On Xelphatol and the Actual Summoner.

[Ama_Hamada]

SMN is a joke because they tied it to ACN and outdated 1.0 ideas.

it needs to be split off ACN completely and let it be its own thing..

All 3 jobs needs to be its own thing.

Once this is done give us real SMN looking weapons, books should be ACN only thing.

[Silverquick]

I disagree,

The Summoner is just fine as is. It's one of the Top damaging jobs in the game. And I actually like the book and the pet Aesthetic... if you guys are talking about going back to that POS that was the FFXI summoner, I won't be playing one anymore. That thing really stunk on ice.

Your pet actually drained your MP just having it out and it was continuous. You couldn't solo with it because it would suck you dry before you killed the mob. And more importantly... the powers it used were weak as hell compared to any spell cast by the Black Mages, so you didn't even get THAT much for all your trouble of having to beat them in a very tough instance fight just to get the Summon itself.

Even the level 50 spell Ultima for the BLMs.... though it was incredibly costly MP wise and took 16 seconds to cast... at the very least it was major damage and damn near take out a mob in one shot.

I can't say that about anything the Summoner was capable of with ANY of its Summons. Carbunkle was the only one you could have out that could fight and wouldn't drain you completely... unfortunately it was also weak as hell and got crushed by any mob it went against.

At the VERY least THIS incarnation of the SMN in FFXIV is viable and powerful... the FFXI Summoner was anything but that.

[Duelle]

The whole point of this thread is about the fact SMN on XIV is more of a joke on the SMN job, every FF game ever made SMN has always been based around the use of alot of different SMN's with different abilities and strengths.

And in those games, the summons are basically attack spells with sprite artwork instead of particle effects. Or involved things that would be overpowered as hell in an MMO (see: FFX's version of summons).

"B-but FFXI": The problem with XI's summons is that despite there being several avatars to choose from, they were stupidly weak when compared to player characters, since players can manipulate their stats via gear swaps while avatars (and BST pets, for that matter) cannot. This is why for the longest time avatars were worthless and SMNs had to be turned into gimped White Mages to get parties. Sure, Astral Flow was powerful, but an ability on a 2-hour cooldown doesn't justify how badly implemented SMN was.

You may have forgotten, but I remember a time when SMNs pretty much brought out Carby for healing ruby and spammed cure the rest of the time. And that was assuming the SMN had carby mitts, an HQ light staff and the karate gi to nullify the perpetuation costs.

Any true ff fan doesn't like when they stray too far from from what the classic job roles are in ff games and the various elements that have always defined the series, take the movie ff spirits within when that had come out the shear outrage from the ff fans was huge because it had nothing in it that related to ff at all.

Guess I'm not a true fan, though I've been playing FF games for almost 20 years at this point. This isn't an all-or-nothing type of situation. There's stuff that simply does not work when crossing into the MMO space.

This is not even taking lore into account. FFXIV's SMN is tied to the rules the writers and the devs have for primals. A summoner cannot call upon a full primal because a) they'd be difficult to control, b) you're likely to get tempered as a result (PS: in case you forgot, the guy in Xelphatol is a tempered thrall of Garuda), and c) it would take an insane amount of aether. That's why the entire 30-50 questline is about using residual aether from your fights with primals to summon a sliver of their power.

What has not helped is that the devs then changed the direction of primals by changing them from gods that are given form through faith into ideas (and in some cases, outright lies) that are created and given form through faith. These aren't the sentient guardians of the world like in FFXI, who you could make pacts with and talk to. These are ideas that were given form by the mortal races. As per the current rules, I could draw Sanic The Hegdehog on a piece of paper, and with enough prayers and crystals bring it to life as a primal. It sounds silly, but this is what the writers have opened themselves up to. And these sort of things do have an adverse effect on SMN.

Also, if you want to complain about anything relating to SMN's design, I'd start with where the job was taken with Heavensward. Everything implemented since 3.0 looks like a blatant admission that the devs have given up on the pet system and developing Egis. This is despite there being things that could be done to them along with the SMN to better flesh out their gameplay.

