In the beginning there was the Blood Pact ability. Any and all Blood Pacts made would reset the cooldown on this jobability timer. In this age, the summoner job felt very slow. Being able to only use an ability once every 45 seconds meant that the remainder of the time would have to be spent healing, or in some cases meleeing, just waiting for the BP timer to return.
Then came the age of the Rage/Ward Blood Pact division. This helped immensely with the pace of the job. Summoners were now able to spend more time than not, using blood pacts. We were no longer constrained to only doing 1 offensive or 1 defensive maneuver per BP timer. Note that, at this point in time, there were no charge systems in place for any jobs.
Jump ahead to today. Charge systems have been implemented for various jobs: Dancer (finishing moves), Scholar (stratagem charges), Beastmaster (Ready charges). These charge systems serve to limit the resources of the player, yet allow them to make their own decisions on how to use their resources. They let the player choose between offensive maneuvers and defensive maneuvers. They may decide to use both types of maneuvers with their resources, or they may choose to focus all of their resources on either offensive or defensive maneuvers at a single point in time.
I'm asking that the Summoner job also be allowed to choose between these types of tactics as well. Specifically, I'm asking that the Blood Pact Rage/Ward system be replaced with a single Blood Pact Job ability again, and that this job ability would have multiple charges (currently I'm suggesting 2 charges). I know the Rage/Ward system was extremely helpful when it first came out, but now I think that it's time to revise it again, and I think this is the right way to do it. Right now with the Rage/Ward system, summoners are forced to go the 50/50 route on offensive/defensive maneuvers; it would be helpful if they could focus on one or the other at a single point in time, just like the other jobs that were previously mentioned.
By turning the Blood Pact JA into a charge system, you would be allowing summoners to do the following:
* Summoners that are in a purely offensive role could effectively replace a useless defensive pact with another offensive pact.
* Summoners that are in a purely supporting role would be able to better support their parties, as they could use 2 supporting blood pacts instead of just 1, by replacing one of their offensive pacts.
* Summoners would now have more of a place in fights that are finished extremely quickly, as they would be allowed to use 2 offensive blood pacts during the fight, instead of just 1.
* Summoners wouldn't be unbalanced because they're still constrained to the charge system, which has worked for other jobs.
Please seriously consider this.
Thanks for your time.