Why are SMNs not getting new Egi?

As it is right now, we have 3 types of summons;

Summon 1 - Garuda - Ranged magic DPS (Single target)
Summon 2 - Titan - Tank
Summon 3 - Ifrit - Melee physical DPS (Minor AoE)

There are a *lot* of Primals out there who would offer variable styles and others that are similar enough that they could be just egi-glamours.

Ramuh *could* work as a Summon 1 glamor, but he'd also be an excellent magic DoT pet for a Summon 4. Shiva would be an excellent Summon 5 Ranged physical DPS (single target), Leviathan would be an excellent Summon 6 AoE magic pet, and those are just the original 6, without getting into HW or Stormblood (though admittedly more than 6 summons *is* a bit much and those probably should just be glamors)

And then, lastly, there's Demi-Bahamut, who's really, really awesome appearance wise. Why is the only Demi-Primal we can summon Bahamut though? Why can't we replace egis with demi-primals in general? Obviously they all need to be smaller than the Large Bahamut model, but at 70 why can't the class quest be to learn to harness more power/control and stabilize the primals as demi versions that work essentially like the passive enhancements, just to the Summons? (Apparently there's a 1200 character limit to posts)

Well one day it might happen, the idea was considered a long time ago and the are plenty of egis in the game that could potentially be glamoured. It definitely doesn't seem to be a priority at the moment and if anything glamour related needed to be looked at, it's related to the equipment more than anything.

As for character limit, you can edit posts afterwards to bypass it that way and put as much as you want.

It's much easier to balance three Egis and a DemiPrimal than 6 Egis and/or 6 DemiPrimals.

I believe they had intentions (could be wrong) to add in new ones at some point back in ARR but seeing as how Titan is worthless, Ifrit is more for pvp/bosses and Garuda is more used than the other 2 it just kinda fell apart.

As for the glamour that was also promised or hinted at a while back but got put on the back burner, but they managed to get out carbuncle glams instead.

Either way you're unlikely to get an official response from the devs here, if there's a post about it from them it would be more than likely buried in the smn thread on the Jp side.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

It's much easier to balance three Egis and a DemiPrimal than 6 Egis and/or 6 DemiPrimals.

---

While true, there's no reason you can't feature the Egi's as part of spell animations. This wouldn't be a matter of balance but would cement the Summoner visually summoning a creature to execute the attack rather than themselves.

For example, if Painflare animated as Demi-Ifrit blasting an area with flame.

The same reason "builds" don't really exist : false choice.

As someone said, and it was particularly true in HS it only changed recently : it was Garuda 99% of the time.
Introducing new Egis and balancing so that all are equally viable is hard af, so one will be a little more powerful and get picked. People will be too lazy to change in dungeon or midfight anyway (well to be honest, I'll be, dunno about others, but people are lazy in general).
So more choice to not pick up from = useless (in terms of ressources to spend for development team).

So all that remains is glamour. "Pulease looka forward to it" Well, still looking.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shouko

Ifrit is more for pvp/bosses and Garuda is more used than the other 2

---

What the...? You know we only have Demi-Bahamut in PVP and that Sicfrit is being more used than Garuda right?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by popotaro

What the...? You know we only have Demi-Bahamut in PVP and that Sicfrit is being more used that Garuda right?

---

Well I don't PvP and was told differently about Ifrit and Garuda, I don't honestly pay attention to who has what out most of the time, I'll admit my knowledge of HW/SB SMN is limited, I quit playing it in ARR.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shouko

Well I don't PvP and was told differently about Ifrit and Garuda, I don't honestly pay attention to who has what out most of the time, I'll admit my knowledge of HW/SB SMN is limited, I quite playing it in ARR.

---

Get a new friend, that one is sharing wrong knowledge lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by popotaro

Get a new friend, that one is sharing wrong knowledge lol

---

Wasn't a friend, just a mentor when I got back into the game that I had talked to, not even on the same server as the guy anymore so it's not a big deal.

All the current pets have the same criteria
1 CC skill
1 AoE skill (2 if you include Enkindle)
1 Buff skill
The CC skill is often irrelevant as it's used primarily as an extra attack that's kept on CD when applicable for extra damage from the pet. Any new egi could have knockbacks, stuns, silence, sleep, etc effects and it would be no different, so long as it did damage. The AoE skill would also be largely inconsequential as to what it is.

