Your Thoughts On: A Compromise to SMN's Pets

[Mayhemmer]

Firstly, this is not any sort of request to the dev team. It's not something I'm asking to be added or changed. It's simply a hypothetical I'm throwing out to gauge interest.

Currently, Summoner's summons (carbuncle included) don't directly auto-attack enemies. They used to, but that obviously changed. A request I see pretty often is for that feature to be reimplemented, at the very least with carbuncle. While I can't see the primal summons getting autos again being a thing without some hefty reworks (which I don't feel the dev team is willing to do, but we'll see), I could see it happening with carby.

But I propose a compromise.

How would you feel about Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, and any future summon, getting the Living Shadow/Automaton Queen treatment?

Here's an example of how it could function in theory:

You summon your primal as normal, they appear, do their big opening move, and you get your associated enhanced abilities. Rather than immediately dipping out, however, they stick around on a timer. For the case of this example, let's say the timer is around equivalent to the total time it would take for you to expend all of your enhanced spells from said summon.

During this short window of time, the summon will, depending on which one it is, either go through a pre-set rotation of abilities (akin to how Living Shadow does), or spam a basic attack for the duration (akin to how Automaton Queen does). When the summon's timer runs up, or when the player reactivates the summon spell, just like Queen, the summon will perform an "exit attack" and desummon. You then rotate to your next summon, and repeat.

A potential "bonus" is that the "exit attack" also imparts some minor buff to the SMN/party, or enhances your next set of Gemshine, Precious Brilliance, and Astral Flow abilities with additional effects, depending on which primal just left. For example: Garuda might cause all of your next set of Gemshine (single-target) spells to hit in an AoE; Ifrit may cause your next set of abilities to hit a second time at lower potency; Titan may cause them to DoT every enemy they hit; etc., etc..

I know this would a challenge to balance and would get meta'd out quickly, but I think it'd give the SMN another layer of decision-making when it comes to their sequence of summons, which is something the devs initially noted wanting to be a thing with the rework.

It's not an indefinite summon with auto-attacks, but it's a thing I could see functioning within the bounds of how SMN is currently designed. Strangely enough, I thought of this concept for a job when I was head-crafting up a version of a potential Beastmaster job before we got the Endwalker job actions trailer.

Let me know how this sounds, or any potential adjustments that might be made by somebody far better at this than I am.

[Vandso]

I agree with this, but I think instead they doing their big attacks automatically you would have to use "Enkindle" for them to use it. Also I would prefer if Ifrit is the one who uses the dash combo and not you. Also Radiant Aegis should be up at all times for this to work.

[Davy_M_Jones]

This is an interesting compromise. Ideally, at least for me, Automaton Queen and the turrets would be available to leave out indefinitely. I'm sure it would be ridiculous to balance, but I imagine it doing roughly the same amount of damage as a Brd maintaining its DoTs on many enemies at once, except it would be focused on significantly fewer enemies for Mch. That's what kinda makes this a nice compromise however, because currently Smn has none of that, it only has summon-flavored attacks, not actual summons.
Personally, I really like your idea. I especially enjoy the fact it requires you two use and showcase all of your summons, still, rather than picking a favorite egi and sticking with that.

[Mecia]

It would bring back some the summoner feel but thats akin to adding Miasma back though. AQ and LS are nothing but glorified DoTs.

[rawker]

In my opinion, ACN should further be reworked to remove abilities/spells that either SCH or SMN does not need, specifically, Physick on SMN. They were able to strip Bio and Miasma from the base class but not Physick?

As for pets, I would suggest Carbuncle be the default for both SMN and SCH and add layers of abilities to it. For instance, Carbuncle for SMN will have more offensive oGCDs than Carbuncle for SCH. For SCH, it will have an additional command for Carbuncle (Sic) so it will aid the SCH in dealing damage when no healing is needed.

For SMN demi-summons and the current primals it can summon, let it just do what it is supposed to do much like how blood pacts work in 11, then leave the battlefield. As for SCH, just remove Seraph and bring back Rouse. Also give it back the ability to order the pet to cast Embrace to a specific.

[Raikai]

I like the idea... If becoming analogue to the Automaton Queen is a compromise, I'll take it. The 'glorified dot' at least is nice to see around doing something.

