SMN - Why it is not a very interesting job and not a good upgrade from ACN

[ApexPred]

What I don't understand is why the players think they are the ones dictating the game and what content it has. You don't make the lore, you don't decided on job abilities, you don't make the game. You play it.

They decide what a summoner is; if you don't like it you can give feedback, but they are in charge of the design. If you don't like the job they created you play something else you like better. They are perfectly in their right to change what jobs do.

You are basically telling us that we can give feedback on a FORUM and everyone here knows SE has the final say. After the first FFXIV release im sure SE has learned a few things about customer feedback. We are perfectly aware of our freedoms, we know we can play another class but being a newly released game and all there is going to be negative feedback toward certain classes/jobs which is very much needed for SE to steer them in the right direction.

[KingBerry]

What I don't understand is why the players think they are the ones dictating the game and what content it has. You don't make the lore, you don't decided on job abilities, you don't make the game. You play it.

They decide what a summoner is; if you don't like it you can give feedback, but they are in charge of the design. If you don't like the job they created you play something else you like better. They are perfectly in their right to change what jobs do.

No just no summoner are the "DADDY" of Final Fantasy that what most of the FF fans have been waiting for and what do we get? a summoner that get 95% of his attack from DoT and nothing from his summons? Summoner is a pet class all his power should come from it and for god sakes they need to fix the eggi they have no Final Fantasy feel to it.

[Malix]

My problems with summoner? I hate the way Egi look, the distance of Bane and, how long a cast time tri-disaster has. Thats about it.

I understand why they put more of the damage on the caster than the pet because of what problems it would cause for game balance. Make them too weak than smn as a whole sucks(case and point ffxi). Make them too strong than the class becomes overpowered. The real problem is theres no happy medium because they will not be taken unless they are OP. Let me try to explain with an example

Lets say they switch places and made the egi deal more damage than the player. W/e it dies it will cause the smn to lose a lot of dps while its down and this will cause ppl to believe it is an under-performing Job for endgame(that was the big problem with pup in ffxi). If they decided to fix this problem with making the pet take a significantly less amount of damage than it would becomes OP because the pet will do all the work while the master is essentially playing support. There are not a lot of mmos that have the pet do more damage than the master or even close and every one i seen that it was the case, the class itself was considered weak and niche.

[Crevox]

No just no summoner are the "DADDY" of Final Fantasy that what most of the FF fans have been waiting for and what do we get? a summoner that get 95% of his attack from DoT and nothing from his summons? Summoner is a pet class all his power should come from it and for god sakes they need to fix the eggi they have no Final Fantasy feel to it.

This is kind of true too now that I think about it. Summoner is played up a lot in Final Fantasies, and it's kinda lame for it to be so far from the concept and disappointing in this game.

[Samuraiking]

-snip-

Probably the only person defending SMN that has made sense.

There are multiple fixes for this though. From the pet only taking reduced dmg when not the main target of the mob attacking it, as to prevent abuse. You could have the pets do weak auto-attack dmg but LARGE bursts every minute or so. Fast Cast making its death a non-issue. Or have all pets aside from Titan/Topaz only come out to do an animation for our personal spells. We cast some fire spell akin to BLMs Fire III and then Ifrit pops up and actually does the spell.

I assure you SE has had most of these ideas, why they didn't ask us first before releasing the class and testing it, I have no idea. We don't want warlock. SMN really should not have DoT spells. We get why they did it, you make sense, it just shouldn't have been named SMN and given iconic SMN pets. It's insulting.

[KingBerry]

Probably the only person defending SMN that has made sense.

There are multiple fixes for this though. From the pet only taking reduced dmg when not the main target of the mob attacking it, as to prevent abuse. You could have the pets do weak auto-attack dmg but LARGE bursts every minute or so. Fast Cast making its death a non-issue. Or have all pets aside from Titan/Topaz only come out to do an animation for our personal spells. We cast some fire spell akin to BLMs Fire III and then Ifrit pops up and actually does the spell.

