Summoner: An action or a dot?

[HeulGDarian]

Summoner does not summon just anything. They summon grand creatures to perform grand feats. ARR summoner in effect puny elementals, and maybe once in a blue moon with enkindle you'd get a sort of neat effect.


ARR SMN was akin to FFXI SMN if all FFXI's SMN was summon elemental spirits. Which would have been pretty bad. Clearly FFXI didn't feel like a summoner just because it summoner elementals. It was because it summoner these awesome creatures.


You will never change my mind to make summoner as simple and paltry as summoning chibi makes you on par with any other summoners of the series.


So yes we do and always will have to go through this. I will always appose you on that idea. Unless the whole game is chibi themed, but to change Summoner from what is in effect the most fancy and grandiose job in the entire franchise into a fast food chibi caller with some dots. Never going to be on that same page with you.


It is a subversion to change a core concept, if you compare every single SMN to each other and the jobs (or characters and spells in jobless FF)- FFXIV stands out as being different. They made some reasons for it, like Yoshida wanting to respect the primals by making them world bosses you could call out as a FC but at the cost of changing summoners vibes.


If you give dark knight only the most bland and boring black magic sure it's still dark knight, but it's kind of lame. Especially if all the other dark knights didn't have that issue. So in this case summoner never had a meager appearance until FFXIV ARR. Ever. They have of course worked to change that, demi(s) and trances includes.

That can just be fixed by simply changing how they look, and giving them more things to do. You can call it lame till they do something like that but you cant call it a subversion, Like i said before you may say summoner is meant to have big scary looking summons, i wont disagree with you, but i will say summoner should have options and variety first something that it does have to an extent and that id love to see expanded.

[Shougun]

That can just be fixed by simply changing how they look, and giving them more things to do. You can call it lame till they do something like that but you cant call it a subversion, Like i said before you may say summoner is meant to have big scary looking summons, i wont disagree with you, but i will say summoner should have options and variety first something that it does have to an extent and that id love to see expanded.

My fault for editing after posting but I added some more details, I think you're arguing mechanics and I'm having PTSD (lol) flash backs to when people pretended summoner never had visual narrative or that visual narratives are not important. So many times I was misquoted and saw people make arguments I felt were like "sure if we delete everything and pretend SE doesn't have a franchise..... You're clearly here to say they can do no wrong". To be clear I don't argue if people like a certain gameplay or even if they like the chibi primals. That's opinion (and technically I've even said ARR SMN played well)- but I would vehemently disagree on narrative, history, and options available, which is where I probably get so "No, you listen here -- chocobo is not cactuar don't you pull this funny business on me". Lol

Mechanically yes, summoner has had diversity. Many, many times. Sometimes strictly primal related but even then it was diverse in effects.

And want to repeat for those joining me in this first world PTSD (so many threads back then lol), I think SE has done a lot since then- I think SE has done a lot since chibi master. Both the trance and demi-bahamut were wonderful additions. Personally also love the flare they added to the second demi... The heal aoe dot (which is actually pretty substantial for a freebie on summon effect). Damn that's exactly the spirit the primal spells should be throwing off. So I speak in the past in some ways when I talk issues.

Also am not against people trying to hold or improve the current system over complete destruction like some people are going for. So long as SE keeps the spirit they've shown recently for SMN I honestly think it will be in good hands. I'm not worried about SE as much as I don't want to see someone hand-wave the importance of a narrative, in particular the through line between each FF that hands the baton off. Which you /can/ fiddle with expectation, it is not forbidden, but that doesn't always lead to good results, maybe sometimes yes and sometimes nooooo lol, especially in a FF game where their presentation and self reference is a legendary and key part of their games. Music and visuals are a cornerstone symbol that are so big you can simply see footage of one and likely be like "ah yes that must be a FF game" .

[HeulGDarian]

So I don't want to give the appearance I'm against what they've done recently, I've in fact regularly cheered the changes (even if sometimes some polish or smoothing might be needed here and there).


