I feel like I've won a battle

[pandabearcat]

Not every spell needs to be applicable all the time.

For instance, I used tri-disaster plenty back in the old wanderer's palace speedrun days...you bind the enemies outside of the boss gate.

That was awesome?

Like I'm not sure what you want here. If all of our skills did awesome damage we'd still just end up picking the ones that do the most and ignoring everything else.

Granted, SMN -does- need an actual useful AoE spell, but our AoE dots with bane, miasma II and sflare actually amount to a decent dps, without destroying our mana.

Of course not compared to Fire II (not even going to mention flare here), because BLM aoe is broken and the devs are stupid in thinking that an infinite resource class is balanced against all other classes in AoE.

[Cynfael]

Of course not compared to Fire II (not even going to mention flare here), because BLM aoe is broken and the devs are stupid in thinking that an infinite resource class is balanced against all other classes in AoE.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the devs never claimed that BLM or any other class was intended to be "balanced" against the others in AoE. That's like calling foul because MNK has a ridiculously high single-target damage ceiling that BLM can't touch outside of brief, RNG-powered bursts.

And yes, Tri-Disaster is garbage for anything other than PvP. A slow-casting, low potency AoE Bind when no one cares about Binding anything in PvE. The WP example is a legitimate use for speedrun utility, but the tank can just as easily sit on the boss gate and keep the mobs there until the lockout kicks in. I'm very happy that they are renaming this skill and providing a new "Tri-Disaster" in 3.0.

[pandabearcat]

I'm not sure what you're saying here, that because they never claimed balance that balance isn't needed...?

Ideally all classes should be able to be competent in both.

Or to put it another way, there should be a fairly even spread of dps so that no dps is top on every fight.

[Cynfael]

I'm not sure what you're saying here, that because they never claimed balance that balance isn't needed...?

Ideally all classes should be able to be competent in both.

Or to put it another way, there should be a fairly even spread of dps so that no dps is top on every fight.

I guess what I'm saying is that their balance game isn't about having all classes put out the same numbers in all situations. It's more about ensuring that all classes be generally viable and desirable in group play, which they've done pretty well at accomplishing. When BLM was undesirable for raid content, they got tweaked; when SMN suffered badly from MP problems, they got a tweak to make them more self-sustainable.

I don't think it's reasonable or even particularly fun to expect that every class perform the same in every fight. E.g. Part of the fun of playing BLM is having the best AoE in the game, while part of the fun of playing MNK/DRG/NIN is having untouchable single-target DPS if you play it right. If anything the "balance" favors the latter group since high AoE DPS is rarely required in more difficult content, while a high single-target damage ceiling is ALWAYS useful :P

[pandabearcat]

There were fights in fcob progression (namely t4) that you really almost couldn't do (or do nearly as easily) without a BLM.

This is the problem in a nutshell. You're right that we don't need everyone doing "the same" on every fight. But no class should be borderline mandatory for any fight.

If this is true for some of the single target fights, that is also incorrect.

[Alberel]

Apparently the line, "if you don't enjoy a particular job, try another" applies to every job but Summoner.

To be fair there are a lot of players out there, myself included, who enjoy pet classes as a gameplay mechanic. In every MMO I play, if there is a pet class that's what I play. For me personally the fact that SMN is this game's only pet job is what leaves me wanting to improve this job rather than switch to another; I already know I don't enjoy them as much as SMN.

As for the job changes in the expansion: we still don't know what other things have been changed. They only mentioned tri-disaster specifically in the live letter but had previously discussed some potentially more significant changes. The live letter served only as an overview of how the jobs would play in the expansion; most of the new skills weren't even named for most jobs and we were only given a few scant details regarding changes to current skills. I think it is too early to draw any conclusions regarding what changes we're going to see.

I'm personally happy with the Dreadwyrm Trance but I'm admittedly disappointed by their stance on new egis (primarily because their reasoning for omitting them was weak). I'm going to wait and see what this pet glamour system is before I grab my pitchfork though. If they give us the ability to summon any egi we want and have it perform any of the three roles we currently have I will actually be very happy.

