The problem with Summoners

[rawker]

IMO, current SMNs are good in their own but if we will be strict to what and how SMNs has been, I would suggest for it to be its own class and just let SCH be the only branch of the ACN class.

[Akiza]

Summoner needs their own spells separate from the Arcanist so they don't share spells with the Scholar.
Pets need to play a role in the party and not just be an auto turret.

[Havenae]

Summoner needs their own spells separate from the Arcanist so they don't share spells with the Scholar.
Pets need to play a role in the party and not just be an auto turret.

They really don't, they just need to make the split more prominent. If we're going to stick on this track of being just a dot class, then there needs to be a little more functionality that we can pull from beyond what a scholar can than basically just having fester.. well and of course tri-disaster which is pretty much next-to-useless. For instance giving a trait that removes the cap on the number of targets that bane will hit would be a start.



And to be honest Scholars need to be toned down a little. I can solo things on my scholar that I can't even begin to attempt as a summoner and that is mostly because with Eos they are virtually invincible until it comes to group content. Pop cleric stance and you are nearly as powerful as a summoner and you don't really have to worry about dying to boot thanks to the fairy, but that's another discussion for another day.

Also...

It would upset a lot of people if pets were made like minions and they have one single Summon spell that has to be swapped out every time we want to summon a different pet.

How would that upset people if you still have the same basic functionality but with less actual spells to perform it? I'm also not suggesting they be downgraded. All I said was use a selection process similar to how we can open up a window to choose a mount or a minion. I'm sure macros could even be adjust to select the specific egi rather than going through the menu each time. I mean the macro system can already tell the difference between Eos and Selene when selecting macro Icons..

I just find it a little hard to believe anyone who plays a summoner would be unhappy with a system that could actually allow the job to have more summons faster over the long run rather than waiting for each new level cap increase because SE doesn't want to seem like they're giving summoners extra abilities while everyone else does with what they have.

Or, are you just arguing with everyone now based solely on principle?

Asking for changes within the confines of the job is good. Asking for the job to be completely overhauled to play completely different is bad. The latter is what a certain few keep asking for.

The latter is what a vast majority of forum complaints from many different people, likely the majority of the job as a whole (at least from what visits the forum ) have been asking for since v2.0. I'd just be happy with a slight shift myself, not a complete overhaul.

[Sequora]

I've personally stated this several times myself. For me it's mostly the aesthetic image of SMN for me. That and lack of pet focus. I don't mind being a DoT class at all. I do think our repertoire of spells feels out of place. I would say every other job in the game feels like an extension of the class. We go from this poison wielding mage to a caster who uses the power of the primals. It just doesn't fit. Separate SMN and SCH. SCH should stick with arcanist as I feel poisons make more sense for their DPS spells. Give us elemental DoTs of some kind and then for heavensward give us more pet focus. No new DoTs, just new abilities involving our summons.

[Buff_Archer]

They should give is a really rude and nasty Summon that works in conjunction with our main DOT's when on SMN, where each time you cast one the Summon uses a corresponding animation and sound effect which the rest of the party hears. Like a successful Miasma cast would have it slow burp in the face of the target, and Miasma II would be more of a loud but fast belch. For Bio & Bio II those could be flatulence based with the Summon doing a quick 180 on the target. It would still have its own auto attack but this way it would be more directly tied into the caster's DOT spells, and maybe when using this Summon you get an enhanced version of the spells not available to a SCH in Cleric Stance.

From a design perspective, if they made it look like Slimer then that's not a huge departure from the current Summon design, just a slightly different shape and color.

[Imoye]

Visually, summoner really sucks. At least give new casting animations when upgrading from Arcanist to Summoner so we can feel at least a bit unique. Egis are totally boring as well.

[Akiza]

The Arcanist and Summoner are disconnected from each other and Summoner's extension from Arcanist seems forced. The Summoner harnesses Energy of the Primal's and reshape it into a biddable Avatar which translates to Egi in Allagan. There is no reason why Summoner's don't have Elemental spells since they can channel the Energy of the Primals. I'm pretty sure judging by the story Summoner will get the ability to reshape the Egi into the Primals just like White Mage will get Holyra and Black Mage will get Flare Star.

[SoloWingMetatron]

The lore of ARR states the Primals are the physical manifestations of elemental Aether (Ifrit = Fire Aether, Titan = Earth Aether, and so on) and the lore of the Summoner is that they can channel a portion of the Primals Aether to call forth the Egi.

So it really makes no sense where all these current abilities (Bio, Miasma) fall in place in terms of lore. These abilities are a contradiction to the Summoners discipline of channeling elemental Aether. It would make more sense to give the Summoner a series of elemental abilities that are dictated by which Egi is in play at any given time. So the Summoner essentially draws their personal abilities from the Egi in play. So if Ifrit is in play the Summoner would gain Fire based abilities, Titan earth based abilities, and Garuda wind based abilities. They could still be D.O.T based attacks of course just with that elemental overlay in order to give the Egi more of a focus and for the lore of the job to match up with the actual game play.

[Sequora]

So it really makes no sense where all these current abilities (Bio, Miasma) fall in place in terms of lore. It would make more sense to give the Summoner a series of elemental abilities that are dictated by which Egi is in play at any given time. So the Summoner essentially draws their personal abilities from the Egi in play. So if Ifrit is in play the Summoner would gain Fire based abilities, Titan earth based abilities, and Garuda wind based abilities. They could still be D.O.T based attacks of course just with that elemental overlay in order to give the Egi more of a focus and for the lore of the job to match up with the actual game play.

I've been saying this since ARR was released lol. I don't think the devs really care enough to change it though.

[SoloWingMetatron]

I've been saying this since ARR was released lol. I don't think the devs really care enough to change it though.

Yeah it's almost as if due to the Summoner's iconic image of being an OP job of wonder they are purposefully holding themselves back from doing more with the job in fear of making it outshine the others. Which I think is a legitimate concern to have for an MMO. But at least in FF11 they addressed that by making it one of the hardest jobs to unlock (if not the hardest). However the job in ARR as it stands is essentially just a "trophy job" that is just there to look pretty and have no real substance. There also seems to be a large quantity of players asking for some kind of change to the job, so I think it is something the devs will have to address in some fashion at some point.