Another Upset Summoner

[Judge_Xero]

Yup, I think that's the 'Flare' line of spells are pretty much reserved for BLM at this point. Giving Mega/Tera/Whatever-Flare to SMN would be too much of a blurring between the two jobs. If any more Flares make it into the game as job skills, they'll be given to BLM.

This way we're more unique with regards to the other jobs (except SCH which we share our base class with ofc).

Flare is just a normal Black Magic Spell. I don't see any issue with SMN ever getting more Bahamut Skills.

[Natsuno]

Flare is just a normal Black Magic Spell. I don't see any issue with SMN ever getting more Bahamut Skills.

I coulda sworn Bahamut used it in a previous FF game but after looking it up it appears my memory has failed me, heh. It was mega flare I was thinking of, not the bog standard flare, so my argument is flawed. My apologies.

[Akiza]

Tera Flare is Bahamut's signature skill so giving it to Summoner under Dreadwyrm trance is not an issue.

I hope SE reduce the cool down of Enkindle to 60s since it's base damage is lower than Flare and around that of Fire III or astral 3 Fire.

[Havenchild]

I think what they showed in expansion was the best move they could have done with the direction of the class.

I very much agree that adding new pets makes no sense atm for this iteration of summoner. Again what is the point? I don't really care what they claimed would come because I have the common sense to know, things and plans change as the game progresses. To see people surprised they won't be giving egis right away especially after the swift changes that came to housing regardless of previous statements, to me shows people aren't really paying attention to the development process at all. Furthermore, they said we won't get new egis at this time, but that didn't mean never.

People keep saying add more pets and then in the same breath asking to give every pet a reason to be used? Please elaborate on how do you balance this correctly.
There will always be one pet that will come out on top of all the rest anyway. So why are we simply adding bloat to the class that in the end is gonna be a waste of development which gives rarely any benefit? Currently we have Ifrit surpassing Garuda in almost every situation even some AoE based ones where she is supposed to be good in. It's so bad at this point that you can use Ifrit in almost all scenarios even the ones Garuda is better and you would still see very little difference in damage. Ifrit has nearly invalidated Garuda entirely and this is only with three pets in play. The only way to get around this issue of the go- to pet, is if they were to allow us to use two pets at a time.

So now let's look at a few things:
There are some nuances of the class that should be tweaked.

Food hands down should affect pets, and if not from secondary stats AT LEAST ACC should be transferred. If we are gonna be subject to the same gear as other casting classes then we should both be using the same ACC. So either BLM should have to meet SMN ACC or SMN ACC should be lowered to match BLM. Works like this with melee or BRD currently yet SMN seems to be the only class being punished by this extra requirement.

The class needed some sort of better Burst tool. Sure you could use some things like ED and Ruin II combos but that wasn't exactly great. Although we don't know the entire picture just yet, perhaps this Tri-Disaster or Ahk Morn ability is essentially this "burst" option. We don't know entirely yet.

Pet AI: Needs cleaning up. Especially the times when Garuda or Ifrit refuse to use an ability for whatever reason. Also needs to fix the fact when pets decide to stop doing anything after an add dies sometimes.

Enkindle: This definitely needs to be lowered CD wise. 5mins is far too long for the amount of damage it does. We can fire off 3 Festers per min that will do the same or more damage then this ability. Please explain why this is still 5 mins.

Outside of those things, to be straight up, the SMN community as a whole and others who try to ask for certain buffs to the class, don't even play it to its full potential most of the time. So often enough, I see all this "advice" to help the classes performance, and meanwhile I'm sitting here thinking like, "I'm sure no ones thinking how crazy things can get unbalanced easily with SMN". Would I personally want to do more damage, sure because to me it doesn't make too much sense that BLMs do superior AoE and have a higher damage cap on single target but I also want it to be balanced with BLM alil because as soon as SMN has a high single target damage cap, it can very easily transfer over to doing more AoE damage due to Bane.

Both casters need to be valid for use. Overall though, everyone that seems to be complaining have no idea, what aspects will change about the class as we do not know everything yet. I main SMN throughly, and it even offends me that I feel like I'm part of a community of crybabies. Every other job community seems to be progressive in improving while SMNs just seem to whine and moan without even trying to compete against the other classes.

[Kuponutz]

I agree with almost everything you said Haven. Obviously the food thing and the Enkindle issue I had mentioned earlier but also the balancing to an extent. Of course there would need to be balancing to have the new pets put in but I think for a lot of us we thought this would be the time. I for one certainly didn't think we would get new pets and they would be able to put them in and not have to make adjustments. Early on in thread we discussed that the Elemental Wheel issue as the biggest roadblock here. But again, roadblock or none we thought the expansion would address this in addition to giving us new pets with new abilities. The disappointment happens when promised one thing and not really directly addressing it. I'm not saying they're not fixing it at all just that on Thurs we really needed to hear something constructive about some improvements that were coming and instead we were given a short clip of pretty lights and over-hyped ability names. It felt like the equivalent of a 5 yr old waiting for Xmas to come then when it does he gets a lump of coal, named "chocolate" and is supposed to be happy about said coal because it has a name that sounds like it would be good. There was nothing constructive offered and no acknowledgement of the SMN situation beyond "yea Tri-Disaster sucks we'll rename it and you give you a real one".

