Developers Poor Attitude to Summoner

[dinnertime]

and doesn't feel like a summoner...

Honestly, what makes a Summoner a Summoner?
In my opinion Demi-Bahamut is a good example of what summoning should've been in the first place, from the pretty grand visuals of summoning him, to the powerful signature move (even though Akh Morn is actually just 540-ish potency) and and yet I see this.

Maybe they could've made Summon Bahamut only cost one Dreadwyrm Aether to see it more frequently, increase its DPS and make the job less punishing, but what's the problem this time? Do we need different Demi Summons/Demi-Glamours now, too?
W̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶I̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶r̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶t̶w̶.̶

[Texa]

Honestly, what makes a Summoner a Summoner?

The most consistent feature of summoning through all FF games is that summons/aeons/eidolons/espers are the biggest and flashiest attacks we get (excluding limit breaks/overdrive/quickening).

Even with Bahamut I don't think we meet that criteria in the game currently. I'm doubtful we ever will.

[Felis]

The most consistent feature of summoning through all FF games is that summons/aeons/eidolons/espers are the biggest and flashiest attacks we get (excluding limit breaks/overdrive/quickening).

Even with Bahamut I don't think we meet that criteria in the game currently. I'm doubtful we ever will.

Only with the "come and go" summons. The pet summons are weaker.
Maybe if the devs abolish the pets and rework the Summoner, so that the summons will work more like a Limit Break.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Maybe if the devs abolish the pets and rework the Summoner, so that the summons will work more like a Limit Break.

If they do that, I guarantee I'm kicking SMN on sight, and I'm willing to bet money I won't be the only one. Who in their right minds wants the equivalent of Teraflare/Meteor blasting in their face every two seconds? Demi Bahamut is enough of a nuisance for all melee in the game as is, if SMN was any flashier it'd be unplayable in group content.

[SpookyGhost]

Honestly, what makes a Summoner a Summoner?.̶

Something that's really hard to accomplish when you've got tons of other jobs to design as well. Summoner basically revolves around being flashy and big nuke damage - ya summon the big thing, it does the big damage (like your example, Demi-Bahamut), then it goes away. Unfortunately they really couldn't accomplish this in 2.0 so they tried to reinvent summoner by tying summoning with aether and not being able to channel a ton of it because it's the life source of the world and blah blah blah lore reasons. It's nice to see with this expansion that they're taking it in the direction most would like it to go in without getting rid of the stuff that some people liked about original SMN. Hopefully there's more Demi-Bahamut type skills in future expansions.

[Lemuria]

Unfortunately they really couldn't accomplish this in 2.0 so they tried to reinvent summoner by tying summoning with aether and not being able to channel a ton of it because it's the life source of the world and blah blah blah lore reasons.

They could accomplish it, but they chose not to. From Arcanist's initial direction to the final implementation of the Summoner role, it fails at the task it's designed for. Summoning.

You want to know how I'd build a summoner? Simple. Give the attacks to the pet. For their big 'flashy' attacks, let them build up an overdrive/limit break bar while attacking. See how easy that was? You could give full control of these attacks to the summoner as well as support skills to keep their pets alive. It should be a pet job, not some weird DoT job hybrid.

However, it's too late to do that now. Now they need to be more careful about how they implement skills because if they change it too drastically it might upset a lot of players on both sides. I just don't like the argument that it wouldn't work or simply was doomed to fail from the start. It was doomed because not enough thought was put in.

[aesteval]

However, it's too late to do that now. Now they need to be more careful about how they implement skills because if they change it too drastically it might upset a lot of players on both sides. I just don't like the argument that it wouldn't work or simply was doomed to fail from the start. It was doomed because not enough thought was put in.

Meanwhile we have a bit of a mess that I'm not sure if either side is happy with anyway.

[dinnertime]

Even with Bahamut I don't think we meet that criteria in the game currently. I'm doubtful we ever will.

Ehh, I think Demi-Bahamut is good enough for what it tries to achieve in visuals.

Summoner and SCH should just be their own Jobs.
I believe Yoshida mentioned that the class tie in was a huge mistake and we are still paying for it.
I also think this is why he just threw away with it now.
It's hard to fool around with it without messing with SCH base/action spells.

I said this in another thread and I'll say it again, both jobs are separate at this point since most of the ACN skills they shared were replaced by job skills. Right now it's only Aetherflow, Ruin II, Bane and Shadowflare which they both actively use. They'll have a better time fixing SMN, it's just that they're NOT doing it.

[Vhailor]

I'm quite convinced, based on Summoner and a variety of other Job balance issues, that the development team simply doesn't understand the nature of online play. It's like they're designing a single-player game sometimes. They seem to have concluded that it's alright to sacrifice balance in the name of Job flavour.

The thing is though, especially for FFXIV, that's not an acceptable approach. This game's mechanics only work if various Jobs are relatively balanced. If they aren't, it generates animosity and frustration. FFXIV's content, lest we forget, is designed to be spammed; small imbalances are magnified as a result. It's arguable even FFXI handled job imbalances better than FFXIV, and that's saying something, because FFXI had multiple severe, long-lasting imbalances - but at least end-game content typically allowed for a "death by large numbers" approach, and individual pieces of content weren't spammed a dozen times a week.

The development team, from Yoshi P on down, need to get their collective heads out of their arses. This type of approach isn't acceptable, and hiding behind flimsy excuses like job flavour is ridiculous.

[Minas-tepes]

Bahamut was a step in the right direction. Maybe will get a real summoner for 5.0