Summoner is a Final Fantasy 14 summoner (not a warlock wow clone)

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Yea, I remember managing Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Shadow Flare, Contagion, weaving oGCDs between. That is why I played the job, because I found it fun managing all those systems. Not for the 0MG I'M A 5UMM0N3R! If you want to play a WoW Demonic Warlock you should go play WoW. You can summon to your hearts content.

Yep and when Demi Bahamut came out people instantly asked for it to be resized because they couldn't see the mechanics in a boss fight showing the community why Egi had to be small.

Also this is what people really wanted:


But doesn't matter now. You got what you wanted. Instead of a persist Ifrit Egi, you get a 5 second animation. Not sure why you need to booster SMN on you Alts however if they jobs is going to be so fun to play now but hey, you do you.

Other jobs resizing bahamut is handy for them, I like him at full size tho thank you, I would have loved the egi to be larger too and less hideous. Hyped for the new summons actually looking like the primals. SE better gimme something even BIGGER in future.. or idk gimme /bahamutextralarge so he can look like he does in coils xD fun fun fun

[aveyond-dreams]

Summoner and Arcanist ARE why we play this job. You know, the poison carby programmer/scientist mage subtheme that's carried the job since its inception. SE gave up and catered to players who didn't even play the goddamned job despite getting exactly what they wanted four years ago.

Carried it all the way through a rework every single expansion until they finally got rid of the problem that was created by turning Summoner into a warlock because most people ran in the opposite direction whenever the job was mentioned. They didn't call it the calculator job or the carpal tunnel job for no reason. People overwhelmingly disliked the fact that class was a clunky mess whose summon magic was an afterthought.

Making Summoner into a pure Summoner only angered people who were more married to the warlock aspects of the class than being an actual Summoner while the other 99% of the internet is celebrating. The arguments they've given in this and other threads make me chuckle, because the more they double down on dots and poison magic the more it is strikingly apparent they don't understand what the job is really about. Me and many others tried this affliction warlock and abandoned it for reasons that are obvious to most.

And we will gladly come in droves to replace any lost warlocks come 6.0.

[Grimoire-M]

Carried it all the way through a rework every single expansion until they finally got rid of the problem that was created by turning Summoner into a warlock because most people ran in the opposite direction whenever the job was mentioned. They didn't call it the calculator job or the carpal tunnel job for no reason. People overwhelmingly disliked the fact that class was a clunky mess whose summon magic was an afterthought.

Making Summoner into a pure Summoner only angered people who were more married to the warlock aspects of the class than being an actual Summoner while the other 99% of the internet is celebrating. The arguments they've given in this and other threads make me chuckle, because the more they double down on dots and poison magic the more it is strikingly apparent they don't understand what the job is really about. Me and many others tried this affliction warlock and abandoned it for reasons that are obvious to most.

And we will gladly come in droves to replace any lost warlocks come 6.0.

It also helps our case when you consider Summoner’s thematically are Warlocks. The D&D version of the class. Borrowing the power of a Demigod through a pact is literally what the job is about. And in XIV Arcanist honed in on that better than every prior iteration by tying the magic we used to contain our vessel of that power into the same magic that allows us to wear down our enemies, making us a direct reflection of the primals as a whole.

It’s not my fault you have no imagination. In all of those nonsense posts you still haven’t even broken down any mechanical issues with the current job or looked at how the new iteration makes it worse. All you have is “It’s pretty now shut up shut up shut up”. Maybe, just maybe, you should have read the job quest dialogue and immersed yourself in the lore specific to XIV before casting judgement on graphics.

[aveyond-dreams]

It also helps our case when you consider Summoner’s thematically are Warlocks.

Thank you for demonstrating that you have no context of the job's theme in the entire rest of the series, where they are absolutely nothing that I would call a "warlock." The objective reality is that the devs agreed with players that the job had reached total stagnation and that it was too far removed from what a Final Fantasy summoner is, with mechanics that made people's experience with the class miserable.

