Why are summoners so neglected?

[Rysir]

I'd honestly prefer contagion as a spell to use myself so I could cycle the summons more, and also a lot of the time you really have to click contagion several times before Garuda will actually do it.

This x1000, and the molasses reaction time garuda is a distance problem that if garuda is even an inch too far it will very slowly move into range then very slowly stop and THEN use it.

[Inosaska]

This right here.
If it wasn't for contagion I would use ifrit (unless there's a bard) more and to be honest, they SHOULD do this if they thinking about adding more pets, because come on really? extending your DoT timer on a DoT job locked to one pet...So they either need to give it to summoner itself or to all Pets.
If they don't, garuda will always be the best pet to use in Raids and EX Primals due to contagion.

I really hope with the combat review of abilities that this problem gets fixed. It's not much of a summoner job if you're really only using one pet lol

[Kaethra]

I'm pretty sure this falls under "balancing" issues.

Its actually pretty easy.

Take Ifrit Egi and its skills and copy them. Then make a Shiva Egi with unique animations. Give it the skills stat-wise copied from Ifrit and replace fire aspected damage with ice.

Do the same thing with Garuda and Ramuh.
Then again with Titan and whomever we want with the tanking pet.

That's 3 new pets right there, no balance issue (I seriously doubt you can prove ice, lightning, ect aspected damage can push the balance). And all for the work of adding in a simple 3d model for the new pet and some particle effects. Yet you have a VERY happy Summoner playerbase.

Heck they could go further and add in ALL abilities to all pets depending on what 'stance' the pet is in. So you could have Garuda Tank, or Shiva ranged DPS. Then the summoner could simply use the pet they want to in the role they need at the time. Many MMOs have already done this.

The pet is a glorified dot. But its a visual effect the player likes to show. It should be treated as such. Simple changes that make many happy and do not upset balance at all.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Its actually pretty easy.

Take Ifrit Egi and its skills and copy them. Then make a Shiva Egi with unique animations. Give it the skills stat-wise copied from Ifrit and replace fire aspected damage with ice.

Do the same thing with Garuda and Ramuh.
Then again with Titan and whomever we want with the tanking pet.

That's 3 new pets right there, no balance issue (I seriously doubt you can prove ice, lightning, ect aspected damage can push the balance). And all for the work of adding in a simple 3d model for the new pet and some particle effects. Yet you have a VERY happy Summoner playerbase.

Heck they could go further and add in ALL abilities to all pets depending on what 'stance' the pet is in. So you could have Garuda Tank, or Shiva ranged DPS. Then the summoner could simply use the pet they want to in the role they need at the time. Many MMOs have already done this.

The pet is a glorified dot. But its a visual effect the player likes to show. It should be treated as such. Simple changes that make many happy and do not upset balance at all.

I don't know if it's been said here previously, but with regards to new summons, the biggest question would be "what will it do that the others don't already do?" Titan is a tank pet, Ifrit a melee DPS, Garuda a ranged one. Can't give them a healer pet because we run into balancing issues next. I know people really want more summons, but the last thing I'd want is more summons that don't offer anything unique.

[silentwindfr]

I don't know if it's been said here previously, but with regards to new summons, the biggest question would be "what will it do that the others don't already do?" Titan is a tank pet, Ifrit a melee DPS, Garuda a ranged one. Can't give them a healer pet because we run into balancing issues next. I know people really want more summons, but the last thing I'd want is more summons that don't offer anything unique.

that the reason they have begin the egi glamour... summoner is far to be neglected like some want... it's only a summoner different of what they was expecting. do it make it a bad summoner? nope far from it. just different

[ErryK]

that the reason they have begin the egi glamour... summoner is far to be neglected like some want... it's only a summoner different of what they was expecting. do it make it a bad summoner? nope far from it. just different

QFT. This thread is just basically a bunch of people saying "I want THIS type of Summoner, not that type!", except they aren't running the show, and SE would like to express some kind of creative freedom by altering Summoner to be what their vision of it is. If you don't like it, XI is still running I hear.

[Shougun]

I don't know if it's been said here previously, but with regards to new summons, the biggest question would be "what will it do that the others don't already do?" Titan is a tank pet, Ifrit a melee DPS, Garuda a ranged one. Can't give them a healer pet because we run into balancing issues next. I know people really want more summons, but the last thing I'd want is more summons that don't offer anything unique.

WoW is not perfect but it has 7+ pets (and all the main pets also have upgrades that make them better/different looking, which is what the / will denote).