The carbuncle wouldn't really be around anymore if we're summoning them like that (since apparently they can't have 2 instances of pets out), they could let us glamour the primals into their egi versions or carbuncles.

[Ggwppino]

Personally, it's not that it bothers me that the pet doesn't do anything, but it's simply that as the expansions came out, I stopped managing it 360 degrees until this expansion where the management was completely removed.

I don't mind the way the primals work, but having lost a large part of pet management and therefore gameplay is the cause of my personal discontent.

[Mayhemmer]

Well unfortunately, after mathing it out a bit (which I should have done more thoroughly in the first place), actually getting this kind of primal AI system just wouldn't be very feasible with how the primal summons currently work. Each primal just doesn't get enough time within their individual windows to actually do anything before you've already spent your attunement stacks and hopped to the next one, so as it stands now, this just wouldn't work. Not including the GCD to actually summon them, the stacks you get from each take under 10 seconds to actually spend if you're not getting interrupted, and obviously that's just not enough time to work with. SMN's whole timetable would have to shift to even make this work, but at this point maybe a lot of people wouldn't mind that.

[Reimmi]

It would bring back some the summoner feel but thats akin to adding Miasma back though. AQ and LS are nothing but glorified DoTs.

Even if pets are glorified dots i still like having them in mmo's

[Rongway]

Considering the way DRK and MCH do summons is an understandable direction to explore, but ultimately I think it overcomplicates things by requiring extra potency recalibrations and bigger changes to action scripts for SMN and their avatars.

The SMN rework did a great job of making SMN summons more like classic FF summons. The only two things I would do in re: the existing elemental summons are (1) make all the elemental "ruin/outburst" actions come from the avatar and (2) reverse the order of the actions, having the avatar do its ultimate attack as an exit move, which I think feels better than getting their big attack first and then following it with weaker attacks.

For example, instead of

1. Summon Ifrit - Ifrit appears, does Inferno, and disappears. If you cast a different Summon early, you forfeit any unused Favor, combo, and Ruby Ruin/Outburst charges.
2. Ruby Ruin - SMN casts elemental magic missile
3. Ruby Ruin
4. Crimson Cyclone - SMN gap closes
5. Crimson Strike - SMN does melee atttack

it should be

1. Ruby Ruin or Ruby Outburst - summons Ifrit, Ifrit spits a fireball, Ifrit stays until Enkindle or you cast a different elemental Ruin/Outburst. If you cast a different elemental Ruin/Outburst early, you forfeit any unused Favor, combo, and Ruby Ruin/Outburst charges.
2. Ruby Ruin or Ruby Outburst - SMN sends energy to Ifrit, who spits another fireball
3. Crimson Cyclone - SMN points and Ifrit dashes to target
4. Crimson Strike - SMN pantomimes a booksmack from wherever they're standing and Ifrit does a melee attack
5. Enkindle Ifrit - still an instant Spell on the GCD as Summon Ifrit used to be, Ifrit casts Inferno and then disappears

Compared to summoning a DRK/MCH style avatar that attacks independently in parallel with the SMN, this calls for simpler avatar action scripts and doesn't compel rebalancing SMN's potencies to account for automated pet scripts' damage (SMN still needs potency adjustments because it does, but not because adding extra pet script damage). Except maybe where the optimal summon order during party burst changes to account for the shifting of the Enkindle attacks to the end of each element phase, the SMN's DPS would generally not change because it's still all the same actions, just performed by the avatar instead of the SMN. All the elements at all the levels, including the carbuncles, should be handled this way. With this change all the SMN's attacks would come from a summoned avatar except for Energy Drain/Siphon, Fester, and Painflare.

As for buttons, instead of

• Ruin
• Outburst
• Gemshine (elemental Ruins)
• Precious Brilliance (elemental Outburst)
• Summon Ifrit
• Summon Garuda
• Summon Titan
• Astral Flow

the buttons would be

• Ruin
• Outburst
• Ruby Ruin
• Ruby Outburst
• Emerald Ruin
• Emerald Outburst
• Topaz Ruin
• Topaz Outburst
• Astral Flow
• Enkindle (ultimate attack + dismiss)

which would be an increase of two buttons but honestly that would be no big deal on SMN.