Summoner revamp

[Greedalox]

We have who because SMNs use their own aether to create them and not a stockpile of crystals.

This is the 4.0 Summoner preparing to summon Shiva in full!

[Neophyte]

Well, how often does a SMN summons a summon in those fancy games you showed in the first post? One or two times?
And to be fair: In all those games SMN was a discount black mage (or white mage) with a collection of extra spells. I.e. a SMN has no single 'own' abilities despite the summonings.
So, what's it then: Until 50 a thaumaturg with up to three 5 min CD summons? Or a conjurer?

Also please revamp fighter.
I want strong (auto-)attack, double and triple auto-attack, auto counterattack and berserk (which is basically auto run auto attack). Maby a few more abilities, idk. Thx.

[Ephryos]

Honestly I don't mind the current summoner's combat style and trances are interesting, but I still wish there was more actual interaction between you an the egi. Like I love how Enkindle is a spell that is based on the summoner's stats but is a command that has your pet perform the action. I think it would feel much more interactive if most of the summoners spells were actually spells they used through their egi instead of just by themselves.

Also, I hate the way the egis look with a passion, I love the idea of having a smaller version of the actual primal with how stunning most of them look. The egis are boring and bland. I also hate how every time you fight another egi in the summoner quest line it's like 5 times the size of your egi but still looks just as boring. And it doesn't even make sense since most of the time your egi is just as powerful, if the size is scaled to the power it makes no sense.

[Loggos]

I’ll split this up because I have a character limit for some reason… My apologies! - Edit Found a way to solve this. Sorry for the remaining double posts!

I think SMN in itself is on the right track but should rely on their summons more. I feel that a lot of its potential is untouched which is saddening which is why I'll try to make some unsolicited suggestions to expand the current SMN instead of completely revamping it. I understand it not making sense to have every SMN summon a full-blown Ifrit and I don't mind egis.

This is why I think the DoTs suit the class. It's an indirect playing style whereas the source of your direct hits could be your pet. But as many pointed out the pets seem to be the add-on. They are not the main source while you are in the background doing your DoT work and keeping them alive. They are the “background noise” or occasional DoT enhancer.

(I also think its no crime if XIV gives some of the FF legacy a different spin if done well and explores different routes to some extends.)


I wish they would put some more spotlight on the summons like having them learn at least one or two more important skills and not stick with four forever and maybe have them grow a little as you progress (improved aether management lorewise), and/or maybe slightly elaborating on the design every ten levels or so (comparable to armour that gets fancier and fancier to indicate how badass and highlevel you are.) Also the fact that some are almost universally preferred over others is not good imo. I know this is incredibly hard to balance but I would love to for egis to have more actual situational use or a bit more freedom to choose between summons for one situation in a "different but equal(ly effective)" type of way.

And while I really like dreadworm stance->Deathflare I’m afraid that choosing the ">summoning a beast/stance for one strong blast and then it'll disappear<in different versions as main source for DPS" route, if one were to revamp SMN, might ultimately turn it into “just” a strong caster with fancy animation and story. Its uniqueness might rather stem from the lore/visuals and not so much from mechanics. I think splitting damage by micro-managing pets and inducing indirect damage as back-up is quite unique and personally I enjoy this a lot.

One last idea – I’ll pretend to be joking while being at least half serious.

Another idea would be the Shiva route – turn into a beast yourself for a short amount of time. This might also help to work around the "no more egis" issue without sacrificing the identity of the summoner.

It sounds wacky but I think it could be unique and effective if well-planned. As you have limited aether you’d not be as strong, big and longlasting as a real primal ofc but would have a very short time frame to cause condensed higher damage.
Originally this was inspired by the manticore orb in DD. However the best comparison I have for this would be when you play charizard in supersmash and have your mega evo as smash attack for a limited time. Of course this would need a lot more balancing (than the manticore for example) but having one (or two, depending on the future level caps) “ultimate commands” that let you channel a primal within yourself for ~10 s and you get 2 or 3 skills+stats that make sense for them to cause a damage peak, then slap a long(er) cd on it – I would so play that…Also, since it happens in the actual story it would be in line with FF14's idea of summoning.

Maybe glamour could also be used much later on to customize your final form.

[Eloah]

Dear god no, not another one of these threads. Does Summoner have flaws, yes, can these flaws be fixed, yes, maybe with the next expansion. But, is it a traditional Summoner, no, but neither was 13s, 12s, 11s, 10s, 9s, 8s, 7s, 6s, 5s, 4s, or 3s, hmm... looks like no Final Fantasy has ever had a traditional Summoner, how about that. I guess they all had their own individual versions that each just had similar concepts but different executions, imagine that. And please if you wanna argue issue with Summoner, don't bring up 11, your shooting yourself in the foot if you do that. Instead if you want to make a valid point, express the issues with the summons and ways you feel they can be fixed.

And I semi agree with what zcrash970 said, giving us more trance-like abilities might help. That way people might feel like their summons are doing one big attack and then leaving. Then maybe these threads will stop appearing, and people will shut up.

Signed a pissed Scholar, (PS. Don't touch my job ;P )

[Hasrat]

That image is so weird. VII didn't have any summoners, just summons. I guess in theory you could make your own summoner if you want, but it wouldn't be very efficient, high cost, very squish.
VIII, why is Phoenix displayed? It was one of very few things you couldn't directly summon. And also, still no summoners this game.
Summoners in IX were just White Mages with summons.
Why is X-2 Yuna next to Anima? They couldn't even get the games right on that one. And again, summoner just tacked onto white mage (although in a much more expanded role I guess).
XII had a good set of summons, too, but still no summoner. Plus I don't know of anyone that ever consistently used/relied on them in that game.

