Why are summoners so neglected?

[Kurogaea]

SE is very unimaginative at times. They limit themselves in ways that are mindblowing to me sometimes. And then others they release content that would get a 3rd year student an F.

They need Yoko Taro working some good ol' magic in here

[Lambdafish]

Honestly, I think the best thing they can do for SMN is to stop focusing on the pet as the "summon". Using egi glamour to change the pet is a good idea while keeping the trinity of caster/melee/tank, but the real way to further SMN is to enhance the dreadwyrm trance to include other summons. The way I envision SMN is not as a pet job, but rather as a job that employs something akin to the assist system in dissidia, where a single attack involves a summon appearing, and then disappearing again, and I feel that this could be achieved by changing the way enkindle works and combining it with Dreadwyrm Trance (which could be renamed "Trance form"). This way you could end your combos with Hellfire, Diamond Dust, Judgement Bolt, Tidal Wave, or Megaflare without actually having 6 different pets (hell, add a "mirage" of the primal performing the attack to definately shut SMNs up about their job).

[Gumbercules]

could even have the "Active" summon be the catalyst for trance form and focus the game around the need to actually swap out summons. (ie ifrit out allows you to use faster, close combat "trance" skills garuda would stick to her aoe shtick shiva could be CC centered etc with some of the others just coming in as "glamour" replacements or even just having the trance forms based on the current 3 change the "appearance" based on skill used) IMO i feel they need to fix the smn and egi interaction first before looking into more egis (though egi glamour needs to continue to expand)

[Lambdafish]

could even have the "Active" summon be the catalyst for trance form and focus the game around the need to actually swap out summons.

This would be difficult but could possibly work. I say it would be difficult because there are only 3 pets, and you would possibly need to evenly relegate other summons to those three roles (which would make the summon paired with titan less valued due to lower DPS), and then what becomes of Deathflare? What could possibly happen though is that Enkindle becomes a Dissapation type effect that aids in the process, it could work like:

Enkindle: Dismisses Egi and gives the player 3 aetherflow stacks, grants the player the "Overdrive" status which increases the potency of Ruin 1, 2 and 3 (to the point that matches the lost DPS of the pet). If Trance Form and Overdrive are both Active - Hellfire, Tidal Wave, Diamond Dust, Earthen Fury, Aerial Blast, and Judgement Bolt become available to use (either as individual skills or perhaps based on a mudra esque system).

This kind of theme for SMN is actually very referrential to classic summoning (and would make summoners feel like they are summoning classic espers/eidolons), as you dismiss the egi to perform a large attack in the same way that the players disappear in FFIII-IX and overdrive and trance form would drop off after using the attack allowing the player to instantly resummon their egi. I'm not sure about balance, but thematically I would love for them to go down this route.

[Stanelis]

I played that POS in FFXI... and no it wasn't it was little more than a half assed white mage.

It stunk on Ice... I hear that after they graded the content down to low challenge level it FINALLY was playable...and you want that?

Seriously?

Man I'll take the THIS version of the SMN... over that one.... any day of the week... at the very least its viable and powerful... I cannot say that about the FFXI Summoner who was little more than a gimped WHM.

That one blew chunks.

I was playing smn in endgame before abyssea and they were really usefull, especially on high ends HNM. Because a) you didn't need a lot of gear to deal tons of damage with predator claws or that diabolos move I don't remember b) that damage was enmity free once the summon was unsummoned.

You only healed in leveling party due to how MP intensive the use of summoner's skills were.

[Jerbob]

Incoming wall of text

The current system prohibits it. They need to do something about the command delay first...

Agreed - in all honesty I think this should be fixed regardless of any "revised SMN" plans. If pets are unresponsive and failing to execute moves that's a bug - excuses that it's a "pet problem" are completely unacceptable.

Are you going to be commanding the pet to move to dodge mechanics as well as moving yourself? Theyd have to make pets not immune to most attacks anymore if they were the brunt of a summoners dps. That too i think is why.

I think this would be an important part of the job, were it implemented. Pets auto-dodging mechanics or being immune to the damage would be pretty cheesy, so I think the Summoner would have to actively mitigate the effects. Souped-up stoneskins, damage immunity for single digit seconds and the like, all actively cast by the Summoner - I think this would be quite fun, and fit with the idea of the Summoner empowering their pet rather than the other way around. Of course, this active mitigation would be weaker if the pet is actively tanking, just to keep things balanced.

Look, conceptually there really isn't anything wrong with Summoners in XIV as a feasible job. ..... However, it would come to the surprise of no one if this iteration of Summoner in the Final Fantasy series becomes one of if not the most ridiculed addition...

I completely agree with this viewpoint - it's so important to make the distinction between functionality and aesthetics/theme. XIV's SMN is fine, does damage, blah blah, but... for some people that's not the point!

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.

Completely agree that this sort of thing woul be really silly in XIV. However, the idea of the summoned pet being the focus of the Summoner, and not the bio/etc spells, is something I think is very transferrable with a bit of thinking.

