I think this game could use a warlock class.

[Xaeth]

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.

I totally agree. I just find it funny that in making this argument in the lore as for why we can't have more than 3 egis, they kinda made it questionable why we can't have more than one egi active at the same time.
And now we're getting the egis anyway albeit as glamour. I can't wait how they try to justify this in the lore as it contradicts their earlier statement... :P

[AnaviAnael]

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)

A lot of people had zero idea what a SMN could do. Plain and simple. Either they didn't play the job and therefore "it must suck," or they played with bad SMNs who gave people the impression the job was garbage. A lot of jobs in FFXI suffered that fate (people don't know the job/play job poorly and it must be the job's fault).

I totally agree. I just find it funny that in making this argument in the lore as for why we can't have more than 3 egis, they kinda made it questionable why we can't have more than one egi active at the same time.
And now we're getting the egis anyway albeit as glamour. I can't wait how they try to justify this in the lore as it contradicts their earlier statement... :P

Lore: The cause of and solution to all of XIV's problems XD

[Mycow8me]

(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)

Thats funny i could say the same in regards to early summoners. No, the main reason summoners were healers is because there was always a healer shortage for party exp. It was so bad sometimes you found yourself using rdm and anything else that could toss side cures, which is what the na community ended up doing with summoner. Most only had carbuncle and were trying to get the class leveled anyway only healing setting a unwanted standard. Free mp cost would have been way unfair downtime wise against blm anyway. I never dissapointed parties as a dps when i was in a group even with mp cost. All it took was learning skill chain combos, having all your avatars, knowing how to magic burst if you were the burster, and using the wiki charts and graphs to find out blunt/piercing/slashing weaknesses of mobs and using the best pacts for it.
Free mp casts later on just made smn avatar favor more reliable. Dps was good even before it. I was using smn back when cap was 75 and sky was fresh. So i know what i know. Guess i agree to disagree.

[Warlyx]

FFXI's BLM was kinda like SMN , cast 1 spell once in a blue moon and rest ....casting 2 spells back to back was agro , and blm used to cast low tier spells in order to keep dpsing w/ agroing , only being able to free nuke on aoe spam (with other blm ) rotating AOE spam with Sleepga even

thats what made SMN shine , that could use 1k+ attacks w/o agroing at all :P

[magdahmhara]

if only the summoner........COMMANDED the pet to do all the work , instead of the summoner casting spells....kinda like enkindle but with 75% of the spells... u know summoner summon things to do the work for him/her....u are there to help, no the other way around , u can heal it , buff it to do more dmg ...the summon should do 80% of the dmg and smn 20%...

if SE implements BST i hope is has more synergy with the beast .....

Too much delay in this game. It would take twice as long for spells to hit. Nice idea on paper but the reality would be terrible for dps.

[FeliAiko]

I like how every time there's a cry for a 'traditional Summoner' it tends to refer to the XI version... which is merely iteration of the FFX SMN, which in turn is another iteration of the Job from previous FFs. In other words, there's hardly been a 'traditional' SMN since the Job in question has always been something different throughout the FF series. Only common link they've all had is they summon things. Well in XIV, they summon 'shades' of a Primal's power (Egi), so the definition still fits. You don't have to like the iteration of SMN here, but let's not act as if SE's somehow done a complete disservice to a Job that's hardly had a consistent, defining identity in the first place, compared to actual traditional Jobs like BLM, WHM, DRG, etc.

[Mael-bess]

I like how every time there's a cry for a 'traditional Summoner' it tends to refer to the XI version... which is merely iteration of the FFX SMN, which in turn is another iteration of the Job from previous FFs. In other words, there's hardly been a 'traditional' SMN since the Job in question has always been something different throughout the FF series. Only common link they've all had is they summon things. Well in XIV, they summon 'shades' of a Primal's power (Egi), so the definition still fits. You don't have to like the iteration of SMN here, but let's not act as if SE's somehow done a complete disservice to a Job that's hardly had a consistent, defining identity in the first place, compared to actual traditional Jobs like BLM, WHM, DRG, etc.

You know what's also common with all those other FF titles except FFXIV? Summons were always massive, threatening entities, that you call once in a while to destroy your enemies. Not pokemon versions of them that you have constantly by your side in battle.

[FeliAiko]

You know what's also common with all those other FF titles except FFXIV? Summons were always massive, threatening entities, that you call once in a while to destroy your enemies. Not pokemon versions of them that you have constantly by your side in battle.

Doesn't matter how you slice it, XIV's SMN still fulfills the criteria off the fact that, like the others before it, they summon things. Whether it's screen-filling size avatars or otherwise is irrelevant. Your dislike of the XIV SMN doesn't mean it's not a SMN.

[Mael-bess]

Doesn't matter how you slice it, XIV's SMN still fulfills the criteria off the fact that, like the others before it, they summon things. Whether it's screen-filling size avatars or otherwise is irrelevant. Your dislike of the XIV SMN doesn't mean it's not a SMN.

Loads of games have classes that summon things (WoW Warlock, GW necromancer, ect), that doesn't makes them summoners (FF summoners). The fact they are this way in FFXIV is mostly to not get in the way of gameplay, like many folks have stated, such as summons too big will clutter your screen.
But you are right, this is my opinion, i don't like how they are here while having previous FF's in mind, SE has every right to call them summoners, i just don't agree with it.

[Belhi]

I totally agree. I just find it funny that in making this argument in the lore as for why we can't have more than 3 egis, they kinda made it questionable why we can't have more than one egi active at the same time.
And now we're getting the egis anyway albeit as glamour. I can't wait how they try to justify this in the lore as it contradicts their earlier statement... :P

Wait. My understanding of the lore is our inability to summon Ramuh had nothing to do with how many Egis we had but rather the primal Ramuh. Primals have different levels of power and it seems different levels of potential power. Having unsummoned Egis doesn't drain you of power. The issue is summoning them in the first place. We couldn't summon a Ramuh Egi because summoning a Ramuh Egi required more Aether than we had. Same reason we wouldn't be able to summon a Bahamut Egi. The WoL simply lacks the Aetheric reserves to summon an Egi of a Primal that powerful. That also means that Ramuh is more powerful than Titan, Ifrit and Garuda but I can believe that.

As for explaining us being able to summon stronger Egis, it would be easy to explain, particularly since research into Allag Summoners was far from over. Potentially their may be a way to perform a more efficient summoning ritual, it might require some form of special equipment such as supercharging our soulstone or it could simply be that we have grown stronger. Don't forget there is precedence in lore where the Ascian fused several of Tristan's soulstones together to allow him to summon Belias Egi.

You know what's also common with all those other FF titles except FFXIV? Summons were always massive, threatening entities, that you call once in a while to destroy your enemies. Not pokemon versions of them that you have constantly by your side in battle.

I can see why they wouldn't go with such a model in this game though. It would be too restrictive to the class as effectively its just a Job that revolves entirely around big burst CDs. Balancing those and making them effectively impressive would be difficult in FF14's combat system. They would have to be a DPS class and to accommodate making those Summons impressively destructive enough the Summoner would be quite weak without them. This would in particular be an issue in fights where mechanically timing the Summon CDs was difficult and if fights where big burst was needed Summoners might be viewed as mandatory. Further they would be a nightmare to balance between PvE and PvP.

Its the same reason that if we ever get Blue Mage, its not going to be the old style blue mage. What worked in FF11's combat system wont necessarily work in FF14.