(Endwalker) Summoner goes into the right direction but i'd like to see permanent pets

[Tonkra]

I guess the direction is good where SE is taking the summoner. Away from the DoT WoW warlock type of summoner more into the direction of a Final Fantasy summoner.
But still i think casting spells by myself as a summoner or going into melee (ifrit charge attack) as a summoner feels pretty weird / comical and not accurate to the history of the Final Fantasy Summoner.

Final Fantasy summoner is a job that issues commands to the summons / avatars.
In my opinion they should make the pets cast the spells / or hitting with melee attacks instead of the summoner himself.
Otherwise in my opinion i could play a white mage or red mage already if i want to cast stone and wind spells myself.

Just imagine the summoner job action trailer. But instead of the summoner casting the wind, fire and earth spells it'd be the specific semi-permanent summon in the current rotation.
thats about it. No rework of skills, its more a matter of animations and keeping the feel and essence of playing a FF summoner.


Why not letting them take part in the battle as a semi-perma pet while the summoner is kind of bending them with nicely looking bending techniques such as in "Avatar Aaang - the last air bender" for example`?

Of course they would need to reduce the overall size of the summons so that they dont block the view of other players. To make them as tall as the biggest Roegadyn or just like in Final Fantasy XI for example?



Bending animations like these for example:







An other suggestion is to cut out the current ultimate attacks of the summon pets and make them exclusive to Limit Break III. So when for example the summoner currently has ifrit out as a pet and is casting ,,Limit Break III" the huge version of Ifrit will appear in the selected area to cast "hellfire" etc. . this way it still feels special if the pets are casting their ultimates. (if none pet is out the summoner would show up with his old LB3 animation)

[MicahZerrshia]

I guess the direction is good where SE is taking the summoner. Away from the DoT WoW warlock type of summoner more into the direction of a Final Fantasy summoner.
But still i think casting spells by myself as a summoner or going into melee (ifrit charge attack) as a summoner feels pretty weird and not accurate to the history of the Final Fantasy Summoner.
[/IMG]

The majority of FF titles have summons that appear, do their attack and fly away, leaving the smn to keep attacking by themselves. I don't know where you get the summon being persistent is how smn works in the franchise and this is the outlier.

[Tonkra]

The majority of FF titles have summons that appear, do their attack and fly away, leaving the smn to keep attacking by themselves. I don't know where you get the summon being persistent is how smn works in the franchise and this is the outlier.

Well there are actually more Titles where the summons are persistent in the last decade or 20 years. Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XI Online, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
And in my opinion these are also the better systems than having a "fire and forget" animation and calling it "summoner".

Additionally we literally dont have any petclass in this MMORPG... but many casters and melee fighters.
Secondly it would make the summoner distinct from other casters such as red mage or white mage who are already casting wind and fire and earth spells..

And then you have to show me even one Final Fantasy title where the summoner job is casting wind, fire and earth spell by his own... and even worse: is attacking with his bare fists like a monk in melee range.
So i actually "dont know, where you get that"

So .... now you.

[Vahlnir]

Well there are actually more Titles where the summons are persistent in the last decade or 20 years. Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XI Online, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
And in my opinion these are also the better systems than having a "fire and forget" animation and calling it "summoner".

Additionally we literally dont have any petclass in this MMORPG... but many casters and melee fighters.
Secondly it would make the summoner distinct from other casters such as red mage or white mage who are already casting wind and fire and earth spells..

And then you have to show me even one Final Fantasy title where the summoner job is casting wind, fire and earth spell by his own... and even worse: is attacking with his bare fists like a monk in melee range.
So i actually "dont know, where you get that"

So .... now you.

FF7, FF8, FF9...

And even earlier than that, have summons appear to do their thing and vanish. I'd say there's more of a precedence for that, hence why people are excited to see Summoner return to its roots.

[Tonkra]

FF7, FF8, FF9...

And even earlier than that, have summons appear to do their thing and vanish. I'd say there's more of a precedence for that.

FF7, FF8, FF9 dont have a summoner class.

And since we are playing an MMORPG pet classes are a thing, you know. (for some players at least)

[Vahlnir]

FF7, FF8, FF9 dont have a summoner class.

But they have summons.

[Enkidoh]

And then you have to show me even one Final Fantasy title where the summoner job is casting wind, fire and earth spell by his own... and even worse: is attacking with his bare fists like a monk in melee range.
So i actually "dont know, where you get that"

So .... now you.

Sorry to jump back to this post but Rydia in FFIV does exactly that (besides summon magic she also initially has access to White and Black magic spells, but after her... age up.... she inexplicably loses access to the White magic strangely, but still has Black Magic). Really, any FF game which doesn't use a variation of the Job system and instead has characters with unique abilities and summon spells can be freely equipped to all characters can do this easily.