It has already been explained numerous times why the poison magic and broken pet AI had to go, no matter how much of a "sign of skill!" it was to battle against such mechanics while every other job in game had great flow to it. Once again, if what brought you to summoner was poison magic then this was not the class to co opt to turn into poison mage. You had 8 years to experience FFXIV's affliction warlock-now that it is finally a true summoner, I suggest you wait patiently for Necromancer to be released just how I and many others had to wait for an actual summoner to be added to this game.

In any case, I do not believe this thread should be bumped further so any more of these recycled "SMN is a poison mage! You just need to learn to play the game! You didn't even try the class! It's supposed to be unique!!! You're obsessed with graphics!" posts will just be responded to in the front page where I've collected the more *interesting* takes some of these affliction warlocks have had and to save people from having to read the same disproven arguments over and over again.

6.0 can't come soon enough.

[Rolder50]

Thank you for demonstrating that you have no context of the job's theme in the entire rest of the series, where they are absolutely nothing that I would call a "warlock." The objective reality is that the devs agreed with players that the job had reached total stagnation and that it was too far removed from what a Final Fantasy summoner is, with mechanics that made people's experience with the class miserable.

It has already been explained numerous times why the poison magic and broken pet AI had to go, no matter how much of a "sign of skill!" it was to battle against such mechanics while every other job in game had great flow to it. Once again, if what brought you to summoner was poison magic then this was not the class to co opt to turn into poison mage. You had 8 years to experience FFXIV's affliction warlock-now that it is finally a true summoner, I suggest you wait patiently for Necromancer to be released just how I and many others had to wait for an actual summoner to be added to this game.

In any case, I do not believe this thread should be bumped further so any more of these recycled "SMN is a poison mage! You just need to learn to play the game! You didn't even try the class! It's supposed to be unique!!! You're obsessed with graphics!" posts will just be responded to in the front page where I've collected the more *interesting* takes some of these affliction warlocks have had and to save people from having to read the same disproven arguments over and over again.

6.0 can't come soon enough.

I'd like to reiterate a point I've made a few times before. That being, I don't see how a primal coming down, giving you a buff, and leaving, makes you a summoner. Give the current summoner primal models instead of egis and you have 100000x more class fantasy.

[rewd]

Blablabla

My favourite Final Fantasy game is IV, and Rydia is one of my favourite characters. She is cool and being able to summon beasts that help you by using big attacks is amazing. You said that XIV's version of a summoner is a real summoner now, so I'm pretty excited to play it. Out of excitement, I'm checking its kit right now. I'm slightly confused though, so I hope you can help me here.

As I'm seeing, you get... A weird, shiny rat? Must be a summon I don't know, I don't remember it in IV. Doesn't seem very threatening, but it doesn't matter. But... Why does it stay there? Like, all the time? Not really doing anything...? Oh, he is casting a buff, I guess? But isn't he supposed to be going away? Oh right, he is going away now. Is this a chicken nugget? Oh, it's a summon? Uhm, ok... I don't really remember summons being like this in Final Fantasy IV, though... And now the rat is back again? Oh, he is gone again. This really looks like a chili pepper. So this is the level 50 kit, huh? Well, not really what I was expecting, but let's move on!

Wow, you get Bahamut! Look, he did his flashy attack, cool! Uhm, why is he staying? Isn't he supposed to go away after his attack? This is getting kind of weird, I'll be honest. I don't remember Rydia getting a dog (or is it really a rat?) and some.. shiny floating things. She does get Bahamut, so this is nice, but why is he big? And the rest so small? Why isn't he leaving? Oh, ok, he is leaving.
Wow, Phoenix now! Oh, we are talking now. That's the flashy attack, I suppose and... It's not going away, I guess. Oh, it just did. Kinda sucks that the flashy attack is just what Bahamut did, but with a different color.

Oh, now you get rid of the floating things and get Garuda, Titan and Ifrit! Like, the big versions! That's cool! Wait, why are they going away? Why is Bahamut staying? What's the difference? Oh wow, the dog is still there too... I don't really remember Rydia working this way.

Don't get me wrong, it does look cool! But... I feel kinda tricked now. Not really the "Final Fantasy summoner" I was expecting :/ I don't remember Rydia being like this...

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

I lost interest in SMN when my pets weren't actual pets anymore in ShB. Before, I'd use Titan to tank for me when solo. There were problems with how pets worked, but those could have been fixed. SE decided to distance themselves more and more from the old SMN, and now rebuilt it from scratch.

