Please do not ruin summoner! I heard that summons are being removed

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Originally Posted by Bacon4Makin

Breaking point does not mean they're saying it's clunky, it means they're saying they can't add any more skills without making the class feel incrediblely bloated

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It's exactly this. The rotation is already over 2 minutes long, so adding more to it just means more bloat. They need to trim back the job substantially so they can develop it further. Adding another trance just means, as was said, extending this already very long rotation even further, when it already has one of the longest rotations in the game.

This being said, it's too early to tell what they have planned for summoner, they only thing we know is that egi glamors had to go on the backburner because any changes they make now would not be compatible with the plans for the job in endwalker.

So this could mean that skills like egi assault are one and done summon animations and that your carbuncle or whatever else doesn't follow you around anymore. This would be easier for them to balance than a traditional pet class and more in line with most final fantasy games where summons are just spells rather than controllable creatures. But it also doesn't mean that egis are also going away entirely either as they may serve some other purpose or be brought about in the code of the game differently so that it would just cause more work to add more glamors now that then have to be recoded when the job is reworked.

Dreadwyrm Trance reworked to summon Bahamut at level 70. Summon Bahamut removed. Trances become generic 60 second cooldowns and no longer reduce cast times, 90 if another Trance is added, with no resource cost. Trance buffs and Bahamut and Phoenix have 25 second durations and only one trance can be active at a time. Summoner reworked to become Bard 2.0 with you cycling between Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix, and a third Demi-Summon if they are added.

Enkindle Bahamut and Phoenix cooldown increased to 15 or 30 seconds and share a hotkey and cooldown.

Wyrmave potency increased. Ahk Morn potency decreased. Scarlet Flame becomes an AoE and Revelation potency decreased.

Egi's removed and Egi Assault I reworked into summoning Emerald Carbuncle/Garuda Egi to do some AoE attack. Egi Assault II reworked into summoning Topaz Carbuncle/Titan to put a barrier around you. Egi Assault III added where you summon Ifrit to do some single target attack. Enkindle reworked to change effect depending on the last Egi Assault you used.

Ruin III's and Miasma's cast times reduced to 1.5. Ruin II and Ruin IV both become an ability with a 15 to 30 second cooldown with 2 to 3 charges and reduced potency that no longer reset upon using Egi Assaults.

Aetherpact removed with Devotion taking it's place. Devotion used by the Summoner now.

Please look foward to it. I'm only half jesting btw.

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Originally Posted by MoltresRider

I went from level 1 beginning of ARR to MSQ completed from August 17, 2020 to MSQ completed Early-March-something, did extremes until 5.5 dropped, did 5.5, all with using summoner. I did not even touch another job until I completed MSQ in March.

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Sorry, the context is a little confusing here. Are you saying you started playing summoner at the beginning of 2.0 when the game re-launched and have stuck with it through every expansion, or that you started in 2020 with Archanist as your class and you have stuck with it through the entire plot?

I don't mean to be one of those people, your opinion is still valid either way, but it changes how your opinion is framed.

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Originally Posted by MoltresRider

I am being told by multiple streamers

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Oh, my sweet, summer child...

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Originally Posted by ChazNatlo

Sorry, the context is a little confusing here. Are you saying you started playing summoner at the beginning of 2.0 when the game re-launched and have stuck with it through every expansion, or that you started in 2020 with Archanist as your class and you have stuck with it through the entire plot?

I don't mean to be one of those people, your opinion is still valid either way, but it changes how your opinion is framed.

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They're beginner, a quick intrusive glance at their minions/mounts/gear show they mainly played normal content.
Last event mount they have is from December, last event minion is Ardbert so it's safe to say they started during 2020 summer or before.

Whole topic is a "Nuuuuh don't remove this I like it despite 3/4 of the community hate iiiit". With a bit of "I heard it from this Streamer whose uncle works at Nintendo".
Summons won't be removed, pets might be heavily reworked. That's a safe assumptions since Egis are not working properly.

