Summoner: Changes that would justify its name

[Baklavah]

To be perfectly honest, SMN feels more like a grind to play than it should, what with its immense rotation and lack of actual "summoner" gameplay. At least in my opinion.

To fix this, I have devised a rather simple solution.

Step 1) Add more summons to the mix for every Primal defeated.

Step 2) Remove shared CD from the skills for each summon and instead put them on "summon specific" CDs.

Step 3) Allow for a cycling mechanic. As an example, I summon Ifrit-egi, use his specials, one after the other. After his abilities are used, he unsummons automatically (and becomes unable to be resummoned until such time as Bahamut or Phoenix are used), allowing you to summon the next Primal-egi. Once that happens, use the abilities as per the previous example. Rinse and repeat. Upon summoning Phoenix or Bahamut, reset the summons to the "useable" state and begin anew. (in order to facilitate this, pet taunts and and increased threat generation will need to be removed and replaced with something else to make Titan useable without destroying party threat by "taunting" enemies).

Step 4) Make it so that using all of a summon's abilities contribute to the SMN meter to summon Bahamut (1st cycle). After using Bahamut, you will have a timer. If the timer runs out before you refill the meter, it will reset back down to Bahamut. Otherwise, summon Phoenix once the meter is refilled by using the skill (2nd cycle). Timer will depend on how long it takes to cycle each summon. If you're very slow and prefer to use your spells over your egi's abilities, you will most likely never summon Phoenix.

Using the above method would not only make you actually feel like a Summoner, but it would be far more entertaining to both use and watch unfold. As it stands right now, SMN is basically a BLM without a focus on the elements. It's boring and feels uninspired.

What do you guys think? I've had this idea for a while.

I have posted this in another thread, but figured I may as well start a thread about it to give the idea some awareness.

[HeulGDarian]

Hoo boy another one. Can we stop insulting the best story telling in the game as a "not an actual summoner" . Also a blm without a focus of the elements? They play and feel completely different.
1) smn needs to plan out his rotation for the whole fight in order to get the max value, blm needs to find a spot and keep casting
2) smn has freedom of movement with all the egi assaults ruin 4 and ruin 2s and as a gameplay mech you have to not use ruin 2s to maximise your dmg , blm has teleports he can abuse in order to be greedy for dps with various degrees of success.
3) smn has burst phases he has to make the most out of while blm puts out sustained dps aka casting fire 4s
4) smn has to take into account in his rotation the garbage pet ai which is why we do stuff like using bahamut on 6th gcd so that egis dont ghost out and stuff like triple weaving so that pheonix gets his gcd out
5) story wise smn is a branch of arcanima he is someone who specializes in summons which is why he has more spells than just summons the same way SCH specializes in healing and has more stuff than just physick and res such as SUMMONS they are both arcanists they just took a different specialization , meanwhile Blm is just a better thaumaturge
6) SMN is a tactician till you get bahamut you dont have flashy stuff , meanwhile blm is all about casting explosions left and right after you get fire 3


Im fine with reworking the egis so that they are a bit more usefull, but not be another demi this is just silly , and it would also help the lower levels since till you get trance you dont do much with your egis which is why the job feels like a drag in the lower levels. It is NOT caused cause you have 2 dots to keep uptime or ruins.

As for the proposition you made:
1)theyll add more summons . they wont add all of them unless they make them skins .
2 and 3) you basicaly want to put the clock of demis away from trance and on to summons but its not well explained, are they gcds?, ogcds? its an unfleshed out idea , it doesnt work with anything it works alone in a vacuum
4) this is blatantly how mch queen works (which is something they took inspiration from demis.....), if demis become like the queen then it will become a dots job no matter how good looking they are if they are just something that you click once and then forget its unengaging , its the other extreme of current egis where you got full control so they cant do anything alone like a bunch of toddlers rather than the summons they represent.


I know i wont change your opinion but you finding the job boring isnt the jobs fault , it is not to your taste and thats ok , the job doesnt have to appeal to every single soul on the planet, look how the tanks and healers ended up in order to deliver to a broader audience and even current smn is a weaker clunkier version of stormblood smn.

[Baklavah]

I'm not saying it has to appeal to every soul on the planet. Yes it's an unfleshed idea. I don't have the time to sit here and write up "from the ground up, level 1-80 experiences" for all the jobs. I have a day off and for once I'm not exhausted. So I thought I'd share the idea. I don't feel the same way you do. FFXIV SMN doesn't feel like an actual SMN. It feels less rewarding to me. The whole concept I devised for SMN is to make it feel more engaging by having you actually summon multiple beings in a row and having them use their special abilities, only to have to cycle them when they're done. If this were "pre-modernized SMN", it would be "summons big thing. It attacks once and goes bye bye", as it always has been before FFX made them into actual entities on the battlefield.

I understand what you're talking about and where you're coming from, but the fact remains that summoner feels..... well, less than fun. I'm not the only one who thinks this way. From a story standpoint, I understand why SMN is the way it is. From a gameplay standpoint, it feels terrible in my opinion.