Also just in case there is a confusion I'm commanding dots to be removed or the job get a whole rework, though I think primal infusion would be neat (after a certain level or mechanic- such that ifrit turns bio it burn for example). I was mostly responding to the idea that FFXIV lives in a vacuum with no predecessors and that there was no through visual narrative to the job. If your argument is purely summoners have used black and white magic before than yeah sure lol- that's a fact.

Are you from phone ? cause i dont get the commanding part, especially when later you say youd think it would be neat for them to get power upeed by egis :P. Is commanding not demanding but autocorrected?

[Shougun]

Are you from phone ? cause i dont get the commanding part, especially when later you say youd think it would be neat for them to get power upeed by egis :P. Is commanding not demanding but autocorrected?

lol, I will attack you with my auto catcucumber.





(Yes, also why I reread it and be like o.. nice). That and the new Firefox update has honestly messed up a bunch of stuff. Sometimes it suggests code to me lol. (Like variable names on the screen).

[HeulGDarian]

lol, I will attack you with my auto catcucumber.





(Yes, also why I reread it and be like o.. nice). That and the new Firefox update has honestly messed up a bunch of stuff. Sometimes it suggests code to me lol. (Like variable names on the screen).

Ye i also had firefox problems , like it wasnt saving up my logins so i had to re log in everytime ,as well as change my options cause it defaulted them. I swapped to opera and now i got 0 issues

[reivaxe]

My idea for Smn overhaul would be to take away the dots and turn egis into a trance with hard casting instead of "pet actions".

The reason why Smn is such a head ache for the devs to balance and work with is because the way it works is basically like a clunky Ranged DPS. It's busted because it has to do stupid high damage or else people wouldn't bother putting up with the pet AI and button mashing if it, ya know, actually did the amount of damage you would expect from a job with that level of mobility and utility.

Seems like they really want to focus on trances so go with that, turn egis into a default trance-state and toss out the pet AI system. Each of the 3 egis gives you 2 different hard cast spells with different effects (like FBT but hard casting).

Boom, frees them up to actually make a proper Dot Mage in the future and balance them around that instead of balancing "dot mage" around all the other stuff Smn has going on.

[spf1200]

I feel like they plan on doing something with egis soonish because that is the only reason I can see that egi glamours have never gotten an update. Maybe they just haven't figured out how it will work yet.

[HeulGDarian]

I feel like they plan on doing something with egis soonish because that is the only reason I can see that egi glamours have never gotten an update. Maybe they just haven't figured out how it will work yet.

they have indeed said they had something planned out, older players tell not to expect anything cause theyve said that before. It remains to be seen

[Amnmaat]

I'm really tired of Summoner being Bahamut-mmoner. Even Phoenix is just something tied to coil of bahamut.
Some people that play Summoner they're looking for variety, you know being able to summon Lakshmi, Sophia, or Bismark? It's about time.
Morever, the egis don't provide anything meaningful, being a dot pet is boring, the pet has no meaningful influence in the fight besides aoe pulls.
Frankly, egis are just useless no matter how pretty you make them out to be as a carbuncle.

[Amnmaat]

When I talk about action or a dot I'm talking about the summon/pet itself. I love the dot system of Summoner and Scholar. In my opinion this game could do with more dot jobs. My issue is that the summon itself (the egis) are boring as dot "pets" that stay at your side the entire fight. Then they go and make the job even more convoluted with the demi primal system with bahamut/phoenix. But once again I have to point out, this is about the summon and its function, Leave the summoner skills as they are. As stated in the full OP, should summons be dots or a 1 time big attack summon using your job gauge (as they were in past classic FFs, except for a few like X, XI, and XII).
Some made a really great point here, the version of Summoner that has its summon at its side is not actually summoning but instead they're just walking around with a pet. A summon is a temporary entity that's supposed to return to its point of origin, that's not what we see with XIV's Summoner.