How Would You Do... Summoner?

[Duelle]

Yeah that's why Pets or any new pets are a bad idea and won't work either.

Summoner is a DPS job in this game. There's a reason only ONE summon ever gets used while the others are little more than benchwarmers.

The problem with this is that the devs gave one pet a notable DPS increase via Contagion. If they had made Contagion a SMN ability from the start, you wouldn't be having this issue much. Regardless of other changes or modifications to the job, removing Contagion from Garuda is a given.

Going back to my earlier point, lack of variety in gameplay is largely to blame. As I said, we don't have enemies with skills that need to be interrupted because if you don't the tank dies. We don't have adds that need to be controlled by multiple people in the raid to prevent the raid taking too much damage. We don't have air phases where ranged DPS can shine. The entirety of combat in this game is focused on telegraphs and memorizing American football plays.

In every one of those scenarios, SMN pets would have a purpose in the event a raid group brings a SMN. Boss has an air phase that prevents melee from hitting it? Pull out Garuda to do her thing. Your raid is short an interrupt for a boss fight? Pull out Leviathan and join the interrupt rotation. Boss fight has powerful adds that need to be CCd and your raid is short one DPS with reliable CC? Bring out Shiva. Boss fight has an add phase with lots of adds that need to die quickly? Bring out Ramuh and have him AoE stuff to death.

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I get why Garuda was given Contagion; they wanted to go for a pet benefiting the master, but there are other approaches. Passive personal/group buffs would be one way (having X egi active for Y seconds enhances some aspect of your performance). Slightly affecting certain abilities on your action bars would be another (X ability gets a slight boost when Y egi is active).

Another thing those that don't actually play the job don't know are the kinks in the Pet interface. There is a major delay due to queueing of the pet attacks that creates enormous delays in the response time between the time you issue the pet a command, and they actually obey.

Contrary to what you think, people are indeed aware of delays in input. If you play a PLD or WHM, you see that every time you push Benediction or Hallowed Ground. It's no surprise that pets suffer from that problem as well, and that needs to be addressed as a whole.

Limiting class variety due to not wanting to arse yourself to fix the issues with the battle system is not an excuse.

One is stronger on one side, the other is stronger in the other. This is their balance point and how they are balanced against each other in the grand scheme of things. Remove that AoE damage from the SMN and you only gimp him. so now he has substandard AoE and no niche where he filled it perfectly before. and still allowed the BLM to flourish in his niche.

You're a) assuming that BLM would not be seeing changes in any form (unlikely), and b) banking too much on niches.

Niches in overall design don't matter because classes live or die via a combination of output and utility. Niches needlessly force classes into subcategories for the sake of being different, when the gameplay is what sets one apart from the next. Put into tank terms, I don't give a shit if Mystic Knight enters the game as a tank that can mitigate damage as well as my PLD can or has as many defensive cooldowns; what I care about is how different the gameplay is between the two while generating the same results (hence why Yoshida's "WAR should deal more DPS than the other tanks" logic is complete bullocks).

Same logic applies to DPS, though I personally make room for minor advantages where appropriate. Of course, minor advantages like better AoE are worthless if you're not putting those aspects of a class to use in combat. Going back to my earlier point, if you're giving a class an advantage in AoE, you better be including boss fights that put that AoE to use.

[Heliantheae]

I always joke about how the Ninjutsu is going to have the primals come down and assist and be more like Summoners than the actual summoners. But I was thinking, you know how in the old games the summoners would disappear after summoning with orbs floating off and bringing down the summon. Why not give the summoners four commands like the ninja. It'd be Body, Mind, Soul, Evoke. And based on the order you'd get your summon.

Ifrit - AoE fire damage and burn status that lowers attack and a DoT
Titan - Linear Earth damage and defense boost to the party.
Garuda - AoE wind around the caster and group haste
Ramuh - Conal lightning damage and magical defense boost
Leviathan - Linear water damage and lowers magic defense
Shiva - Sweeping Ice AoE and lowers physical defense

And King Mog would be the fail and it does a random effect to both sides.

[Silverquick]

Ifrit - AoE fire damage and burn status that lowers attack and a DoT
Titan - Linear Earth damage and defense boost to the party.
Garuda - AoE wind around the caster and group haste
Ramuh - Conal lightning damage and magical defense boost
Leviathan - Linear water damage and lowers magic defense
Shiva - Sweeping Ice AoE and lowers physical defense

And King Mog would be the fail and it does a random effect to both sides.

