Once again...
I'm already running a rotation that looks like this...
Single Target:
Quick Cast + Shadowflare>Bio 2>Miasma>Bio>(Garuda) Contagion>Fester>Ruin 3>Ruin 3>Fester>Rouse + Spur + Enkindle (Aerial Blast)>Ruin 3>Fester>Dreadwyrm Trance>Ruin 3 (x4)>Tri-Disaster>Deathflare (aka TeraFlare).
Thats not even including Raise during Raids, or Double tapping a Ruin 3 + Ruin 2 for a Dual cast quick 280 potency Burst.
Or on Multiple Targets.
Quick Cast + Shadowflare>Tri-Disaster>Garuda (Contagion)>Painflare>Bane>Rouse + Spur + Enkindle (Aerial Blast)>Painflare>Dreadwyrm Trance>Bliz 2 (x3)>Deathflare (aka TeraFlare).
I don't NEED another pet... I've already got a ton of abilities... and ALL of them get used. Well Admittedly I don't get much use out of Ifrit these days... only Titan and Garuda.
What exactly did you want to "ADD" again to my already full Rotation?
You are also asking for a "Add" rather than "Change". Can't have your cake and eat it too. You only get so many abilities.
Oh, no, just to rouse your ire as always. Unless you have a better idea? You do, don't you. You made this 46 page long topic, after all. What is "balance" to you? Or, since you disdain it so, do you care about a balanced summoner? Would you just prefer to have your 6 egis and dreadwyrm trance and ruin 3 and healing and tanking too? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to fix this problem you've both created and revived this topic for.
Wow soooo many replies to this thread! I am just glad I am not the only one thinking of easy to implement ways for the Devs to dig themselves out of the hole created.
This isn't about balance. Who cares about balance - it's numbers, and you can work numbers without a problem if you got a sufficiently adept mathemagician working your simulations.
This is about the feel of the Summoner not feeling like the summoner.
Summoning is a staple of the Final Fantasy Genre.
It's important. Very important.
So lore wise, you name it, it can be explained. There's no single lore problem with SMN you can bring up to me that I can't have fit perfectly well lore wise for any changes done to the class. The magic is making it feel organic.
Lore wise there's all this content that Devs worked hard for, and needs to *stay* in the game.
That's fine. It's all fine.
What needs to happen is an organic shift, like some are saying, to this "Trance" system that works really well and satiates the fan crowd regarding the "feel" of a Final Fantasy Summoner. Great - the landwork was already done for this. That's like, incredibly easy to implement now.
Class issue - what to do with it?
There are 2 routes here depending on future development.
1) Keeping classes, and working with whatever is already in the game: you will need, as has been suggested to adapt ACN abilities into flavored SMN abilities. It was already mentioned how it can be done. It's easy. No 3D modeling needs to occur, just moving already existing code for some particle effects to apply to a player, and tweaking the ability effects/adding slight changes to it.
2) Keeping classes, and ignoring class abilities in favor of completely new abilities, snubbing the utility of old ACN abilities. This feels like a cheap patch. It could happen, but I rather not. It won't build on what already exists and wouldn't have the feel of history changing course, but would feel like admission to mistakes. This is bad on many levels, especially towards the current fans of the Job. Lore wise, easy to fill in though.
X) Classes are removed - this may occur if rumors of classes abolishing happens (unlikely). This is still an easy scenario, and actually makes it much more easy to have SMN feel like summoners. The problem, and why it's unlikely to happen, is the huge amount of lore invested already in the game. Not something that will happen.
Streamlines Summoning through Trance - what's the cost?
If we go with keeping up with Trance summoning in game, we end up without additional Pet and Pet development (like right now...but worse). It would be worse for the Pet argument (in favor of pets, as lots of players like pets, even snubbed sub-par excuses for pets. They love em.) So how could SE respond to this? Pet class. It's the perfect excuse for a new Pet class, that utilizes Pets properly, and organically with the new Job. Boom done. Then they can focus on SMN summoning, and Pet-Job-X on pet-managing.
