Summoner Pet's design and appearance

[Akiza]

The Egis suck from a design and appearance stand point Summoner's don't even care if their pet dies until it's time to use Rouse or Spur then it feels like a waste of mp to re summon a lackluster pet. There should've been balance between single player Final Fantasy summons and MMORPG gameplay but instead square went with the Sorcerer pet from DCUO.
I'd rather have impressive pet visuals, skills and still provide support damage than a lackluster pet that looks like floating candy, have poor skills and won't be missed if it died.

[Altimis]

They need to make the Pet a small replica of the Primal giving the Summoner pet more of a distinct Final Fantasy style and design and less lackluster MMO.

I actually like this idea but I think its hard to change now

btw what lackluster meaning for here?

[Ricdeau]

The Egis suck from a design and appearance stand point Summoner's don't even care if their pet dies until it's time to use Rouse or Spur then it feels like a waste of mp to re summon a lackluster pet. There should've been balance between single player Final Fantasy summons and MMORPG gameplay but instead square went with the Sorcerer pet from DCUO.

Uh, no self respecting Summoner is going to leave their pet dead because it looks lackluster because it provides a good bit of damage. They would be doing their group a disservice by not having their pet up, and I would hope that any such Summoner would be promptly removed from the group.

[Razard]

The Egis suck from a design and appearance stand point Summoner's don't even care if their pet dies until it's time to use Rouse or Spur then it feels like a waste of mp to re summon a lackluster pet. There should've been balance between single player Final Fantasy summons and MMORPG gameplay but instead square went with the Sorcerer pet from DCUO.
I'd rather have impressive pet visuals, skills and still provide support damage than a lackluster pet that looks like floating candy, have poor skills and won't be missed if it died.

Bad SMN confirmed.

Nothing to see here.

[Jandor]

It seems to me (I'm not 50 on SMN yet so feel free to disregard) that aside from a few little things the issue that most people who aren't happy with Summoner have is that the summoning itself doesn't feel that important. Changing that wouldn't require a massive overhaul though, at least not to me. Just a few tweaks to certain -egi and summoner abilities would do it, even if the actual distribution of DPS remained the same.

I'd tweak Ifrit so that Crimson Cyclone gave Ifrit a 15s damage boost buff instead of being a stun and I'd change radiant shield so that it affects everyone within a small AoE, just big enough to catch the tank and other melee DPS.

Titan's pretty much fine in my opinion, he could do with an ability to put him on par with whoever has top aggro (not aggro+1 like provoke) to enable carefully handled tank swaps or allow him to regain aggro from the PC. Maybe at the cost of his stun ability.

I'd remove contagion from Garuda and give her tri-disaster (possibly renamed something else for thematic reasons) instead. I'd also remove the pushback from shockwave and instead have it give a 'windburn' DoT effect that can be extended with contagion.

General SMN tweaks would include Spur visually making your pet about 50% larger while it's in effect and maybe possibly tweaking Enkindle for double damage at a cost of removing that pet and locking it's summon skill for the duration of the Enkindle CD. Summoning one of the other pets would still be an option though.


I'm not really experienced enough with the job to know if these are decent ideas, they sound ok to me but my opinion might change after some level 50 content on it. As a job so far it plays fine and I find it fun, I'd just like the pet to feel more important. It doesn't matter if that feeling is a trick so long as it's a convincing trick .

[Akiza]

Removing Contagion from a Garuda and replacing it with tri-disaster is a bad idea because it's not a equivalent replacement.

[Akiza]

Uh, no self respecting Summoner is going to leave their pet dead because it looks lackluster because it provides a good bit of damage. They would be doing their group a disservice by not having their pet up, and I would hope that any such Summoner would be promptly removed from the group.

But self respecting Summoner's do moan and groan about having to waste mp re summoning it.

[Wolf_Shay]

But self respecting Summoner's do moan and groan about having to waste mp re summoning it.

What self-respecting Summoner is lacking MP to re-summon? And please stop using your opinions to stand for every SMN player

[Exstal]

Removing Contagion from a Garuda and replacing it with tri-disaster is a bad idea because it's not a equivalent replacement.

That's irrelevant. You're supposed to be using pets to suit the situation. When every situation basically is, "Garuda or you have no idea what you're doing", there's a problem.

[Jandor]

Removing Contagion from a Garuda and replacing it with tri-disaster is a bad idea because it's not a equivalent replacement.

Well, that's the idea.

Without getting to wordy, the idea is to give the pets certain niches and a bit more visual flair while making the 'Swiftcast - Summon - Rouse - Spur - Enkindle' combo a bit of a callback to older Final Fantasy's where (I'm under the impression) the summons acted more like large impressive spells. You could even alter the Enkindle pet ability to reflect the pets specialty.
Using Ifrit for instance would be a big fancy single target attack but at a cost of sustained single target DPS for 300s while Garuda would do lesser AoE damage but leave you without a ranged pet.

I don't want to get into exact numbers or start thinking about ways to totally redesign Summoner, someone better at math will rip any hypothetical numbers I come up with to shreds and so far at least I actually like the way the class plays. I'd just like it even more with some tweaks .