The problem lies more with the Buff skill. For the longest time, Garuda was the only pet used because Contagion, its buff skills, was more powerful than anything Ifrit could ever hope to match and only with SB did this change by making Contagion a nice skill but not the "end all, be all" skill it once was. Now, picture this issue but with 6 egis instead of the 2 currently available (Titan isn't viable as far as DPS is concerned). How do you make all these pets viable without tilting the balance in favor of 1 over the others? If any one of those pet's abilities is underwhelming, it will instantly be made obsolete by the community and never seen again, outside the oddball player that does it for the challenge or cause the pet looks cool, etc. that it's probably just easier (not to mention cheaper) to just stay as it is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

How do you make all these pets viable without tilting the balance in favor of 1 over the others? If any one of those pet's abilities is underwhelming, it will instantly be made obsolete by the community and never seen again, outside the oddball player that does it for the challenge or cause the pet looks cool, etc. that it's probably just easier (not to mention cheaper) to just stay as it is.

---

That's why I want to see an overhaul to SMN's pet/Summoning system. Something like Bard songs, they are temporary and have long cooldowns so you rotate through 3 of them. At least the first one does exist in the form of Demi-Bahamut.

We have ranged dps and melee dps already so what more do we need? Anything more will end up ignored like the titan egi and would give a false sense of varity as well as lead to balancing issues. In the end everyone would still use the egi that gives the biggest dps.

Egi glamours though it comes down to what they have time to work on. Considering a new egi appearance would only really benefit the summoner in question who uses said glamour then it is easy to see it is not a priority. You can argue then why did music playing come out for bard? That actually is something everyone can enjoy even if they don't do it themselves. You can listen to the music a bard plays. Seeing a new egi glamour doesn't give you the same satisfaction.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Desril

Snip

---

The reason they said back in 2015 on why they couldn't add new summons was because they couldn't figure out how to add new one and make them relevant. Through out FFXIV Garuda was the end all Egi because of her old ability to extend DoTs. SE finally address this problem in 4.0 and we now have two useful pets. Also a lot of people wanted to use carbuncle again, mainly because I think everyone liked the design, thus Egi Glamour was born and sadly seemed to die soon after launch.

The best thing we can do at this point is push SE on adding new Egi's to the Egi Glamour system. I suggest SE divide the Egi's Glamour system up into two caterogies; Melee and Ranged. In this way the community doesn't have to guess if you are using Summon I or Summon III and the dev don't have to try and make each Egi into a once style fits all approach. Starting now Titan and Ifrit would be melee and Garuda would be Ranged; Carby is what it is and shouldn't be changes.

Melee:
Leviathan
Ravana
Sephirot
Susano
Zurvan

Ranged:
Shiva
Ramuh
Bismarck
Sophia
Lakshmi

that all seems fine and dandy... but when is Selene getting an upgrade?

wrong thread... I know.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dyvid

snip

---

Good suggestion, but to keep the roots of Summoner true to the ARR style for time's being, I suggest the following glamour options:

Melee - Ifrit <--> Leviathan
Ranged - Garuda <--> Ramuh
Tank - Titan <--> Shiva (in sword + shield mode)

Regarding the "lack" of demi-primals, you need to remember two things:
1.) Even the model of Bahamut took strains to create for optimization. Demi-Bahamut looks fairly different to the real one.
2.) Demi-summons will most likely be based on "Prime" primals, such as Bahamut Prime and Alexander Prime. That said, I can see Alexander Prime being a thing, even if only as glamour to Bahamut.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Good suggestion, but to keep the roots of Summoner true to the ARR style for time's being, I suggest the following glamour options:

Melee - Ifrit <--> Leviathan
Ranged - Garuda <--> Ramuh
Tank - Titan <--> Shiva (in sword + shield mode)

Regarding the "lack" of demi-primals, you need to remember two things:
1.) Even the model of Bahamut took strains to create for optimization. Demi-Bahamut looks fairly different to the real one.
2.) Demi-summons will most likely be based on "Prime" primals, such as Bahamut Prime and Alexander Prime. That said, I can see Alexander Prime being a thing, even if only as glamour to Bahamut.

---

The issue with that and why I suggest to glamour just attacker and caster is because Summon II is rarely used by Summoner; restricted to mainly solo content or open world events that doesn't have a tank. Also if you look at both Ifrit and Titan Egi, they have very similar action animation to the point that you coult glamour Titan to Summon III today and the devs would only need to remove the AoE ground effect. Also Sephirot Egi is already in the game.

