowd control effects on bosses (only adds), not much CC in general; only a handfull of traditional FF-buffs available; no fancy stuff like Zantszuken...
• Arcanist/SMN still needs (idk) ~20 class-related GCD/oGCDs... this is a game system, where everyone is supposed to do something every ~2,5s to keep up a 'rotation' or fulfill a 'priority list', while doing dodge-/stack- or other mechanics: SMN in all those listed other FF-games was just: stand there and cast spells of other classes and then go invulnerable while you get your big thing out (until it casts his signature attack or dies).
• lore

Things like 'summons', but also every other command/ability has to fit the game mechanics and lore. In FF10 summons where supposed as shields for the group as well, to counter specific attacks. In others they were only big damage spells. In other ones they were motorcycles and bound to a character and not a class/job.

[YohSL]

2. There are many things that speak against the 'usual' summons:

1: They don't need to be as large as the originals, just larger then your character on average. You could also implement a transparent effect when summons get between you and the camera.
2: Elemental properties could be something they implement correctly on the back end, since it's sort of there but doesn't really do anything atm. It's really no different then distinguishing Black Mages spells as is.
3: This still leaves room for debuffs and buffs, and CC is still will have it's usages, just not on bosses.
4: A summoner could buff/debuff, keep their summon alive, perhaps resource management.
5: Lore wise I'd imagine that first you wouldn't be summoning the primals themselves, but rather smaller avatars of them, lowing the cost requirement. But perhaps the advent of new technology to fill in the gaps and make the process easier. Like how computers made complex calculations easy.

[Cabalabob]

1. How could a SCH (which has same toolkit as SMN.. but without a pet, which deals about 30% of your dps as extra dps + damage oGCDs) out dps a SMN?
He has literally nothing (except healing) to deal more damage then the SMN, even on 50.

In 2.0 the only things SMN had over SCH was fester, a damage dealing pet and raging strikes. In sustained AoE situation, E.G dungeon speed runs, A.K.A the majority of content for 2.0, fester wasn't used, the pet's 90 potency auto attack was a drop in the bucket on those huge pulls and raging strikes could only be used once or twice.

The constant 10% damage buff from cleric's stance outweighed all of these things and a SCH rarely had to leave cleric's stance because Eos could handle most of the healing and lustrate still worked at full potency while cleric stance was on. So both their rotations consisted of DoT a mob > bane spam > shadowflare > blizzard 2 until DoTs need to be reapplied.

SMN might have beaten SCH dps on couple of occasions with raging strikes contagion DoTs but over the course of an entire dungeon run the SCH encDPS would be higher due to the extra sustained dps from cleric's stance.

[Leigaon]

Someone did make a post about the scaling of the summons to be more game friendly for the user and the environment. This was a big issue and I'm sure still is, though I do worry if a summon is too big, that could be an issue.

On the other side, I do like how they feel the summons should remain these powerful entities, and it might knock them down a notch to have smaller versions of them running around.

Though you're right, when I did the quests in 11 I felt more of a connection. I would have liked to see us try to summon Ifrit, Garuda, Ramuh etc..but show how we can be come either tempered or that our aether isn't enough to call them forth. That seems to have been forgotten.

These egis, while I've gotten use to them, could be replaced with lesser summons of their elements. Such as Mateus or Belias (I was sort of annoyed when I saw him...) that require less aether for us to use. There is a lot that could be done but it also takes time, effort, money..and someone high up enough to care and say "Do it"

I guess can only wait to see what 4.0 brings us and where our egi's go from there.

[Neophyte]

In 2.0 the only things SMN had over SCH was fester, a damage dealing pet and raging strikes. In sustained AoE situation, E.G dungeon speed runs, A.K.A the majority of content for 2.0, fester wasn't used, the pet's 90 potency auto attack was a drop in the bucket on those huge pulls and raging strikes could only be used once or twice.

The constant 10% damage buff from cleric's stance outweighed all of these things and a SCH rarely had to leave cleric's stance because Eos could handle most of the healing and lustrate still worked at full potency while cleric stance was on. So both their rotations consisted of DoT a mob > bane spam > shadowflare > blizzard 2 until DoTs need to be reapplied.

SMN might have beaten SCH dps on couple of occasions with raging strikes contagion DoTs but over the course of an entire dungeon run the SCH e reapply/bane again as soon as Bio1 runs out). ncDPS would be higher due to the extra sustained dps from cleric's stance.

Well, then was WHM the best dps of all classes. I didn't know you only meant overgeared (by tank, healer and dps) ez-pz dungeons, where contagion is not used/needed. Well then... maybe.

On a 18s (0:00 @ 3rd GCD = Bio) fight against X enemies a SCH has (both save one AF-stack for later fight):

[X *[(25+40+40+35+10) * 6 + 6*50 B2 + 10 Miasma2 hit)] + 1*150 ED] * 1,1
=
1,1*(X * 1210 + 150)
=
1331*X + 165 pot [@ 5 targets = 6820)


SMN got:
X *(25+40+40+35+10) * 6 + 6*50 B2 + 10 Miasma2 hit + 80 Aeroslash) + 1*300 Fester + 6*90 single target Egi
=
1290*X + 840 pot [@ 5 targets = 7290]


And there's also Spour (1322*X+1056) or Rouse+Spour (1366*X+1358).. oh, and enkindle.

If longer fight (= contagion) the SCH loses even more, since he has to redot, while SMN can do extra B2s.

And of course Fester was used, since you can't use three banes within a minute (unless you reapply DoTs too soon or don't use contagion).


Soooo... i don't believe you. :3

I mean, nothing despite Enkindle-CD was changed (Bane-buff was for both Jobs) for SMN <=50.. so SCH schould still do more dps than any SMN in lvl 50 content or below? I don't think so.

[YohSL]

Before 2.0 yoshi said he didn't want a smn job because he wanted summons to feel like super powerful beings, and that having a summoner job has to have balanced summons which belittles them being powerful.

So the simple reason summons in 14 are bad is because the director is spiteful!

Honestly I think Yoshida has right core philosophy when it comes to summons, if a little dogmatic and over the top. And I'd rather he had not buckled to fan pressure and put out this piece of crap because all he and his team have done is disappoint a lot of their fans and create unnecessary work for themselves.

And even if Primals do deliver on the feeling of power, it's all relative since players hand them their ass to them on a regular basis. You don't need to be able to summon the originals, just avatars of them, smaller very similar looking version of themselves, that are still very powerful, just not as powerful as the original.

[raela]

[

The point of the picture is to show that summons in all other ff games are like stallions and then ffxiv got a shetland pony.

Well, that was just about the stupidiest thing I've read this week. FYI, a stallion is an unneutered male horse and a shetland is a breed - there are shetland pony stallions, nice quality shetland ponies, and poor quality stallions. You really shouldn't use metaphors when you're clueless about them.

Traditional summon systems would be difficult to be implemented in FFXIV. I think the job works well here, and I'm hardly offended by the size of the Egis..