I assure you SE has had most of these ideas, why they didn't ask us first before releasing the class and testing it, I have no idea. We don't want warlock. SMN really should not have DoT spells. We get why they did it, you make sense, it just shouldn't have been named SMN and given iconic SMN pets. It's insulting.

Totally agree why they named it summoner is beyond me and everyday I think about it sickens me.

[Ryuko]

I like Summoner, the class, and how it functions. I think it's a great addition to the game. DoT classes are great.

...But people are right when they say "Summoner" is not a Summoner.

There is no emphasis on the pets (except for soloing, really, and Garuda's time extension on your DoTs is great), and I've given a lot of thought as to why. It's hard to both allow our pets the potential to do a lot of damage while at the same time making it possible for our pets not to get slaughtered by AoEs. It's hard enough to get out of AoEs yourself -- but commanding a pet, assuming you aren't waiting on the GCD, and you need to wait for the latency of the server to 'communicate' your command? It's going to happen. The reduced damage to our pet is to counteract the fact that we can't really move it like we need to move. So, giving it a lot of damage? It would be a huge exploit. And I think SE wants summoner to be more 'active' than just... "Hey, pet, do something."

In FFXI, there were times when you wouldn't do anything. You would literally sit there and wait. In FFXIV: ARR, SE encourages all classes to be doing something at some point. As a SMN, there is not a single point where I rest. I'm always casting or moving. The same is true of every other class. If they gave us 'burst' damage with our pet, would we be just 'standing' there idle waiting for our pet's burst cooldowns? If the pet did more damage but we still had our DoTs... would it play the same? (Of course, it would be adjusted so that we still output a fair amount of damage; our DoT damage would be reduced in response to the pet damage increase.)

The problem is -- I agree that summoner is not a summoner, but I can't really think of a realistic way to 'fix' the class. We all have some pretty good theories but they'll need to be put to the test before an adjustment is made. I agree that this class should have been tested more before it was released. I'm honestly surprised it wasn't.

[Malefi]

Firstly I would like to say that I agree with the complaint that the SMN does not play as a Final Fantasy Summoner. However, I would also like to point out that the majority of you agreeing with the complaint are then defining the class role wrong again. Allow me to explain.

Summoners ARE NOT pet classes. Plain and simple, they never have been nor should they be.

Sans a few Final Fantasy games, mainly those after Final Fantasy 10 (not the majority of Final Fantasy games) The previous 7 games (1 and 2 did not have summoner) and even the Final Fantasy Tactic games, the summoner acquired the summon by defeating it and then they were able to use a "Summon Spell" to call them forth to use their unique attack... Ifrit = Hell Fire (or variation), Shiva (Diamond Dust) or variation, etc. However, the summons did not STAY in battle.

I believe a more correct version of the classic summoner would be that they focus on summoning to cast powerful spells based on the summon. PART 2

[Malefi]

Summoner begins battle and they Invoke Ifrit, the summoner gains a buff for a duration that gives them the ability to cast powerful nukes and damage spells building up "Aether" if they fill the appropriate level of aether before the buff runs out, Ifrit is summoned to use his signature spell.

Now of course, the summoner base class would need some of its own spells and abilities to 'hold' its own while they wait on the ability to recast the "Summon Spell" or if they have multiple summons they could move to the next in a great chain of Summoning abilities. I would think that although the concept I've just layed out will never be implemented it is more true to summoner lore, and even story lore for FF XIV as they wouldn't be consuming a constant amount of aether to maintain the egi.

All I ask, is that all of you please reconsider your notion that a Final Fantasy Summoner is simply a "pet class" when it is most definitely at its core not.

[abesut]

Firstly I would like to say that I agree with the complaint that the SMN does not play as a Final Fantasy Summoner. However, I would also like to point out that the majority of you agreeing with the complaint are then defining the class role wrong again. Allow me to explain.

Summoners ARE NOT pet classes. Plain and simple, they never have been nor should they be.

I see you never played FFXI or FFX? Those had Summoner classes in them and yes they are pet classes.