I think this game could use a warlock class.

[Eloah]

I never played the XI summoner, so I "sadly" cannot compare, but no 2 Final Fantasy games have ever had the summons the same, either in execution, style, or abilities. Most people seem to forget that things that work in a single player game usually don't work in a multiplayer game, like an MMO. Summoner in this game is fine, could a few things be improved yes, but is it a broken job, no. And is it a Summoner, YES!!!, it summons things, so please... SHUT UP.

Also, as an outsider who has never played XI, I have to say I only see two groups of people.

One group acknowledges that Summoner is not a broken job and has similar flaws to the other jobs, that a job such as this doesn't work as well in an MMO where other people are involved, if certain designs or mechanics are implimented: long summon sequence, big hulking monster, etc. They realize that there is no such thing as a "traditional" Summoner, since summons change from game to game.

The other group are the winers, who think XI's Summoner was the end all beat all, that no other MMO Summoner can top it. That XIV broke the Summoner job. Well I have a question for those who "love" that Summoner? What was your subjob? What were you doing when you weren't managing your pet? How many times did your big pet block your or someone elses view? Were the answers anything like: any Mage, since Summoner's benefit from the MP/magic boost, were you healing like a WHM or attacking like a BLM or standing around looking at your big summon, and wasn't that summon in you way once or twice? Think about it in every other Final Fantasy game any character who was a Summoner or you placed summons on, had other abilities, right? They had other skills to provide other uses, when SUMMONS WEREN'T NEEDED. You didn't have Yuna summon an Aeon everytime it was her turn, or Dagger and Eiko; and I'm sure most people use Rydia's BLM more than her summons since the spells were cheaper. And don't pretend anyone has ever used summons every time it was the summoners turn. We've all played RPGS, we all try to conserve our resources like MP when we can and use the bare minimum at times. Summons were/are just glorified trash killers. Why waste the MP on a summon that deals X amount of damage for YY MP when another spell does the same amount of damage for Y.

Okay closing my rant. People who like the XI Summoner, that is okay. I like XIV's Scholar, would I like it if I played XI, I dunno, will I like XI's if I ever get to play it, still dunno. But are they not a Scholar, yes, they are, just a different version. So please think about the series as a whole. There is no "traditional" Summoner, just different iterations, but please don't make it that SE broke the job, they didn't.

And also, technically Scholar is a Summoner in this game too, they just got the healing summons, should we bitch about them next?

[Mael-bess]

Never played FFXI but i don't fancy Summoner's in this game either.

My take on is summoners shouldn't have egi's with them all times and instead summons should be tied to limit break (of summoners), but for that the limit break would need to change, they could be personal instead of group and you could choose which limit break to use (you "equip" it before battle). When the gauge is full you just call a summon, they do his glorified thingy and they're gone, in the meantime SMN's do their spells like a regular mage.

Limit breaks would change for everyone ofc, every class would get their specific limit break. Anyway would this work here? Probably not, a lot would need to change and i don't see it being done or even working in the game, but this is how i would have liked it to be in the 1st place.

[Iromi]

I envy you. Endgame SMN with the people I played with was "Stand there and heal," or "Use Aerial Armor because this is before tanks knew how good /nin was," or more likely "Go change jobs."

Who did you play with? That is odd. I was a SMN main in FFXI since release (2003) I got my WHM up to 60 fairly quickly and then did the lv65 avatar fights. In end game on my SMN I did sub WHM but never touched the spells, only sneak and invis to get to the camp. My LS leaders had me do damage...always. I was put in a PT with a brd and rdm and had my pet out all the time with my AF2 (I got the full set very quickly,w as lucky lol)

The only "healing" I did on SMN was in EXP PT. in end game it was always damage, damage, damage. I played with JP/NA mix and we did a lot of world firsts and fought all the hard stuff. Bringing a SMN to heal in end game was a very mediocre thing to do. WHM was far superior. I am not defending FFXI SMN, I do not want that in this game either, but that is just absurd. Sure, now and then I would throw a Cure if someone went in the red but that wasn't too often unless playing with bad players...

