Why are summoners so neglected?

[Jerbob]

... they went through the bother of giving it an exclusive vanity element. A feature that IMO they shouldn't have wasted time doing but whatever.

I agree, they should have spent that time designing something significantly better and meaningful than a rather badly implemented "compromise".

It's true that SMN has varied a lot throughout the series, but in XIV it's undeniable that the primary focus of the job is on DoT-related mechanics that are unrelated to the summoning. There's nothing wrong with that as a job concept, but it's clear that there's a group of people that expected quite a bit more than that. I don't see why that is so surprising or unforgivable, and why people are so vehemently in opposition to it? Correct me if I am wrong but as far as I can see, no-one is advocating for the existing SMN to be removed - just for something new to be created.

...the FFX-iteration of the SMN job would not work with XIV's battle system...

This seems to be a really common thing to say, but I'm not quite sure why it's so widely accepted. Is there any evidence for this kind of thinking? Genuine question. Yeah the pet management system in XIV is pretty awful and unresponsive currently, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the theory.

[FeliAiko]

This seems to be a really common thing to say, but I'm not quite sure why it's so widely accepted. Is there any evidence for this kind of thinking? Genuine question. Yeah the pet management system in XIV is pretty awful and unresponsive currently, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the theory.

Because XIV's system is not a slow, turned based affair, where you have lots of time to sit and think of your next action. FFXI's battle system was closer to that style, so it's not surprising why the SMNs from that game are closer to the FFX iteration.

[Jerbob]

Because XIV's system is not a slow, turned based affair, where you have lots of time to sit and think of your next action. FFXI's battle system was closer to that style, so it's not surprising why the SMNs from that game are closer to the FFX iteration.

I get that - certainly a completely unaltered, direct import of FFX or XI's Summoner into XIV isn't something that would work. But why not the general concept of the pet focus? Why not a job where the pet "does the work" and the character supports it? In all the instances where XIV's SMN is casting Bio, Ruin, etc etc, could this hypothetical job not be interacting with or commanding the pet? Surely there's nothing in XIV that prohibits that.

[Nerisu]

snip

The current system prohibits it. They need to do something about the command delay first if they want to add more pet interactions otherwise it will be a complete clunky mess. Just imagine how infuriating it will be if, let's say, Deathflare is a pet command and the egi misses the trance timer because it's not finished casting its auto-attack. Right now you can't even command Garuda-egi to use both Aerial Slash and Enkindle in the same oGCD window. Again, I'm not against more pet interactions but I don't see it happening unless they fix the delay.

[Duelle]

I get that - certainly a completely unaltered, direct import of FFX or XI's Summoner into XIV isn't something that would work. But why not the general concept of the pet focus? Why not a job where the pet "does the work" and the character supports it? In all the instances where XIV's SMN is casting Bio, Ruin, etc etc, could this hypothetical job not be interacting with or commanding the pet? Surely there's nothing in XIV that prohibits that.

There's a couple of reasons.

First is concept. FFX's summons basically replaced the entire party to justify how strong they were, and that's overpowered as hell and not something that would work here.

Second is incongruity in class growth. Every class in this game follows a template of 18 class skills, 10 job skills, and 11 traits. SMN as implemented in FFX would require breaking that entirely, which can be good or bad depending on what it is replaced with. FFXI actually underlines this quite well, since SMNs get almost nothing between version updates additions unless the devs add new avatars. And it's clear they've struggled with that (look at how long they took to add Cait Sith; not to mention the arguably contrived conditions to summon Odin and Alexander, which was partly done to justify how strong Zantetsuken and Perfect Defense are).

Last is use of the summons. FFX's aeons were obsoleting each other, with Yojinbo and Bahamut being the "top" summons. We can lean towards situational use by giving each summon a niche, but even that has limited and forces you to water down their relative power (hence why FFXI's summons were largely jokes for a big part of the game's lifespan). Stuff like Healing Ruby, Aerial Barrier, Earthen Wall, and Ecliptic Growl would be OP as all hell here and make SMN a must for pretty much every raid encounter (and in turn force the devs to balance the game around bringing a SMN in every group comp).

You might try to argue that summons are already situational because of how Ifrit-egi is melee, Garuda-egi is a caster and Titan-egi is a tank, but having pets with different roles is not the same as having all of a class' pets be DPS with random utility. That's not even taking into account the elemental affinities of the FFXI avatars, and how that wouldn't (and shouldn't) be part of the equation in this game.