Summoners would then make use of their current Egis as placeholders for the Trancing to build up on already existing facets of the game.
Another cost is difficulty curve versus fun. This isn't about balance. This is about the feel of the job versus the fun of the job.
What makes summoner fun in a Final Fantasy game? Summoning. How so? The ability to have different summons at your disposal. If you implement this in FFXIV or an MMO setting, you run the risk of stunting your beautifully crafted Job with subpar use due to fun not being an aspect of the job as there would be 1 Trance superior in the role of DPS. The fix is Enkindle tweaking and reduction cost of summoning new Egi to burn up for new Trance.
I mentioned this earlier and I saw a few other posts building on Enkindle and I think Enkindle is great. Rouse and Spur also good, but not a mechanic for fun the way Enkindle is.
Enkindle is the summon casting its ability. In Trance it's the Deathflare equivalent. *BUT* like Deathflare, using Enkindle should stop the Trance, but provide a way to get back into a different Trance through casting time reduction.
How would it feel?
Like a summoner, summoning a primal (summon) and using that summon through themselves. Rotating their summons once they expend their power. Lore wise, how does it feel? Think of the personal Aether of the summoner as not 1 pool of Aether, but the summoner has 1 pool split into different Aether types. The training a summoner has splits the Aether into Fire/Water/Air/Lightning/Earth/Ice/Dark/Light. Each time a pool is used up through Trance + Enkindle, a new pool should be used so the SMN stays sharp and deadly for their opponents.
You could also keep the Egi out if you don't trance, ensuring the RP side of things is cool and all. Some that don't delve deep into lore would feel like they are bonding/fusing with their Egis - all in all wouldn't feel bad for playstyle, and would sate summoning issue.
There's a lot of issues with the feel of jobs being tarnished by stunted design due limited computation/patching on top of old content. It doesn't mean its poorly designed, it just means this was the best that could be done under X circumstances.
Circumstances have changed, and now there's room for better design, and improving the feel of a lot of jobs; especially summoner.
Make summoners summon again.
Last edited by Tarta; 05-03-2017 at 07:58 AM. Reason: Char limit is bad m'kay
wow Tarta
so man
such big
wow
much scarry
I get as many as I can beg SE to add lol. Although I'm concerned about the controller, but if they can get it to work with the controller then ability difference is rather irrelevant to me (anyone with experience with MMOs should be used to certain jobs having more buttons than others, especially the older ones like FFXI or WoW).
Well your summons are not part of your rotation, it would only be adjusted when the situation dictates. Say you have your single target egi out and you're doing your single target rotation, no change to your rotation, boss disappears and 40 adds appear - you change to your aoe pet (with an improved fast cast so that you're less punished and on less downtime) and you continue your aoe rotation exactly as you had before.
Of course there are new scenarios to think about but the rotation wouldn't change really, and a better separation of the egi - as you said you neglect Ifrit my suggestion was to make sure every Egi has a clearly superior situation (and thus inferior); which would encourage change.
When the big party buster comes you might have the opportunity to help yourself survive with a utility buff, but again your general rotations are not changed - just that you're more mindful of what Egi you have out for what and their existence is more clear. You still might not use certain Egi, like if you never do solo content and always have a tank then Titan Egi probably collects dust but whatever it's still in your toolkit (same thing happens with Warlock, but then all a sudden they have the opportunity to rise to the occasion and flash their impressive breadth).
So I think you're adding to the suggestion something I'm not suggesting.
Last edited by Shougun; 05-03-2017 at 07:31 AM.
Dude I highly doubt you can even run the rotation I'm running currently... yet here you are... wanting to completely remodel the class into something overly complicated and likely will be useless in the grand scheme of the thing with rarely used abilities that won't likely contribute much or are going to be too time consuming to work properly...
Ie... the failure of the FFXI Summoner and why it was so useless.
