Fix Summoner Once and For All in 6.0 Please!

[Exodus-E]

Also make summons killable again, including demi-summons.

I'm sorry, but this is a terrible (not to mention backwards) idea.
Making all pets (SCH's included) immune to any and all damage post-5.0 was a step in the right direction; not sure why would anyone want them "killable" again.

[Grimoire-M]

I'm sorry, but this is a terrible (not to mention backwards) idea.
Making all pets (SCH's included) immune to any and all damage post-5.0 was a step in the right direction; not sure why would anyone want them "killable" again.

May Double Succ Deployment Tactics Rest In Peace.

[Mykll]

I'm sorry, but this is a terrible (not to mention backwards) idea.
Making all pets (SCH's included) immune to any and all damage post-5.0 was a step in the right direction; not sure why would anyone want them "killable" again.

SMN was my main going through MSQ and the side quests and whatnot. Was really fun having that pocket tank. Now? Won't touch SMN. Sure open world content seems easier now on any job even without chocobo backup, but still. That first day post-5.0, and all the mobs would ignore my little Titan, that was the end for me.

[Exodus-E]

SMN was my main going through MSQ and the side quests and whatnot. Was really fun having that pocket tank. Now? Won't touch SMN. Sure open world content seems easier now on any job even without chocobo backup, but still. That first day post-5.0, and all the mobs would ignore my little Titan, that was the end for me.

I won't deny that it took me a bit to get used to.

But still, you gotta admit that Earthen Armor is a very good "replacement" of sorts.
It alone has saved/helped me plenty of times early on in 5.0.

That said, having a separate pet just for that action alone is unnecessary nowadays.
They could've just made it an Aetherpact-based action and repurposed Titan-Egi as an Egi Glamour skin...

[ItMe]

SMN was my main going through MSQ and the side quests and whatnot. Was really fun having that pocket tank. Now? Won't touch SMN. Sure open world content seems easier now on any job even without chocobo backup, but still. That first day post-5.0, and all the mobs would ignore my little Titan, that was the end for me.

That was def a pretty big change and I understand. I'm sorry that was your final straw.
As incredibly glad as I am that my pet no longer dies to, well, simply walking through mechanics... it's not a change I'm wholly happy with either.

[Anhra]

I won't deny that it took me a bit to get used to.

But still, you gotta admit that Earthen Armor is a very good "replacement" of sorts.
It alone has saved/helped me plenty of times early on in 5.0.

That said, having a separate pet just for that action alone is unnecessary nowadays.
They could've just made it an Aetherpact-based action and repurposed Titan-Egi as an Egi Glamour skin...

Earthen Armor is just a generic Shield and having all Pets immortal makes the Job incredibly unflexible. If executed properly, killable egis/demi summons would allow SMN not only to micromanage with say, egi and demi summons, it would also allow the SMN, Grimoire-M stated already, to allow to use his summons as a "extension" of his range of influence with abilities which can be a very useful thing if executed properly. It would also grant alot of Room for design since there is ALOT if stuff you can do, just by having killable "pets" again.

I fail to see why the current Earthen Armor, which is just a generic Shield should be any better than having Titan itself tank for you.

[Grimoire-M]

Earthen Armor is just a generic Shield and having all Pets immortal makes the Job incredibly unflexible. If executed properly, killable egis/demi summons would allow SMN not only to micromanage with say, egi and demi summons, it would also allow the SMN, Grimoire-M stated already, to allow to use his summons as a "extension" of his range of influence with abilities which can be a very useful thing if executed properly. It would also grant alot of Room for design since there is ALOT if stuff you can do, just by having killable "pets" again.

I fail to see why the current Earthen Armor, which is just a generic Shield should be any better than having Titan itself tank for you.

While I do miss Deploy shenanigans on Scholar, I honestly I don't want pets to be targettable again. There's nothing it offers to either job that matters in current content apart from cleave memes. Pet uptime functions the same as it did back when they were targetable too. It's just safer. I'm guessing you're really into cheesing old raid/trial content, which frankly is much more engaging on a healer or tank to begin with. And if the overworld is that hard for new players to deal with I'm gonna say they need to level their healer chocobo like every other DPS does. And the one titan quest that cared about it is easy enough to manage with Titan Shield and Physick given how it's been nerfed alongside other ARR content repeatedly.

As for Titan Egi, I want Earthen Armor to be split into a Manaward equivalent with SMN flavor. It felt way better to use before EAs were made into GCDs and would be fine if it was changed again. Titan Egi itself needs to get an actual niche. I don't think it's realistic to make any predictions on that at the moment, but given how SE shoots for minimal effort when it comes to this stuff historically, I'm not holding my breath until I see how responsive pets are in practice. If they go back to Stormblood's iteration me and other high ping players are going to be annoyed. If they're back to 5.0 minus the dupe EA spam bug then everyone is going to be annoyed. I doubt they're going to scrap the current assets unless they tune up Garuda/Ifrit/Titan specifically, but who knows.


