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

[Dwill]

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

1. It removes depth from the character since too much focus is put on the pet itself, the character just looks like a regular person controlling a powerful entity, which doesn't make you look like much of a powerful person in the first place.
   
2. Your usual PvP balance reasons (e.g. Pet needs less tankiness if their damage gets higher, pets get tunneled, summer is now a sitting duck. Other example, pet has too much tankiness, summoner can just keep it up via Sustain + Physick then said pet proceed to deal high amount of damage while being extremely durable).
   
3. The most important reason of all, if the pet dies, your dps drops by a tremendous amount and even resummoning it via Swiftcast (which isn't possible that often due to Swiftcast being usually kept for Raises, then you have to hardcast the pet back while doing mechanics which can results in cases of 10+ seconds of losing 50% of your total damage throughput) incurs a steep penalty to your damage.

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

No games to my knowledge have given so much emphasis on the pet due to the aforementioned reasons.

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?

I agree with you on that point and and the solution is simple: They just to remove the limits of DoTs on one target at once. Having any form of limit for DoTs and debuffs, especially in a game such as this one where everyone and their mother have DoTs and debuffs, is archaic.

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?

Everything here will depend on how Square Enix address the Contagion issue. There are two feasible solutions, neither of them includes flat out removing the ability, which is a big no-no: Either Give it to the summoner or give the other pet more damage to compensate but the latter would just be a band-aid fix because as soon as their would be two+ targets within Bane's range, Contagion becomes the winner again The best bet is to give it to the summoner and replace the ability by something else and then let us decide which summons to use and when.

For example, if in their current form, the Summoner would have Contagion and not Garuda, Ifrit would be better in group having a Warrior and Monk as they buff his damage with their respective debuffs and Garuda would be better in a fight like Titan Ex where you can just park her at one spot and she stays there and DPS the rest of the fight while not fearing to get randomly hit by Mountain Busters and Weights of the Land.

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.

It's quite hilarious that you mention that I have an "agenda" just because I am against a rework. Do I think there are a few QoL of changes that could help the job ? Of course. The thing though is that myself and plenty of other people just so happen to like the job currently and would rather it not be changed because some people don't like its current form.

[Swagcity]

What is up with people talking about summoners in FFXIV? There is no smn in XIV.

I have played countless FF titles and can spot a smn when I see one.

[Mjytresz]

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?

They, y'know, had the summoners summoning things.
The reason most FF games had summoners as dual roles is because its kind of impractical to have a single character who does nothing but summon and effectively covers all areas of combat. Summons deal single target, AoE, CC, and heals. One party member could potentially carry all aspects of combat. So you nerf effectiveness of their main role by introducing a new one.
That's not the case with this game.

What do people expect from summoner in FF14? Summoning.
That's something the class is clearly lacking. The sheer fact that auto attacking from a child-sized egi accounts for so much DPS is nearly offensive. There are other games out there with summoner/pet-type classes that actually get it right. SMN in FF14 is a fucking identity crisis that does moderately respectable DPS at the expense of self-respect.

[Estevo]

[*]It removes depth from the character since too much focus is put on the pet itself, the character just looks like a regular person controlling a powerful entity, which doesn't make you look like much of a powerful person in the first place.

I'm sorry but, what!? I mean this is just ridiculous, are you actually saying that FF summoners are just normal people controlling powerful beings....???????

What normal person would be able to summon even a fraction of the Summons IN THE FIRST PLACE, and secondly, being able to use your summon to the best of your abilities is a much better, more in-depth way of going about the SUMMONER, than just DOTS. I'm pretty sure that lore-wise, if your summon is super powerful, than you are also super-powerful, that should especially be the case in this game.
If you want a summoner, than who cares about the damage that WE DO!? I want more in-depth summoner mechanics, because that should be the gauge of how powerful the player is. The "pet summons" are just sitting backstage to our DOT superiority, I mean how does that even make any sense lore-wise.

The best case scenario is, you are your summon are PARTNERS in battle, the summoner divides his power to summon and utilize his summon, the term pet in itself is kind of a disgrace to the summons in any shape or form in the first place. I'm sure a lot of the people that would want a change, including myself, want it because they LIKE what they have with the summon pets so far, and they want to see MORE of it, there is absolutely nothing negative or wrong about that, even if the words they use seem negative.