I'm hoping they rework SMN since it is pretty borked. I am a SMN main and did Savage (took a break this tier). Been playing since 4.3. SMN should not be doing as much DPS as BLM and even with the potency reworks I think it isn't enough with the amount of mobility we get. Not to mention it doesn't really feel like a SMN class compared to other SMNs in the FF franchise.
Also I would laugh if they took pets out and made them into a glamour item for the class.

Noaki Yoshida:
Currently summoner as a job is reaching somewhat of a breaking point when it comes to the overall play mechanics, so we've halted work on Egi Glamour for the time being in order to shift focus. There is a reason behind this, but we can't share the details with you at the moment. When the time comes, I'll be sure to properly share that information with everyone.

So let look at the first sentence: somewhat of a breaking point when it comes to the overall play mechanics. As the jobs evolution has moved on, they have just added on mechanic on top of another; DoTs, Pets, Aetherflow, Trance, Demi-Bahamut, Egi Assaults. Some of this mechanics are showing their age now. Some are most likely on the chopping block.

• Aetherflow has gone from the jobs tempo keeper to just Energy Drain that is a resource for Fester and Painflare.
• DoT went from Miasma, Bio, Bio II, Shadowflare to a condense single cast Tri-D Miasma / Bio combo doing background DPS.
• DWT and Demi Bahamut are a hold over from 4.0 but not as grand and somewhat disjointed when paired next to FWT/Phoenix.
• Egis have evolved from Garuda / Contagion, Ifirt Auto, Titan Solo to Single Target / AoE pet with more interaction but still feels weak, unimpressive.
• Devotion still is locked to Egi and makes it limiting.

Clearly we can see some items that could be cut from the job in this list.

Now consider that Summoner playstyle since 3.0 has always built up to something. Heavensward was AF + Fester + Fester + Fester = DWT.
Stormblood was (AF + Fester + Fester + Fester = DWT) + (AF + Fester + Fester + Fester = DWT) = Demi Bahamut.
5.0 lost that playstyle with Trance replacing Aetherflow as the tempo but has no big payoff, yes you have Phoenix but it's just a part of the rotation, not the big finally.

The next sentence we can focus on is: "we've halted work on Egi Glamour for the time being in order to shift focus. There is a reason behind this." Very vague to be sure. We can gather they are shifting focus from the current Summoner build as mentioned above but to how is unclean. They've halted Egi Glamour, the system to assign a new palette skin over current Summon Spells 1, 2, 3. One possible answer is they found a way to add new Egis, maybe by cycling through Egi pets in something of a rotation. Maybe Egis are going to be just a burst damage spells. Or as some suggest maybe they are just going to toss Egi into the trash bin.

We got and answer to a question that only opened the floor to tons more question.

Also not even considering the fact that Egis are heavily themed. It works for Carbuncles to replace them as a glamour, sure, because they don't scream "elementlal"... But think how weird would be to see a Ramuh-Egi casting wind spells, or a Sephirot-Egi using fire abilities. They would also have to glam the skills themselves if they want to add anything other than more colors of Carbuncle. And I suppose this would be a novelty.

Just a quick observation and someone can correct me if I am mistaken; from a narrative sense, The Demi summons can be cut from the kit without changing the lore and the content of the Summoner story, the Egis cannot. Demi Bahamut is something that you get without mention in the plot. I haven't gotten to the end of Shadow Bringers yet, but I doubt Phoenix is any different.

Not that I think they should be culled, just that they could be without any changes.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

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To me, there's nothing about current summoner that needs to be removed apart from the Reset mechanic on Tri-Disaster. What is there needs to interact with other sections of the rotation, or be relegated to the levelling process where it belongs.