What I'd rather see is how they change Scholar's Fairy, and if they expose the internal state of pets to us or not. Scholar actually makes use of the Fairy's range way more than Summoner does (sometimes I use EAs to bypass being out of a boss's range for mechanics, but that doesn't require a killable pet, just nonsense raises in Alliance Raid), and even they are questioning how much The Fairy actually matters in that regard. Which should say something about how much confidence people have in pets as they are now. Everyone wants SE to nail it but few are expecting them to.

[Anhra]

Snip

It isn't because of the cheesing potential that i say having a HP bar with proper defense values is a good idea for pets, but from what i've seen on FFXI's SMN counterpart on the wiki.

I haven't played said game but from what i can tell (correct me if i am wrong), SMN in FFXI has pretty much no offensive abilities on his own aside from the weapon it wields. Literally anything he does, is being done trough his Summons, from attacking to support. And boy does it have alot of stuff to summon (most of those need to have a quest completed in order to get summoned).

Summons include: Carbuncle, Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Ramuh, Shiva, Fenrir, Odin, Diabolos, Alexander, Cait Sith, Atomos, Spirits of each Element and Leviathan.

Personally, i'd love to see a proper equivalent to this in FFXIV, instead of that halfheartedly-made DoTmage with his pseudo summons which we have at the moment (who cant even summon in pvp).
I remain hopeful with the endwalker expansion but im expecting something alot worse if i am being honest here.

[Exodus-E]

If executed properly, killable egis/demi summons would allow SMN not only to micromanage with say, egi and demi summons, it would also allow the SMN, Grimoire-M stated already, to allow to use his summons as a "extension" of his range of influence with abilities which can be a very useful thing if executed properly. It would also grant alot of Room for design since there is ALOT if stuff you can do, just by having killable "pets" again.

Beyond that "niche" use (and even then, it was only SCH that benefited from it), I still don't see why would anyone want them "killable" again.
Having to constantly refresh Sustain on Titan-Egi (against anything it wouldn't survive long for) or having to re-summon them mid-fight was not fun.
As I said, making them immune to any and all damage was a step in the right direction (in that we didn't have to worry about their "welfare" anymore).

I haven't played said game but from what i can tell (correct me if i am wrong), SMN in FFXI has pretty much no offensive abilities on his own aside from the weapon it wields. Literally anything he does, is being done trough his Summons, from attacking to support. And boy does it have alot of stuff to summon (most of those need to have a quest completed in order to get summoned).

Summons include: Carbuncle, Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Ramuh, Shiva, Fenrir, Odin, Diabolos, Alexander, Cait Sith, Atomos, Spirits of each Element and Leviathan.

The problem is that, unlike in FF11, FF14's elements are pretty much for "flavor" and don't really matter in terms of game-play (outside of certain content like Eureka or The Masked Carnivale).
With that in mind, you really can't do much with "summons" here outside of aesthetics, which is exactly what the Egi glamour system was meant to do: allow us to apply different "skins" to what we've already covered (role-wise) from the start.
Still, we shall see what else they'll bring to the table in 6.0...

[Anhra]

Beyond that "niche" use (and even then, it was only SCH that benefited from it), I still don't see why would anyone want them "killable" again.
Having to constantly refresh Sustain on Titan-Egi (against anything it wouldn't survive long for) or having to re-summon them mid-fight was not fun.
As I said, making them immune to any and all damage was a step in the right direction (in that we didn't have to worry about their "welfare" anymore).

That is only because they didn't had proper defense values, it would be understandable if garuda and ifrit would be squishy due to their Dps role for single- and multitarget, but even titan was quite weak defensewise.

The problem is that, unlike in FF11, FF14's elements are pretty much for "flavor" and don't really matter in terms of game-play (outside of certain content like Eureka or The Masked Carnivale).
With that in mind, you really can't do much with "summons" here outside of aesthetics, which is exactly what the Egi glamour system was meant to do: allow us to apply different "skins" to what we've already covered (role-wise) from the start.
Still, we shall see what else they'll bring to the table in 6.0...

Might as well delete SMN then and allow Minions to fight for any Job and turn Egis into Mogstation exclusive Minions then.

Pet-based classes in MMOs have alot of room design- and gameplaywise and it is a shame that Squeenix keeps going for the easy Route of just dropping a idea, instead of fixing it and learn from the mistakes they made. But i guess all is fair and games as long as the money keeps on rolling and people praise yoshi p. as the god-emperor of mankind equivalent of FFXIV.