Ahh and this is the REAL reason new pets won't work.

There's no difference between any elemental damage in the game... there's no elemental wheel... hence why ONLY the most damaging pet ever gets used...

And the SMN class is the DPS class... the SCH is the Support job...

Their abilities are neatly divided along those lines. Remember this is a dual class here... one side is the DPS... the other side is the Support. So when you start making the SMN the Support class... you begin taking away the roll of the SCH.

Remember there are TWO sides to the Arcanist... the DPS (SMN) and the Support class (SCH)

And when you start moving in that direction, you begin stepping on the toes of the SCH, whose job it is to shield and buff and heal. Many of those abilities would be excellent on an SCH, and I would suggest talking about Improvements to the SCH job like that over in the healer section.

Example here:

The SMN job DOES have access to debuffs like Virus, Physick, Ressurection, and Eye for an Eye... but they rarely get used on the SMN side at high levels because he's only DPSing.... they do get used by the SCH who is running a lot of healing, shielding, buffing abilities.

So any support abilities given to the SMN... end up stepping on the toes of the SCH... AND likely never get used by the SMN side which is concentrating on DPS only.

[Jandor]

Rouse and Spur should increase pet size according to the buff, stacking as well so both would temporarily give you an impressive looking pet.

Dreadwyrm Trance should be summon IV, at 3 Aethertrail Attunement you instantly swap your current egi for Bahamut-egi. He lasts for 15s or until you use...

Enkindle II, replaces Deathflare, commands your egi to do their signature move, can only be used when Summon IV is in effect. Essentially Bahamut Deathflares instead of you.

Now, the numbers would have to be looked at very carefully re: Ruin III, the 10% damage buff, how much power Bahamut-ehi has, etc. but who seriously does not want to summon a mini-bahamut, make him grow in size with rouse and spur and then have him deathflare a big pack of enemies?

I'm hoping for a future in which the summon glamour system eventually looks like this:
Tank pet: Titan or Ramuh.
Melee pet: Ifrit, Shiva or Ravana.
Ranged pet: Garuda, Leviathan or Bismarck.
Ultimate pet: Bahamut, Alexander or Odin.

I'd make the ranged pet the AoE focused one, moving contagion to the summon and giving the pet a DoT than can be contagioned and baned. Melee pet would be the single target focus one, tank obviously staying much as it is and Ultimate obviously kicking ass in all scenarios really.

Got a few more things I'd change as well, but it's mostly just cosmetic changes and stuff about splitting SMN/SCH. Probably not be worth it unless they want to do large changes to SCH at some point.

E: Summon IV would have your current egi quickly wrap itself in a mini Dalamud that explodes to reveal Bahamut-egi. Because that would kick ass.

[Silverquick]

Well that one would definitely require a complete ground up rework of the class... and for that matter a complete rework of the pet interface.

Another thing those that don't actually play the job don't know are the kinks in the Pet interface. There is a major delay due to queueing of the pet attacks that creates enormous delays in the response time between the time you issue the pet a command, and they actually obey.

Example: Trying to get Garuda to do Contagion can take upwards of 3-10 seconds at times if he's busy.

The second bug... or should I say deficiency... Enkindle itself. As above... there will be a delay in the time it takes the Enkindle to actually be performed with the pet. SO.. when you kick in Enkindle on say Garuda, and the target dies before he does Aerial Blast.... the attack never happens and your button goes into Cool Down anyway... so you lose your Enkindle for the next 3 minutes. One of those little tricks you learn as a SMN it so only use it on the target with the most HP or you might just lose it.

So the pet interface as a whole would need to be rebuilt. I suspect this is yet another reason why they've given up on pet classes as a whole. It would be a massive undertaking... and if they don't do that FIRST... then they just screw up the whole class by making everything pet centric.

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But you might get some Egi Glamors.

Those wouldn't hose up the Job or create class balance issues either.

[Nerisu]

Or they could just add a Bahamut-egi animation near our characters when we perform Deathflare to at least give us an illusion that we are summoning it and it's the one performing the attack. You know, like NIN's new frog summon jutsu.

