lol SMN

[Ryujin_Ketu]

The pet does maybe 30% of the players damage.

That said, I love the job.

Touche...I guess with the dots that adds some nice extra damage for the player...but Carby and the summons still wreck

[Jennestia]

I was looking forward to SMN, till i started seeing what it does. Man, what a waste. Totally dissapointed. Its a DoT class with a pet. Instead of a pet class that focus' on the pets damage. So in my opinion its basically in the same category as SMN from XI. Pet comes last.

One of my Mains in XI is SMN and I'm pretty damn sure my Avatars don't come last - Though guessing by what you were trying to say you last played XI in 2003.

[Phaylis]

I am kinda disappointed to Hear it sounds like arcanist with different pets. I will still level up and will form my on opinion on the job, but I was hoping that it would play off the summon. While the SMN would use abilities to enhance the summoned Eggi. Looking at the 5 SMN spells I have mixed feelings. The AoE and the enhance to the DoTs is nice, but would rather all the abilities be Eggi focused.

Arcanist main damage should be from the class. SMN main damage should be from the Eggi, Dots should have a de-buff component added while potency reduced to compensate for the de-buff. The Eggi itself should output say 60~65% of the SMN damage. That's my take. Yoshi could have done alot with this class. And maybe with feedback from us could be made better since testing was limited to internal testers and looking at how abilities had changed on other classes from beta to launch Yoshi and the Devs are listening.

[rabbitzero]

The pet outdamages the player...and you can control what the pet casts/does for the ability.

I'm pretty much bad off if my pet goes down, which in some fights is almost always, as i have to move too much to get the mob dotted and pet healed. Then if i try to resummon, i get aggro. I just wish it was more responsive, and not tied to my casts and gcd. :P So many times i'll command it to do something, and it won't or will take a while. Don't really mind it's not a summoner like in older FF's, and like how it's a pet class.

I hate it though when during dungeons there needs to be burst damage, and all i can really do is dot and try to get the pet to do some.

[Jennestia]

The thing is, they wanted XIV ARR to pretty much mimic the 'standard' style MMO and in most MMOs everyone is generally universalized in damage - Having the pets more FF like would throw that out the window. Even pet classes in other MMOs are generally weak or overly powerful, very rarely is a pet class perfectly balanced. ARR's SMN was a product of being too careful and different from the sake of it - XI's SMN as of now is extremely powerful and if they took that SMN design and tweaked it for ARR's play it would have been one of the most amazing pet classes to ever grace an MMO.

[atomicdeath]

One of my Mains in XI is SMN and I'm pretty damn sure my Avatars don't come last - Though guessing by what you were trying to say you last played XI in 2003.

I guess i meant it like SMN was used as a healer. But essentially for the most part the pet was not the reason for a party invite, unless you were needed for the BCNM's or SMN burns in korrokola tunnel (sp), or diablos refresh. Basic leveling parties was anyone else > DD SMN.

The summons we got now, if they were more like XI where they way outdamaged the summoner himself, would be superior.

[Duelle]

The thing is, they wanted XIV ARR to pretty much mimic the 'standard' style MMO and in most MMOs everyone is generally universalized in damage - Having the pets more FF like would throw that out the window. Even pet classes in other MMOs are generally weak or overly powerful, very rarely is a pet class perfectly balanced. ARR's SMN was a product of being too careful and different from the sake of it - XI's SMN as of now is extremely powerful and if they took that SMN design and tweaked it for ARR's play it would have been one of the most amazing pet classes to ever grace an MMO.

Erm..."you're useful only when Astral Flow is up so you can summon Alexander and perfect Defense the raid" is not amazing, nor powerful relatively speaking.

[Alhanelem]

I was looking forward to SMN, till i started seeing what it does. Man, what a waste. Totally dissapointed. Its a DoT class with a pet. Instead of a pet class that focus' on the pets damage. So in my opinion its basically in the same category as SMN from XI. Pet comes last.

On top of that the very few pet options available, that look stupid.

Time to retire this class.

Except that SMN is a million times more useful than it was in XI. This thread is bad and you should feel bad.

Pets can tank and can be cured by anybody, unlike XI where no pet can hold enmity worth a damn and can't be healed by anybody except the owner and even then only once a minute and only with certain pets.

I'll oversimplify things like you, for XI: "It's a crap class with a pet." ACN/SMN/SCH are actually powerful in this game. Did you ever feel powerful playing SMN in XI? No, you didn't, because you were rarely wanted, and when you were, it was either 1) as a backup healer and nothing else, or 2) an event that was too hard so we all played "throw pets at it til it dies."

Just because *you* don't like it, doesn't mean it's bad and should be "retired."

Oh yeah, and guess what? On SMN In XI, I can easily outdamage my pet with melee staff damage. At least that doesn't happen here and all your damage is spells and abilities, both on you and the pet.

I am kinda disappointed to Hear it sounds like arcanist with different pets.

Every Job in the game "sounds like the class with different stuff."

You are oversimplifying. Every job has all the abilities of the class it is based upon. The point of the jobs is to focus the class into a particular role- not to radically change the class.

[atomicdeath]

What they should have done was make this class a puppet master or something else.

Like dude said above, that the pet (cant really consider it a summon) only does 30% of the overall damage, is pretty much a slap in the face to all the summoners in FF history.

Then make a decent summoner later when they figured out how to do it.

Right now its in, because they wanted to entice people back to the game and they knew people wanted summoners so they had to throw something together.

[Mortikhan]

Maybe I am out of the loop a bit. Do the 5 Skills/Traits you get being a SMN not apply to your summons at all? I have not gotten to that point yet but the base classes have received their own set of Skills/Traits and then had 5 additional Skills/Traits added assigned by being the Job to focus the class into a specific niche. You got these through questing. The downside being you could not take as many traits from other Classes like you would be able to if you stayed on the Class. Did this change? Or are they handling the ARC class differently because it has two aspects (SMN and SCH) assigned to it?