Thread: Fix Summoner Once and For All in 6.0 Please!

Originally Posted by Rika007

Those of us who have an issues with Pets don't just want to see them axed, we've just given up on them ever being done right. Summoner has been my main caster class since 2.0, I've swapped off Bard and raided on summoner in two separate expansions. I've been through every single rework that they've done on those damn Egi's and honestly I just don't believe the dev team can do it right. Of all the mechanics on Summoner that has bloated the class so much, they are the only one I don't see a good potential reworking that makes feasible sense that the dev team can pull off without issue.

To me pets are closer than they have ever been. Part of the reason SMN has been so bad historically has been due to clunky interactions with the non-pet aspects of its rotation. DWT and Ruin III have been through the ringer just to get made into normal actions because of some bad ideas the devs were married to. Bahamut is and was worse than the egi but they use the same AI constraints apart from the auto-attack timer. It is mostly the variable response and lack of clarity that leads me to wanting pet AI exposed in some manner. For example, adding charges to auto attacks and letting Egi immediately use EAs is a potentially feasible solution with proper coding, but taking advantage of it for repositioning egi mid-fight as a player requires seeing the Egi’s recast timer. Bahamut and Phoenix could also be made consistent by tying their actual durations to the number of wyrmwave attacks SE wants us to use. Both theoretically eliminate ghosting but don’t necessarily solve the problem without first seeing how the AI behaves. I think that is long overdue, particularly for the demi summons.

I've seen free2play games from 2005-2010 doing a far better Job with pet jobs than the dev team from FFXIV could ever pull off. Egis and Fairies literally had to be turned immortal in order to properly function since they weren't capable to give summons proper defense values. The Pet controls themselves aren't the best, but at least, theyre manageable if you practice a little.

Imo, it would be alot better for SMN, if they would just turn the whole demi-summon idea into a upgrade buff for egis and finally fix the issues for good. Also make summons killable again, including demi-summons.

Originally Posted by Exodus-E

I'm sorry, but this is a terrible (not to mention backwards) idea.
Making all pets (SCH's included) immune to any and all damage post-5.0 was a step in the right direction; not sure why would anyone want them "killable" again.

May Double Succ Deployment Tactics Rest In Peace.

Originally Posted by Exodus-E

I won't deny that it took me a bit to get used to.

But still, you gotta admit that Earthen Armor is a very good "replacement" of sorts.
It alone has saved/helped me plenty of times early on in 5.0.

That said, having a separate pet just for that action alone is unnecessary nowadays.
They could've just made it an Aetherpact-based action and repurposed Titan-Egi as an Egi Glamour skin...

Earthen Armor is just a generic Shield and having all Pets immortal makes the Job incredibly unflexible. If executed properly, killable egis/demi summons would allow SMN not only to micromanage with say, egi and demi summons, it would also allow the SMN, Grimoire-M stated already, to allow to use his summons as a "extension" of his range of influence with abilities which can be a very useful thing if executed properly. It would also grant alot of Room for design since there is ALOT if stuff you can do, just by having killable "pets" again.

I fail to see why the current Earthen Armor, which is just a generic Shield should be any better than having Titan itself tank for you.

Originally Posted by Anhra

Earthen Armor is just a generic Shield and having all Pets immortal makes the Job incredibly unflexible. If executed properly, killable egis/demi summons would allow SMN not only to micromanage with say, egi and demi summons, it would also allow the SMN, Grimoire-M stated already, to allow to use his summons as a "extension" of his range of influence with abilities which can be a very useful thing if executed properly. It would also grant alot of Room for design since there is ALOT if stuff you can do, just by having killable "pets" again.

I fail to see why the current Earthen Armor, which is just a generic Shield should be any better than having Titan itself tank for you.

While I do miss Deploy shenanigans on Scholar, I honestly I don't want pets to be targettable again. There's nothing it offers to either job that matters in current content apart from cleave memes. Pet uptime functions the same as it did back when they were targetable too. It's just safer. I'm guessing you're really into cheesing old raid/trial content, which frankly is much more engaging on a healer or tank to begin with. And if the overworld is that hard for new players to deal with I'm gonna say they need to level their healer chocobo like every other DPS does. And the one titan quest that cared about it is easy enough to manage with Titan Shield and Physick given how it's been nerfed alongside other ARR content repeatedly.

As for Titan Egi, I want Earthen Armor to be split into a Manaward equivalent with SMN flavor. It felt way better to use before EAs were made into GCDs and would be fine if it was changed again. Titan Egi itself needs to get an actual niche. I don't think it's realistic to make any predictions on that at the moment, but given how SE shoots for minimal effort when it comes to this stuff historically, I'm not holding my breath until I see how responsive pets are in practice. If they go back to Stormblood's iteration me and other high ping players are going to be annoyed. If they're back to 5.0 minus the dupe EA spam bug then everyone is going to be annoyed. I doubt they're going to scrap the current assets unless they tune up Garuda/Ifrit/Titan specifically, but who knows.


What I'd rather see is how they change Scholar's Fairy, and if they expose the internal state of pets to us or not. Scholar actually makes use of the Fairy's range way more than Summoner does (sometimes I use EAs to bypass being out of a boss's range for mechanics, but that doesn't require a killable pet, just nonsense raises in Alliance Raid), and even they are questioning how much The Fairy actually matters in that regard. Which should say something about how much confidence people have in pets as they are now. Everyone wants SE to nail it but few are expecting them to.

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Snip

It isn't because of the cheesing potential that i say having a HP bar with proper defense values is a good idea for pets, but from what i've seen on FFXI's SMN counterpart on the wiki.

I haven't played said game but from what i can tell (correct me if i am wrong), SMN in FFXI has pretty much no offensive abilities on his own aside from the weapon it wields. Literally anything he does, is being done trough his Summons, from attacking to support. And boy does it have alot of stuff to summon (most of those need to have a quest completed in order to get summoned).

Summons include: Carbuncle, Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Ramuh, Shiva, Fenrir, Odin, Diabolos, Alexander, Cait Sith, Atomos, Spirits of each Element and Leviathan.

Personally, i'd love to see a proper equivalent to this in FFXIV, instead of that halfheartedly-made DoTmage with his pseudo summons which we have at the moment (who cant even summon in pvp).
I remain hopeful with the endwalker expansion but im expecting something alot worse if i am being honest here.