I get them wanting to try and put a new take on things but they shouldn't stray too far from what the jobs roots are, if they want to make a well known job and make it into something its not they should be making completely new jobs rather than labeling them with a classic job name.

They'd have to move away from way the job is represented in older games no matter what they did.

I mean, they could have gone the route of Spirit Shapers from Revelation Online. Or maybe the summoners from Lost Ark Online. The problem with both is that making summons appear for a few seconds and disappear makes the job look more like a fancy BLM that spends their MP faster. You could try focusing on the pet, but put too much focus and you end up with the mess from FFXI, where you basically sit on your hands while waiting for Blood Pact to come off cooldown.

What the devs started with (WoW's demonology Warlock) was a good starting point. Then they gave up on pets. And that's something more people should be taking SE to task for, not complaining that egis are not big enough or why they don't look like primals.

Shameless plug, but here's something I wrote on SMN.

[Neela]

I disagree,

The Summoner is just fine as is. It's one of the Top damaging jobs in the game. And I actually like the book and the pet Aesthetic...

I guess this topic is not about dps-ranking but more about the identity and mechanic this cls is designed. compared to summoner in offline titles they are just not what u could understand under its definition. They don't use DoTs or Books - they are known for heavy impact skills with a longer cast time: BOOM. (Though the LB3 is the only thing which really fits the offline definition of a summoner for me). And they use 2handed staffs don't they? at least in FFT which I really like if its come to smn cls at all.

Personally, I think Summoner in the context of FFXIV is actually up there with Scholar / Warrior as the better designed jobs (in terms of skill interactions / job mechanics / etc).
I do agree that it doesn't feel much like a 'Summoner' in the traditional sense.

I don't think they should change the DoT / utility focus that Summoner has, but it would be nice to see more interaction with the pets. Right now you just kind of press Obey and forget about them unless they're dying. Rouse and Spur are great, but they don't really require any sort of interaction with the pet (it's not going to do anything differently because of those abilities). Or pressing their cooldowns in-between Wind Blade / the Ifrit one etc for more damage.

I think more abilities that involve both the Summoner and the pet would go a long way to making the class feel more 'traditional'. Abilities like Enkindle that gives more of a 'using the power of the primals' feel to the job.

yeah absolutely this - its like mindreading :3


@comparising smns at all
SE played around with their "summon" mechanic very much if you take a look at f.e. ff7 (just big boom) ff8 (big boom but with a behavior system of the GFs), ffx (first "pet-time" - they stay on the battlefield and are controllable with different skills and own LP-bar), ffxiii (every character got his own personal one in different forms, even using them as mounts). - so if we talk about summoners identity we shouldn't compare it to a specific title but about what we would expect to work in an MMO. For me it's like Silver said, id love to see more egi-related skills like enkindle or the fairys support skills, different stances or stances finisher like Deathflare – or potd pots which could work like yunas summons in ffx *jammi*

no matter how but SE should increase the pet-interaction and shouldn't just focus on dots/burst...

:3

[MagiusNecros]

Needs more Pet skills. Their respective skill trees ended at lvl 40. We are level 60 now. Would love to hear their reasoning on this.

[Jerbob]

I don't know when some people in this thread last seriously played SMN on FFXI, but I think it's a fair bet to say it wasn't within the last 5 years, possibly even 10. As I mentioned on the last page, you are all referring to the state of XI's summoner from almost a decade ago as if it's the current iteration. It was certainly a complete disaster back then, but a lot has changed, and it's kind of embarrasing to read people mentioning carbuncle mitts as if they're still something relevant to SMN in XI.

XI still exists, contrary to popular belief, and I continue to play SMN on XI on an almost daily basis. The concept of XI's SMN is not flawed - the job currently functions very well. SE's support for the SMN they created was flawed because there was effectively no equipment to support it for a very long time. Consider a scenario where XIV's BLM only has access to VIT gear and you'll have an approximate idea of what things were like.

Yes, SMN in XI used to have rather pathetic potencies on most of its abilities, partly through this complete lack of gear. That is bad balancing, not a flaw in the job's direction.

