SMN pet redundancy

[Crescent_Dusk]

I never understand why developers always make the same mistakes with pets throughout every game:


- One pet is made a tank pet. This pet becomes obsolete in endgame.

- Between the two remaining pets, we have the ranged and melee pet. The way people decide between these should be utility, but it always comes down to damage because damage is the greatest utility of all. So of these two pets one always ends up neglected.

We have Titan Egi, which has no use in endgame because of the cost to switch pets (swiftcast is a 60 sec cd saved for a quick rez or resummon), it cannot taunt and cannot keep aggro against geared DPS, so you can't use this pet to offtank.

We have Ifrit Egi, which is overshadowed by Garuda because a) its survival in melee range sucks, cleaves seem to hit it for full damage, and b) it's utility skills are worthless. This is not a tank pet, but it has a skill that does damage when hit. Why? It'll rarely see any benefit in usage.

We have Garuda egi, whose use over Ifrit is contingent on Contagion and its survivability/mobility advantage over Ifrit egi. At any point if Ifrit egi's survivability and utility is fixed, it might end up replacing garuda egi because people will choose the summon with the most damage.

Titan has a useless niche, Garuda and Ifrit step on each others' toes and don't distinguish themselves enough.

I also don't get why the summon cast times are so long and mp costly. What that does is it discourages you from using your full toolkit. If cast times were instant or very low, the summoner could have the added dimension of gameplay of using different summons for different needs as the fight goes on instead of feeling compelled to stick to the single summon that does the best overall because switching summons to fit a single situation is impractical.

Please reconsider your approach to the summons.

[pandabearcat]

I agree with you except that summon cast times SHOULD be high.

There is a high cost to ripping open the world and imposing your will on a shard of a primal...thats got to be a cost in there somewhere.

We already have swiftcast (which could be lowered cooldown maybe), as a panic resummon, much like soul shards for a WoW warlock (which also has staggering cast times for summoning).

It would be nice to have a way to swap pets on a cooldown (like our own version of swiftcast which uses aetherflow for a quick swap), but again it needs to have a cost (like aetherflow) or a cooldown (or both).

But again, this isn't even an issue until they add in abilities (other than contagion) that are neat to swap back and forth with to do maximum damage.

[Terk177]

It would be nice to have a way to swap pets on a cooldown (like our own version of swiftcast which uses aetherflow for a quick swap), but again it needs to have a cost (like aetherflow) or a cooldown (or both).

I like the idea of having more uses for Aetherflow other than just Fester. Sure, you can use it for Bane on the occasions you need to spread your dots, or Energy Drain if you're mana starved and the CD on Aetherflow isn't close. But my only issue would be that if you add more uses for Aetherflow, we would need to be compensated with 1-2 more stacks of it.

[JonFarron]

I like the idea of having more uses for Aetherflow other than just Fester. Sure, you can use it for Bane on the occasions you need to spread your dots, or Energy Drain if you're mana starved and the CD on Aetherflow isn't close. But my only issue would be that if you add more uses for Aetherflow, we would need to be compensated with 1-2 more stacks of it.

I can see them adding this with a level cap increase. After all, we're only at lvl 50 out of a future 99.

[Chahls]

Idk what you're smoking but Titan can definitely hold aggro against well geared DPS, I've used it to hold aggro on boss fights in Castrum speed run groups, you just have to give it an initial 10 seconds where you burn rouse, spur and enkindle on the boss while throwing sustain up and giving it a chance to gain that aggro and cycle through enmity skills. All I can say is, you're doing it wrong.

However I do agree that Ifrit is useless and Garuda is a one-skill-trick pony with the most dps assist.

But Titan still does have uses, especially when soloing / grinding groups of mobs... Titan can quite easily hold aggro on 3-4 targets while you bane-dot + SF the lot of them.
Again, if you're struggling to do this, you're doing it wrong and not using your class to the solo potential it has (I was soloing equal level fate bosses while levelling up with Titan and myself alone).

[Crescent_Dusk]

This is absurd. If it needs 10 seconds to build aggro, it's no use.

And please just stop. Castrum is not endgame content. It's a stupidly easy tutorial dungeon.

Who cares that you can solo fate bosses during leveling? Cingrats on wasting time you could have used to finish 3-4 fates in the same time window with a group.

[Chahls]

yawn

It's an example of the utility provided by Titan, not my e-peen.
Titan can offtank many things in dungeons, i've found many uses for it throughout my levelling experience, including level 50 dungeons such as Amdapor Keep for off-tanking bees on the demon wall etc to prevent group paralysis, obviously this was early when nobody had even really cleared AK, but still it had its uses at the time.

Most tanks ask for 5-10 seconds before burst damage is applied, it's not just Titan.


Judging by your character snapshot btw, I'm assuming you're still in your evoker gear.
You don't know enough about the game / end game content yet to be able to call out what the class is useful against, perhaps you should reconsider your demeanor.

[Crescent_Dusk]

LOL I've been gearing both a scholar and smn, you think because you just blew your tomes on AF2 and got an AK mask to drop for you you know more? Get real. I did my character snapshot in evoker because the point of showing with a relic is to look like the job. I didn't go straight ahead and dumped myth on AF2, while now I can consider relic +1 for my glow while you'll sit here for months complaining about how underwhelming your lack of relic glow is

If you're using titan to hold bees instead of killing wall before bees become a concern you've just discredited yourself. Most importantly, if your tanks ask for 10 secs for aggros I'm not sure I can take you more seriously than a guy who just farmed amdapor.

I also see you've got no other single class to 50. Just stop. Seriously, a good tank should never lose aggro if he does his rotation. Not even with raging strikes on and a firestarter+thunderhead+swiftcast flare burst will I pull aggro off tank.

[Chahls]

Suits you sir.
*Bows*

I AM NOT WORTHY.

Thanks for stalking my post history.

[Crescent_Dusk]

You're the one who brought up the snapshot from another thread, don't get mad when your petty remarks get thrown back at you.