Fix Sumnmoner

[Sanguisio]

Ok, point is ?

Please just give up with your rambling on here.

[Cynfael]

I don't understand how people repeating the same feedback over and over is supposed to be productive.

SE is unlikely to take forum feedback regarding classes too seriously since, as others have observed, only a minority of players is even active on the forums.

What will speak to them are metrics that only they can see. If SMNs are grossly underplayed and/or clearly under-represented for certain content, they will continue to tweak; the greater the disparity, the more drastic the changes.

I also wouldn't expect any major overhaul of SMN since that would screw over players who like its current playstyle. If anything, a future Job with a greater focus on pet management would be more likely to be introduced to fill that niche that SMN really doesn't in its current incarnation.

[rawker]

he/she will not stop. it's better to just ignore him/her.

i am already starting to build discrimination towards pink haired female midland hyurs.

[Cynfael]

he/she will not stop. it's better to just ignore him/her.

i am already starting to build discrimination towards pink haired female midland hyurs.

You mean the princess run wasn't enough to invite derision on its own?

[rawker]

to some, perhaps. i just grew tired of it that i begin to display apathy whenever i see a post from him/her.

[Jandor]

Summoner isn't irredeemably broken. What Summoner is though, is very boring to watch compared to a Black Mages fireballs and flares. A lacklustre BLM is many times more impressive to see in action than even the best Summoner.

In my mind that's the main issue, Summoner has been many things over the course of the series but one of central things it's always had is flashiness.
I'd tweak SMN in the following few ways:

Rouse - In addtion to it's current effects it would also physically increase the size of the Egi by about 20-30%.
Spur - Same sort of deal except a 50% increase and a subtle model change making the summon more closely resemble its Primal form.
Summon ** - Would only have a cast time & MP cost on the initial summoning, a summon already out could be swapped at the cost of nothing more than one GCD. Ideally encouraging more swapping through instances and giving the dev team the chance to give every summon a niche.

The above small changes would show the Summoner actually making use of summons in all but the most visually crowded of fights. The egi actually contributes a good portion of the DPS a Summoner does, but you get very little visual feedback from it, even when powering it up through your cooldowns.


Possible more drastic changes could be:
Enkindle: The idea here would be to make the Enkindle move have a much bigger impact but consequences for using it. Using Enkindle would dismiss the summon and lock it from being resummoned for the duration of Enkindles cooldown.
Big burst by spending your summons at a cost to sustained DPS. It's a concept I've mentioned before, because I like it, I think it could evoke the feel of past Summoners in the franchise without creating a job that for balance purposes only attacks a few times an instance and spends most of its time doing nothing.

Ifrits Inferno: Nice & boring, massive single target damage with the Inferno DoT being placed on all nearby enemies.
Titans Earthen Fury: I'd replace it with Titans Blessing (name a work in progress,) essentially Stoneskin II with the Stoneskin copies strength linked to Rouse & Spur. With the insta-swaps mentioned above it could give Titan a useful, albeit temporary, use in duties.
Garudas Aerial Blast: slight, boring changes again really, I'd up the damage to make it worth the cost of losing Garuda for a while, I'd keep it as an AoE, and I'd improve the visuals. Maybe make it a ground targetted AoE with the animation creating Suparna and Chirada-egi around the edge of the area of effect for increased impressiveness.

Other slight summon based changes might include giving Garuda a windburn DoT ability instead of that annoying and useless pushback and swapping Contagion for a low damage AoE bind style effect (basically swapping Contagion and Tri-disaster.)
Ifrit alterations could include faster animation on his stun and the ability to cast his shield on party members.

The DPS effects of all those changes might be to much, permanent contagion with an extra Garuda DoT plus Ifrits shield being applied to a tank would have to be handled with care. I'm not particularly great at maths, I've mostly posted based on nonsense like "feel" and "visual feedback" because as I said at the beginning, that is the Summoners weak point IMHO. Stick a BLM and SMN side by side and one of them will always look like it's doing nothing compared to the other in their current forms. But system limitations have to be considered as well, just upping pet size permanently is a very brute force solution. Pets growing and really standing out when they are breaking out the big moves is a good compromise.

