Summoner Pet's design and appearance

[Ardan]

I doubt a swap with tri-disaster and contagion would ever happen since tri-disaster has a unique animation to it. Contagion is no doubt a good ability. It's so good it invalidates the use of the other summons. Ifrit and Titan need fixes. If I had to make changes to current abilities, it would probably go like this:

Ifrit
- Increased damage dealt
- Faster animation on Burning Strike, allowing to weave other skills in faster
- Crimson Cyclone recast reduced from 40s to 20s, stun duration increased from 2s to 4s
- Radiant Shield targetable on target party member rather than self cast
- Increased AoE range on Flaming Crush
- Removed 80% AoE damage reduction

Ifrit becomes a high risk, high reward summon. Capable of high damage, can reliably stun, but can easily die.

Titan
- Earthen Ward changed to a Shield Oath effect, reduced damage dealt in exchange for higher enmity gain and less damage taken
- Landslide changed from a stun to enmity grab

Titan before was a giant ball of HP with no defense. Now comes with high HP and defense and can temporarily tank if main and off-tank are down.

Probably overpowered as hell, but whatever. Better ideas than Akiza's at least. Flame shield on. /hides

[Ricdeau]

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

Okay, so? Sure it's a pain to have to re-summon just like it's a pain when a Dragoon misses a Heavy Thrust/Impulse Drive, when a Monk loses Greased Lightning stacks or can't get positions, when a Black Mage misses procs, and all the other myriad of abilities that players have to either re-do or just plan lose out on when mechanics don't go your way. It still doesn't explain why you think summoners don't care to re-summon and willingly screw themselves out of damage. I don't know of any self respecting summoner that does that...just bad ones.

[Akiza]

The Egis appearance and design screams the Summoner's pets were in afterthought even though it's a pet based class. Instead of making Final Fantasy themed pet class Square Enix made and Affliction Mage with a lackluster pet.

[Jandor]

I doubt a swap with tri-disaster and contagion would ever happen since tri-disaster has a unique animation to it. Contagion is no doubt a good ability. It's so good it invalidates the use of the other summons.

It was a mistake to give the Summoner abilities that are buffed by the pet, it should be the other way around IMHO. Tri-disaster is a cool looking spell but I think SE would be best cutting their losses with it.

A shield oath equivalent may be to much for Titan, but a Defiance style buff without the HP increase might work. Sustain and Physick would work better with him and allow Titan to be used as a tank more often but the active component should prevent the Summoner ignoring it to the same extent a Shield Oath type buff would.
Titan could use some changes to be a better tank, but I don't think anyone wants it to be overly viable to run content without a tank at all because Titan can do it just as well.

Edit:
I'd have Ifrit have a complete single target melee focus. As I said before I'd have his Radiant Shield effect work as an AoE on anyone close to him enabling it to apply to the tank and any other melee DPS there. I'd change Flaming crush to be single target and grant Ifrit a slight damage boost when used (or possibly a debuff that increases damage taken on the enemy.)

On Titan I'd change Earthen Ward to be a defiance style buff granting Titan a passive 15% hp restore buff, a 20% emnity buff but a 20% damage decrease. I'd also change Landslide to function as a provoke without the +1 effect. You wouldn't be able to steal aggro with it, but if the character the enemy was focused on stopped attacking then Titan would be able to take the lead.

Garuda as mentioned before would lose Contagion but gain Tri-disaster (or something similar) and have the pushback effect removed from Shockwave. Instead Shockwave would place a 'windburn' DoT on the enemy which would be affected by Contagion and Bane. It wouldn't be an impressive DoT but it would be something the SMN and Garuda could work together on to decent effect. Aerial Slash, Tri-disaster and a DoT that can be spread through Bane would make her a good ranged AoE pet but leave her single target damage unimpressive next to Ifrit.

The pets current Enkindles are ok but I'd like to see the damage increased on them (especially Ifrit) but at a cost of locking that particular summon out for the duration of Enkindles CD.


Possibly wildly unbalanced, any changes to Summoner would obviously have to looked at with far more care than I have here. The class is very well balanced and fun as it is, but that doesn't mean it couldn't use some tweaking here and there.


Edit2: Also, I'll say it again. Spur should physically increase the size of the pet 40 to 50% for its duration. It's an incredibly minor change that I'd enjoy as I like the flashy stuff .

[Akiza]

I'm not complaining about Summoner dps I'm complaining about how the job was designed it is Affliction Mage with the pet as an afterthought. Summoner is suppose to be a Final Fantasy themed pet based job but it's not so my suggestion is to compromise between two extremes of the Egis and Primals they should make the pet a smaller and weaker version of the Primals about 150% bigger than the Egis.

[Alcide]

Did you ever consider that since you don't like the job and you don't like the job's visual maybe you shouldn't play smn?

[Akiza]

Most of the classes and jobs got severely stripped down from their Final Fantasy rpg counter part but the Summoner got stripped down the most.

[Pooky_Pasha]

Most of the classes and jobs got severely stripped down from their Final Fantasy rpg counter part but the Summoner got stripped down the most.

If by stripped down you mean actually useful, outside of a very occasional Astral Flow and occasional buff, and wanted in party play, I agree.

[Akiza]

The problem with removing contagion from the Garuda Egi and replacing it with tri-disaster is the Garuda Egi can't perform moves that Garuda herself is unable to do and since the Garuda Egi is the essence of the Primal Garuda she will never be able to perform tri-disaster. The only moves that can be used to replace contagion are Friction, Mistral Song, Mistral Shriek and Great Whirlwind.

[Dixon]

I think the tweaks should be as follows:

-Ifrit-Egi should remain Melee DPS and probably have a few more HP and some sort of flanking/back attack bonus from certain attacks. (I personally love radiant shield since it give him several extra attacks, and pound for pound does more damage than Garuda.)

Titan-Egi I think is great as is. One small AOE, defense bolser, and aggro. Perfect for going out solo. if anything give him a damage boost and a bit more HP to balance him with someone I will mention later on... I would probably change the properties of his existing Enkindle ability to further increase enmity to anyone within the attack's range.

Garuda-Egi I think should have less cooldown time on her base attack. She would be more balanced with less HP, and her Enkindle ability should be a constant AOE like Shadow Flare. I think she should have small ranged nukes, but not with the same potency that Ifrit has on his single-target attacks.