How Would You Do... Summoner?

[Duelle]

The challenge: be thorough. What, if any new mechanics would you create? How would you solve the “pet problem”? Will there be a reason we use books? Etc., etc.

Where to begin...

1) Keeping the pets: Assuming we want to make pets relevant, there could be mechanics added that improve overall performance of the pet via actions taken by the master. Not stuff like Rouse, but more subtle and constant effects. For example, imagine if using Energy Drain increased an egi's damage dealt and attack speed by 20% for 45s. Part of optimal gameplay would thus require the SMN to learn to pace their use of Energy Drain so that the buff doesn't fall off. Ramp up mechanics could also work in this case as well (say that an egi deals increased damage on targets under the effect of your Bio, Bio II, and Miasma).

2) More pets: This has been a peeve I have with the direction the job was taken, since I still argue that SMN should at the least have the 6 main egis to correspond to the 6 main primals we fought in ARR. Each egi could and should have a different role and purpose. The downside to this is that gameplay currently doesn't require enough input from the player. We don't have adds that need to be CCd in raid fights. We don't have enemy abilities that must be interrupted in raid fights in order for you to get a clear. Shiva-egi could enter as a CC pet, Leviathan-egi could enter as an anti-caster pet, but without gameplay actually giving them any use, it'd be a wasted gesture.

3) Redesign: If we want trances, then the job needs to be built from the ground up for them. Currently it not only suffers from schizophrenic design, but also has needless overlap since you basically have two Aetherflow systems on top of each other. Turning Aetherflow into a resource to be generated by certain skills and then using that for trances or utility skills would be the way to go. I could probably do a write up for a complete trance-based SMN, but I don't have time for that at the moment.

There's also this.