No SMN casts physic either, but we still have it. As for the buff skill, there are ways to make it balanced with the others, and right now no one uses anything but sicfrit anyway. Yes, having 6 summons would be a pain to balance, and most likely every patch that rebalanced them would result in 1 or 2 that were going to be used over the others. And then the next patch would see which ones are in the spotlight change. That's better than 4 years of Garuda, and then a total swap to Ifrit.

Additionally, as you say, the pet with the highest DPS will be used. So when the people who run the numbers find out how much stronger one pet is than the others, you have numbers for how much the other pets need buffed to stay competitive.

As for buff skills, there are plenty of status effects that aren't being used much, particularly by SMNs. Ramuh might, for example, have lower DPS than Garuda but be able to apply a magic vulnerability debuff to boost raidwide damage. Obviously the number would need to be carefully watched so it didn't become too powerful, but that's what patches are for.

Incorporating the remaining ARR primals as Egi's would be cool if they can differ between at least Garuda and Ifrit because there's probably no reason to have multiple Tank egi's such as adding debuffs like others have said. Not seeing a reason to include every primal ever as while Summoner has historically been about summoning some big thing who wants to try and work out which egi is good for a given situation with a billion egi's and that's not even getting into the development stuff?

Also getting a new summon ability every other level doesn't leave much room for non-summon abilities unless XIV makes like XV and goes beyond a level cap of 99 and even then at ten levels per expansion it would be messy.

A Phoenix Egi which already exists in-game (never seen it outside of its name on the enemy list) would be cool. Lower damage than Garuda-egi, but perhaps and maybe tied to a trait, a sort of auto-life ability for the summoner so if they die, the egi may die too and revive the summoner and put that summon ability on a cooldown or something to prevent a theoretically immortal summoner and keep it as a sort of oh shit button.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TaiyoShikasu

A Phoenix Egi which already exists in-game (never seen it outside of its name on the enemy list) would be cool. Lower damage than Garuda-egi, but perhaps and maybe tied to a trait, a sort of auto-life ability for the summoner so if they die, the egi may die too and revive the summoner and put that summon ability on a cooldown or something to prevent a theoretically immortal summoner and keep it as a sort of oh shit button.

---

before sb dropped there were several ideas how to raise interaction with your pets to fit the lore even more. I like that phoenix thing and could imagine it as 2nd Demi-Primal very well. if we will ever get some more interaction with egis or any chance that our egis became more relevant - I wouldn't mind letting RDM/BLM pass in burst dmg. At least interaction would make the cls design more unique in the caster landscape not blocking the burst king spot for Blm any longer...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TaiyoShikasu

A Phoenix Egi which already exists in-game (never seen it outside of its name on the enemy list) would be cool. Lower damage than Garuda-egi, but perhaps and maybe tied to a trait, a sort of auto-life ability for the summoner so if they die, the egi may die too and revive the summoner and put that summon ability on a cooldown or something to prevent a theoretically immortal summoner and keep it as a sort of oh shit button.

---

I like the phoenix idea. I would also have no qualms with it making me immortal. ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shouko

As for the glamour that was also promised or hinted at a while back but got put on the back burner, but they managed to get out carbuncle glams instead.

---

Carbuncle was simply the first egi glamour using that developed system. I'd hardly call that something promised or hinted at, when it's already there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dyvid

and sadly seemed to die soon after launch.

---

3.5 added Carbuncles and the Egi Glamour System. 4.0 added a demi-egi. While 4.1 hasn't added a new egi glamour, they didn't say that every future patch would contain a new egi glamour, just that new egi glamours would be added in future patches.
It's too soon to call it a dead system, so let's hold off on that until we know what'll be in 4.2.

I didn't read most of the thread, but probably the most valid answer is that the more Egi SMN gets, the more complicated learning the class becomes over the other jobs.

Imagine having to learn six different sets of rotations/situational uses for six different Egi while MNK still presses pretty much the exact same buttons in the exact same order as it did in 2.x. Until 4.0 players were already discouraged from really learning the job because it was complicated, so complicating it more would have been a terrible idea.


I feel for you, though, I would like to see the Egi/Dots/Ruin system completely abolished and see more Demi-style summons that last 20-30 seconds and utilize different big hits or skills while rotating between them (similar to the way BRD songs currently work).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Llugen

more Demi-style summons that last 20-30 seconds and utilize different big hits or skills while rotating between them (similar to the way BRD songs currently work).

---

If they gonna improve the petsystem at all this will be the easiest solution for lore and cls design ya. Personally would like it as well - fe the phoenix idea above :3