Also WHO CARES if the chance of a change is slim or not, chances are nothing more than chance, and it's better to speak your mind without doubt than to keep your mouth shut and regret. If a rework does happen, and the pets gain more focus and mechanics etc., why do you care, you're only in it for the DOTS, which will inevitably go onto another Job in the future, so seriously, there is no point.

[Exstal]

What is up with people talking about summoners in FFXIV? There is no smn in XIV.

I have played countless FF titles and can spot a smn when I see one.

Means you've lost your ability to tell what a SMN is.

[Shurrikhan]

There are other games out there with summoner/pet-type classes that actually get it right. SMN in FF14 is a fucking identity crisis that does moderately respectable DPS at the expense of self-respect.

Any links to good examples among other MMOs?

Honestly, I feel like the current Summoner job would be better off called "Evoker", and gain a few more mechanics in its own direction, and a new Druidic class take the actual job, but... if I have to weigh that priority against Ninja's timely release, new content, eventual gun-class, the expansion, etc.... it's a hard call, especially since plenty of people (who would likely enjoy a good revamp more, granted) do like the job as is.

[Dwill]

I'm sorry but, what!? I mean this is just ridiculous, are you actually saying that FF summoners are just normal people controlling powerful beings....???????

What normal person would be able to summon even a fraction of the Summons IN THE FIRST PLACE, and secondly, being able to use your summon to the best of your abilities is a much better, more in-depth way of going about the SUMMONER, than just DOTS. I'm pretty sure that lore-wise, if your summon is super powerful, than you are also super-powerful, that should especially be the case in this game.
If you want a summoner, than who cares about the damage that WE DO!? I want more in-depth summoner mechanics, because that should be the gauge of how powerful the player is. The "pet summons" are just sitting backstage to our DOT superiority, I mean how does that even make any sense lore-wise.

The best case scenario is, you are your summon are PARTNERS in battle, the summoner divides his power to summon and utilize his summon, the term pet in itself is kind of a disgrace to the summons in any shape or form in the first place. I'm sure a lot of the people that would want a change, including myself, want it because they LIKE what they have with the summon pets so far, and they want to see MORE of it, there is absolutely nothing negative or wrong about that, even if the words they use seem negative.

Also WHO CARES if the chance of a change is slim or not, chances are nothing more than chance, and it's better to speak your mind without doubt than to keep your mouth shut and regret. If a rework does happen, and the pets gain more focus and mechanics etc., why do you care, you're only in it for the DOTS, which will inevitably go onto another Job in the future, so seriously, there is no point.

Congratulations, you just missed the entire point.

[Spellbinder]

@Dwill: Thank you for the more detailed response.

It removes depth from the character since too much focus is put on the pet itself, the character just looks like a regular person controlling a powerful entity, which doesn't make you look like much of a powerful person in the first place.

I hate to disagree, but this seems more like an opinion than an explanation pertaining to game mechanics and implementation.

Your usual PvP balance reasons (e.g. Pet needs less tankiness if their damage gets higher, pets get tunneled, summer is now a sitting duck. Other example, pet has too much tankiness, summoner can just keep it up via Sustain + Physick then said pet proceed to deal high amount of damage while being extremely durable).

The most important reason of all, if the pet dies, your dps drops by a tremendous amount and even resummoning it via Swiftcast (which isn't possible that often due to Swiftcast being usually kept for Raises, then you have to hardcast the pet back while doing mechanics which can results in cases of 10+ seconds of losing 50% of your total damage throughput) incurs a steep penalty to your damage.

If I'm reading this correctly, you're saying you want pets to have a smaller contribution to your ability to fight because of a DPS loss if something should happen to your pet? The point of a class using pets (in my opinion) is to use attacks in tandem with the abilities of said pet to perform at full effectiveness in ways other classes can't. The loss of a pet during battle is the tradeoff for any advantages they give you. I may be misreading you, but it seems a bit absurd that you'd want to be able to shrug off the death of your pets because they only make a small contribution to what your character can do. It's a matter of risk and reward. With that said, it's not necessarily the damage that they put out that concerns me. You can look at my previous post and quote me if you want. I said that they could increase their damage, but it doesn't address the problems I see with the pets. And I'll get to that shortly. Case in point, loss of DPS or advantage against an enemy when your pet is defeated is supposed to be the drawback of being a pet class.

No games to my knowledge have given so much emphasis on the pet due to the aforementioned reasons.

