Why are summoners so neglected?

[Zojha]

SMNs in reality are just another MMO's copy-paste Warlock, branded with a very appealing name to cater to FF fans.

SMNs in reality have always just been regular mages with generic AoE spells that got a flashy animation.

Pick fire -> Target all people = Summon Ifrit. Pick Reflect -> Target full party = Summon Carbuncle. It never had much to do with pets - I think the first time summons were more than just a generic spell was in X.

All they'd have to do to get back to its roots is to ditch the pet, take the DoT spells, rename them Summon X, Y, Z and W, then change the animation to an entity attacking for the respective duration. They already have high AoE damage, so no change needed there.

[Silverquick]

That's always been the bigger issue for me is that the vocal ones want something that is pretty and do not care about functional or have given up.

"I want Ifrit..no..FIRE KITTY!" and on the side lines I'm yelling "wait, before that...Radiant Shield is for Ifrit only..lets make it party wide" so I was happy when they changed that.

It still is around. "Titan egi is ugly..give me...rock Quokka!" happy lil nugget! ...while I'm all for that I'd like Titan to get a boost itself into party play first.

I'll admit I used to be one of those "Give me Ifrit! Give me Crimson Howl!" then I remember, I don't want to go back to those times. The job itself took too long to develop and in the end it wasn't as great as I remember it when I get to look back.

Yeah I've noticed that too... Right now the SMN is powerful and viable and an excellent soloer. All because of that "booger" pet.

Some of these guys are like well I don't care if I get my ass beat down... as long as I can like... look "kewl" while doing it.

The FFXI Summoner was the I look "kewl" while getting my ass beat...

The FFXIV Summoner is the I'm plain looking but.... kick the crap out of you and the army you brought with you....

Its extremely powerful and viable, and the Pets and combination of abilities allow you to solo things no other class can.

Yet... there are still these people going... but but but... I wanna look kewl while getting my ass beat... that's like better and stuff.

Lol the gimped version of the SMN is the one they're asking for... when the good and powerful version... is the one we're playing right now.

[Ralts]

SMNs in reality have always just been regular mages with generic AoE spells that got a flashy animation.

Pick fire -> Target all people = Summon Ifrit. Pick Reflect -> Target full party = Summon Carbuncle. It never had much to do with pets - I think the first time summons were more than just a generic spell was in X.

All they'd have to do to get back to its roots is to ditch the pet, take the DoT spells, rename them Summon X, Y, Z and W, then change the animation to an entity attacking for the respective duration. They already have high AoE damage, so no change needed there.

Ffx summoner was the almost-perfect type of summoner though, or ffxi's.

[Ageofwar]

Yeah I've noticed that too... Right now the SMN is powerful and viable and an excellent soloer. All because of that "booger" pet.

Some of these guys are like well I don't care if I get my ass beat down... as long as I can like... look "kewl" while doing it.

The FFXI Summoner was the I look "kewl" while getting my ass beat...

The FFXIV Summoner is the I'm plain looking but.... kick the crap out of you and the army you brought with you....

Its extremely powerful and viable, and the Pets and combination of abilities allow you to solo things no other class can.

Yet... there are still these people going... but but but... I wanna look kewl while getting my ass beat... that's like better and stuff.

Lol the gimped version of the SMN is the one they're asking for... when the good and powerful version... is the one we're playing right now.

The more vocal people seem to want 18+ summons that do the same thing with diffrent animations

The only thing that really need to be done is 3 of the skills need to be renamed and add more to the Egi-glamor system

I mean if they rename Summon I, Summon II, and Summon III to Melee summon, Tank summon and Caster summon and added 12 more egi-glamors SMN with maybe a few more Dreadwyrm Trances and SMN will still be in a good place

[Talraen]

Let's establish some rules first. 6 "main" egis that represent the elemental wheel (nothing to do with elemental affinities; this is more for thematic reasons). You get Ifrit-egi (melee pet), Garuda-egi (caster pet), Titan-egi (tank pet), Leviathan-egi (anti-caster pet), Shiva-egi (CC pet), Ramuh-egi (AoE/damage aura pet). Gain abilities that allow you to temporarily call upon egi beyond that (Ravana-egi, Bismarck-egi), and a skill that allows you to summon more than one egi (this would be a DPS cooldown). An aetherflow skill that lets you quickly switch to a new egi (on a 45s cooldown). Throw in pets dealing greater damage on targets affected by your DoTs, a couple of skills that deal with pets (an Aetherflow skill that temporarily increases damage dealt by your active egi), and you have a decent starting point.

This is the only post in this thread that actually lays out what they want summoners to do. Just having more egis isn't going to make the class better. You can still only summon one at a time. Literally every extra egi is just more content that's guaranteed to not see use at any given time. Also, from a dev perspective, if you give new level abilities to summons instead of to the summoner, you're doing three times the work right now, and more than that if you add summons. As people have pointed out, if the new summons do more DPS than the current ones, the current ones will stop being used, and if the new ones do less DPS than the current ones, the new ones won't be used. Look at how dominant Garuda is now. Yes, it's because of contagion, but even if it wasn't, either Garuda or Ifrit would still be better than the other, unless they were exactly the same.

The above quote is a cool idea, but how would you balance it? If summoners had the utility to deal with every possible situation, they'd have to be made weaker not to be the de facto best DPS class in all situations. Having even six summons all with different and useful abilities would be a hotbar nightmare, especially on a controller. (And not for nothing, but this is exactly what the dev team has been trying to avoid going forward.) My summoner macros in FFXI use up all ten pages and are still incomplete, that's not going to fly here.