Summoner has always struck me as a role with a very loose definition. And most often that depends greatly on the story of the game. I don't really mind it as is, but sure, there's plenty of other designs they could've used. Maybe it would've been cool to use "summons" as a stance. Ifrit-stance, Titan-stance, etc. Skills adjusting accordingly. Idk. But, this is what we got. Probably they didn't want the class to seem totally useless if the pets die, so probably better to not make the class completely reliant on them.

[Kabooa]

Summoner has always struck me as a role with a very loose definition.

In the single player Final Fantasy games, Summons represented early and mid-game power spikes. No one could Thunder as hard as Ramuh until later levels, where the damage cap was approached and the casting time of summons were far longer than the casting times of Bolt3.

The role summoners played were all-target heavy nukers, and in further iterations (Such as Final Fantasy 10) when the damage limit was extended, Summoner power lasted a little longer, up until you could haste a fighter and get 99,999 damage hits on every hit at 1/5 the turn cost. The long and the short of it, though, is that games with upward power scaling with stat caps made summons feel very weak in the lategame.

[Cabalabob]

Before 2.0 yoshi said he didn't want a smn job because he wanted summons to feel like super powerful beings, and that having a summoner job has to have balanced summons which belittles them being powerful. But he added smn due to popular demand and went as far out of his way as he could to make summons the exact opposite of powerful to the point where they are basically nothing more than an auto attack.

So the simple reason summons in 14 are bad is because the director is spiteful!

The reason people dislike summoner in 14 is because it's just so backwards, instead of focusing on your pet as your primary means of doing damage, with casting spells being something to do in your pet's downtime, casting spells is what you do primarily and your pet is an afterthought. That simply is not a summoner. It doesn't matter if 14 wants a "different take on summoner". it's the fact that what they've produced is not a summoner that displeases people.

And no, more trances is not the way to go. Trances were a bandaid for SMN because it was so poorly designed (in 2.x SCH could out damage SMN) and they pull summoner even further away from being a summoner and even more towards the player doing everything while the pet watches and auto attacks.

But sadly, since 3.0 I'm in the camp of summoner cannot be saved. It should just be renamed to evoker and free up summoner to be a future job in another expansion and hopefully done right.

That image is so weird. VII didn't have any summoners, just summons. I guess in theory you could make your own summoner if you want, but it wouldn't be very efficient, high cost, very squish.
VIII, why is Phoenix displayed? It was one of very few things you couldn't directly summon. And also, still no summoners this game.
Summoners in IX were just White Mages with summons.
Why is X-2 Yuna next to Anima? They couldn't even get the games right on that one. And again, summoner just tacked onto white mage (although in a much more expanded role I guess).
XII had a good set of summons, too, but still no summoner. Plus I don't know of anyone that ever consistently used/relied on them in that game.

The caption on the picture says SUMMONS not SUMMONERS. The point of the picture is to show that summons in all other ff games are like stallions and then ffxiv got a shetland pony.

[Neophyte]

1. How could a SCH (which has same toolkit as SMN.. but without a pet, which deals about 30% of your dps as extra dps + damage oGCDs) out dps a SMN?
He has literally nothing (except healing) to deal more damage then the SMN, even on 50.

2. There are many things that speak against the 'usual' summons:

• game mechanics don't allow X giant creatures covering everything (imagine a 24 man raid with 6 SMN [could be up to 15])
• no elemental weaknesses: what will differentiate Ifrit, Ramuh, Shiva, Titan, Bahamuth, Leviathan, Garuda?
• no crowd control effects on bosses (only adds), not much CC in general; only a handfull of traditional FF-buffs available; no fancy stuff like Zantszuken...
• Arcanist/SMN still needs (idk) ~20 class-related GCD/oGCDs... this is a game system, where everyone is supposed to do something every ~2,5s to keep up a 'rotation' or fulfill a 'priority list', while doing dodge-/stack- or other mechanics: SMN in all those listed other FF-games was just: stand there and cast spells of other classes and then go invulnerable while you get your big thing out (until it casts his signature attack or dies).
• lore

Things like 'summons', but also every other command/ability has to fit the game mechanics and lore. In FF10 summons where supposed as shields for the group as well, to counter specific attacks. In others they were only big damage spells. In other ones they were motorcycles and bound to a character and not a class/job.

[YohSL]

2. There are many things that speak against the 'usual' summons:

1: They don't need to be as large as the originals, just larger then your character on average. You could also implement a transparent effect when summons get between you and the camera.
2: Elemental properties could be something they implement correctly on the back end, since it's sort of there but doesn't really do anything atm. It's really no different then distinguishing Black Mages spells as is.
3: This still leaves room for debuffs and buffs, and CC is still will have it's usages, just not on bosses.
4: A summoner could buff/debuff, keep their summon alive, perhaps resource management.
5: Lore wise I'd imagine that first you wouldn't be summoning the primals themselves, but rather smaller avatars of them, lowing the cost requirement. But perhaps the advent of new technology to fill in the gaps and make the process easier. Like how computers made complex calculations easy.