SMN endgame how is it

[Warlyx]

I am a returning player, and wanting to stick around for good to get into endgame, after trying a few classes I am deciding to go with SMN since It will be easy to move to healing as well.

My question is how is summoner for endgame? I have read about it taking a minute to get through the rotation but imagine with practice it will come with muscle memory?

the rotations are usually rigid , outside proc based classes , so yeah after 1 week u will be mastering SMN , isnt hard ,but u sometimes forgot to cast X or refresh dots because a mechanic happened but oh well u lost some dps here and there is not big deal tbh otherwise dual ranged parties wont make it...

but no class is hard tbh , well nin opener is madness tho

[Dyvid]

I am a returning player, and wanting to stick around for good to get into endgame, after trying a few classes I am deciding to go with SMN since It will be easy to move to healing as well.

My question is how is summoner for endgame? I have read about it taking a minute to get through the rotation but imagine with practice it will come with muscle memory?

Keep in mind that when Endwalker drops Sumoner, for better or worse, is going to under some changes.

[Truen]

Keep in mind that when Endwalker drops Sumoner, for better or worse, is going to under some changes.

Lest we forget. I imagine they'll remove pets entirely and make them some kind of temporary summon instead of something glorious like what we used to have BEFORE 5.0.
I really miss being able to tank through my Earth pet and rotate between ranged and melee dps depending on what's happening.

It seems like most of the job changes they make anymore reduce what we've already got for no reason. Instead of making things better they actually make things less fun to play.
Don't even get me started on the Scholar... what a damn disaster. Very few thing 5.0 is better than 4.0 or earlier. Sure, it's a functional healer--but it's boring as heck to play!

[domovoi]

I really miss being able to tank through my Earth pet

i genuinely don't understand why so many people bring this up. you would rip hate off of titan if you did so much as crit a dot tick. like topaz was decent when you were just an arcanist i guess but if you were remotely competent as a SMN you were already destroying titan's enmity generation within just a few levels of even unlocking it, let alone as a geared lv70 player.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

i genuinely don't understand why so many people bring this up. you would rip hate off of titan if you did so much as crit a dot tick. like topaz was decent when you were just an arcanist i guess but if you were remotely competent as a SMN you were already destroying titan's enmity generation within just a few levels of even unlocking it, let alone as a geared lv70 player.

i liked having titan tank for me, too, and i always knew exactly how far i could go in order to have it maintain aggro. titan was for when you wanted safety, not speed. look at the summoner class quests, for example. those are designed with a tank titan-egi in mind, they'll rip you a new one if you do them without grossly overgearing them now.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

I used to play summoner in Heavensward, on my old account. When I learned that the summoner lost the pets (they're not pets anymore now, just funky graphical effects for DOTs), I didn't even unlock SMN. Found SCH boring enough as is now, that the faeries are just cosmetic perma-HOTs, ARC is completely ruined IMHO.

Here's hoping that they'll one day introduce something like necro, with actual pets.

[Dyvid]

I used to play summoner in Heavensward, on my old account. When I learned that the summoner lost the pets (they're not pets anymore now, just funky graphical effects for DOTs), I didn't even unlock SMN. Found SCH boring enough as is now, that the faeries are just cosmetic perma-HOTs, ARC is completely ruined IMHO.

Here's hoping that they'll one day introduce something like necro, with actual pets.

Ok, what is an actual pet? What are the defining qualities and then how do you transfer those quality into FFXIV's combat system?

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

Ok, what is an actual pet? What are the defining qualities and then how do you transfer those quality into FFXIV's combat system?

What we had before were actual pets. They existed in the world and were targetable. One of them was usable as a tank.

[Raikai]

Ok, what is an actual pet? What are the defining qualities and then how do you transfer those quality into FFXIV's combat system?

An "actual" pet, as in concept (seen in other titles) is a separate entity that you need to micromanage movement, health and skill administration, maybe with a level of customization on what they do.

Which right now the only thing that SMN checkmarks in that is the fact that is a separate entity from the caster that deals damage automatically. You don't need to command it around, you don't need to watch their HP, and their actions - despite the onus of lagging due to being "fired" from another entity - are ingrained to the SMN's GCDs.

I'm not mentioning this to say they are bad pet designers. They surely know what exacly a MMORPG pet gameplay means, however pets are just not compatible with how the combat engine works right now, and that's why they lost their "pet flavor" across 3 expansions. I don't know how this code works, so I'm at a loss on how to suggest anything to transfer those qualities without making the job even clunkier.

So, also in response to the person before, it's kind of hard to think about any other "pet jobs" being introduced to the current combat system as it is, unless they overhaul their combat engine, which is probably not happening for Endwalker, at least. To be honest, as far as pet flavored job goes, I find much more likely for a Beastmaster or Puppetmaster introduced as a limited job that explores a separate pet combat system rather than another pet user added to the regular jobs.

My hopes for the expansion, since they are most likely keeping the egis (Benchmark trailer), is to remove Egi Assaults and Devotion from them and convert those into actions from the Summoner themselves, and treat the "pets" just like the glorified dots they are now, and have the active egi change some of the caster actions, like a stance.

[Dyvid]

An "actual" pet, as in concept (seen in other titles) is a separate entity that you need to micromanage movement, health and skill administration, maybe with a level of customization on what they do.

Okay, lets break down FFXIV Egis based on your design requirements and how they relate to FFXIV battle structure.

1. Lets tackle movement and health first since they go hand in hand. FFXIV battle design is built around dodging and it's very hard as well as time consuming to command your pet to move out of the AoE all the time, we first had that in 2013 and didn't work out well. Slowly pets started taking less and less damage because of this until the devs decided it wasn't really necessary to take damage considering how Demi mechanics worked; fresh egi is summoned after Demi phase.
   
2. Skill Management: Egi Assault check the box there, doesn't it? You are commanding the pet to perform an ability. Now I can't say if it's faster now than clicking skills pre 5.0 but you can't just leave them on auto pilot anymore. Egi Assault make you command your pet which is what people wanted.
   
3. Let's talk about our tank pet though if we could and why it didn't work from the start. It was only good during solo situation because it's enmity was so low, it couldn't even manage to pickup adds if the tank died. Couple that with losing Egi when a Demi is summoned, you can see the writing on the wall that Egi Tanks days are numbered. I think getting a good shield is a nice trade off considering I can enter Demi Phases without any worries now.