[Inosaska]

There's a couple of reasons.

First is concept. FFX's summons basically replaced the entire party to justify how strong they were, and that's overpowered as hell and not something that would work here.

Second is incongruity in class growth. Every class in this game follows a template of 18 class skills, 10 job skills, and 11 traits. SMN as implemented in FFX would require breaking that entirely, which can be good or bad depending on what it is replaced with. FFXI actually underlines this quite well, since SMNs get almost nothing between version updates additions unless the devs add new avatars. And it's clear they've struggled with that (look at how long they took to add Cait Sith; not to mention the arguably contrived conditions to summon Odin and Alexander, which was partly done to justify how strong Zantetsuken and Perfect Defense are).

Last is use of the summons. FFX's aeons were obsoleting each other, with Yojinbo and Bahamut being the "top" summons. We can lean towards situational use by giving each summon a niche, but even that has limited and forces you to water down their relative power (hence why FFXI's summons were largely jokes for a big part of the game's lifespan). Stuff like Healing Ruby, Aerial Barrier, Earthen Wall, and Ecliptic Growl would be OP as all hell here and make SMN a must for pretty much every raid encounter (and in turn force the devs to balance the game around bringing a SMN in every group comp).

You might try to argue that summons are already situational because of how Ifrit-egi is melee, Garuda-egi is a caster and Titan-egi is a tank, but having pets with different roles is not the same as having all of a class' pets be DPS with random utility. That's not even taking into account the elemental affinities of the FFXI avatars, and how that wouldn't (and shouldn't) be part of the equation in this game.

The first two summons become invalid with attaining Garuda since that Egi has the ability to extend dots making the other two completely worthless. They first have to remove contagion from Garuda in order to make the other two worth summoning but that isn't the case right now at all. I don't even see summoners summon Titan anymore and same goes for Ifrit. I see that new players are using them but veterans to the game do not use those 2 pets at all.

[Silverquick]

The first two summons become invalid with attaining Garuda since that Egi has the ability to extend dots making the other two completely worthless. They first have to remove contagion from Garuda in order to make the other two worth summoning but that isn't the case right now at all. I don't even see summoners summon Titan anymore and same goes for Ifrit. I see that new players are using them but veterans to the game do not use those 2 pets at all.

While its true... that Titan is starting to lose some strength at the upper levels, the reality here is that he's not used in dungeons and never really will but unless the Tank goes down. He might need some tweeking up in the uppermost levels, but honestly that doesn't start to happen until later about level 56 and up and its primarily for soloing.

There's nothing wrong with Ifrit. Garuda does have some abilities that are very integral to the base Summoner skillset... but honestly even outside of that I'd still probably take Garuda over Ifrit because he's got that Wind AoE you can combine with your other other AoEs and when stacked with Rouse and Spur gets pretty nasty. Nothing wrong with Ifrit, its just that the nature of the game lends itself to Garuda.

But that's not really the major issue with SMN... nor is it that it doesn't resemble a "True Final Fantasy Summoner"... it does that just fine in Dreadwyrm.

The real problem is that playing the Job with any real proficiency requires a computer... I am running 3 hot bars... 4 including the Pet Bar...

I cannot imagine anyone truly playing this job well on a console... and it's not even their fault... they just don't have the space to be able to use all of those keys with a controller.

The Summoner has Soooo many abilities that to use it properly requires using them all. And you won't be able to do that from a console and controller.

There's a good 5 DoTs to stack... plus Bane, Fester, Painflare, and Life Steal. 3 pets to summon and always the cross class skills Quick Cast, Raging Strikes, Bliz 2, and Quelling Strikes.

Rouse, Spur, and Enkindle for the Pet, not to mention, Obey and Sic, let alone Stay and Heel.

Physick for healing and Ressurection... and the grand finale of Tri-Disaster, Dreadwyrm Trance, Death Flare,

And that's not including Ruin 1, 2, and 3 because each of them are used for different reasons and do different things... and don't get into mount, and companion summoning or god help you keeping Elixirs or Potions on a bar...

AND then you have to have different hot bars for different levels because you get level sync'd a lot.

I doubt you could play one with any proficiency from a Console... luckily I use a gaming laptop so it doesn't affect me.

[Inosaska]

While its true... that Titan is starting to lose some strength at the upper levels, the reality here is that he's not used in dungeons and never really will but unless the Tank goes down. He might need some tweeking up in the uppermost levels, but honestly that doesn't start to happen until later about level 56 and up and its primarily for soloing.

