Please don't defile BST

[Jonnycbad]

I see BLU/BST/PUP being similar types of limited jobs in that they involve a mini-game of sorts. BLU was defeating mobs and learning spells. BST could be charming/capturing mobs when their HP is low and fighting along-side them (and their each individual unique commands/skills/spells) to defeat things. PUP gather parts from defeating different kinds of mobs and using them as attachments for their Mammet. Different parts would have different effects and enable the Mammet different spells/traits/stats/or combat logic (melee vs healer). There would be a limit to the # of slots you could equip, similar to BLU spells. Each of these 3 limited jobs would have their own solo content (like Masked Carnivale) but balanced for their own unique style of combat.

[Khalithar]

I've been thinking a lot about how to make BST and SMN different, ultimately the SMN pet is more or less a glorified dot and it's up to the player to do the majority of the dps. I actually think the game's interpretation of smn is fine, it's functional and does what it needs to. But for Beastmaster I think they need to put more emphasis on the pet and what it can do as a way of making it "feel" more critical to the job and it's performance. They CAN add a collecting minigame where you tame the various creatures (coeurls, bears, tigers, etc.) while keeping their stats balanced and then select one as a pet to join you in combat. But now the question is how to make it more involved with the job performance?

You could make the oGCD abilities where you command the pet to do various special attacks, you could make certain combos cause the pet to do a weapon skill each time, or you could go an entirely different route and make the beastmaster play support and focus on keeping the pet alive and powered up and make it the bulk of the damage. I actually think the beastmaster hanging back while commanding their creature to do the majority of the work is most fitted for the job but I don't know if the devs would be cool with that. Hard to say!

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

I haven't played 11 but traditionally SMN in FF is a job that summons a huge entity for a very short period of time. From FF8, when the summoning animation hijacked the entire screen (and you nearly broke your thumb trying to Boost) to FF10 where the Aeon battles made your party flee and locked you into pet commands, summons have always been a big impressive thing with a very short life-span. I don't think traditional ff summoner is possible given how the FF14 job system is structured, but Im all for new egi glams or even NEW egis from some of the new primals.

As for BLU. Blue Mage/Magic has always been either A) enhanced melee or B) a collection of niche support skills. Since we have our spell-enhanced melee already (RDM), I see why SE didn't go that route. And unless they do, BLU cannot contend with the other jobs, again because of how the system is structured. It would be a straight support class and an uneven one at that.

[Dyvid]

First on topic, I think it could be said that BST in FFXI was a limited job because it was mainly used for soloing. In fact it even had a xp penalty to the party if you had a BST. Second I don't think SE wanted to add anymore pet jobs because it's been such a headache in term of AI development. The best pet is one left on auto because of command lag. Maybe in 5.0 they'll fix this but for now.....

Now as for SMN, people seem to forget this is FFXIV and the job has to be designed to play within the games mechanics. First, egi are small so people can see when to dodge. This was a prime issue in 4.0 with Demi-Bahamut and people saying it's too big. Second is the gameplay style, SE wanted something that would be different from BLM which was the second caster in 2.0. In all purposed, FF SMN is just a very cinematic nuker; Rydia casting Meteor and Bahamut did 9999 regardless. DoT mage is good for pets because it allows players to keep dps up and give them time to control pets, which is why I believe the devs chose it. Lastly this Bahamut Summon does not translate well into a MMO. It's basically a Limit Break.

[Kalise]

Now as for SMN, people seem to forget this is FFXIV and the job has to be designed to play within the games mechanics. First, egi are small so people can see when to dodge. This was a prime issue in 4.0 with Demi-Bahamut and people saying it's too big. Second is the gameplay style, SE wanted something that would be different from BLM which was the second caster in 2.0. In all purposed, FF SMN is just a very cinematic nuker; Rydia casting Meteor and Bahamut did 9999 regardless. DoT mage is good for pets because it allows players to keep dps up and give them time to control pets, which is why I believe the devs chose it. Lastly this Bahamut Summon does not translate well into a MMO. It's basically a Limit Break.

To retort to this I merely point to Demi-Bahamut.

Demi-Bahamut works in an MMO setting. It also brings some of the feeling of having a powerful summon doing powerful things.

Demi-Bahamut is SMN's one saving grace.

More Demi's and less Egi's would be ideal.

Even that FFVIII summon, is literally what Demi-Bahamut does. Where he casts Wyrmwave on your target and you have Akh Morn to have him use. Sure, there's not a 5 day wind up culminating in a nuclear explosion, but you get a MMO realized version of that summon.

