Summoner revamp

[YohSL]

I recently returned to the game after years since launch, and the one thing that partially ruined my experience and was a massive disappointment, and continues to do so, is the Summoner.

Mainly in the fact that it's not really a summoner. Because it yaknow, doesn't really summon anything. It's a discount black mage with a pet. And with Havensward it's continuing on it's wrong headed trajectory.
And while I can understand why the Summoner ended up the way it did from a development perspective at re-launch, I don't accept that it should continue to do so going forward.



continued......

[YohSL]

I think it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what a summoner is and does. Summoners don't have pets, they don't do most of the damage themselves with a pet to supplement, that would be more of a Beastmaster or Puppetmaster.
Summons are their partners, where they do heavy lifting and you support them and fight vicariously through them. They are your weapon and shield both. They are not your pets.

Almost every other game in the franchise gets this right. Esp FF11, where you went on an epic quest for each and everyone of your summons, where they felt like part of your family by the time you were done.

[YohSL]

In FF14 the summons would be the Primals. Not crappy little elemental version of them, ie Egi. But Avatars of the Primals themselves. Basically smaller, thou still quite large compared to your character, with perhaps a few cosmetic differences.

And it wouldn't be the first time in the series where an originally antagonistic summon becomes your ally in the end, usually after defeating them in battle and proving your worth to them. So Lore wise there shouldn't be anything prevent this.
(not a lore expert)

It would also save on modelling and animating entirely new pets for the summoner, since many of the primals are already done. As for the skills that the summoner/arcanist already has, how about repackaging it and putting it into a new job that is purely about direct dot damage.


You recycle the work that's already been done, and Summoners actually get to bloody summon.
Also the Scholar could also stand to get a little love in this department as well, even if their selection is limited purely to the healing and supportive primals, like Siren and Mog King.

However as it stands, I will never accept this 'thing' as a summoner. It's not.

[Duelle]

Esp FF11, where you went on an epic quest for each and everyone of your summons, where they felt like part of your family by the time you were done.

And like unwanted relatives, you left them hidden where no one could see them while you spent your MP bar to heal in parties, since avatars had no justifiable reason for being out sans Astral Flow until the lv70 Blood Pacts were introduced. Yes, avatar potency scales with summoning skill, blood pacts were split into ward/rage, bloodpact recasts were shortened, and perpetuation was eased up, but that stuff was implemented almost a decade too late. Before that, SMNs had to deal with the inherently terrible design for avatars.

And it wouldn't be the first time in the series where an originally antagonistic summon becomes your ally in the end, usually after defeating them in battle and proving your worth to them. So Lore wise there shouldn't be anything prevent this.

There's a pretty good reason for this. Summons in prior games were independent entities that can choose to help you. FFXIV primals are built on a LOT of faith & crystals and are more like concepts brought to life, heavily reflecting the desires of those doing the summoning. Now consider that even if you alone could amass the crystals needed, you still lack the needed prayers/faith to do a summoning. Also consider that the machinery needed to simulate prayers for summoning is gigantic (I'm talking about something about the size of a building).

Egis are essentially constructs of aetherial residue that you can tap/control without a) the need for massive amounts of crystals, b) massive amounts of faith, and c) won't have an easy time killing you the way a full primal would. Lore and concept-wise it makes perfect sense why you have egis instead of full primals.

If anything, I'd focus on the fact that the egi system hasn't been built upon going into the expansion (looking at you, Dreadwyrm Trance). That's a better talking point for wanting to see improvements to SMN rather than what the egis look like.

[MagiusNecros]

I've said it before. Summoner is a complete joke. Poor man's Necromancer. But half the players love their Super Arcanist so I really think the traditional Summoner is screwed. SMN is pretty much lol garuda DoT spread lolcontagion and then spam fancy oGCD's and ruin popguns.

Ifrit is barely used and Titan Egi is well an afterthought.

Tank enmity ratio's got buffed. Guess who didn't? Titan Egi.

Any new pet skills in HW? Nope. When was their last skill? 40. What level are you now? 60.

[Iromi]

I've said it before. Summoner is a complete joke. Poor man's Necromancer. But half the players love their Super Arcanist so I really think the traditional Summoner is screwed. SMN is pretty much lol garuda DoT spread lolcontagion and then spam fancy oGCD's and ruin popguns.

Ifrit is barely used and Titan Egi is well an afterthought.

Tank enmity ratio's got buffed. Guess who didn't? Titan Egi.

Any new pet skills in HW? Nope. When was their last skill? 40. What level are you now? 60.

This. SMN is a joke. It is not a PET class at all...it is a poison class. In 1.x we took a poll asking for a pet class, not some DoT mage with a "pet" that just stands there and shoots. contagion should have been a SMN ability long ago, more pets added and more abilities about the pet..not us.

It has been my "main" since 2.0 pre launch...and dont get me started on the pet glamours.

And as for the FFXI hate, SMN is totally different now. It is purely about the pets, buffs, debuffs, damage, and magical casting. We do not even sub /WHM anymore and rarely heal. You'll heal on SMN in FFXI as much as you physic in XIV. No one is asking for a SMN to stand there and heal in XIV...who in the world wants that?

People want a class that is about the pet and feels like the pet is a big role. That is easy to fix in XIV.