[pandabearcat]

As a pet job, SMN behaves identically to WoW's hunters and warlocks.

As in, pets basically do their own thing and are a line item on your recount, nothing more.

What games have you been playing where a pet was significantly part of your gameplay experience?

[Alberel]

As a pet job, SMN behaves identically to WoW's hunters and warlocks.

As in, pets basically do their own thing and are a line item on your recount, nothing more.

What games have you been playing where a pet was significantly part of your gameplay experience?

FFXI, Aion, RFOnline, Vanguard... there are a LOT of MMOs out there that have featured the pet as the medium for all (or most) of your skills rather than casting them yourself. It's been done before and that is how Summoners in the FF universe have ordinarily worked in the past. WoW's Warlock works because the mechanics make sense within the lore of WoW's universe. FFXIV's Summoner does feel very cobbled together with it's random combination of elemental pets and a bunch of poison spells. The fact it imitates WoW's Warlock so closely is sort of the problem for many I think.

[Spiritreaver1217]

FFXI, Aion, RFOnline, Vanguard... there are a LOT of MMOs out there that have featured the pet as the medium for all (or most) of your skills rather than casting them yourself. It's been done before and that is how Summoners in the FF universe have ordinarily worked in the past. WoW's Warlock works because the mechanics make sense within the lore of WoW's universe. FFXIV's Summoner does feel very cobbled together with it's random combination of elemental pets and a bunch of poison spells. The fact it imitates WoW's Warlock so closely is sort of the problem for many I think.

Plan to continue reading all of the posts in this thread, but wanted to speak at FFXI's SMN a second. And why you really shouldn't hold that iteration of a pet job up as an example of anything, except an example of what NOT to do when making one.

In that game SMN was a trophy job for the most part until very much later in that games life-cycle. And that was because of, in no small part, the actual summons being the centerpiece of the job. Unfortunately, the stupid perpetuance cost coupled with a dearth of actual abilities for the SMN to use apart from summons led to SMNs being shoe-horned into a crappy, pseudo healer role by the playerbase using the non-native cures from a subjob and their massive MP pool. Also led to SMNs being told to not actually summon anything, or to summon quickly, use a pact, and quickly release-so as to not preclude any Cure 3 spam....

Now i'm not omniscient or anything like that, so i can't say that if the pets were the main focus of FFXIV's SMN they'd have turned out like XI's; but as it is the same company at the wheel, i am actually pretty glad they went the other way with it thus far.

On a not completely unrelated note, i remember from XI-and being a SMN there as well-many a time SMN's there asked for focus to be shifted from the summons some and back toward the summoner, as it is here in XIV. I personally would have put a few more direct dmg actions in the job's arsenal from the jump, instead of the over abundance of dot's, but that is just me. Most importantly though, here while the summon is still a good chunk of the job, SMNs are not gutted when a summon is killed.

Sorry for the ramble, but just seeing FFXI's SMN class being used as a positive example of pet class design(even briefly) made me cringe a bit. Loved the job in XI, but it was a hot mess for a long time before coming to some semblance of a functional design recently.

[pandabearcat]

All the games you mentioned iirc are gone now...possibly for good reason =P

It is actually nothing like WoW's lock gameplaywise. The classes in this game are not rotationally complex (nor proc based/reactive) in the least, and the primary point of this game is doing DDR with void zones, so its a different kind of complexity than WoW.

As I mentioned in a previous post, what people seem to actually want for SMN is for it to be a druid. You switch pets = switch forms, multitude of abilities, completely different combat roles. Etc. So this is a massive disconnect from what we have currently, so its not going to happen. Maybe for another class (beastmaster, blue mage maybe).

EDIT: I actually had the biggest gripe about SMN, is that their pets are called pets and pet actions, instead of summons. Its a pretty big hint here, but it would mean a lot to me if that entire section was called Summons.

And when mechanist comes out, their pet section will be called Tools (a la Edgar, the Machinist) or Turrets or something.