Demi-Bahamut also bypasses a lot of the stupid AI problems that Egi's suffer from (While only having his positioning as an issue)

[Dyvid]

To retort to this I merely point to Demi-Bahamut.

Demi-Bahamut works in an MMO setting. It also brings some of the feeling of having a powerful summon doing powerful things.

Demi-Bahamut is SMN's one saving grace.

More Demi's and less Egi's would be ideal.

Even that FFVIII summon, is literally what Demi-Bahamut does. Where he casts Wyrmwave on your target and you have Akh Morn to have him use. Sure, there's not a 5 day wind up culminating in a nuclear explosion, but you get a MMO realized version of that summon.

Demi-Bahamut also bypasses a lot of the stupid AI problems that Egi's suffer from (While only having his positioning as an issue)

To retort I point to Demi-B

Demi-B is a pet that last 20secs, not a one and done spell. It will literally just sit there unless you command it directly or indirectly

Demi-B original size was problematic; That one guy in a movie theater..., Why is Demi Bahamut so big?. Make Bahamut transparent.

Demi-Bahamut suffers from the same A.I. problem as all Egis. He will prioritize movement over commanded action which makes him miss Demi-Enkindle.

Egi's do need a better design, but shrinking down Primals to Lalafel size looks odd at best. Up sizing them to point they interfere with other players is also bad. SE has to find the happy medium.

[Kalise]

Demi-B is a pet that last 20secs, not a one and done spell. It will literally just sit there unless you command it directly or indirectly

Which is fine. You're playing an MMO not a turn based RPG. You can't expect everyone on the server to have to wait 5 minutes while you activate your summon.

The fact that Demi-B is mostly passive, you don't get a pet action bar, you get a single active skill and the rest of him is merely just reacting to your natural spell slinging, makes it essentially feel like a one and done spell. Just one that has continuous barrage of damage over a short period of time as opposed to 1) Being an exact copy of single player RPG FF incarnations which wouldn't work in an MMO or 2) Being a crappy Egi that is active at all times and is a glorified DoT when they bother to actually do something useful for a change.

Demi-B original size was problematic; That one guy in a movie theater..., Why is Demi Bahamut so big?. Make Bahamut transparent.

Is something that can be worked on.

A combination of design choices and visual effects settings can mitigate the negative impact for having such large entities being summoned in during Raid content.

Like for example, does Bahamut have to be near the ground? Could he not be flying overhead some distance?

Demi-Bahamut suffers from the same A.I. problem as all Egis. He will prioritize movement over commanded action which makes him miss Demi-Enkindle.

Though, he has much less movement to handle.

This also has more lenience because Demi-Bahamut only has a single activated skill.

But in the end, Demi-Bahamut shows an example of an MMO capable Summon with a scale comparable to that of the iconic job.

Is it perfect? No, it has some kinks to work out.

Is it better than Egi's? Oh yeah, by a factor of magnitudes. Egi's are complete trash. Demi only has a couple of issues to sort out (Size vs visibility of others and some more AI work)

Of course, you'd never be able to have Bahamut to scale though... Given his hand was an entire battle arena for Twintania with room to spare...

[Flana]

Demi-Bahamut is nothing but flaws. He's worse than egi's in every possible way.

His AI prioritizes moving even though he has the longest range of any player spell in the entire game. 100 yards. And yet he still still act like a braindead glitchpuppet and run towards you whenever possible.

This never happens with the other pets. Garuda will never move once she plants herself unless the target moves out of her range, which is considerably less than Bahamut. Ifrit and Titan likewise have no problems with chasing the Summoner randomly unless their current target happens to die. They do have problems with attacking and moving, but its significantly less of a problem than Bahamut. No one cares if Ifrit's Flaming Crush is 2 seconds late. Everyone cares about Ahk Morn being 2 seconds late.

He also has the hilarious problem of being inconsistently bad. Sometimes you push Enkindle Bahamut and it works. Sometimes it doesn't. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I've been standing next to the guy and the longest I've seen him ignore orders while spamming Wyrmwaves is five seconds. That is absurd when you have 6 1/2 seconds at most for the second Ahk Morn before he flies off and leaves you in the dirt.

Bahamut has to be forced to do anything. I do not understand how you can call this effectively a "one and done" when Bahamut literally warps your entire playstyle around his existence. You have to use ogcds and spam Ruin II to efficiently make the idiot attack. If you have to spend 20 seconds doing something that is completely different from your normal gameplay, that is not a "one-and-done." That is an entire phase of babysitting his awful AI.