• Imp/Fel Imp: Support damage, single target. In the current demonology build you hit an enemy with an attack that spawns a few of these that then attack the target, so frequently used (also popular for specs that didn't talent into demonology as it has decent damage and support, can heal the master and remove debuffs).
  
• Voidwalker/Voidlord: Tank pet, used .. to tank lol
  
• Succubus/Shivarra: DD, CC pet
  
• Felhunter/Observer: DD, Anti-Mage
  
• Felguard/Wrathguard: Great overall, bruiser (will be used a lot in general circumstances once earned)
  
• Infernal/Abyssal: Temporary strong AoE DD
  
• Doomguard/Terrorguard: Temporary strong DD
  
• Darkglare: Single DD, temporary
  
• Dreadstalkers: Calls 2 pets to attack - DD, temporary

Relates to the imps but, Hand of Gul'dan: mass wild imp summon (up 4 imps) and they have another talent that makes their shadowbolts sometimes spawn imps on impact

Temporary spells are just like super summons you get to momentarily have before they leave for a while on cooldown. Keep in mind all the pets have abilities (some more than others).

The thing to consider though is that Warlocks that focus on pets are Zoolocks as they can 11+ pets on the screen lol, but I think we can take a few hints from there.

For example temporary summons, or the utility types. Right now we have Tank, Ranged DD, and Melee DD and specifically the two DD have grabs at a bit of everything. I believe it would be entirely possible to design 6 summons (the main primals) but I think you would need to narrow the summon's pro(s) to specific things, allowing them a place to shine better or worse. I predicate this on a new summoner skill that lets you switch between or temporarily use another Egi easily and quickly with perhaps encouragement to do so. This is to give players more thought, so instead of just "this pet for this thing" its okay more like "okay I'm this phase, what would be best in /this/ phase", because circumstances can make a niche choice change rapidly through a fight. Suggested stuff before, a buff mechanic of some sort could encourage changing to force multiple decisions, temporary summon, or even simple stuff like perhaps Fast Cast has a talent that it reduces the cooldown (Fast cast's) by half and returns half mp (summoning cost) when used to summon - meaning summoners can be more dynamic in their Egi choice.

Trying to think of their actual primal mechanics that might be able to translate into pet stuff:

Ramuh: High single target damage, specifically good on stationary long standing targets and bad when there isn't time to build up the potential: Judgment seems like a good single target, the stacking debuff that does a lot of damage. I like the idea that Ramuh has a spell to summon an Arbiter or two (your summon has summons haha) and whenever you cast Ruin they also cast Ruin, also like the idea that he has a hidden passive that lets him blink to a location every X seconds rather than float there.. lol

Garuda: Utility / CC with acceptable AoE: Aoe Feather attack (bind), AoE plumes including the AoE sleep plume, perhaps a tether with a heal (or mp)/support skill of some type (empower attacks), auto attack applies a 1.5 second 45% (lower in PvP) ms slow every 5 seconds (no resistance build up, unless immune by default).

Levithan: Anti-mage/squish (high burst) / Rogue, Trickster / Debuffer: Worst tank sustained tank (once the shield drops, will die the easiest), most agile (just has awesome movement speed, pretty much impossible to run away from) with perhaps drown bubble (temporary silence/damage) and armor (within the bubble, perhaps on an armor stack like FFXI blink stack - but make sure it doesn't lead to tanking lol), debuff and burst attacks (basically your assassin).

Titan: The Tank, bad damage, hard to kill.

Ifrit: AoE / DoT (aoe damage focus): Big group, have tank? Ifrit will give you the most AoE damage. (While Levithan is more agile, Ifrit of course needs a charge just like the primal ifrit)

Shiva: Bruiser with decent single target damage, if you were in PvP this is what you'd send after the melee (the non-super squishy ones at least) / effective single target non-elite tank (worse than Titan, better than the rest): Taking the sword and board form being a bruiser, with the other spells relating to the other forms (also can give players the option to glamour the other forms, just if people care - but there would be a spell for each form, like a sniper bow ability). Perhaps a debuff she applies on bow and mage ability attacks that allows her sword strike to charge towards the target and deal bonus damage (because of the bow/mage cooldown sword strike would be a natural follow up, as it is the auto attack/default attack but also due to the cooldown she doesn't have infinite chase).

