Splitting SMN in Two

[Flana]

But back to Dezz's point, if you replaced Garuda and Ifrit with say FFXI Avatars, most of the Egi complaints would die down.

I would infinitely rather have the current egis over the plastic action figures that just slide around. Not to mention just model swapping would do nothing for the major source of complaints, which is ability ghosting. If you want to solve that immediately, Demi pets have to go. Forced petswaps force in so much more jank than the egi's ever had before Stormblood. Not to mention this is a problem endemic to demis. If you deleted egis you would still have ghosting issues because the demi is a hard swap once the timer runs out.

[dezzmont]

But back to Dezz's point, if you replaced Garuda and Ifrit with say FFXI Avatars, most of the Egi complaints would die down.

I don't think its a modeling problem. Heck, even the model's animations themselves are quite decent. Its more effects and what the animations are.

Ifrit's base attack, for example, would actually be a pretty rad mid-grade melee attack (Like an upgraded rotation, or a minor oGCD). Its a cool side slash with a flame effect, just look at it!

But its actually going to look more like this. Or... worse, imagine like 3 other melee going ham on that dummy and also your casting spells too.

What would be an awesome ability for a samurai to cast looks terrible for a caster or ranged, because the jobs have different needs. For them, the animation needs to read clear and well from a distance and have a lot of impact. This is the case for their assaults too. Flaming Crush is... kinda an explosion? But its a melee sorta explosion, like inner release.

Caster and ranged 'impact animations' are subtly different than melee ones. Their particle effects are more 'busy' because the focus isn't on a character doing something awesome like screaming into the air Inner Release style, and they tend to 'rise' higher as a rule so you can see them. If you look at fire 4, deathflare, xenoglosy, pitch perfect, ect, you notice they try to fly over the 'melee line' so they aren't obstructed, or are giant pillars that you will definitely see. A subtle and clever method of making sure your cool spells aren't easily obstructed by your Warrior.

Only Inferno is really appropriate for a 'caster animation' and even then its sorta minor, and your character doesn't do too much. It would be nice for say... egi assault 1 or 2, but your capstone on a 2 minute cooldown? No way.

This is why I think an animation pass is so necessary. A lot of the animations would work fine for a melee and were designed from that perspective without really thinking of how they look to the summoner and how they fit into caster/ranged animations, which go out of their way to 'go high.' Which is really cool and clever and subtle design you might not notice unless your looking for it, and which is absent noticably from the egi.

In my opinion, the fix is admitting egi movement management is silly and only exists to let you pre-place devotion's AOE and to make some of your egi-centered AOEs frustratingly miss sometimes. Biting the bullet and making it your pokemon that follows you around and does ALL its attacks at range by your side frees you up to basically intertwine its cast animations with yours and allows you to design its 'impact' animations as caster/ranged animations, and get rid of all the pet control jank.

[Anhra]

I like the Idea posted by the OP.

Some of the Skills which SMN loses, such as the DoT skills, fester, bane as well as the Ruin Spells should be given to SCH, maybe not with the same potencies, but it would clearly make the job more interesting, as it is now.

As for Egis, i think a good way to design them would be to give them a "enrage bar" that fills up during combat, as long as the egi is out, once it "enrages", it can take its demi-form for a limited time and gets a new set of skills. In order to properly balance this, it would require Egis to be killable again (as well as updating the way they are controlled). The Demi Summon also gets additional stats such as increased HP and stats befitting its Role.

[Flana]

As for Egis, i think a good way to design them would be to give them a "enrage bar" that fills up during combat, as long as the egi is out, once it "enrages", it can take its demi-form for a limited time and gets a new set of skills. In order to properly balance this, it would require Egis to be killable again (as well as updating the way they are controlled).

This only introduces even more ghosting points because now the kit has dramatically increased the amount of forced pet swaps instead of just every ~60 and ~80 seconds. You can lose abilities going into the phase and you can lose abilities going out of the phase. Also pets taking damage has never been an engaging mechanic because its either useless chip damage or the pet gets one shot, and in the latter case that could cause even more resetting problems in the job if the bar dies when the pet does, which is how similar mechanics already work for them (such as Garuda and Titan AoEs).

[Anhra]

This only introduces even more ghosting points because now the kit has dramatically increased the amount of forced pet swaps instead of just every ~60 and ~80 seconds. You can lose abilities going into the phase and you can lose abilities going out of the phase. Also pets taking damage has never been an engaging mechanic because its either useless chip damage or the pet gets one shot, and in the latter case that could cause even more resetting problems in the job if the bar dies when the pet does, which is how similar mechanics already work for them (such as Garuda and Titan AoEs).

There are plenty of other MMOs out there far older than FFXIV, which did a far better job not only designing classes, but also Summoner Classes with killable Pets, i am certain IF Squeenix would properly put their mind into it, they could pull it off.

Back then during SB, Egis didn't had proper Defense values added to them, and Summoner clearly doesn't had and has, many skills in managing/controlling them in general, but Tanking with Titan did worked for certain content like deep dungeons (and Ramuh, from what ive heard in HW, but that again, was Squeenix failing to properly balance the job).

A killable (and more importantly, targetable) Summon could also add alot of variety many people dont think about at first. Selene/Eos for example, could greatly boost SCH range of influence with adlo + deployment tactics, just by standing at the right place, at the right time, that kind of gameplay element is something SMN should have.