I'm also amused you called egi's a glorified dot right after saying Bahamut is a one-and-done spell that deals continous damage over a period of time. So Bahamut is also a glorified dot? Because that's the same thing egis do: damage over time.

Plus no one with a brain is actually arguing for a literal 5 minute summon animation in an MMO. You know what they could have done? Had a short animation of summoning demi-bahamut and then your involvement is done. He can take w/e 5s to charge up a Megaflare and blast the boss before leaving. That would have been a one-and-done that's actually in line with what people claim to call the "real" summoner experience, and it splits the animation time between you and him so no one is left standing around waiting for too long.

Personally I also find his visual attacks to be a complete joke. Even the egi's are better. You can at least see the different animations between all of them. The only new thing Bahamut brings to Summoner is an air-hump that you can barely see half the time (and his eyes glow red, in case you want to be not looking at the boss for some reason). That's it. Ahk Morn is just a slightly bigger Deathflare, something I've had for years now. I can not think of a more boring execution than this. Where is all of the other unique effects he had in the fight? Where are Flare Breaths, Flatten, Megaflare, Teraflare, Flare Stars, Earthshakers, Tempest Wings, the list goes on and on. They settled on the minimum amount needed and it's boring imo.

Plus they keep trying to parade Bahamut around and it's lessening the effect of everything else in the kit. Why didn't they make the egi's better and give them more gameplay? They just wanted to dazzle people with a low effort summon. That's so much easier than actually making them cool. Why can't I use primal mechanics through the egis like they do in the Summoner trials? Ifrit has eruptions and infernal nails. Garuda has chirada and suparna. Titan could have had gaols as a defensive shield or something. There is so much space for Summoner to be a cool job and they're flushing all of it out to cram in more dargonmage.

Edit: To also stay on topic, I'll add: Don't defile puppetmaster either. I like my puppetry jobs in games. Make it a real job or don't waste your time.

[NYCAcimStudent]

WARNING! Appreciation post:

Kalise, you have spitting fire all day! Many of your comments are extremely accurate and they made me laugh out loud. You are fighting for us to have a real Summoner and as a (reluctant) Summoner main, I would love that! People are free to disagree with me but there IS a classic version of Summoner and this is not it. If BLM wasn't in such a bad place right now, SMN would have a hard time justifying its slot in a party. Why on Earth did SE choose to have SMN be the dot class and have that take precedence over summons?...

I have summarized your greatest hits into 1 post:

"Even SMN's job gauge has nothing at all to do with summoning at least until we got Demi-Bahamut."

"So, again, just because SMN can 'Summon' Egi/Carbuncles doesn't make them a Summoner any more than SCH is a Summoner because they 'Summon' fairies."

"None of which were DoT mages that summoned a Popoto, Spicy Popoto, or some weird Green Goblin thing."

"Egi's are literally just Carbuncles with some meaningful lore stapled to them"

"It's honestly like you just learn Glamours for your Carbuncles"

"Not once do I recall in those games ever having a Summoner (Or summon skills in general in lieu of a dedicated class) that summoned a crappy minion to deal damage alongside my team."

"you remove Demi-Bahamut and what are you left with? Oh right yeah, Warlock just like the class has been since its release in this game "

"If you want to compare it to a SCH situation, it would be as if they released the Red Mage we currently have back in ARR under the name Scholar and then at level 70 they gained access to a single skill where they put away their Rapier and Focus and pulled out a book and started to use that to cast a spell."

[purgatori]

Yeah, no, I don't think many people really found the way they executed the "limited side job" with BLU entertaining for any length of time, let-alone whole weeks. I'm fine with BLU and BST being main-able, so to speak, and opening them up to the DF. That would be preferable, in fact, to the current implementation which just doesn't work in any way, shape, or form for virtually anybody. But I would rather they made these jobs true solo jobs that allowed you to clear old content in over the top/ridiculous ways, and which tied in with soloable content like Squadrons, Trusts, and/or Deep Dungeons. They could be designed in such a way that they were the perfect complement to crafters: that is, the best gear they could obtain could be crafted gear, and, a the same time, BLU & BST, etc. could allow crafters to go in to old content and grind for mats in an entertaining and expedient way without being required to group up with other players. Again, I'd be fine with them going the other route as well, but SE should at least pick some solution that makes these side jobs serve some useful purpose.