Most smn's I know completely micromanage their Egi's skills, very little is left to "the pet just doing it's thing", same with most sch's that I know

The only micromanaging I do is put Garuda on obey...and Ifrit is left on auto. From what I am told I am always top damage dealer by our raid leader and we've gotten many clears. Lol Summoner has very little pet managing to do. The main focus is the upkeep of dots, trance and what not. Nothing to do with pets...which makes no sense, seeing how in 1.x the player poll wanted a PET CLASS the most. This is NOT a pet class, it is a dot class.

What I wouldn't mind having is Aion's spirit master. The pet's would evolve, were a pretty decent size, and the Spirit Master themselves had dots too..but the main and powerful attacks came from the pet. It was a good balance, at least when I played it was.

[DragonFlyy]

snip

Unfortunately, lore must always take a back seat to mechanics, otherwise there would be some horribly over powered classes. Such as summoner, could you imagine how weak an egi would be to allow all three or more summoned at once. Unless you want people to be able to one shot a boss without a party.

[Duelle]

The only "healing" I did on SMN was in EXP PT. in end game it was always damage, damage, damage. I played with JP/NA mix and we did a lot of world firsts and fought all the hard stuff. Bringing a SMN to heal in end game was a very mediocre thing to do..

That's kind of the thing, though. You have a job that was used as a poor-man's healer for most of its life. The worst part was that no one expected SMN to do anything other than healbot until the lv70 Blood Pacts came in. Of course, that still leaves levels 1-69...

The main focus is the upkeep of dots, trance and what not.

If we're talking about SMN mechanics, I think the focus should really be on Dreadwyrm Trance. I remember people were celebrating when that was revealed and saying "omg i get to become bahamut" instead of asking "wait, where are the pet abilities I thought I was getting with the expansion?".

Unfortunately, lore must always take a back seat to mechanics, otherwise there would be some horribly over powered classes. Such as summoner, could you imagine how weak an egi would be to allow all three or more summoned at once. Unless you want people to be able to one shot a boss without a party.

Not necessarily. Temp summons would be one way to do it. Say, you summon Ravana-egi to auto attack the mob for 15 seconds, and upon hitting the 15 second mark it does an egi version of Chandrahas (that deals reasonable damage) and then vanishes. And there's nothing that prevents temp summons from being more fragile than egis.

[Iromi]

That's kind of the thing, though. You have a job that was used as a poor-man's healer for most of its life. The worst part was that no one expected SMN to do anything other than healbot until the lv70 Blood Pacts came in. Of course, that still leaves levels 1-69...
If we're talking about SMN mechanics, I think the focus should really be on Dreadwyrm Trance. I remember people were celebrating when that was revealed and saying "omg i get to become bahamut" instead of asking "wait, where are the pet abilities I thought I was getting with the expansion?".

Oh yeah, levels 1-69 was a healer with some semi decent buffs haha.

And yeah I remember that too...soo many threads lol. I do enjoy playing SMN right now, I doubt SE will change anything about it, the only thing I can hope for at this point is slightly better looking egi (like the ones in titan extreme or ramuh) ..

[LineageRazor]

I have no issue with SMN being DoT DPS. I never played WoW, so even if SMN is a "Warlock clone", it still feels like a fresh and unique take on the SMN class for me.

As for FFXI's SMN... Certainly, while I played and enjoyed the SMN job is FFXI, I don't have a great deal of nostalgia for it. Because of how they were implemented in that game, SMN was little more than a half-assed WHM. Summons were too costly to keep out for any length of time, and they could only use abilities once per minute. Essentially, a level 75 SMN's role was that of a level 37 WHM with a crapton of MP. They only ever felt like a "classic" SMN at most once every two HOURS, when they could use Astral Flow - and even that was discouraged in general play due to the fact that it drained all of the SMN's MP. The situation did improve for SMNs eventually, but it took a long, long time.

So, I'm fine with FFXIV's take on SMN. I do have to say, though, I like the idea of SMN casting all or most of their spells by giving commands to the pet. The SMN doesn't cast Bio, Miasma, etc - the pet does, by command. It would give more of a feel that the SMN is commanding her thrall to fight for her, rather than doing most of the fighting herself with a pet providing support. For that to work, though, the pet would need to be a whole lot sturdier, maybe even indestructable, since a SMN would be pretty much helpless without it, rather than just inconvenienced as they are now.