I swear if you had asked me a week ago what my biggest concerns were as a SMN Tri-Disaster was the last thing on my list. Although that could be because I haven't used in forever.

[Havenchild]

snip

All I'm saying, it's too soon to judge what we have and don't have. Half of your suggestions for example could be a simple part of patch notes that are guaranteed to hit every classes current skills. All they showed in that video in general for all classes was what was being added to the class. Fairly sure they they didn't even comment on how any of the classes current abilities would be changing. Not to mention we also don't know all of the affects of the new abilities and/or traits being added. Several things may very well change for the better but meanwhile everyone is going bananas now when we don't even know everything and even if this was everything, we still again don't know how much this changes the balance of power.

The Pets, perhaps a promise broken for now with the new Egis, but I refuse to believe the correct idea was to add more Pets when the current system has incredible flaws that need adjusting. Before we add more Pets let's fix the current issues we have with the ones available, after which we then fix the problem of the go-to pet. No one is saying more Egi's wont come just not at this time. Even if more didn't come, it's not a terrible idea to think that maybe just maybe they can expand on what we currently have ability wise of Pets and this may actually become a interactive class + SMN abilities.

Let's get rid of what everyone's ideal version of the FFXIV Summoner should be, because everyone is thinking differently there. Instead work on what we currently have and strengthen some of the current aspects of the class that are lacking. For now, I think they took one thing into consideration of SMN in 3.0. The cooldown period you have every 30 seconds until you get another set of Aetherflow stacks, which is big because that's where the main loss of DPS comes from. Their answer to that is Bahamut Trance which to me feels like an interesting new way of connecting summoners to the summons / primals. They could further expand on this side later on as an option while also working on new egis to become a summoner / evoker (channeler) combo. Who knows what else they could do. Another rather common complaint about SMN was that it was boring to look at when playing because it didn't have many flashy abilities at all so people weren't enticed by it. Two birds with one stone with this Trance ability. One step at a time I say.

The biggest thing I want from the class, is perhaps to streamline it alil. It's a very complex class to grasp and imo, too complex. The hardest part of it is maximization and many SMNs currently aren't capable of doing that because to me, it doesn't articulate well everything you need to do to get there. Just too much work to play the class correctly, and that to me, needs to be worked on the most. If anything I'm surprised people aren't up in arms that they may in fact be making it more complex with some of the current stuff we know being added. If people can't easily decipher how to play the class correctly, then to me that's just leading to further people abandoning the class because it's seeming more and more incapable of doing well when people consistently pull bad numbers but then you have a slightly simpler system in BLM.

[Kuponutz]

I agree with pretty much all you said there Haven. There has to be new abilities that we wont find out till right before launch. I am just scared to get too excited because I am paranoid that it's going to be another over-promise, under-deliver.

[Sunako]

We already have 2 type of attack pets. If we would get more pets, I believe those would be support pets and do similar thing as bard 2 be useful regenerate mana or tp and that would sacrifice our dps. Players have already whined from that summoner is too much support class and can not do enough damage. I hope they improve our old pets so there would be great situations where garuda would be lot better than ifrit or ifrit would be lot better than garuda. It is already pretty hard balance pets between those two. What comes to titan, it have like zero raid utility. Do you want more that kind of pets? I think it was good idea heavily improve our rotation since it is bit too much copy from scholars right now.

[Judge_Xero]

@Natsuno - no biggie. There's been so many skills over the FF years it's hard to keep track.
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Having each of the current pets fleshed out would be a huge bonus. I think some who want more pets, don't even realize that they have different purposes (other than Titan) and not just "use whatever one you like".
Garuda could use stronger AOE skills and Ifrit could use much stronger single target so you can distinctly classify them as such. (Ifrit flaming crush has no business being AOE)
These are all changes that could be coming in 3.0, which is definitely more important for SMN than say, another AOE or ST pet that doesn't quite accomplish its purpose.

[Dyvid]

Having each of the current pets fleshed out would be a huge bonus. I think some who want more pets, don't even realize that they have different purposes (other than Titan) and not just "use whatever one you like".
Garuda could use stronger AOE skills and Ifrit could use much stronger single target so you can distinctly classify them as such. (Ifrit flaming crush has no business being AOE)
These are all changes that could be coming in 3.0, which is definitely more important for SMN than say, another AOE or ST pet that doesn't quite accomplish its purpose.

Honestly I think devs and the community lack imagination when it comes to pets.

Ifrit - Single Target melee pet that adds dps buff to melee dps
Ramuh - Single Target range pet that adds dps buff to back line dps
Garuda - AoE range pet that adds back line dps buff
Shiva - AoE melee pet that adds melee dps buff (maybe tp regen so they can spam more AoE abilities)
Titan - Tank Defense buff in obey that can become emergency tank with sic
Levithan - slight healer buff / Crowd Control (mainly AoE push backs and binds to protect Mages from adds)

Change cast times to standard 2.5 and lower mp cost to encourage situation summons.