Let me first say, that example I'm about to give would never, ever, be implemented here, but in my opinion, City of Villains had the best pet based class I have ever seen in a game: the Mastermind.

Your character was given three minion level pets, two lieutenant level pets, and a "boss" level pet. You could enhance them all with two abilities, each giving your pets additional moves to use. The game also had a very impressive system of macros you could use to control each of the six pets individually, or as a group as you saw fit. You had about four attacks from your primary class (think Arcanist/Summoner) and a secondary set of nine offensive/support abilities to compliment the pets. Your primary damage was, without question, from the pets, but you could still hold your own in a pinch when necessary. But again, pets doing 50% of our damage is not my issue.

I agree with you on that point and and the solution is simple: They just to remove the limits of DoTs on one target at once. Having any form of limit for DoTs and debuffs, especially in a game such as this one where everyone and their mother have DoTs and debuffs, is archaic.

Ah, a point of agreement. The people out to destroy the Summoner job aren't all so evil after all, eh?

Everything here will depend on how Square Enix address the Contagion issue. There are two feasible solutions, neither of them includes flat out removing the ability, which is a big no-no: Either Give it to the summoner or give the other pet more damage to compensate but the latter would just be a band-aid fix because as soon as their would be two+ targets within Bane's range, Contagion becomes the winner again The best bet is to give it to the summoner and replace the ability by something else and then let us decide which summons to use and when.

For example, if in their current form, the Summoner would have Contagion and not Garuda, Ifrit would be better in group having a Warrior and Monk as they buff his damage with their respective debuffs and Garuda would be better in a fight like Titan Ex where you can just park her at one spot and she stays there and DPS the rest of the fight while not fearing to get randomly hit by Mountain Busters and Weights of the Land.

Now we're getting somewhere. Would you agree, then, that the utility of Contagion is a potential balance issue? Just to be clear here, although I do come into these threads from time to time talking about changes to Summoner, I am by no means advocating radical changes (except maybe for their appearances, but that's a horse of a different color). Going to work through your quote piece by piece to make sure I'm understanding you.

You say that no solution would include removing Contagion, which I agree with 100%. I also agree that giving the other pet more damage to compensate is a band-aid fix, and I facepalmed quite hard when I saw they increased the potency of two of Ifrit's abilities by a measely five or ten points. You then finish by saying the best bet would be to give Summoner Contagion and replace it with something else on Garuda.

Now, let me ask you: If they really did do that, would you be okay with that sort of change? If you are okay with that sort of change, what type of ability would you like to see in place of Contagion on Garuda? Your idea for addressing the balance issue with Contagion is something I and many others have offered up, which brings me to my main point.

When I say I want to see changes to Summoner, I'm not asking for an overhaul that changes the way we play. In my previous post, I did indeed say I'd like to see more mechanics involved with the pet. What I meant by that is possibly what you alluded to with your suggestion, assuming your suggestion isn't actually something you're against.

Returning to my previous post, what would happen if they gave Summoner Contagion? What kind of skill would fit in its place for Garuda? My only true complaint with Summoner is that the three Egi do not all have clear-cut incentives to use them in different situations.

Titan is obviously a tanky pet, and I wouldn't change it for anything. My concern lies with the disparity between Ifrit and Garuda, and the problems that may arise when we receive more Egi. If every Egi had at least one interesting skill like Contagion (but obviously not that overpowered) that people would actually want to use regularly, I would be happy. If you can understand that concern, then honestly, I have nothing to argue about with you.

It's quite hilarious that you mention that I have an "agenda" just because I am against a rework. Do I think there are a few QoL of changes that could help the job ? Of course. The thing though is that myself and plenty of other people just so happen to like the job currently and would rather it not be changed because some people don't like its current form.

Perhaps "agenda" isn't the appropriate word, but you do seem very defensive, almost abrasively so, whenever a thread appears on the forum asking for a change or adjustment to Summoner. You've stated here that you believe QoL changes could help the job, and on that point we're in agreement. If you also, at the very least, understand my viewpoint in my statement above, then I see no reason for us to continue with this back and forth.

Pleasure discussing with you all the same.

[KokopokiRirinima]

If anyone here played a Mastermind in CoV then it's a good base for what I would like my summoner to be, minus the 6 active pets. The pets for a Mastermind were the biggest source of damage in the Masterminds arsenal and that put the Mastermind in the position of a support where he/she would buff the pets or allies. He did have offensive abilities which were capable of dealing decent damage but could never replace the dps of his minions. It worked splendidly and is the only game I can honestly say did a pet based class true to the role.

