COMBAT SMN!Follow

While mindlessly grinding away experience points, I was thinking of ways to make the summoner and avatar work a little more as a team...
I think that would be cool; I just haven't been able to come up with many examples.

I mean, I'm not suggesting that Carbuncle should be used as as projectile, etc.

I heard a couple times on here that Fenrir could be rideable.
That's an outstanding idea, he looks made for it.
It's one example of how the summoner and avatar could work in sync.

But what I'm thinking of is a little different. Basically, I've decided that in one more level and I'm SMN75, I'm going to focus on skilling up and learning to use a staff properly... I want to be right there, alongside my buddies as we fight bad guys.

I'm going to do anyway, for the 'fun' factor, but the problem with this is that it probably won't end up doing much damage or being all that useful.

This lack of uselessness translates to any melee-based summoner tactics being restricted to solo play.

So, what if... (most used set of words on this board?) Square Enix implemented ways for the summoner and avatar to work together side-by-side, right on the battlefield? My ideas are all a little silly compared to the highly mathematical ones that you've all come up with, but I'll continue anyway.

The idea is that you and your avatar are to both fight a monster together; use your avatars' Blood Pacts as usual.
What would be different is a set of various triggers and bonuses between the meleeing summoner and his avatar.

Here's an EXAMPLE. (Please note that I'm not familiar at all with Staff Weapon Skills yet)

A summoner engages an enemy wielding a Staff, accompanied by Ifrit.

While both the summoner and avatar are using their basic attacks, the summoner uses his Staff to perform Spirit Taker on the enemy.

This action by the summoner triggers the avatar, Ifrit, to automatically perform a Fire-based magic blast on the enemy.

So, basically, just a fun little combo system between the summoners and their avatar for boosted damage. Unlike the Blood Pacts, these combos wouldn't have an MP cost. You're using your MP by keeping your avatar summoned and continuing to use occasional Blood Pacts, as well. (depending on your MP)

I know that my idea would probably not work, I'm just sleepy and having fun on my summoner; thinking of ways that I could have even more fun, and be strong, too.

Maybe the combo/team system could just offer less subtle benefits... like, the summoner's abilities would just become stronger in battle if an avatar was with them.

For EXAMPLE!!!

A summoner engages an enemy wielding a Staff, accompanied by Carbuncle.

While both the summoner and avatar are using their basic attacks, the summoner uses his Staff to perform Retribution on the enemy.

Carbuncle augments the summoner's Retribution Weapon Skill, causing major bonus light damage. Rather than the usual skill animation, Carbuncle uses his tail to whip the summoner's Staff forward during Retribution.

Anyway, I'm just pouring out my ideas! Sorry, they aren't very good.

But a system where our avatars helped us fight so we weren't just standing back so often could be really cool.

Right now the system is a lot like Pokemon where the summoner does nothing but order commands and heal.

I think if summoners were given more of a role we might be on the road to usefulness!

Tell me what you guys think. I don't even know if my idea made sense, it's 8:05 AM in the morning. I'm sure you've heard worse.

Edit :( sleep deprivation, damn... how do I delete posts

Edited, Jul 11th 2009 4:21pm by Poubelle

There's nothing that ever indicated that SMN should melee. Every job was given a decent or better stat in some weapon so that it was an OPTION, just like in every other game.

In fact, every indication is that SMN is doing exactly what it should with SMN/WHM|SCH, based on the FFXI-specific tools we're given and past series history.

What Poubelle is proposing is a tweaked DRG+Wyvern system applied to SMN, which is a novel idea. It wouldn't see much use outside of solo, I'd say. A melee SMN is already highly situational, and takes a good deal of effort a lot of SMN's aren't used to.

It's not something I care about personally, I leveled SMN for the by-proxy system, I would have leveled any of the other pet jobs if I was truly interested in a team-based system.

Edited, Jul 11th 2009 3:51pm by jlejeune

I viewed NIN as the adaptable damage dealer. They could start nuking with the elemental wheel and /RDM or /BLM, or they could go /WAR and melee with their katana, or they could go /RNG and throw shuriken. Sadly, SE dropped the ball on making ninjutsu do viable enough damage post-60 and the immense lack of shuriken.

Heh, that's how the players started to see NIN... eventually. It took ages for us to figure out how to get proper DD from NIN -- when I first started playing, /THF was still perfectly acceptable because it helped pulling and offered a DD boost once a minute. It took players a while to notice the effectiveness of shuriken spamming, and even longer to discover "the wheel" and the value of /RDM for making it faster and more effective.

Those DD options, and the effectiveness of shadows as more than a tool to get back to camp alive while pulling a mob, seemed to be completely lost on the game's design team. NIN was a lot like SMN for awhile -- neat toys but not much of a role to fill with them. NIN got lucky that players eventually found a great way to use the job. One could argue that SMN is still waiting for that.

And, come on SE... still no throwing WS's? It would take an unpaid intern two hours to write the code for them. They don't even need new animations...

That, in the history of any education at any college or university for any profession of any trained or educated man for any society, is the worst reason to assume anything. Lack of extraneous options does not imply intent.

You assume a SMN will be twiddling their thumbs, incapable of doing anything. That is simply not the case. Our avatars are an ever present function of the job, and when deprived of all other tools, they will still be there. Quite simply, that is the only intent given. Or to rephrase that, "what we should do." That is what should be compared to a WHM's cure, a BLM's nuke, or any other job's primary function.

Nevermind that there is nothing to promote us above other mages with melee as a primary function.

Questioning someone's Final Fantasy "resume" is not a good idea. For every character that doesn't follow current player-base convention you pull up, I can list another that does.

Consider this as some food for thought, the biggest pattern you can see across the entire series is that melee is an option for every single character. Yet in every single instance, there are characters where it is more beneficial to ignore that option and use them for their intended purpose.

Just because Rosa can shoot an arrow, doesn't mean Rosa should shoot an arrow.

Except I never said SMN's were supposed to always main heal, either. Don't put words in my mouth.


Did you seriously just compare a BST with access to Huaberk, Byakko's Haidates, Dusk gear, the top DD axes, Rampage, and free pets, to a SMN with a hefty MP price tag and Tabin?

Edited, Jul 13th 2009 7:14am by jlejeune

Galkas would disagree. It's bad enough they don't get mongoloid chocobos to ride so it looks proportioned.



/eyetwitch