How Would You Do... Summoner?

[Okamimaru]

Did play FF11... in that game the SMN was a half assed White Mage with no abilities. And the Summons were pretty weak and drained your MP too fast to be used as actual Pets.

Never played 12 or 13...

i do not know here you can sit there with a straight face and somehow claim after saying that it doesn't "feel" like a Summoner.

The one that doesn't "feel" like a Summoner is a half assed pet class from FFXI.

you have some weird obsession with FF11 for some reason... seriously almost every post you make is about comparing things to 11 and how terrible it was.... im sorry that a game was so traumatizing for you that it still haunts you to this day... but the recent trend (not including 15 which to me was barely FF) has been to have the summons come out and last longer than the simple nuke attack... but whatever youre clearly not going to listen to anybody else...

[Sarynth]

I just have to ask silver, did you play smn in ffxi at 75 or 99? Because with perpetuation cost gear/refresh on gear/auto refresh/ convert/etc avatars did not drain your mp too fast and you could even keep a positive mp tick going. Not to mention they weren't half passed whm's they were used in endgame content for pet buffs, pet burns and magic bursting on skillchains.

[Legion88]

How Would You Do... Summoner?

Clarification: Consider SMN before its incarnation in either 2.0 or 3.0. How would you have made it (from scratch), or how would you have revised it to prepare its way forward (into 3.0 and beyond)?

For this I would like to show the concept of SMN how I think the job would fit as a on-the-fly adjustable job for heavy AoE or single target encounters with summon dependent support utility.

As first Step, this concept would kill ACN and absorb it, so SCH would probably need some rework or adjustment to this but that is not part of this concept.

Main Mechanic:

I decided to use the trance system introduced with 3.0 for SMN and extend on this also i don't use any pet at all.
SMN gets Carbuncle as an early "lesser" or "normal" summon and with levels and jobquests he can unlock up to 3 slots for "primal" or "Egi" summons.
With additional sidequests SMN can unlock more primal summons, some specific for PvP, or PvE or for both.

In short, SMN summons an egi to enter the corresponding trance for X seconds, like Bahamut Trance. The summon gives the SMN a set of summon specific actions (basic actions, trance consuming action, trance ending/signature action), on a second parallel GCD, like the summon has it's own GCD.
The actions of the SMN himself are more or less some DoTs and low damage filler abilities with the main goal to support the summon.

To provide a variety of used and useful summons you can't use the same summon twice in a row, so you have to cycle throught at least 2 different summons.

Every summon causes a utility/buff by its summoning.

If you use an action from your summon and it hits an enemy with DoTs/debuffs from its SMN it will extend the duration of them.

With the loss of the summons as pets, their is also no tank pet.
Every summon will instead be somewhere between "full AoE damage" and "allmost no AoE" with some variety in AoE size and supporting actions.

Also SMN itself will lose its range and will fall on the half of the original range by also losing most of his casttimers.

New Lore:

After encountering the first primals the Allagans needed something to prevent their troops to get tempered.
The invention of choice was a soul crystal with the power to absorb corrupted aether and purge the wearer from it.
After extended tests the allagan scientist found a way to use the stored corrupted aether to manipulate the summoning of carbuncles and created the first egis.
As it seems the egis, less in power than their corresponding primals, can temper their SMN by long enough time of summoning. The soul crystal gets numerous additions and adjustments to make it more save to summon egis and use them in battle.

The catchword for this rework would be: "no pets", "summons as shiny animations for trances and actions", "high mobile, low range"
I'm not good in explaining this...but i hope some will understand what i mean by this concept.

[TheGothmog]

the main problem with summoner is aetherflow,everything revolves around it. the dots take to long to cast on each mob,but bane is only good under aetherflow.deathflare is to erratic,about 255 of the time it want let me cast,even if i use the same combo to get it.ruin 3 is a joke,to expand to long to cast,can cast more ruin 2 that do more dmg in time to cat 1 ruin 3,unless of course you have trance on which of course mean you need aetherflow.so you spend your time waiting on ONE spell over and over.its use is over in an instant than back to waiting.

[Dyvid]

In the spirit of the post I'll toss my ideas down again.

Reduce Summon 1, 2, 3, 4 casting time to 2.5

Summon 1: Tank pet. Needs to have provoke skill, AoE increase enmity skill, defense buff, and stun
Summon 2: Ranged AoE DPS pet: Needs to weak AoE attack, strong AoE attack, AoE heavy, AoE DoT attack.
Summon 3: Single Target Melee DPS Pet: Needs weak attack with short GCD, Strong attack with long GCD, Elemental Spike that works like Radiant Shield.
Summon 4: PvP based pet that mainly focuses on debuff and crowd control. Reason for this is because PvP is really the only element in the game that requires CC abilities. PvE is based more on two tanks that control the flow of combat.

Remove Tri-Bind and replace it with Contagion, this is a must must must.

Increase duration of Miasma II to 30s

Increase healing done by Sustain and Physick does bonus healing to pets