This is what I would like to see for a summoner or, rather, a close variation of it. The pet being the biggest form of damage output with Summoner using buffs/debuffs on allies/enemies with the capability to also contribute a tad more dps. I'm no game developer or mathematician but I would say that balancing that form of a Summoner would be no harder than it currently is. It did not lack depth or immersion either.


TL;DR

Switch the pets current role with the summoner and vice versa. Give the summoner more support based abilities and the pet more damage/offensive abilities. That's how I'd like my Summoner to play.

[Dwill]

@Spellbinder: Since your post was massive (and well detailed, kudos to that), I won't quote in its entirety to not make this post even bigger that it's going to be but will nevertheless respond to its content.


Here's what I meant for lack of depth. You say that you want our pets to be around 50% of our mechanics while their damage, which represents about 25% of our total damage, not needing to necessarily go up. What happens then is that for the other 75% of our damage, we have the remainder 50% of our mechanics. That creates a huge disparity from what we have with the pet as of now so to achieve the aforementioned goal, we would need to remove need to remove certain of our current abilities to make room for the new pets abilities, seeing as with the current pace of summoner, keeping everything would only create a huge glut in our abilities in which that even keeping everything we have, we'd have to prioritize what to use and what not to use. That would leave us with less choices for the character to achieve its damage just so that people felt rewarded for actually making the pet do its 25% that it's currently doing right now.

Your assessment about my thoughts on pets was partially correct and I wholeheartedly agree with you when you say that the goal of a pet class is to work in tandem with your pet to achieve optimal results. However, even though I recognize that the survival of your pet is an inherent part of the job and a risk vs reward system, your pet surviving is never a guarantee no matter how hard you may try to keep it alive. And if that occurs, yes there should be a penalty. But if the pet becomes the main focus of the job, the penalties will be much steeper and then it becomes a debate on "Are the risks vs the rewards justified ?"

On the matter of Contagion, you are pretty much correct. My reasoning in not wanting to remove Contagion is that as of now, people have grown too accustomed to it and at this point, it could almost be considered a Summoner ability due to people manually controlling when Garuda uses it. The only way I'd see them remove Contagion completely would be by giving a duration increase to the initial DoTs, which I frankly do not see them doing. Which lead me to conclusion that giving Contagion to the summoner and giving Garuda something else in its place, it would open the room for possible adjustments in Egi balance.

You brought up an interesting point when you mentioned that Egi could all have one interesting skill that would make them all attractive depending on the situation. A possible example for the scenario would be to give each Egi (current and future), a Full Party-wide buff that would be different for each pet, for example:

1. Ifrit: Burning Resolve: Increases the Determination of your party by 15% for 20 seconds. 80 Seconds Cooldown
2. Garuda: Tempest's Fury: Increases the Spell/Skill Speed of your party by 20% and Movement Speed of your party by 10% for 20 seconds. 80 Seconds Cooldown

So depending on the encounter and your party's composition, you could change which Egi you use.

Perhaps "agenda" isn't the appropriate word, but you do seem very defensive, almost abrasively so, whenever a thread appears on the forum asking for a change or adjustment to Summoner. You've stated here that you believe QoL changes could help the job, and on that point we're in agreement. If you also, at the very least, understand my viewpoint in my statement above, then I see no reason for us to continue with this back and forth.

Pleasure discussing with you all the same.

While I won't disagree on the fact that I sometimes sound abrasive in these types of threads is that they always come up and it's always nearly the same old drivel of people claiming the likes of: Summoner doesn't exists in this game, This job is an affliction warlock, FFXI summoner was better, put even more damage on pets! and after quite some time, it gets kinda irritating reading that stuff. Contrary to popular belief though, I am quite open to change, if it's done correctly.

In-depth discussions about the job is extremely rare so even though we don't share the same point of view on certain topics of the job, we both share the same goal of wanting the play a job we enjoy so it's a pleasure discussing this with you all the same.

There wasn't a point to miss, only an opinion, which is what I responded to. There is no such thing as a "can't" when it comes to things in this mmo, hell, Yoshida is even thinking of making a pvp system similar to the new Evolve pvp coop game, so there isn't anyone that should say whether they can or can't do something.

There was an obvious one and you still missed it. But don't worry, I explained it above so that the obvious doesn't go unseen, for a third time in your case.