I don't see the old summoner return. But I do hope that we'll get an actual pet class (hunter pets in WOW do just fine in raids btw), preferably with debuffs, buffs, pet management, and maybe dots.

[Taranok]

I'd like to reiterate a point I've made a few times before. That being, I don't see how a primal coming down, giving you a buff, and leaving, makes you a summoner. Give the current summoner primal models instead of egis and you have 100000x more class fantasy.

Basically, there's 2 ways you can be a summoner. One, you can summon a pet and act through the pet. Think DAoC necromancer or what they tried to do with demi phoenix/bahamut where it mimics your GCDs. They could make that the primary core of the class. 2, you can channel abilities of a primal, such as directly casting ifrit erruptions or ramuh lightning strikes.

EW Summoner went with a hybrid of both. You directly summon major summons (pets) but they act on their own while you channel individual abilities yourself, and then you do partial summons to channel the abilities which are used as a reason to basically shake up the rotation depending on which summon is out.

Both are good implementations and both capture the feel of a summoner, but one is very much a final fantasy summoner without replacing the party, and the other is FFXIV's way of expressing this without basically turning the summoner into a permanent Anima or Yojimbo as has been done in past FF games.

It's an unfortunate limitation of how FFXIV is coded in some capacity, but the pets aren't responsive enough to be allowed to do things on their own, and short of having a rotation where you command a pet to do things but it's really just echoing your GCDs, this is a good compromise.

[Roda]

Let me try to bridge the gap and explain the worry of summoner mains about the state of the job fantasy.

Pictures of the feel of the old fantasy vs new "fantasy"

People are mourning the loss of the fantasy of collaborating and coordinating with a summoned entity and exchanging it for something with an over reliance of a sequence of pretty pictures with no mechanical depth deeper than "cooldown is up, you're allowed to see pretty sparkle!" Having the pretty particle effects is great, and no one is complaining about that. Hell, summoner mains have wanted that for years (thanks ps3...), but for those who liked interacting with the summons, and the lore of primals, this new fantasy is comparable to playing redmage, while looking at a google image search of ifrit on your second monitor.

My personal feelings on the fantasy, and various concerns with how the job fantasy is expressed:

TL;DR:
Carbuncle is cool, I want more carbuncle interaction.
Build up to cool super move is more fun than waiting for permission for cool super move.
Leveling was fixed... kind of.
SUMMON I CHOOSE YO- wait no, wrong IP! Having a selection of summons to customize depending on situational needs is more engaging than picking an order to summon the same primals every time. And the future of summoner kind of needs the option if we want to have its identity depend on mascots long term.
Dots and egis were not against the job fantasy of summoner, their graphics were.
Delete physick.


1. I love that the carbuncle is taking a more canonical role in summoner as a permanent familiar and I don't mind that the primals themselves are just particle effects, but I do wish that carbuncle interaction was more than One mandatory burst phase buff, and two shields. (if it must be JUST a support bot, an easy fix would be to have the role action animations be displayed as coming from carbuncle now that there shouldn't be a queuing problem. Think of mch lunchbox slap vs brd flute, vs dnc... dance. That would be a big help with flavor, at least for me. Oh, also bring radiant shield back from old ifrit :3c carbuncle casts reflect doesn't he?)

2. The mechanic hierarchy is all kinds of messed up. Our BIG POWERFUL ELDER PRIMAL summons are fulled by... wait no, nothing, they're just cooldowns. You literally start with the most powerful primal in canon (outside of [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]) and it's all deescalation from there. THE MIGHTY AND POWERFUL DREAD WYRM BAHAMUT gives us permission to do our filler phase which consists of ammo whack-a-mole, until the timer tells us we're ready to summon phoenix, and then it repeats until bahamut decides he's ready to play again. So to repeat: Biggest baddest dude on the block is ready to go immediately, unlocks the ability to use the weak ones, slightly less baddest dude on the block decides that the biggest baddest dude has been gone long enough and allows himself to be summoned, and then once again grants us permission to summon the little guys. cycle repeats. The rotation is a constant downhill hype ride. Also aetherflow is there. (why is aetherflow there? It is literally just ocd fluff with no mechanical or thematic tie in to the job at all now.) Also it rubs me the wrong way that the small weak primals have more influence over your approach to casting and optimization than the two demi primals, despite them being out for longer (individually) and them being our big climactic abilities. It's the same problem I have with how ruin IV is where the skill lies in current summoner, instead of making sure bahamut is summoned. It's more of a mechanically artistic complaint than a numerical/rigor mechanic complaint.