Single Target : Ramuh > Levithan (higher burst/adaptability than Ramuh, less sustained damage) > Shiva > Ifrit > Garuda > Titan
Area Damage: Ifrit > Garuda > Levithan > Shiva (not too great a difference between Levithan and Shiva) > Ramuh > Titan

None of the above is "fixed"/"non-negotiable" if someone was like "but I think Garuda is a better aoe DD than Ifrit" or w.e. Just what I see in the primals.

You could of course just stick with the three, but assuming they don't give the summons more abilities I believe it would hurt the maximum possible potential a summoner may have in the long run even if they don't use those niche summons every day all the time. Like I didn't see Warlocks always CCing everything but when we needed it they had it, and that was nice. Haven't played recently but I would add that you actually needed CC in WoW, since you could wipe on the Trash if you weren't careful - seems a bit more generous in FFXIV.

Also as said before I believe where they stopped feels incomplete, and at least personally see filling out the main summons of FF games and specifically the primal elemental (Ifrit embodying fire, etc etc) could make a nice close on the lore as well (and why Summoner can only use visions of other primals as glamour as SE sees fit in the future). So imo personally stopping at 3 and just adding glamour feels more amiss than finishing the elemental set and then never adding any more permanent pets (then continue with trance mechanics/Elder Primal magic, and perhaps temporary summons if SE feels like they wanted a new summon but didn't want to make a whole new permanent scheme that requires more work).

[Dyvid]

I don't know if it's been said here previously, but with regards to new summons, the biggest question would be "what will it do that the others don't already do?" Titan is a tank pet, Ifrit a melee DPS, Garuda a ranged one. Can't give them a healer pet because we run into balancing issues next. I know people really want more summons, but the last thing I'd want is more summons that don't offer anything unique.

Well ironically at work we had to go to training about problem solving. If you have a problems, you can't fix them with excuse like blaming others, limit design, simple choices. As stated above you can change it where pets are defined by AoE, Single Target, PvP, Emer Tanks, time limited, etc...
You could give each pet one or two unique skills that would encourage summon and release play style.
Another is develop a rotation style around the elemental wheel where as Shiva would fight for ___ time limit, cast Diamond Dust and placing a Primal Fire buff on the player making Fire based Egi's stronger.

The point is a creative team can make it work but just throwing your hands in the air and give up isn't a solution.

[Atlaworks]

Well ironically at work we had to go to training about problem solving. If you have a problems, you can't fix them with excuse like blaming others, limit design, simple choices. As stated above you can change it where pets are defined by AoE, Single Target, PvP, Emer Tanks, time limited, etc...
You could give each pet one or two unique skills that would encourage summon and release play style.
Another is develop a rotation style around the elemental wheel where as Shiva would fight for ___ time limit, cast Diamond Dust and placing a Primal Fire buff on the player making Fire based Egi's stronger.

The point is a creative team can make it work but just throwing your hands in the air and give up isn't a solution.

It's pretty easy to say "they can make it work" when you yourself can't make it work.

Ideas are fine and all, but balance is a thing. If you look at 2.x, by the end of that patch cycle summoners were the weakest class bar none. They complained a lot then, and back then they actually had a good reason to, as well. It got fixed in 3.0- sure, they gravitated away from a conventional "pet class" some, but mechanically, they became much more stable, to the point that at 3.5 they are the most played class in the game according to the census. While mechanically, they feel less like the idealized version of a summoner some people want, the class is now arguably the most mechanically stable while still fitting into the lore reliably. If you want to change that, you should bring more to the table than "It's not what I want" and "I want more".

Your ideas(And thank you for bringing some to the table!) are nice, but can make the class a little too bloaty. You can't have one class do everything- which is why there's no healer egi, and only three egis. You put more in, each role becomes more niche, and balance becomes more and more of an issue. Really, to make them more prominent at all they'd need a complete overhaul and the class would need rebalancing to not be nearly as strong on it's own. It's also bound to Scholar due to the dual nature of the Arcanist class, and that can't really be stopped.

By that point, isn't it easier to just start from square one, and request something like an "evoker" class?

[Alerion]

In my opinion the job's focus should be the summons and there should be many of them.

My ideal vision of the Summoner is buffing and commanding the pet being the rotation with procs that allow you to call in an unsummoned pet for either a brief amount of time and/or a special ability. Of course there would be abilities to weave and utility to consider, but this is just the core i'd prefer over DoTs.

Barring the separation of SMN/SCH and a complete rework of the job, I don't ever see this happening. Anything's possible though.