[Pole] Do you want to see the summoner class reworked?

[Spellbinder]

The pet is already between 25-30% of our damage. Do you understand the implications of having the pet do half of our damage ?

It would mean that a Summoner needs to...summon to do full DPS. Heaven forbid we do what our job title implies.


But in all seriousness, in answer to the question of this topic:
Would I want to see the summoner class reworked? It depends on what you mean by "rework."

Summoner gameplay as it is right now is "okay," in the sense that it functions as the developers intended, but there are a number of problems (or at least what I think are problems), that, if addressed, would make the job better overall. Examples:

- DoT mechanics
Originally, an enemy could only receive the effect of 30 status effects at any given time. The problem with this design came to light during initial encounters with enemies such as Odin, Behemoth, and bosses in Crystal Tower, when the application of several debuffs and DoTs from a multitude of players would remove the DoTs of summoner, dropping our DPS to 0. This could be confirmed when Summoners used the ability Fester and it whiffed, reading "No effect" on the screen.

Long story short, our main source of damage was invalidated by the application of 30 status effects by other classes. This limit has since been increased from 30 to 60, and although this alleviates the problem, no class or job should have to deal with this limitation. On paper, the liklihood that more than 60 debuffs will be applied to an enemy is low, but it can still happen, and I'm sure many players would be at ease knowing that their DPS doesn't suddenly hit 0 on the off chance the rest of their alliance is doing what they're supposed to do.

Another change they made, I forget when, was to have any debuffs initiated by a player always appear before any others on an enemy's status bar. However, this is still bugged. I can't count the number of times I've fought an A or S rank elite mark, and none of my DoTs can be seen on the enemy's status bar. The only reason I know my DoTs are still active is because Fester still does damage to the enemy, but I have to guess when the DoTs need to be reapplied.

To summarize:

・The use of debuffs and DoTs from other classes has the potential to nullify Summoner's main source of damage.
・The use of debuffs and DoTs from other classes has the potential to make our DoTs invisible on enemy status bars, making it impossible to manage our main source of damage properly.

- Eye for an Eye
Who doesn't love Eye for an Eye? Apply it to a party member, and enemies striking them receive a damage debuff. Except, there's a catch. Enemies attacking targets affected by Eye for an Eye have a 20% chance of being debuffed each time they attack. This means there's an 80% chance that they won't be debuffed. My problem with this? Mathematically speaking, there is a chance that, even after applying Eye for an Eye to a target, enemies will not be debuffed. I've experience this myself, on several occasions, and it's a waste of a 180 second cooldown when this happens.

- Rouse and Spur
This is just a personal gripe, but the effects of these two skills seems a little backwards to me.

Rouse, the level 42 skill, has three effects: Boosts cure magic potency, boosts damage dealt, and makes pets immune to status effects. 90 second recast.
Spur, the level 45 job ability, has one effect: Boosts damage dealt. 120 second recast.

Again, just a personal gripe, but I think it's odd that the ability that requires a higher level, unlocking a job, and has a longer cool down is inferior. How should this be addressed? I'm not a developer, so I can't say, but I'd like it if they looked into it.

- Pet roles in general
The devs have already said they're going to look into the balance between the pets, but yes, I feel that something should be done about it. I'm going to nitpick the piece of Estevo's quote that Dwill dismissed a little further to get at my point.

...As the one and only pet dps job,especially the summoner, the Egis and other pets should make up at least 40-50% of our dps and mechanics...

Do I think pets should count for 40-50% of our DPS? I don't think they necessarily should, but even if they did, I don't think it solves our real problem as a pet class. Do I think pets should count for 40-50% of our mechanics? Yes, Yes I do.

The bread and butter of the Egi is Garuda. To be more specific, Contagion. A lot of people have said "Well, take Contagion off of Garuda and put it on Summoner." Hypothetically speaking, if they did do that, what would the roles of our Egi be?

Titan:
- High HP
- High Defense
- +Enmity to keep attention off the Summoner.
- In my opinion, titan is a tank, through and through.

Ifrit:
- Average HP
- Does damage
- Uh...does damage.
- Ifrit does damage, but doesn't bring any role-defining traits to the table.

Garuda: (without Contagion)
- Average HP
- Does damage
- Uh...can knock enemies back, angering tanks and melee DPS.
- Garuda also does damage, and also doesn't bring any role-defining traits to the table.

What will happen when they add Ramuh-Egi? Leviathan-Egi? What will be special about the five Egi that will make summoners say "Oh, for this battle you'd definitely want to try using X-Egi." or "At the start of the fight I like to use X-Egi, and then when Y happens, I switch to Z-Egi." or have a meaningful discussion about "Which Egi abilities do you prefer to use in battle."?