There's nothing wrong with Ifrit. Garuda does have some abilities that are very integral to the base Summoner skillset... but honestly even outside of that I'd still probably take Garuda over Ifrit because he's got that Wind AoE you can combine with your other other AoEs and when stacked with Rouse and Spur gets pretty nasty. Nothing wrong with Ifrit, its just that the nature of the game lends itself to Garuda.

But that's not really the major issue with SMN... nor is it that it doesn't resemble a "True Final Fantasy Summoner"... it does that just fine in Dreadwyrm.

The real problem is that playing the Job with any real proficiency requires a computer... I am running 3 hot bars... 4 including the Pet Bar...

I cannot imagine anyone truly playing this job well on a console... and it's not even their fault... they just don't have the space to be able to use all of those keys with a controller.

The Summoner has Soooo many abilities that to use it properly requires using them all. And you won't be able to do that from a console and controller.

There's a good 5 DoTs to stack... plus Bane, Fester, Painflare, and Life Steal. 3 pets to summon and always the cross class skills Quick Cast, Raging Strikes, Bliz 2, and Quelling Strikes.

Rouse, Spur, and Enkindle for the Pet, not to mention, Obey and Sic, let alone Stay and Heel.

Physick for healing and Ressurection... and the grand finale of Tri-Disaster, Dreadwyrm Trance, Death Flare,

And that's not including Ruin 1, 2, and 3 because each of them are used for different reasons and do different things... and don't get into mount, and companion summoning or god help you keeping Elixirs or Potions on a bar...

AND then you have to have different hot bars for different levels because you get level sync'd a lot.

I doubt you could play one with any proficiency from a Console... luckily I use a gaming laptop so it doesn't affect me.

Hot bar issue bloat is being solved by the devs right now and to honestly fix it they have to give the job a focus its either a pet job or its not. If they make it a pet job they could easily replace all the abilities on it and have a command bar that pops up allowing you to control the Egi at will and use abilities that it has for itself. About the ability bloat each Egi would have its own bar that appears with its abilities. If its not a pet job then please remove the Egis and give SMN contagion and go the route of having these epic summons with long cooldowns that do tons of damage that you can cast. The job just needs some focus instead of being all over the place.

For those left over arcanist spells. I don't even have physik on the bar at all and resurrection is solely saved for the healer death to revive them otherwise it just sits there most of the time unused.

They need to split SMN off from ACN and SCH in order to fix it.

[Keyln]

I must be the only one in the world who pet swaps...

Anyway, there's quite a bit that SE could do about SMN, let's discuss what SMN was supposed to be in FF FXIV, and that's a pet class. I remember a survey way back when in 1.0 that Yoshida sent out, and one of the options was a pet-based like SMN, and guess what we got, SMN. And it was marketed as a pet-based class. And in 2.0, a big deal in the quests was made around Carbuncle and later the Egi's. Even a few of SMN's abilities were focused on the pet. The problem, though, in 3.0 is that the focus went away from the pet and towards the master. No new pet abilities or new pets, and the horrible scaling from 50 to 60 on the part of the Egi's. This is the state of SMN as it is now. Pets are largely ignored, and the focus is on the master and the ability to increase the AoE abilities.

Yet, there are still things that could change that in 4.0. If I were SE, I would encourage pet swapping. This could include new abilities that complemented the egi's abilities. I would probably give a temporary buff to a new and different pet egi summoned to encourage pet swapping. And I would also throw in new pets, and at the very least, a shiva-egi, a leviathan-egi, and a ramuh-egi.

There's so much that SE could do, but it really depends on what SE wants to do. Do they want SMN to be more pet-based such as in 2.0, or more master-based as in 3.0? We've already seen the direction that SE is going in with SCH, with the ability to sacrifice the fairy for more heal power...

[SenorPatty]

Underwhelming Ps4 SMN performance.

I'm gonna laugh a bit here, not at you, trust me or your argument. If anything, you just made me remember when I thought I couldn't play it on the ps4. I actually had switched to keyboard and mouse for a while (while still connected to the ps4).

Turns out, its boils down to muscle memory. Seriously, the only thing I could not do with a ps4 as a smn is activate contagion at will. Otherwise, I was manhandling that controller like someone on speed. Short of that, I managed to do it all.

I would of course kill for streamlined hotbar skills but there was a time when it just was pure and total reflexes working.