[Mycow8me]

For some reason, i get the feeling that the people saying smn was only useful for healing and stould there doing hardly anything were either playing with terrible summoners or tried the class and never made it to endgame.
Low level summoner on ffxi was no different than any other class other than... Thief. The reason summoners ended up healing was cause of the shortage of healers. I found alot of parties that let me dps with my pet and staff and did a fair amount of damage. Lets not forget staff weaponskills. The NA playerbase had this ideology that you needed a skillchain starter War/drk/etc and a thf or sub thf and then a blm. Funny thing is, even a good summoner could magic burst off the skillchains or participate in creating the skillchains, blm was not required. Smn was good dps. Alot of the healer summoners were the people who only had carbuncle at the start cause they didnt get the primals... till they introduced the lvl 20 avatar fights after the devs noticed the problem.

Endgame summoners had free mp cost diabolos and fenrir as well as 45 second bloodpacts with an ability that eliminated bloodpact recast.. camon. higher level unlocked staff skills were very strong. Sub was strictly redmage for refresh and convert. Elemental siphon for mp as well. We practically never had to heal for mp.

I realize this isnt ffxi but ffxivs summoner IS basically an arcanist still with no change. There was no shift to utilizing a pet with special powers and abilities. Theres no special bond or connection. Ffs sometimes i notice ffxiv summoners forget to even smn their pet, cant say i blame them since their really isnt any skills for interaction that are powerful or necessary? Even scholars pets skills are more useful to hotbar. The irony...

[jazo]

LOL @ people wanting a big cast big damage summon attacks, do you play BLM??? have you played BLM on lvl 60 stuff? have you had to move out of AoEs interrupting a fire-X? now think on how frustrating that would be with longer cast times.


I mained SMN on FFXI for years, loved the quest, the avatars, the challenge etc, but it was the most ignored job by devs, or better said, the job that scared the devs the most to give new toys. The upkeep MP you needed, the stats that didn't matter on you char as avatars did all the job, the role of healer up to lvl 70, and then later in end game stuff with the updates so avatars buffed the party you became a sad kid with a diabolos balloon that was only used to refresh the BLM party in dynamis (as using the buffs cut the avatars dps, so you needed a meticulus dance of throwing a bloodpact once in a while) but at least at that time yo used an avatar other than Garuda (poor titan, poor ifrit, etc)

Seriously FFXIV SMN people, just admit that you are ok with the job and your complain is that your avatar is minion size and not the model of the primal. If you had the models and with FFXI size you would... complain that you only have 3.

[LineageRazor]

Endgame summoners had free mp cost diabolos and fenrir as well as 45 second bloodpacts with an ability that eliminated bloodpact recast.. camon. higher level unlocked staff skills were very strong. Sub was strictly redmage for refresh and convert. Elemental siphon for mp as well. We practically never had to heal for mp.

These much-needed changes came VERY late in FFXI's timeline. The only avatar that came close to free for a long, long time was Carbuncle - and Poison Nails wasn't exactly what anyone would call l33t deeps.

No, until SE caved in to years and years of complaints, party SMNs were healers, and endgame SMNs were... well, not wanted, except for certain niche fights that called upon specific skills - usually Astral Flow, but occasionally also for long, drawn-out fights where the enmity cap was a serious enough issue that you had BLMs logging in and out to reset hate; Avatar attacks are VERY low enmity (or, rather, the enmity was all on the pet, not the SMN, and the pet taking hate and dying was a trivial concern), which made them an attractive option for fights like Kirin that could take an hour or longer to complete.

Yes, SMN eventually came into its own as a legitimate DPS class, and even had a few non-Carbuncle avatars that it could keep out perpetually. Heck, by the time of Adoulin, SE even reduced Avatar costs to the point where a SMN could keep ANY Avatar out. Even so, even at its finest, SMN was passable DPS, not great. A party leader given the choice would pick almost any DPS over a SMN, with the possible exception of PUP or THF (and PUP was actually pretty good DPS in the right hands; so few people could play it properly, though, that party leaders rarely gave them the chance to show it). Again, except for certain niche fights where SMN-specific talents were particularly desirable.

Well, at least until SE decided partway through Adoulin that all endgame NMs should have aoe attacks that murder any non-tank without Utsusemi (and sometimes, even then), making bow SAMs and RNGs the only DPS worth having. SMN were okay there, too (even if they were a distant third choice, after SAM and RNG). :P