Just allow multiple pets with diff abilities. Hastega for the PT, how bout a cure ability that cleanses debuffs and heals a little. Then we can have abilities to make the pet cast strong magic. wnat more buffs..sure how bout increase stats on the PT. Refresh..etc..the possibilities are there but we are left with this bland job instead and battle system.

[Eloah]

same old stuff that has been said to death

Hmm... so a pet that has a hastega effect on the party, a cure ability, a cleanse ability... hmmm? Now i could be wrong but that sounds like a Scholar. Lets see, a cure, sounds like Embrace and Whispering Dawn, a cleanse, Fey Caress, a Hastega, hmm.. Fey Wind perhaps.

Seeiously, not to sound mean but please think before you post things like this.

[MagiusNecros]

Don't be a nitpick. The core concern you should care about is having the Pet be the bulk of the dps output. And not a glorified DoT. Players wanted a Pet class and they completely failed to deliver. Playstyle should be around the pet and not the master.

Funny thing with Titan Egi though. When it was able to Tank Ramuh Ex...the devs pretty much said "no no no a summoner beating content through it's pet? Poppycock! nerf nerf nerf"

Yeah exactly.

Why doesn't Ifrit have a line AoE rushdown attack? What about a party wide Earthen Ward? What about Rage of the Land being a Quake attack that does aoe damage with massive range? Why aren't we getting new egi's with new skills as primals get defeated and the SMN pulls partial strength from them? SMN doesn't need to summon the real thing. It could be a damn Astral Projection if they wanted it to be.

Why can we trance an Elder Primal but fail at life to conjure a sissy egi of Ramuh...who isn't a Elder Primal?

And then the kicker between BLM and SMN

SMN - Not enough aether. Can't summon shit. Taking aether from wasteland planet is bad.

BLM - Who cares. Take all the aether and mix it with your own and make em go boom.

But I'm sure Egi glamour will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE. Surely it will make me say "oh yes that's a summoner all right". NOT.

[WhiteArchmage]

Why can we trance an Elder Primal but fail at life to conjure a sissy egi of Ramuh...who isn't a Elder Primal?

And then the kicker between BLM and SMN

SMN - Not enough aether. Can't summon shit. Taking aether from wasteland planet is bad.

BLM - Who cares. Take all the aether and mix it with your own and make em go boom.

Lore reason or gameplay reason? Because both have answers.
Lore: We've stretched our own aether so thin that we're literally unable to attune and conjure another egi. A trance is the next best thing since we're taking that essence unto ourselves, and it's not like "oh, allagan summoners could summon whatever they wanted" because they couldn't, and the trance IS an allagan technique. Maybe in the future we'd get a Frost Trance, or a Levin Trance or whatever Alexander's title is, but for now we've spent so much of our aetheric reserves on giving shape to three mini-primals.
Your BLM argument is kinda flawed since Black and White Mages taking aether from the land was a direct cause of the flood that ended the War of the Magi, the consequences were that both Black and White Magic are now highly regulated and carry great stigmas with them. It is forbidden that any non-padjal use White Magic (with the exception of the WoL) and Black Mages were hunted down for the damage they could cause themselves and the planet. Not to mention that comparing archinima (which the modern summoner IS, by using an aetherial construct made of our own aether instead of crystals) with thaumaturgy (using the astral and umbral cycles) and conjury (borrowing aether from the land) is like comparing apples to oranges.

Gameplay reasons:
The devs know that to make the game balanced, they had to shift out the emelental wheel, making the resistances pretty useless. Maybe if the summoner had come out in 1.0 there would have been egis (since the plot line of primals draining the land of aether was from all the way in 1.0) from all six elements, making SMN a CNJ/pet hybrid (the 1.0 CNJ, which used all the elements). However, in 2.0 onwards, having 6 nearly identical pets whose only difference is the elemental damage they deal is redundant and a waste of already low resources; so, the trinity of melee/ranged/tank enters, make one pet useful for one thing. Unfortunately, that writes the devs into a corner: if a new pet is to be released, how do we justify it? what is the thing this pet has that makes it viable? Also, if the most of the DPS is on the pet then we go into the FFXI loldrg area. Lose your pet and you're useless until you can get it back.

Honestly, outside of making 4.0 into a "Oh, look, ANOTHER CATACLYSM! LET'S CHANGE EVERYTHING LOL" SMN is not going to change that drastically. Maybe 4.0 will actually give us a new egi, maybe it will allow us to do a Shiva/Thordan transformation WITHOUT it draining away all life on Hydaelin every time we need to stop the newest world-destroying abomination.

[zcrash970]

While I completely understand where you are coming from, I disagree with you. What I imagine what you summoner to be is usually coupled with high cast times and long cooldowns. That in itself would make SMN useless in most fights. Also with how combat is set up in FF14 having an array of support abilities is pointless. We only need the basics like regens, mitigation, and vulnerabilities downs. Either FF14 while combat content needs to change or make the summons have very generic abilities.

Also having bigger egis would go against lore in this game. We have who because SMNs use their own aether to create them and not a stockpile of crystals. If we make the egis too powerful, they could tempered the SMN or the Tristan accident might happen again. However, it would be possible to make our egis stronger if SMNs learn how to harness the aether around us like black and white magic.
I know it was a cop out but our limited aether abilities are explained on why we couldn't summon a Ramuh egi.

I do agree that we need new abilities for our egis though, but honestly, I rather SE to go further into Trances then more egis