3. I am super SUPER thankful of our leveling process being fixed and having such a complete kit at such a low level, as current summoner teaches you WRONG right now as its leveling progression. But, there is a huge problem with the acquisition of phoenix right now, as since level 79 is a deluge of BAHAMUT, GEMS, BAHAMUT, GEMS etc, once you get phoenix, your damage drops since you will be missing a deathflare every other minute now. Leveling up shouldn't feel sucky, especially not at a capstone level. And yeah, a utility summon is nice and all, but one that lasts for 15 seconds out of every 2 minutes isn't very useful since you shouldn't just hold your demi just in case. And I really don't think that fights should be designed to need more healing every 2 minutes just for a smn to feel (artificially) useful. (more on this later)

4. After we get our last 3 gem summons (leviathan, ramuh, shiva) what is next? Add another demi + the warring triad? Are we gonna have a 3 minute rotation? Are our different primal/demi phases going to be overwritten? I don't think this design is as future proof as we're hoping. And I'm worried that someone might get attached to a certain phase or mechanic that exists now, but will be overwritten later to save room. (more on THIS later)

(now is later) Personally, a key part of the fantasy of a monster summoner is that your pool of summons is a toolbelt, not a check-list. Phoenix, as he works now, would be much cooler if I could keep him in my pocket until things start to look dicey, and instead of summoning my big bursty bahamut demi, sacrificing that summon to instead summon pheonix to provide support in a pinch, while still doing a bit of damage. Hell, I know there's talks of removing raise, and I'm all for it, but I wouldn't mind if raise was ONLY accessible in pheonix trance, and say your attack gcds, if targeting a downed player, would raise them instead, maybe even have each raise give a little (VERY LITTLE) buff to phoenix itself, so that its revelation could do more damage the more people you raise (not enough to be more than bahamut, or even comparable, but enough to reward you for doing a cool save and not feeling like you wasted that trance) that would be a much cooler fantasy imo.
-
And I think the end game for summoner, to prevent any more button/rotation bloat, and avoid removing more things as summons will eventually have to be overwritten or diminished, is for us to either have branching paths on our rotations, or to keep things a bit more mechanically simple/restricted, to "slot" summons (say, 2 demi attunements,and 3-6, gems) and have that dictate your available summons/rotation.
Examples for "summoning slots":
EW lv90 slots: bahamut/phoenix attunements, ifritx2/garudax2/titanx2 gems.
EW lv78 slots: Bahamutx2, ifritx2/garudax2/titanx2. (for more raw damage, less support)
Expected Lv 100 slots: Baha/Phoenix, ifrit/garuda/titan/leviathan/ramuh/shiva.
LvXXX slots: Alexander/phoenix, sephirot/bizmarck/Sophia/.../.../... (potential full support)
So you would slot more supporty/safe summons in a prog scenario, and then go full force with more aggressive summons in a farm/speed clear scenario. For more casual stuff, you would go with a jack of all trades / default loadout
It could even be tied to our gauge in some way (if the ui could handle that)


Also I liked dots. I love death by a thousand cuts styles of combat. The only complaint I had about them was they didn't get the glare/dia treatment to make them more thematic with the job. (as people didn't understand that we were corrupting the enemy's aether like primals do)

And delete physick, like wtf?


This isn't a full request for a redesign. (if the incoherent rambling didn't tip you off! :P) But this is just more of a list of concerns I have for the state of SMN's identity and how it expresses its power fantasy. I truly think there is an achievable middle-ground that can be satisfying for both old smn mains, and non-xiv smn fans.

[MercuryD]

I think Roda hit the nail on the head. There's died need to be more Carby interaction...the rest of the stuff they said was spot on too.