As it stands now, Ifrit and Garuda are just DoTs with uninspired abilities and poor aesthetic designs (although poor aesthetics is a personal opinion), and it saddens me that players can be satisfied with such simplified pet mechanics.

[Estevo]

Couldn't have said it better Spellbinder!

Regarding the aesthetics I'm pretty sure at least 70% of the Summoner population wouldn't hate a more interesting egi design

With that said the devs apparently said they would take our feedback into consideration for future egis, this will not do. If the Leviathan egi looks incredible and then the Ifrit egi remains the same I don't think anyone would be happy, especially fans of the current three primals.

[Exstal]

The pet is already between 25-30% of our damage. Do you understand the implications of having the pet do half of our damage ?

If it dies, RIP DPS.

[echoica]

No /10 charssss

[Nilam]

I feel like the Ifrit Egi's problems would be solved if it was turned into more of a quick AOE pack answer. I feel that radiant shield is a wasted ability since he doesn't put out enough enmity for it to do damage ever. Maybe replace radiant shield with a self buff that increases his speed so that he uses his burning strike 20% faster for 20 seconds on a 60 second cooldown. Additionally, have his burning strike deal damage in an AOE. On single targets its power would be wasted, meaning Garuda would be the go to summon for bosses/single targets but in things like speed runs when there are large groups, pulling out ifrit would mean more consistent AOE dps than 4 max targets on bane / and having shadow flare down.

Alternatively: Make Radiant Shield not just self cast onto the Egi. If he registers some one in the group taking damage, he would cast it on them instead. Tank pulls, Ifrit sees tank take damage, throws shield on the tank. That way its damage is being used to it's full potential and turn ifrit into kind of an AOE pack offensive/support summon.

[Jandor]

Small QoL change I'd like is for the Enkindle ability to be renamed to whatever the pets action is when a pet is summoned.

So, nothing summoned, it's on my bar as Enkindle. Summon Ifrit and it's replaced with 'Inferno' and the appropriate icon & description.

[Dwill]

Snip

Or the fact that having the pet do half of our damage/mechanics is a terrible idea for anyone who cares about balance.

It's quite hilarious though that people want a summoner more like the "Final Fantasy summoner", states the lack of abilities for summons in this game yet forego the fact that summons in nearly every other Final Fantasy games have one attack (their Signature Ability). Or they want it like FFXI, where summoners wanting to do damage (which was terrible compared to everyone else's) were Garuda bots using Predator Claws when it was available and going back to be sustandard healers waiting for Blood Pact Rage to come back up or in rare occasion, they could use Fenrir's Eclipse Bite (which was when you had a terrible party to begin with so you'd have to have Fenrir out for Ecliptic Howl).

[Rydia13]

I've already posted my reasoning for not wanting Summoner reworked, but let's be real here. The chance of them completely reworking SMN is slim to none. The job is more than fine and people are just being picky. I've said before I'm a hardcore SMN fanatic and I'm very pleased with this games version of it, It's a newish twist.

Also, what exactly are you talking about when you say "Final Fantasy Summoner" Cuz the MAJORITY of them have had the Summoner doing other things besides summoning, except for maybe FFX but that's unrealistic for an MMO. There is no traditional SMN cuz of the few actual SMN in the games, they're mostly different from one another. So what exactly do you mean by traditional FF SMN?

[Dwill]

Also, what exactly are you talking about when you say "Final Fantasy Summoner" Cuz the MAJORITY of them have had the Summoner doing other things besides summoning, except for maybe FFX but that's unrealistic for an MMO. There is no traditional SMN cuz of the few actual SMN in the games, they're mostly different from one another. So what exactly do you mean by traditional FF SMN?

I'm bringing this term because some people bring it up as an excuse on why the class needs a rework and it serves to highlight the fact that they don't even know what they want themselves. Personally, I am on the same stance as you regarding summoners.

[Spellbinder]

Or the fact that having the pet do half of our damage/mechanics is a terrible idea for anyone who cares about balance.

Saying "No, because it's just bad" doesn't really make your case. Care to elaborate on why?

Can you provide any examples of where games have tried to do so and fail?
Putting changes to mechanics aside, do you not see any problems with the other examples I presented above, such as problems with how DoTs function? Are you really okay with faulty design like that?
Does it not concern you that Garuda and Contagion may continue to be "flavor of the month" even when new Egi are released, making them a waste of the developer's time and effort?

I'd rather discuss the issues, rather than just sweep them under the rug because you disagree with anything that might possibly make the job better.

Edit: For this particular question

Can you provide any examples of where games have tried to do so and fail?

I already know you're going to point fingers at FFXI. Please don't use that outdated game as a scapegoat for your agenda. Try to pick a game with a battle system comparable to FFXIV so we can see where they went wrong and what they could have done better.