[Cariborne]

I like the Summoner as it is really. The only issue I've really come across is Enkindle feels really lack luster for what it does, and Tri-disaster I wish was something more.

I think the Egi's do tell me who they're based off. Red flaming guy with Horns is clearly a spirit of Ifrit. The rock pebble man is a spirit of Titan, and the whirly bird creature reminds me of Garuda. Sure, they don't look just like them but they have the colour scheme and the theme down pat, I'm just summoning a shard of their essence if anything. If we get Levitahen-Egi I'm almost positive it'll be a floating snake with water whirling around it, Ramuh will be a purple man with a beard and a crystal staff, and Shiva will be a small, blue, dancing ice lady.

I'm fine with how the Egi's work as well. Titan is the solo pet, he's like the Voidwalker from World of Warcraft, it's fine to me. Ifrit is the Melee pet, and Garuda is the Caster pet. This I'd change in Heavensward. I'd keep them melee, and caster but change how they work with the Summoner. Ifrit should deal a bit more damage on his own and have slight cleaving, drop his Radiant Shield and give himself an extra steroid. Garuda should focus on making your DoTs deal damage longer like she does now and be the go to Summon for movement fights. You need burst damage, or you'll be cleaving little adds a lot? Use Ifrit. Prefer longer sustained damage, or melee isn't a safe place? Use Garuda. Then have Titan for solo'ing.

If we get a Heavensward summon, I'm sure it'll be Ramuh or Leviathen because of the story around Shiva. And they can be the summon we use for AoE. Then we'd have Ifrit for the Add Cleaving and being a "summon and forget" pet. Garuda would be the "Buff my DoTs to deal more damage" pet. Giving you extra cooldowns. Titan would be the Solo'ing pet. Leviathen or Ramuh would be the "Kill all these Adds" pet. Four pets, all filling seperate roles for different fights and playstyles. Obviously for the players who are progressing the hardest content, they'd probably swap pets depending on what they need. But people want their pets to be viable, and have uses, give them set roles.

I like the DoT aspect of the Summoner, we have the burst damage from the Black Mage already, they also have the elements handled as well. We got the other side of the Black Magic with the status effects and the debilitation. Build off that, give the summons a bit more purpose and make Enkindle actually good. I'd suggest Ifrit do a high potency attack on his Target, Garuda throw a DoT on her target that maybe makes them take a bit more damage from the summoner, Titan would be a defensive use maybe give the Summoner and Titan a sturdy shield for a bit, and then Ramuh/Levi deal AoE damage around their target. And make the damage from the offensive summons actually deal damage and have an impact.

So, TL;DR:

1. Keep the DoT aspect of the Summoner
2. Give the Egi's more purpose and feel different from eachother
3. Make Enkindle not suck
4. Keep the class as fun as it is (I really enjoy it compared to BLM)
5. Ramuh or Leviathen as our Heavensward Summon, and they should focus on AoE!

[Wintersandman]

I actually agree with everything Cariborne said!

There is more than the big numbers that make up a job and with small tweaks we can once again achieve balance.

[rawker]

if only we were given Thunder(again please make it happen), and the upcoming effect of spell speed towards dots... the scales will be balanced.

[Akiza]

People initially accepted Summoner even though it was Aesthetically a bad iteration of the WoW Warlock because they had the second highest DPS. Now that the Summoner's DPS is marginally better than a Bard people a lot of people arec bashing it and switching to Black Mage or Ninja. People want a Final Fantasy iteration of the Summoner not a bad iteration of a WoW Affliction Warlock.
Right now the Summoner is boring to watch compared to other jobs which have a lot of wow factor.
Summoner should take inspiration from the WoW Demonology Warlock which can also be used to AoE Bursts down a lot of mobs.
-DoTs should be used while waiting for Aetherflow to build and while under the affects of Aetherflow Summoner's can absorb the Egi and temporarily Transform into the Primal similar to metamorphosis
-While in Primal form players have to consume Aetherflow stacks to do special abilities and when the player is no longer under the influence of Aetherflow they revert back to the Summoner and Egi