No I don't want your version of the Summoner... if I have to choose between the two I'll take what I'm playing right now... its a hell of a lot more effective.
Depends on the situation and how much movement will be required at any given Boss Mob...
If its a lot of movement mechanics later in the fight you'll want to save your Tri-Disaster to refresh your DoTs later while you're moving... because you won't be able to stand and cast Bio, Bio 2, and Miasma, and they'll fall off.
10% more damage from a trance is useless if you can't keep your DoTs on target continuously anyway. I manually cast them normally if I have a space to actually not move... and use the Tri Disaster later in the fight while I'm having to juggle other things. Its one of those ideas where in a perfect world yeah you can... but in any given combat, wishful thinking can meet reality and tear it all down.
To stablize my opener, I use Contagion right away and begin moving into the Fester, Ruin 3, Ruin 3, Fester rotation, until we hit the magical number for DWT. That's generally right when the Fight Mechanics start kicking in and you have to start thinking on your feet.
That's the reason I use Tri-Disaster later in a fight
Unless we're talking about AoEing down Trash packs, where you WANT to get your DoTs on target as fast as possible, so you can Hit Contagion, then while you wait for that, you can hit Painflare, and by that time Garuda will FINALLY get around to casting it, and you can hit Bane... then another Painflare, and then go into DWT and get ready for the Big TeraFlare/Deathflare.
The suggestions I've made were not based on nor would make it like FFXI's, they're also not a complete remodel and they're not "pet only damage". I'm concerned you might be assuming far more than I've intended or suggested in the desire to prevent any change on the class you enjoy. You also do not need to go into character attacks (skill) simply because you disagree, its unnecessary and in bad form.
Effectiveness would be incorrect if what I suggested existed, since a good summoner would be hitting the niche more often with relative minimal change in setup/rotation (pick the right Egi and continue on as normal) - Atlaworks is correct in asserting it is simply more toys and an an unrivaled amount of flexibility. But.. you can like the current version all you want that's fine, I'm not even trying to destroy it (if anything people should be worried that I'm making it good at way too many things, like Atlas lol)*.
Anyway I only have a few principle dislikes of summoner, one of which is that I think the Egi look awful even in comparison to WoW Warlock which has worse graphics as a whole (imo), the next is I'd love to see the general abilities themed after primals (bio/ruin/bane/fester) even if it's only visual (I mostly have visual issues with summoner, I think it isn't impressive until the later spells), and finally I find the half an elemental wheel obscure and again because of WoW see it as unnecessary (because it has shown that you can have more than 3 pets and be fine, even if you rely on one or two most often - certain patches having their own issues of course). I am concerned about the restrictive nature of the trance and that it is only dragon (so far), but I am not set that it must be destroyed in fact I think it probably only needs a simple tweak and for that I'm not even sure it has to be.. just a lurking fear. Although on visuals I do like the Enkindle/Ahk Morn visuals, they're fun.
Edit: *Although to add onto that last part its just important that you have the wrench as part of the transition (fast cast/aetherflow/w.e) in the flexibility (both Druid and Warlock have these wrenches) even though their total flexibility is insane (Duelle mentions it as well that it's not all at once active flexibility, but total possible flexibility). Some may be uncomfortable with that sheer total amount, but I just suggest that it has worked before (doesn't mean it has to be done again, of course but it does show that jobs that have this trait are not inherently the "only" pick).
Last edited by Shougun; 05-03-2017 at 08:12 AM.
Since you're trying to set up a "you don't say anything beyond 'I want'" as the core of your argument, here. It's a list of adjustments I once wrote for SMN. With interactions and mechanics to replace Dreadwyrm Trance while also giving the job more egi and leaving some room for growth between the 60 and 70 level caps.
