White mage a Mage first, Healer second

[Carighan]

I mean look at dancer.. as perfect support with how unique they dance with RNG button rings to give buffs.. but the issue now we have BRD which is like I said press 1 button and give buff.. this isn't unique and it is the same for RDM and Summoner.. as there is no creativity outside of dancer.. even though I don't like DNC kit.. but it is perfect compared to other supports.

Yeah, that's true.

Bards really ought to work like Paladins from DAoC or Bards from EQ1, having to constantly "weave" songs, basically spending all their GCDs turning one thing off and the next thing on, and as they have to swap what they're weaving they have to keep track what is where in each weave pattern. (in return, that'd be all they do, their damage is partially in some songs, but also their auto-attacks, they can focus entirely on this song minigame which frankly can be quite complicated as seen in other games)

Summoners OTOH I think is a more complex issue. I like giving them some support, but their central pitfall is how their inherently pretty solid design foundation is never used for anything smart. The major->3x minor cycle is amazing, but it needs... something. I'd retool their minor summons into three types, "Hard hitting and hard-casted", "Medium hitting and instant", "Soft hitting and support/utility centric". Then, when you start the major summon, this refills the minors, and you can see which ones you got for each slot. And they will largely work the same (see the descriptions), but the details differ, and it's fully random which you get. This also makes for a neat system for future x-packs, as they can just pile more "sets" on top. Say hard-casting can either be Ifrit (change DPS output to be top, keeps the gap-closer) or Shiva (3 slow casts to slowly build a huge ice crystal, wind up instant to shatter it and deal massive single+AoE damage). And so on. This could then allow pretty flexible utility stuff on the utility slot for them.

[Tunda]

Yeah, that's true.

Bards really ought to work like Paladins from DAoC or Bards from EQ1, having to constantly "weave" songs, basically spending all their GCDs turning one thing off and the next thing on, and as they have to swap what they're weaving they have to keep track what is where in each weave pattern. (in return, that'd be all they do, their damage is partially in some songs, but also their auto-attacks, they can focus entirely on this song minigame which frankly can be quite complicated as seen in other games)

Summoners OTOH I think is a more complex issue. I like giving them some support, but their central pitfall is how their inherently pretty solid design foundation is never used for anything smart. The major->3x minor cycle is amazing, but it needs... something. I'd retool their minor summons into three types, "Hard hitting and hard-casted", "Medium hitting and instant", "Soft hitting and support/utility centric". Then, when you start the major summon, this refills the minors, and you can see which ones you got for each slot. And they will largely work the same (see the descriptions), but the details differ, and it's fully random which you get. This also makes for a neat system for future x-packs, as they can just pile more "sets" on top. Say hard-casting can either be Ifrit (change DPS output to be top, keeps the gap-closer) or Shiva (3 slow casts to slowly build a huge ice crystal, wind up instant to shatter it and deal massive single+AoE damage). And so on. This could then allow pretty flexible utility stuff on the utility slot for them.

I feel we can have this iteration of bard if we split bard into 2 jobs.. DPS bard and Support bard.. DPS bard same current bard design but replace the support aspect to dps and have another job that dedicated to support with songs which I would prefer they name it bard.

the problem with summoner devs don't want to go crazy with the job design.. as for summoner the job should be the most creative job in the game.. having to summon different Eikons is just an idea that can never end.. but how they can make them unique? this is where creativity is needed.

As for me Summoner Phenix should be the main summon not Bahumet as I imagined the job with Phenix more..

but I was thinking of how we can creative while having Summoner which is support job and also be creative (forget the balance)

Imagine if we just summon phenix and all party get buff "raise from the ashes" which it will raise the first one who died without taking the debuff of dying.. and to make it balance it can be casted 2 times in 1 fight. it is just a cool Idea to have .. or instead of buff it is an extra insta cast oGCD raise without debuff of dying