Customary "When are summoners getting new summons" thread

[Ramath]

De-emphasizing the pet on the only pet class just makes it more homogeneous with the other classes, IMO.

Hate to break it to you, but homogenizing all of the classes has been the name of the game since 3.0 came out. It's only going to get worse.

[Tolmos]

If they made it so you just control the pet they would be a very lazy job in my opinion.

Having played games that did "control the pet" classes right, I have to say that I disagree with this entirely. Here are a few examples:

Take Aion. Aion Spiritmaster has a pet that is the primary damage dealer. The spiritmaster itself has mostly DOTs and some utility skills to increase the damage of the pet. However, along with the pets own special abilities (sort of like our egi has now), the spiritmaster also has pet skills of their own; in fact, an entire bar's worth. When the spiritmaster casts that skill, the pet performs this (on top of the pet's own skills). What this results in is the spiritmaster being something of a puppet master, using the pet as their arm to attack and defend as necessary. The spiritmaster itself can drop DOTs and do utility, but their main strength comes from their summoned pet. A true summoner.

Another pair of examples that worked similarly were City of Villains/Diablo 2 zoo necro. In those games, you had multiple pets and the character itself was basically the buffer/healer/rezzer for that group. You were the utility to your pet army. You spent all your time dropping debuffs on the enemy, buffing your NPCs, and then doing some small amount of damage of your own to supplement what your pet army was doing.

The way you described above

I prefer it how it is now pet assist me (bit of extra dmg) and I do majority of the dmg.

is the exact mechanic of the WoW hunter. Now, that's all well and good but the issue is that the pet is nothing but a gimmick in this situation, as all it brings to the table is a tiny bit of extra damage. The class itself now becomes a DoT version of the black mage. WoW players got so fed up with this playstyle that they made calls for, and eventually got, the ability to just not need the pet at all and be able to reclaim that DPS into the main character, since it was more of a liability than a boon.

[Lambdafish]

I hope none of you are holding your breath.

Calling it now (really just again), it's going to be advertised as a 4.X feature the way it was advertised to be a 3.X feature back in 2.X. Lol, you guys still think that egi glamours are going to make it before the expansion. Hahaha, rich.

"We've finalized the specs for this system, but it will require a significant amount of resources to implement. Our plan is to release one each patch, and we'd like to begin implementation from Patch 3.4 at the earliest. We're still discussing which egi we should start off with, so please hang in there just a bit longer." - Live Letter XXVIII

I can see us getting different carbuncles in 3.4-3.45 (not really new egis, as they already exist in the game), then one per patch after that. They have not said anything about delays, so in my eyes that means that the 3.4 schedule is still on track (unlike diadem, which we heard about). We will learn much more on the 27th if that is the case.

What I think is sad is that people are holding their breath for glamours and not actual egis. Screw glamours. I want Leviathan, Shiva and Ramuh.

Because people are realistic and understand that each new pet is an extra 4 new skills for SMN, which need to balanced with not only the job itself, but the other jobs and fights in the game. Glamours are the same (new animations and skill names), but the balance and how the job plays is kept the same. You will get leviathan, shiva, and ramuh, but they will still have the same skillset with new names and animations.

[LineageRazor]

One of the problems you have to deal with when making the pet the primary part of the role, is dealing with what happens when the pet dies. When a regular character dies, they're out of the fight until a healer can raise them, something which is resource intensive for a job that already needs to manage its resources very carefully. When a summoner's pet dies... the summoner summons a new pet. The only resources being spent are the summoner's own.

Additionally, since pets tend to be a lot harder to control than the player themselves is in terms of movement and positioning, they need to come up with a lot of built-in defenses that regular players lack. Having a pet that's nigh-indestructible as long as the tank holds hate and is as powerful a DPS as any other... well, it's a pretty serious job advantage, to say the least, especially if that pet can continue to pound away while all the poor melees are dancing around to avoid aoes and such.

There may be ways to balance this well, but I'd imagine they'd be tricky. Make the pet too potent and tough to kill, and why would anyone DPS with anything else? Make it too vulnerable, and it becomes a nightmare trying to maneuver it out of aoes, or other tricky "move here, then here, then here" mechanics common to endgame fights - all while trying to move YOURSELF out of those same danger zones. Make it too weak DPS-wise... and, well, you have what we have right now.

[Jandor]

You could have the pet be a bit 'meh' like it is currently but having the characters gameplay involve building up to temporarily power up the pet so it's 'woah' for a short time.

Sustained DoT with a bit of burst here and there is basic Summoner gameplay, just put the burst bit on the pet and surely almost everyone is happy then.

[Ametrine]

So, buff Rouse?

[Ragology]

So, buff Rouse?

Myabe buff spur instead since SCH has access to rouse.

[Ametrine]

Myabe buff spur instead since SCH has access to rouse.

Maybe a secondary Enkindle skill, too.

[Rennies]

They should make it so that each of the Summoner's DoTs on the enemy increases the pet's damage by 5 or 10%, and slightly reduce damage elsewhere on their kit to even it out. I dunno. It'd certainly encourage more miasma II usage.

[Eul]

Make ifrit-egi great again! Or make the contagion is SMN ability.