lol, I will attack you with my auto catcucumber.
;)
(Yes, also why I reread it and be like o.. nice). That and the new Firefox update has honestly messed up a bunch of stuff. Sometimes it suggests code to me lol. (Like variable names on the screen).
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My idea for Smn overhaul would be to take away the dots and turn egis into a trance with hard casting instead of "pet actions".
The reason why Smn is such a head ache for the devs to balance and work with is because the way it works is basically like a clunky Ranged DPS. It's busted because it has to do stupid high damage or else people wouldn't bother putting up with the pet AI and button mashing if it, ya know, actually did the amount of damage you would expect from a job with that level of mobility and utility.
Seems like they really want to focus on trances so go with that, turn egis into a default trance-state and toss out the pet AI system. Each of the 3 egis gives you 2 different hard cast spells with different effects (like FBT but hard casting).
Boom, frees them up to actually make a proper Dot Mage in the future and balance them around that instead of balancing "dot mage" around all the other stuff Smn has going on.
I feel like they plan on doing something with egis soonish because that is the only reason I can see that egi glamours have never gotten an update. Maybe they just haven't figured out how it will work yet.
I'm really tired of Summoner being Bahamut-mmoner. Even Phoenix is just something tied to coil of bahamut.
Some people that play Summoner they're looking for variety, you know being able to summon Lakshmi, Sophia, or Bismark? It's about time.
Morever, the egis don't provide anything meaningful, being a dot pet is boring, the pet has no meaningful influence in the fight besides aoe pulls.
Frankly, egis are just useless no matter how pretty you make them out to be as a carbuncle.
The big thing you're missing is that in all of those they were different categories of magic. Summoning Magic is just Summoning. That characters are hybrids doesn't mean that the concept of Summoner is, which is true in games where you get actual jobs and not characters.
I'm... not even sure what point you're trying to make with VII/VIII/VI, none of those are actual Summoners. Same goes for XIII.
Yes ofc too hell with all the other summon systems, lets just pick and choose the ones we like. And from all these titles i said you know in how many summoner is a solo job? 1 ff5, you can make the arguement of ff3 as well but summoner gets upgraded to sage gaining once again black and white magic. This summoner isnt just a summoner either, SE went ahead and created a magic system in which summoning can fit without having to be a blm that being the arcanima magic system. It may not be your cup of tea but it is for many more others. Arcanima gave summoner the out he needed in order to be a standalone job, a magic system unique to him and only him. One that doesnt play in the fanciness aspect of summoner but instead the options aspect.
When I talk about action or a dot I'm talking about the summon/pet itself. I love the dot system of Summoner and Scholar. In my opinion this game could do with more dot jobs. My issue is that the summon itself (the egis) are boring as dot "pets" that stay at your side the entire fight. Then they go and make the job even more convoluted with the demi primal system with bahamut/phoenix. But once again I have to point out, this is about the summon and its function, Leave the summoner skills as they are. As stated in the full OP, should summons be dots or a 1 time big attack summon using your job gauge (as they were in past classic FFs, except for a few like X, XI, and XII).
Some made a really great point here, the version of Summoner that has its summon at its side is not actually summoning but instead they're just walking around with a pet. A summon is a temporary entity that's supposed to return to its point of origin, that's not what we see with XIV's Summoner.
Er... Summoner is in a whole heck of a lot as a solo job other than III and V. XI, Tactics line, others as well. And the point is that there is still a clear delineation between Summoning Magic and anything else a Hybrid character uses. It's like using Rosa as an argument for White Mages being spliced with Rangers.
And my point has never been about how much fun it is or is not, it's that it isn't a proper Summoner. Trying to appeal to me with weak pathos rhetoric like that will get you nowhere.