First is concept.Every class in this game follows a template of 18 class skills, 10 job skills, and 11 traits.

I'm not sure this is actually true. Even if we look at XIV's SMN, it has distinctly more abilities than other classes/jobs because the pets each have at least four unique abilities (three special attacks + unique Enkindles, not including their auto-casting spells). AST has the individual cards on top of Draw that make up an entire mechanic based around "extra" abilities.

FFXI actually underlines this quite well, since SMNs get almost nothing between version updates additions unless the devs add new avatars.

I agree that XI's SMN is hard to manage for the developers, though they are notoriously bad at understanding how the job works. A lot of it seems to stem from a lack of resources/motivation/imagination/remotely caring about the job - as you say, Odin/Alexander are prime (pun intended) examples of this, and I spent enough time ranting about those when they were released. They promised to add more Blood Pacts to Cait Sith, but apparently that was a lie as they still haven't materialised.

I don't think it's necessarily quite as bad as has been made out - a lot of jobs in XI don't receive improvements very often, and SMN has had some non-Avatar related additions over time (though admittedly these are often just "ability X is slightly less terrible now"). Still, it's a fair point.

FFX's aeons were obsoleting each other

This is a problem I'm not sure how to resolve, in part because of how restrictive and... I don't want to say bland, but you know what I mean... XIV's combat system can be at times. We don't have elemental affinities worth discussing, we don't have any scope for hybrid jobs, and we don't have any scope for doing things outside of an accepted paradigm. XI uses these techniques for its SMN with varying degrees of success - increasingly successful as time goes on, I'd argue - but here I agree it's not really possible without a significant change in the game's direction and operation.

Ultimately I'd even be happy with the three "role pets" we have now operating under revised SMN pet-focused mechanics, but a lot of people certainly wouldn't.

It was seriously bad... and I am unconvinced its any better even nowadays...

Play it before you make this judgement! It's still there!

Why in the hell would you want to play anything as boring as that...

I actually find pet-focused jobs to be really interesting and exciting. It's a personal preference thing. Some people like hitting stuff with pointy sticks, some people like to cast the magics that make the bad guys fall down, and some people like ordering their floating potatoes to rough up some coeurls. I personally find hitting stuff with sticks really dull, but I'm fully accepting that some people enjoy it. That's why we have different jobs that basically all do the same thing.

These threads are never gonna end are they?

Not while some people still aren't happy! That's what these forums are for!

Honestly, I think the best thing they can do for SMN is to stop focusing on the pet as the "summon".

I would really hate this, personally. It's probably a really good decision from an ease-of-design perspective, but it would even further remove any interest I have in playing the job. Honestly, I think they need to have two different, parallel paths for SMN - the "trance" variant that a lot of people really like, and a pet-focused one for other people.

Sorry about the wall. My bad for not looking at the forum for a few days...

[Kazrah]

Honestly, I think they need to have two different, parallel paths for SMN - the "trance" variant that a lot of people really like, and a pet-focused one for other people.

Except that wouldn't happen. If SE like variation in that regard, then they wouldn't be looking at the whole Arcanist alternative system as one of the worst decisions they ever made.

Now what could most likely happen is that devs pick one of those options for SMN and then use the other concept for a potential job concept. Right now, looking at the pet control system as it is and the statement made regarding SMN being more player-focused than pet-focused when talking about their then-new skills for Heavensward, they'd probably pick that "Trance" style or whatever style puts more emphasis on the player.

Once a more suitable pet control system can be implemented, only then could I think a proper pet-based job be created.

[Lambdafish]

I would really hate this, personally. It's probably a really good decision from an ease-of-design perspective, but it would even further remove any interest I have in playing the job. Honestly, I think they need to have two different, parallel paths for SMN - the "trance" variant that a lot of people really like, and a pet-focused one for other people.

SMN makes a pretty bad pet job conceptually anyway. I agree with what you are saying, however I think that that would result in two different jobs. My absolute ideal scenario is designing SMN around the trance element, at the same time as introducing BST as the pet focused job that everyone wants SMN to be. SMN right now is caught between a rock and a hard place because people want it to feel like a SMN and be pet focused, and that is not feasible (no matter what FFXI has people believe).

Edit: oops, didn't even read Kazrahs post and we pretty much said the exact same thing xD

[Stitches1974]

My post was a response to the OP using hunter pets as their example, not warlock pets. Warlock pets were indeed designed with their own niches in mind, but part of that was the existence of three specs, each of which made use of a different one. Summoner is just summoner. Hunter pets, especially before what I believe was the first wave of normalization, were extremely niche and mostly wasted. You basically wanted the rare cat from Darkshore that had the faster swing timer for PVE and everything else's only purpose in life, at most, was to teach you some abilities to train it with. .

That would be Broken Tooth from Blasted Lands.

[EorzeaHero69]

Probably because they Ruin everything!

.... I'll leave now.