Why are summoners so neglected?

[Dyvid]

MY point is, if they do the brunt of the damage, they should take damage too. So NIX the damage invuln they got, make them take damage just like the smn itself. make the player have to actively move the pet out of aoes while moving themselves out of aoes.

The reason they did this was because it's impossible to move pet and themselves out of a 2 second hit box. The only other option would be an evade ability to push. But you bring up and interest point / idea. Let pets die and summon different ones while the old one is on cool down. Yoshi-P said he has no idea on how to add more pets, will there you go. Each summon has a __ cooldown timer so you have to pick another pet. Also the class is design for pet management without the pet management. While DoT's are doing damage the SMN should be casting pet abilities via 2.5 sec book writing commands rather than spamming ruin with Egi is on auto pilot.

P.S. /wave Babydoll. Good to see us ol' timers are still playing.

[Rysir]

MY point is, if they do the brunt of the damage, they should take damage too. So NIX the damage invuln they got, make them take damage just like the smn itself. make the player have to actively move the pet out of aoes while moving themselves out of aoes.

Since summoner is not likely to get built from the ground up those DOTs and deathflare is not going away the summon is not likely to be the main point of damage unless 2 expansions dedicate all the job update focus on the pet so thats not something to worry about. Besides the summons do take damage, they just ignore super attacks from bosses while taking damage from everything else.

[Duelle]

Thing is, if they make it focus on the pet more, they have to make it so the pet is the focus of damage going out, as well as the smn itself. That means your healer now has to heal an extra person, or else the smn gets gimped when the summon dies.

Not necessarily. You can just increase the pet's contributions to overall DPS without making them the main source of DPS for the SMN. The only cost the SMN would pay on that end is not get more skills ripped off from Bahamut.

I've said this before, but pet focus doesn't mean that you turn SMN into the Lineage II Arcana Lord (a mage that summoned cats that auto attacked and used skills on the mob, with the AL's main abilities being heals meant for their pet along with buffs that increased the pet's speed, attack and defense). You can be obvious about it by giving the job abilities that enhance/buff the pet. You can be subtle about it by making the pet deal more damage to targets under the effect of your DoTs. You can also be somewhere in between, where your pet benefits from actions taken by you (example being that using Energy Drain or Fester enhances your pet somehow). There's a good number of possibilities when it comes to master-pet interactions, and I can understand why some are frustrated to see those seemingly ignored for yet another expansion.

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Speaking for myself, at this point what I want to see is the job stick to one design and go with it. Either develop egi, or make SMN an entirely trance-based job from the ground up. The design right now leans one way then goes the other way after you hit lv52.

[Iromi]

In Aion the pet job was pretty good. I had dots and still had a large focus on the pet. The devs could give our pets buffs/debuffs (actually put CC in the game) and allow us to command the pet to do a lot more attacks, also heavily improve the pet AI (look at WoW pet AI..) but meh, I feel that discussing this is all moot because the dev team will never do anything like this. I am afraid we are stuck being poison mages with a turret/contagion pet for forever.

I can't say it enough, but with the FFXIV job poll from 1.x the Pet Job won...we still do not have one really.

[Magic-Mal]

I don't know why you guys are taking it personally. SMNs can't summon things like that because obviously it was never planned to do so. And nobody ever said they will. Because XIV has its own SMN. And its the most popular job right now. Old news. Summoning Bahamut's power(or any Primal for that matter) is summoning. Just not your idea of summoning. You just don't like it. And won't let it go.

This is as bad as being mad that Dancer isn't coming.

[Ririta]

I don't know why you guys are taking it personally. SMNs can't summon things like that because obviously it was never planned to do so. And nobody ever said they will. Because XIV has its own SMN. And its the most popular job right now. Old news. Summoning Bahamut's power(or any Primal for that matter) is summoning. Just not your idea of summoning. You just don't like it. And won't let it go.

This is as bad as being mad that Dancer isn't coming.

That's like saying that warrior is a summoner because they're summoning the power of the inner beast.

The proper word for what we do is channeling.

[Magic-Mal]

That's like saying that warrior is a summoner because they're summoning the power of the inner beast.

The proper word for what we do is channeling.

Uh... No. The Inner Beast isn't an entity. Inner Beast is inner strength.

Summoning Bahamut's power to use is summoning. Because Bahamut is actually a thing. No different than Louisoix summoning the strength of Phoenix.

EDIT: Matter of fact, we are doing exactly what Louisoix did. We just aren't dead yet.

[Rysir]

Uh... No. The Inner Beast isn't an entity. Inner Beast is inner strength.

Summoning Bahamut's power to use is summoning. Because Bahamut is actually a thing. No different than Louisoix summoning the strength of Phoenix.

EDIT: Matter of fact, we are doing exactly what Louisoix did. We just aren't dead yet.

We attuned ourselves to bahamut's aether by going to the location scarred by him and tap into his aether by entering a trance by burning our aetherflows which is not summoning. Going super saiyan and using bahamuts akh morn is most definitely not calling in an entity to attack for us.

Our problem with the ninja attack is that ninja can conjure a very large creature to attack for them in a flashy manner before vanishing which is more classic summoner than our summoner who brings up a lower quality creature thats treated more as an auto attack and periodic buff. Its pretty salt inducing.

[Magic-Mal]

.

It IS summoning. In FFXIV. Maybe in X or XI it wouldn't but in XIV it is.

There are 4 ways to Summon in FFXIV that I can see:
-Calling forth the entity to battle(Dangerous to the environment)
---Beast tribes
---Gilgamesh summoning Enkidu
---Ultima Weapon summoning Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit
---Alexander summoning Cruise Chaser

-Summoning yourself into the Primal(Also dangerous)
---Ysayle transforming into Shiva
---Nael transforming into a Bahamut incarnation
---Louisoix transforming into Phoenix(In T12)
---Knights of the Round and Thordan

-Egi Summoning(Not dangerous to the environment)
---Us
---Tristan
---Arcanists

-Summoning the primal's energy to you AKA Trancing
---Us.
---Louisoix(I feel confident in saying what he did can be called Phoenix Trance and I want it)

The summoning everyone seems to want is Strategy #1. The most dangerous kind of summoning to FFXIV univere

[Dyvid]

Please just stop with all the lore straw man debate. Lore is used to explain game play mechanics, not the other way around.