And just like Silver said, pet commands are very clunky. Just imagine missing the trance window just because the "Bahamut-egi" decides it's auto-attack is more important than Deathflare. It's a good concept, though, but not viable because of how the game's pet system works.

[Jandor]

Well that one would definitely require a complete ground up rework of the class... and for that matter a complete rework of the pet interface.

Another thing those that don't actually play the job don't know are the kinks in the Pet interface. There is a major delay due to queueing of the pet attacks that creates enormous delays in the response time between the time you issue the pet a command, and they actually obey.

Example: Trying to get Garuda to do Contagion can take upwards of 3-10 seconds at times if he's busy.

I play the job mate, I know the pet interface can be clunky. It should be fixed regardless of what other changes are or are not made to SMN.
"Don't make these changes because a significant part of the job doesn't function properly as it is." What sort of reasoning is that?

Or they could just add a Bahamut-egi animation near our characters when we perform Deathflare to at least give us an illusion that we are summoning it and it's the one performing the attack. You know, like NIN's new frog summon jutsu.

That would be nice, and more than acceptable. This is a 'how would you do it' thread, so I went for what I want rather than what might potentially happen.

[Silverquick]

"Don't make these changes because a significant part of the job doesn't function properly as it is." What sort of reasoning is that?

The smart kind....

....where you don't end up hosing the Job up with good intentions... because you didn't think things through.

[Shurrikhan]

"Don't make these changes because a significant part of the job doesn't function properly as it is." What sort of reasoning is that?

The smart kind....

....where you don't end up hosing the Job up with good intentions... because you didn't think things through.

OP here,

Not trying to appear authoritarian or anything, but just to clarify, let me restate the premise for the thread: if you were to have made the Summoner, e.g. before there was a ever an implementation of the XIV 2.0 Summoner, or revised it for 3.0, how would you have done it?

Clunky systems are definitely a concern worth mentioning, but their existence does not preclude later mechanics built upon them, so long as it's feasible that those systems could still be revised.

I'm still working on my own example, which has unfortunately bloated into multiple pages worth of documentation... I'll finish it up and then try to trim it down, or at least break it into several sections of hide-able text.

:: To clarify further for you, Silver:

it is a creative venture thread, not one aimed specifically at pragmatics. Nor am I sealing off input from every person who does not consider themselves a SMN "main". Please do not harass other for using the thread as intended, even if you feel that they have been shortsighted or have skipped crucial details; these things can be a team effort... And in the end, the job doesn't belong to its mains, though I do agree that it should largely favor their opinions as those already invested. But, you have 4 other threads in your recent post history in which to continue letting the world know that you ARE a Summoner MAIN. I'm trying to get us to look at the systems that can best aid attraction to others who have put off the job (often due to these exact issues) with the least cost of attractiveness to those already invested, as in your post #20.

:: This thread is not "the enemy". It does not intend to replace your current implementation of Summoner; rather, it's using the comparison between what was made and what might have been to gather insights into design generally, for instance, that using persistent AI units (e.g. Summoner pets) who must check whether they are in fact summoned, their position, the mob's position, their spell cooldown, and then recheck every instance of position and relative position as they chase a mob because there's no predictive movement nor any elastic or otherwise extended ability range to cover for issue, is probably a bad idea, and that while pet swapping might sound thematically interesting, spending 6 seconds to do so for little to no advantage is not. From these targets we could then move towards actual solutions for either the mechanical systems or ability/spell arsenals of something like Summoner to make it more effective, more deeply interesting, and more broadly attractive.

[Silverquick]

OP here,

Not trying to appear authoritarian or anything, but just to clarify, let me restate the premise for the thread: if you were to have made the Summoner, e.g. before there was a ever an implementation of the XIV 2.0 Summoner, or revised it for 3.0, how would you have done it?

Clunky systems are definitely a concern worth mentioning, but their existence does not preclude later mechanics built upon them, so long as it's feasible that those systems could still be revised.

I'm still working on my own example, which has unfortunately bloated into multiple pages worth of documentation... I'll finish it up and then try to trim it down, or at least break it into several sections of hide-able text.

Cool...

But I am also here as someone who actually plays the job... and Mains it.

Here to bring to you and everyone else here... the reality of playing an actual Summoner, and including class balance lessons with our other sister jobs, and a direct focus on what the Arcanist > Summoner/Scholar actually is and their roles.

Along with all the other realities you need to think about.