To me, the core rotation of 6.0 should be the following:

Aetherflow = Tri-Disaster + DWT/Demi-Bahamut + Fester/Painflare x3/4 -> ReDot + Egi Filler -> Aetherflow = Tri-Disaster + Firebird Trance/Demi-Phoenix + Fester x3/4 -> ReDot + Egi Filler

The reason I say that should be the core is in spite of what you've described being SE's 'intended' design for Heavensward and Stormblood, the mathematically best rotation in both 3.0 and 4.0 reflects that exact core loop. And 5.0 also reworked Summoner to establish that exact loop, albeit with some holes here and there. Every cooldown and mechanic Summoner has been given since ARR has been adjusted to best 'fit' that exact core. SE refused to commit to it in a meaningful fashion until 5.0, where they took out Aetherflow and used Energy Drain/Siphon to pad out the usage of Fester/Painflare to lower Summoner's burst potential (which is exactly what that core relies on), and the manner in which they did that is what made the rotation feel disconnected, because Aetherflow itself was the foundation on which everything else was built.

That said, I've gone over those details three times in the last three responses I've made to your posts, and I do not consider any of that controversial. Upon further reflection, here's what I think is what Yoshi-P is actually gesturing at: Pets need to be and are going to be standardized.

What does that mean? Well:

• All Autoattacks, Egi Assault Actions, and Enkindle Actions need to function similarly to one another.
• Mechanically, actions will reuse the same Ranges and Area of Effect shapes as much as possible, so that swapping animations is easy and can be plugged into the rotation cleanly.
• The animations can be different between pet types, but the goal here is to keep the total number necessary to make for each pet as low as possible.

What are the ramifications of this?

• Unique actions within each pet are going to be removed. This means we'd say goodbye to the following: Inferno, Slipstream, Earthen Fury, Earthen Armor. This I would consider a virtual guarantee as they make things awkward to glamour over.
• All pets will be remade into a single type. In other words: No more melee/ranged split. Demi-Summons are all ranged already so I would expect Ifrit-Egi and Titan-Egi to undergo major reworks into ranged Egi if this happens. Doing so removes half the animations that have to be made for glamours period in the long run, so I would consider this to be the most likely change.
• I wouldn't be surprised to see the return of the split-damage mechanic that originally featured on Machinist's Richochet in Heavensward. The way that worked is it applied a baseline level of potency, plus additional potency that was divided evenly amongst all targets within range. This would be used on the single-target DPS pet only, and that's only if SE wanted to eliminate single-target animations for Egi assaults as well (which I do not expect in the slightest). It saves about 2-3 animations per pet but the scalability of that is a problem given there are over two dozen candidates for primal-egi.
• Titan-Egi might be straight up removed. I don't think this is likely, but it's a possibility. More likely he will gain 'utility' that can be slapped on a regular attack, such as a Slow or Stun.
• If we don't lose Earthen Armor, then we're getting it as a seperate cooldown next expansion. Please look forward to it.

Remember, this is purely to cut down on development work. As it stands, a complete pet usable as any Demi or Egi currently would need the following animations:

• Auto Attacks: Three (Ranged AoE, Melee Target, Ranged Target)
• Assaults: Four (Melee Target, Melee AoE, Ranged AoE, Ranged Ground AoE, Shield)
• Enkindle: Three (Ranged AoE, Melee Ground AoE, Melee Cone)
• Other: Devotion, Summon, Dismiss, Movement.

That's Thirteen animations total, and I'm assuming duplicate actions there too. Ifrit/Titan EA2 and Auto Attacks are reusable.

If they rework pets as I would expect, we'd see the following:

• Auto Attack: Two (Ranged Target, Ranged AoE)
• Assaults: Two (Ranged AoEx2)
• Enkindle: One (Ranged AoE)
• Other: Summon, Dismiss, Movement.

Doing so cuts the number of animations down to Eight. That's a third of the potential work on new pets gone in an instant. They could probably cheat and enable/disable the use of extra particles to simulate AoE effects or enhance the animations for Demi-Summons if they wanted to trim it further too.

And if they're going to have to remake Ifrit and Titan to make this happen, then they might as well glam up Garuda too, and give us demi-sized Egi like people have been asking for.

That is the rework I'm expecting to see come to life in the job action trailer for SMN, and it's purely to make Egi Glamours easier in the long run. None of it has anything to do with altering Summoner's current rotation, but it's perfect within the context of Mr Happy's interview.