The more I read in this and similar threads, the more I understand why the dev team regrets making a summoner at all. I don't see how they make a balanced class that can compare with the rose-tinted nostalgia of previous games' summons. (To recap, briefly: summons in most FF games are just flashy damage spells, and when they stick around they generally replace your whole party, which obviously would not fly in an MMO; even the people in this thread who like FFXI summoners basically admit they're only useful once every two hours [one hour these days]. None of these are viable designs in FFXIV.)

[loreleidiangelo]

All they'd have to do to get back to its roots is to ditch the pet, take the DoT spells, rename them Summon X, Y, Z and W, then change the animation to an entity attacking for the respective duration. They already have high AoE damage, so no change needed there.

I like this suggestion, or Celef's suggestion on page 9 about SMN possibly being almost a "combo magic user" where you chain-summon eidolons a la Yuna from FF: Dissidia to deal damage, but they're not persistent entities. My issue with SMN has never really been about the egis themselves, it's been more about how the primary focus of SMN's damage has always been more about DoTs and interacting with those DoTs rather than actually summoning things. The DoTs themselves are a flexible idea - as Zojha said, the DoTs could basically be applied through a "one-time summon" ability and I'd be fine with it, it would fit the aesthetic. ACN as a root is just garbage though and always felt like it belonged more to SCH than to SMN.

Visuals are a pretty important aspects of class design, and I think that's where a lot of SMN discontent comes from. Either re-designing the egis to have more visual impact (size, animations) or a total rework of the class where the same damage concepts are being applied but through actual summon spells instead, would go a long way towards restoring a lot of excitement and interest over the SMN job.

[Kazrah]

Welp, may as well throw my two cents in and add onto the "no egis" bandwagon....

Personally, I don't think summoners should have pets at all. Do away with them. Instead, have summoners utilize a REALLY basic damage kit while revolving around a stance system that would alter the effects of their spells. Think of it like something similar to Dreadwyrm Trance, but alternating between multiple primals (Bahamut could be one of them) and end with Summon, where the summoner briefly calls a full version of the primal for their signature attack before they depart, causing the stance to fall off. Certain primal stances would have certain effects (i.e. "Ember Trance" (Ifrit stance) could give dot effects to their spells, "Aerial Trance" (Garuda stance) would make spells hit multiple targets, etc.), and the goal would be to alternate between a variety of primal stances for particular circumstances.

With a system like that, far more than three primals could be implemented. Maybe not exact size, but using that system would mean not having to muck around with the whole "more egis" argument.

[Talraen]

All these "no egi" class ideas sound cool but... why would they change a working class so fundamentally like that? I don't think the current summoner is going anywhere. Maybe they'd consider a new, separate class (let's say Evoker for that FF3 love) that did all this stuff. But they're not going to scrap the summoner class due to aesthetic complaints when mechanically (and divorced from its name) it's a perfectly fine class.

[Shougun]

Interesting to see some didnt like the Bahamut thing, thought that was pretty cool XD. The look of the Egi is a joke to me (in comparison to all other major MMOs and to SE's own games - although to be clear because it's been confused before I "don't" want 1:1 scale) but the weird/difficult thing with summoner is they've been like everything lol (healer, dd, in some games everyone is one).

So the aspect that SMN can raise and DD with non summoning related mechanics is actually pretty good to many representations in the series, but at the same time I figure many don't really care about those side elements and just want to focus 24/7 on the summons. Fun place to be for SE. However, I do agree that they should theme more of their damage mechanics around the summons even if its not strictly related to the egi (Ifrit Egi, now your have Infernal Aethertrails and your spells change slightly accordingly). I'd be cautious of turning mechanics completely inside out though, so some of the ideas here that shift how the pets work slightly, add new ones, or change the abilities slightly based on pet out I think are a bit safer than taking something that clearly some people like and being like "yeah that's done" you lost 85% of your abilities here are new ones lol.

New pets would be awesome, it's true people might not always need to have an anti-mage pet out, but the fact would be at the moment it's useful a good summoner would shine over one who just sits on the default "generic DD" summon (like the Warlock that actually helped CC the group vs complete chaos :P, different pets can be useful in specific situations that would let them shine - a lot). Not sure exactly what you mean Duelle on the aethertrail summoning a pet thing but I like the sound of it (I'm assuming I understood it), because adding more pets that let a good summoner shine.. it would be important to be able to actually switch your pets in fight without looking silly . Still hoping that the SMN gets some sort of upgraded egi form that makes each egi look "mean" and good looking (like I guess as a random example the spirit master has tiers of pets in Aion, or Warlock has upgraded versions too).

[LineageRazor]

All these "no egi" class ideas sound cool but... why would they change a working class so fundamentally like that?

Why would they? Because currently, the pet is a mighty small fraction of the SMN's damage output. Probably the greatest contribution the Egi has to a SMN's DPS output is Contagion, and that could just as easily be a job ability rather than a pet ability. A SMN can work perfectly well without their pet being summoned, and in fact may not notice for quite a while if it has died. That's how little impact the Egi has on a SMN's job.

However, they likely WON'T make this change. It would require a lot of rework to do. If SMN doesn't have any pets, what does it do with the Summon abilities it inherited from ACN? Remove them from ACN as well? Then how does SCH get their fairies? I'm sure anyone could rattle off a plan for changing SMN that takes ACN and SCH into account - but that brings us to the main reason it won't happen, and that's that it doesn't NEED to. SMN works perfectly fine how it is - it is a powerful damage dealer. Nobody's unhappy with the amount of hurt SMN is able to put out, so it's fulfilling its job role just fine. The complaints people have are aesthetic; "I don't like how Egis look!" or "Egis should be bigger!" or "Egis should deal a greater proportion of the SMN's damage!"

SE, after much development time, has worked in a solution for "I don't like how Egis look!", but look at how long that took. Egi glamours are a drop in the bucket compared to an overhaul of SMN's very functionality. I'm not gonna hold my breath.