Today, SMN in XI enjoys its own equipment with pet stats. It has decent potencies on most of its blood pacts. It's primary role is dealing damage, and it also brings with it some useful support abilities. I've not been asked to be a healer as SMN in XI for more years than I can remember. And it's still a pet job. Fundamentally, it functions exactly as it did before. The mechanics haven't changed. The blood pacts are the same, the pets are the same, the job abilities that control them are the same. SE just figured out how the job operates.

If people don't like pet-focused jobs then that's fine - it's all about personal preferences. Please just stop complaining about XI's SMN in the same sentence as mentioning carbuncle mitts, crippling perpetuation costs and soloing bombs, because Rise of the Zilart is thirteen years old. You are talking about something completely different to those discussing SMN in the current day of FFXI.

[Silverquick]

If people don't like pet-focused jobs then that's fine - it's all about personal preferences. Please just stop complaining about XI's SMN in the same sentence as mentioning carbuncle mitts, crippling perpetuation costs and soloing bombs, because Rise of the Zilart is thirteen years old.

You do realize of course the EQ Summoner and the EQ Necromancer were pet classes right?

And you do Realize this iteration plays very similar to those right?

In other words... you know... if you enjoyed playing those... and playing the current iteration of the Summoner class in FFXIV that you probably DO like playing pet classes?

And no I'm not sold on your "theory" that somehow the FFXI summoner is now better... The entire game was taken down to a low power level low challenge level compared to what it use to be... so is it that the FFXI Summoner suddenly and mysteriously got THAT much better?

Or is it that the Game Challenge was weakened enough that the FFXI Summoner now can participate when prior it no longer could... That is what I seriously question. Because it doesn't sound like the base mechanic of the Original Changed all that much...

[Jerbob]

Perhaps you misunderstood what I was trying to say - I really do like playing pet classes! I just don't like XIV's SMN, and don't play it, because the pet I summon is basically a DoT that I can summon and ignore. Spamming DoTs and direct nukes is fine, and I have no problem with classes that use these mechanics, but I certainly don't expect them to be advertised to me as a summoner. A pet-focused job is different to a job that has a "fire and forget" pet that essentially doesn't do anything.

I don't want to be blunt here, but I've been playing XI's SMN since the times when it was undeniably broken, as people (including myself) have been describing, and I'm still playing pretty much daily. I would say based on my direct experiences that I am qualified to make a decent statement regarding how SMN has changed, and I did my best to describe this in my previous post. If my words aren't convincing you then I am afraid there's not much more I can say!

Suddenly and mysteriously? Certainly not. I tried to illustrate how these changes have come about. SE actually recognises that we need class-specific gear now, because in XI (unlike XIV), pet stats are unique and not connected to the player's MND, INT and so on. They didn't bother with that for a long time. They've lowered our recast times, increased the potency of most of our abilities, increased our ability to synergise with other players using other jobs. This isn't some baffling metamorphosis with no explanation - it's been a progression as the game has developed.

The challenge level of XI is certainly different, but to say it is lower is completely incorrect in my opinion. Lots of things have been made much more convenient, and a lot of the really awful things like multi hour long pop windows have been abolished, but those things were never hard, just deeply boring and unpleasant. The real challenges we face in XI vary from patch to patch, as do those in any game, but there is still content that is very difficult to complete with any consistency, just as there always has been.

[Silverquick]

Perhaps you misunderstood what I was trying to say - I really do like playing pet classes! I just don't like XIV's SMN, and don't play it, because the pet I summon is basically a DoT that I can summon and ignore. Spamming DoTs and direct nukes is fine, and I have no problem with classes that use these mechanics, but I certainly don't expect them to be advertised to me as a summoner. A pet-focused job is different to a job that has a "fire and forget" pet that essentially doesn't do anything..

My friend... with all due respect here... that IS how the EQ Summoner and the EQ Necromancer worked... they were pet classes and incredibly powerful.

Its painfully obvious to me the FFXIV Devs went with a formula they know works... rather than attempt another abortion that was the FFXI Summoner.

This is a true pet class. And its even better than the EQ Summoner ad EQ Necromancer with regards to pet interaction.

[Kahnom]

What if ... when you used enkindle..your egi changed to actual primal and do the signature then turned back to egi.