Considering that it's already very easy to shift from one job to the next here (since changing classes doesn't mean rerolling like in most MMORPGs), yes, I can argue that a powerful job that looks good on the meters will draw people to it regardless of how it's designed. There's plenty of people who ask "which is the highest damaging job/offersmost utility/mitigates damage best/etc", here and in pretty much every MMO I've played in the last decade.You can't just say "SMN only looks good on damage meters, that's why everyone plays it!", because if it was only good at damage and nothing else, it wouldn't attract people as it does. Other classes can output higher sustained damage than it, and I'd say it's far more soundly designed than it was in 2.5 by a long shot- by the addition of further damage abilities not tied to pets. You can say it's not what you want, and that it's not a reskinned WoWlock, but saying it's not soundly designed seems pretty far off base to me.
Read my link mentioned above. And I'll put more stock in someone who cares enough to try to put an idea together over someone who will just sit there and accept whatever the service provider jams down their throat. A great man once said "to complain without offering a potential solution is called whining"; that's something I tend to live by, so if I'm opening my mouth to voice dissatisfaction over something, I will have an alternative prepared.A great deal of your argument as well is "balance is only numbers, concepts are simple to put together it's just the numbers that make it seem tough". Well, let me let you in on a secret: Everyone is an "ideas guy". Everyone has some idea on how to fix the class to their own specifications, and how to "fix" the class with the highest playerbase in the game. No one has solid mechanics on how to do so, and why it's broken in the first place other than "It's not what I personally want".
Also, in an earlier post I mentioned that the job needs to stick to a design. If they want to use trances instead of egi, then scrap egis entirely and rebuild the job around trances (considering SCH and SMN need to be split from each other, this would not be a bad thing). If you want to keep egi, then build the job to actually make them a relevant part of gameplay, with interactions between master and pet. Right now the job has half-assed growth, since it goes one way 1-50 and goes another 52-60. Not only is the disparity in design clearly visible, but it means EVERYONE leveling the job experiences it.
You're assuming they'd have access to all that utility at once, which is not the case at all. Even if you were to take Swiftcast + Summon into account, that'd effectively give you quick egi switches every 60 seconds, and a lot of stuff can go wrong in that time span. If you wanted to penalize it further, ramp up mechanics would be in order, either by a stacking buff that grows over time that increases egi damage (accelerated by using abilities that consume Aetherflow stacks) or simply a weakness period after being summoned to ensure that if you're trying to be slick by quickly switching egi for the utility, your DPS is not going to be low - it's going to drop like a rock.In line with your thoughts on balance and ways to implement new egis, the thing I notice most is that you and most other folks who want a radical redesign of the class just want more stuff. There's very little "Change" and a great deal of "add" to requests, and having 5-6 egis all with some special niche means that you have a class that either is overspecialized into using just one of the egis commonly, or has too wide an array of skills to justify doing the damage they do, and would have to lose something to compensate.
Tell that to every person that said "I liked BRD 1-50 and hate it 52-60 because of Wanderer's Minuet". It's a psychology element that I don't see many people taking into account, much to my dismay.
Using my BRD example, a new player starting the game right now will get blindsided the same way a person that was here during ARR's launch upon hitting lv52. The better scenario would have been to make the whole design cohesive by adding cast times to baseline archer skills when Heavensward launched, so that the new person only sees a class with a bow that has cast times, while the guy that was here during ARR's launch can talk about how ARC/BRD used to have instant skills and mobility. The new person doesn't have much of a frame of reference other than saying "well, that sounds sort of cool" and they can enjoy BRD with its cast times.
Last edited by Duelle; 05-03-2017 at 08:30 AM.
* The sad thing is that FFXIV turned RDM into a turret, and people think that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to combine sword and magic into something more, not spend the bulk of gameplay spamming spells and jump into melee for only 3 GCDs before scurrying back to the back line like good little casters.
* Design ideas:
Red Mage - COMPLETE (https://tinyurl.com/y6tsbnjh), Chemist - Second Pass (https://tinyurl.com/ssuog88), Thief - First Pass (https://tinyurl.com/vdjpkoa), Rune Fencer - First Pass (https://tinyurl.com/y3fomdp2)
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|