Why are summoners so neglected?

[Iromi]

So tell me, how did t10 go for you? The correct answer is "oom by first adds". The hard capped bane targets also didn't help. Granted, rez is useful, provided you had mana to cast it. Which SMN did not.

Bear in mind, final coil was the same time frame as DRG not being able to survive in t13...

I've been playing SMN since release in 2.0 and I cleared every coil raid when it was relevant on my SMN without too many issues honestly. I'd either use pots or our BRD would throw a ballad during down time.

But you are correct..I do remember very little played SMN in 2.x times. I rarely saw another one...and yes, lot of them did struggle. I hated that capped bane target...*shudder* I really hope they don't ruin Summoner in 4.0...I think it is in a really nice spot. Sure, I'd love to see an actual pet class...but as I keep saying, after 3.0 the devs made it pretty clear they have no intention of making this a pet class.

[SendohJin]

Half of them are the same as the Scholars. Including Psysick that don't make sense and eye for an eye.

half? that's two, so what else?

and Eye for an Eye makes just as much sense as Apocatastasis.

so really, i'm seeing just 1.

[Nalien]

half? that's two, so what else?

This seems like an odd point to contest... Summoner and Scholar obviously share plenty of skills, they both use Arcanist skills... Traits too... Scholar really benefits from that Enhanced Intelligence trait...

Unless you just mean skills that don't make sense, in which case fair point. I'd still argue that, at least from a naming point, most of them don't really fit... Shadow Flare perhaps does, that sounds vaguely Summonery... Give Scholar the disease themed stuff, Miasma III instead of Shadow Flare. Rework Summoners skills to reflect the fact that its Summoner... Change the animations, and job done. If that's too much effort, I find myself asking why there is a difference between Doton/Flaming Arrow/Shadow Flare/Salted Earth to begin with... Why do we have Aero/Bio/Combust/etc. instead of just "Generic DoT name"?

[Jhett_Magnum]

No one mentioned how a primarily Debuff based job can't keep track of dots on 24m scenarios. :/

[Khaidal]

Personally when I think of a pet job I think of beast mastery hunters and unholy death knights where your rotation empowered the pet.

You'll have to forgive me, I have no idea what those are. (limited mmo experience ha ha.)

Weren't those jobs, also Puppeteer I think, absolute garbage bottom tier for years?

They had their nuances, and many used them for soloing. SMNs was sometimes brought along for buffs and hate free damage for endgame, but that's about it. BST and PUP on the other hand didn't have a whole lot of endgame value. Still love my old PUP, even if I couldn't bring it to Kirin.

[Lambdafish]

No one mentioned how a primarily Debuff based job can't keep track of dots on 24m scenarios. :/

Oh god, I won't even play BRD in 24 man for this reason let alone SMN, sidewinder is frustrating enough

[Ririta]

You'll have to forgive me, I have no idea what those are. (limited mmo experience ha ha.)

Ah, I'm just saying what I personally expected from summoners as a pet job. Imagine if Fester was a command to order the pet to do a strong single target attack or if Dreadwyrm Trance empowered the pet instead of yourself. That's how pet classes worked in WoW, together with unique debuffs/buffs for each pet (in the case of hunters).

Speaking of WoW... one thing it did right was giving pets a way to travel faster. Ifrit really needs a charge attack so he can quickly get into targets and remove that advantage from Garuda.

Red mages use swords. They were the second-best melee weapon class in FF1 until the job change, since they could use silver/mythril swords, and they are actually good tanks for the first few quests because they can use chain armor. In FF3, red mages basically exist to use the wightslayer early on, which is another sword. In FF5, Dual Cast was something you got as a reward for leveling an obsolete class. It basically existed because Red Mages, as was the case in FF1 and FF3, sucked after you progressed very far in the game. For the brief period they were good, they had decent weapons as well as decent spells.

So yeah, red mages were always melee hybrid casters. This is even true in FFXI: they got the original en-spells. The only reason they didn't melee in FFXI was because feeding TP to mobs outweighed their contribution. They were clearly designed to melee (their artifact weapon is a sword!), but then, ninjas were designed to DPS, too. The FFXI team didn't have a huge success rate at jobs being played as intended.

Guess I should've explored the job more, using them as attackers always seemed inferior to just equipping staffs and sticking with magic especially on FFIII due to it being a pretty punishing game.

So my idea of the job kinda became "uses white and black magic".

[Atlaworks]

Half of them are the same as the Scholars. Including Psysick that don't make sense and eye for an eye.

Or are half the Scholars' abilities the same as Summoner?

Oh my. This rabbit hole goes deep.

[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.

[Duelle]

Ah, I'm just saying what I personally expected from summoners as a pet job. Imagine if Fester was a command to order the pet to do a strong single target attack or if Dreadwyrm Trance empowered the pet instead of yourself. That's how pet classes worked in WoW, together with unique debuffs/buffs for each pet (in the case of hunters).

Speaking of WoW... one thing it did right was giving pets a way to travel faster. Ifrit really needs a charge attack so he can quickly get into targets and remove that advantage from Garuda.

Well, there's also The Beast Within and the Unholy DK variant.

Guess I should've explored the job more, using them as attackers always seemed inferior to just equipping staffs and sticking with magic especially on FFIII due to it being a pretty punishing game.

So my idea of the job kinda became "uses white and black magic".

It was a matter of scaling and the fact that you got jobs that were more powerful as the game progressed. That's just a side effect of having a job system in-game. It'd be another story if you had characters with set classes like FFIV and (arguably) FFVI. In those cases you'd be able to get away with RDM playing up to both its sides (well, within the severe limitations turn-based combat places on hybrid classes).