And you can have summoners attack with bare fists in many games, you could indeed do that in FF Tactics, and titles with no Job system but unqiue abilities could equip summon magic freely could have this effect, like Tifa in FFVII or Zell in FFVIII.

Well there are actually more Titles where the summons are persistent in the last decade or 20 years. Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XI Online, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
And in my opinion these are also the better systems than having a "fire and forget" animation and calling it "summoner".

Additionally we literally dont have any petclass in this MMORPG... but many casters and melee fighters.
Secondly it would make the summoner distinct from other casters such as red mage or white mage who are already casting wind and fire and earth spells..

This view of summon magic is very incomplete, the FF series has been going since 1987, and Micah was completely right in saying that traditionally for the first nine titles in the series summon magic is simply a fancy animation that shows up, does it's big impressive attack and then disappears (some FF titles therefore placed restrictions on how many times a summon could be cast or how many you could equip).

Even FFVII (the original PS1 version and the pre-Remake Compilation titles I mean, not the Remake) just has summon materia as a fancy attack that does it's thing and then disappears with no input from the player (and the ultimate expression of that was in FFVII Crisis Core where summon spell animations were actually over-the-top FMV sequences). Really, FFX started this whole stupid 'summons as a pet you command' thing, possibly inspired by the Pokemon craze, and FFXI solidified it, and, it just doesn't work in an MMO environment, let alone a single-player game, as the continued issues ACN/SMN/SCH faces here in FFXIV show only too well.

Really, at this point, I'd like to just see the whole pet angle for ACN/SMN/SCH here in FFXIV scrapped and replaced with the old-style 'summon spell as an animation and then disappears' concept, as it would solve much of the lingering issues that continues to dog (pun intended) pet classes.

[Xtrasweettea]

And then you have to show me even one Final Fantasy title where the summoner job is casting wind, fire and earth spell by his own... and even worse: is attacking with his bare fists like a monk in melee range.
[...]

Not the person you were addressing, but:

• Rydia from FF4. She is a Summoner who can cast Fire, Wind, and Earth spells be herself (Fire 1 through 3, Tornado, and Quake). Could only use Rods and Whips.
• In FFV you can set the second ability slot to allow Summoners to attack like a Monk or cast spells that happen to be Fire, Wind, or Earth base.
• Summoner from Final Fantasy Tactics can be made to use bare fists to attack like a Monk in melee range and cast wind, fire, and earth spells on their own.
• In FFXI, Summoners could set their subjob to do some of those things... poorly (even as /SCH).

That's four games right there with dedicated summoner jobs or persons who were designated as a summoner and could do those things you have described.

By the way, what you were describing in your OP was Puppetmaster from FFXI.

• There was no "bending" by the user, but you could have three Maneuvers up at once. Each Maneuver was elementally aligned and allowed the attachments on the Automaton to be activate or be enhanced.
• Puppetmaster also have Martial Arts trait for melee combat.
• Although no innate magic casting by the Puppetmaster, but with Puppetmaster being able to equip caster gear and equip a caster subjob (/SCH mainly), you could be a magic caster PUP and be slightly effective at it. This is not considering the three automaton casting heads and body.

Which, as a Puppetmaster main from FFXI, I do not want it in FF14. SE would not make it the same Puppetmaster, but some knock-off version to fit within the Holy Trinity or make it a limited job.

[aveyond-dreams]

As much as I enjoy the summoning system in the games mentioned in your post, historically the pet AI in FFXIV has been unreliable. After several failed attempts of reworking it, I believe that 6.0’s summoner will provide the best overall experience.

As for a summoner that attacks on their own, that would be Yuna’s playstyle from Dissidia NT. As opposed to having a full roster of summons, she can instead use their attacks for various effects. I personally feel like going into melee range during the Ifrit trance is a fantastic addition and I look forward to seeing that being expanded upon.

[MicahZerrshia]

So you named 6 titles out of, how many ff titles are their again? That is not at all representative of the franchise and as you said this, non persistent pet, is supposedly not accurate to the franchise. So what you said was still not true and just because you feel its a better system, doesn't mean it is. It can be, I loved ffxi smn, but don't go throwing around statements about facts when it takes a simple search to find out otherwise, esp when you are in a forum with likely hundreds of not thousands of fans of the franchise who could easily tell you otherwise because they have played all if not most of the titles in the franchise. When you open your post with a statement that is clearly and easily found to be untrue, you lose all credibility for anything else you said.

You want it that way because you like it better, not because of traditions in the franchise. At least be up front and say that or just get your facts straight.

Oh and btw the pets in games like the 7 remake and 10 do not have persistent pets. They still only show up for a quick visit, do what they need to do and leave. (kinda like bahamut and pheonix) 30 seconds does not equal persistence in the way you mean here. FFXI had truly persistent pets but X did not.

Imagine if Yuna or cloud could have just run around with shiva out the entire game lol