Summoer Job Changes and Predictions

Hey Everyone.

After years of seeing how people have reacted to my favorite iteration of my favorite DPS class, I decided to throw my own hat into the ring and offer my own opinion on the subject. That said, I had a LOT more to say than I realized, to the point that I could fill up a small book....literally.

I initially intended share my thoughts on the forums, but found that I had exceeded the character limit by a country mile. Reformatting everything to fit into multiple posts would have been a nightmare, so I decided to post my thoughts into a Gdoc instead.

I can confirm that you don't need a Google account to look at it, so for those who are interested in seeing my thoughts, I would love it if you gave this a quick look. I will warn you though....there's a lot.

You can find the document here:
FFXIV Job Change Ideas - Summoner

I realized after posting this that I probably should've posted a sample of what I wrote so that you'd have an idea of what you would be looking at.

Here's an excerpt from the first page:
"When I came up with most of these ideas, I was basing them on two things: 1) what I thought Summoner’s identity was supposed to be as of 6.0, and 2) what the addition of Solar Bahamut in 7.0 was supposed to represent both gameplay and lore wise.

To me Summoner’s identity consists of the following:

• Calling summons to do big flashy hits.
• Having the character’s abilities mimic the big flashy hits of the summon they just called while being objectively weaker than what the summons can dish out.
• Simple, repetitive button inputs with consistent pacing across the leveling process.
• Multiple super modes with unique gimmicks
• Focus on the cycle of death and rebirth.
• AoE focus over Single Target.
• Limited utility through buffs and combat rezzes.

As for Solar Bahamut, I subscribe to a theory I first saw put forth by Synodic Scribe a long time ago: Solar Bahamut is the result of us using Bahamut as a focus for pulling on the power of Hydaelyn. I don’t know if he was the first one to come up with the idea, but his channel was the first place I heard someone say it out loud.

Using these two sets of info as my basis, I came to the conclusion that the devs were planning on having Bahamut and Phoenix act as conduits for the powers of other MSQ primals we’ve faced. To me those Summons would be Hydaelyn, Zodiark, Shiva, Shinryu, Leviathan, and Ramuh. We’ve already gotten the Hydaelyn summon in Solar Bahamut, so my ideas were mostly focused on how to make the others work.

In the end, I came up with the following forms:

• Lunar Phoenix
• Undine Bahamut
• Levin Phoenix
• Kaiser Bahamut
• Boreal Phoenix

As for the summoning order:
Solar Bahamut → Lunar Phoenix → Undine Bahamut → Levin Phoenix → Kaiser Bahamut → Boreal Phoenix → Solar Bahamut → Repeat

For more info on why you don’t see regular Bahamut or Phoenix in that summoning cycle, see the Summoner Traits section at the end."

If you have time, take a look and let me know what you think.