SMN is good damage, but still has serious quality-of-life, fantasy, and design issues

First of all, to get this out of the way: As of Patch 5.3x, do I think that Summoner needs any adjustments or buffs to its numerical output?

NO! In fact, Summoner might still be a bit too strong numerically, but definitely not by enough of a margin to really imbalance anything at this point. In terms of damage output, for both personal and raidwide dps, Summoner is currently very strong and can easily find a place in just about any team for high-level play. So, let's move along.

What problems does Summoner currently have?

Summoner has bizarre and deep-rooted design issues that can make it an absolute chore to play for players with any kind of reaction-time delays, due to Internet connection, hardware, physical disability, or etc.

Also, the Summoner playstyle is utterly counter-intuitive; it is either difficult or impossible to figure out how to play correctly without detailed instructions and explanations that are only available in guides that are authored by a small handful of dedicated players who could probably have gotten employment as NSA codebreakers during the Cold War.

More subjectively, but still of significant personal issue to me, is that many aspects of the Summoner design and rotation still do not live up the "Summoner fantasy" as it has traditionally been represented in Final Fantasy games.

Issues: Egis

• Egis are unappealing.
  • At no point in any prior Final Fantasy game did I feel that being a "Summoner" was represented by having a grotesque-looking piece of neon-colored candy sluggishly floating behind me.
  • The Demi-Summons — Bahamut and Phoenix — represent a true Final Fantasy Summoner "fantasy": bringing forth the temporary embodiment of a great and powerful mythical creature to serve you in battle.
  • Egis, in contrast, seem to be a relatively-failed attempt to imitate the Demon Minions used by World of Warcraft Warlocks, a leftover design aspect from how the 2.0 / ARR Summoner design was basically trying to be "WOW Warlock, but in FFXIV".
• Egis are sluggish and unresponsive.
  • FFXIV's engine does not seem to be able to handle pet AI well, and Egis continue to be plagued by sluggish and unpredictable response times that makes them tedious and frustrating to have to reply on rotationally.
  • For example, in currently-standard Summoner openers, 4 Egi-Assault actions, Devotion, and Enkindle are all used within a very short time frame. Sometimes, these will all resolve successfully by the 6th GCD of the opener. Other times, the Egi's AI will simply become confused and overwhelmed, and delay the last Egi-Assault until the 7th or even 8th GCD, causing frustrating delays in the playstyle.
  • Or as an another example, Egi's sluggish responsiveness means that Egi-Assaults, which were partially placed on the GCD to make weaving OGCDs (Abilities) more practical for Summoners, actually have to be avoided as weave tools in many cases because the laggy Egi response will cause actions such as Egi-Assault or even Devotion or Enkindle to simply be wasted and not happen if something causes the Egi to despawn (such as a Demi-Summon), sometimes even multiple seconds after giving it the command.
  • Or as yet another example, let's say you have Ifrit-Egi active. You press Egi-Assault 2 while your egi is next to the boss, but the Tank suddenly moves the boss across the room. Ifrit lagged on "understanding" the command. Now, you helplessly watch Ifrit perform Flaming Crush in a radius around it where nothing is standing, completely wasting an entire GCD of potency.
  • Or, let's have another example. You activate Devotion right on time, to coordinate with your party's raid buffs. But your egi gets confused and lags a little. Then the Tank moves the boss across the room. Your egi now decides it will move all the way across the room before actually activating Devotion, desyncing it from the raid buffs and possibly causing Devotion's radius to now not even affect some of the players in your party.
• Egis are needlessly convoluted and annoying to optimize.
  • Ifrit-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 1 and 2 targets.
  • But Ifrit-Egi's "Flaming Crush" has 50% damage falloff against targets beyond the first. This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 actually does the most damage against 2 targets, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
  • Likewise, Garuda-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 3 or more targets.
  • But Garuda-Egi has a cast time on its auto-attack, which can unpredictably cause even more frequent weird lags and delays in executing Egi-Assaults, Devotion, and Enkindle.
  • Additionally, Garuda-Egi insists on staying at range and using its ranged auto-attack. This means that Garuda-Egi requires extra attention and micro-management to ensure it is in range of the party whenever it decides to finally activate Devotion.
  • Furthermore, Garuda-Egi — despite being designed as the "aoe" egi — does either equal or slightly less damage than Titan-Egi with Egi-Assault 2, and also does so as a target-centered ground aoe that takes 9 seconds to resolve.
  • This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 again actually does the most damage against 2, or even more, targets in almost all situations, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
  • Additionally, Ifrit-Egi's Enkindle is a tiny conal-radius attack. Conal attacks are difficult to aim properly even when they originate from a player-controlled character. Putting a tiny conal attack on a sluggish Egi, that tends to position itself in strange and seemingly-arbitrary locations, is very frustrating, especially because the potency lost in auto-attacks — and the cost to a player's attention bandwidth — while trying to position Ifrit-Egi to execute the cone correctly during an encounter means that the conal effect is frequently wasted, ignored, or not worth utilizing effectively.
  • Furthermore, Titan-Egi's "Enkindle" does the same potency as Ifrit-Egi's, while also being a circular aoe centered on Titan-Egi, making it much more practical to execute, and is just directly more potency than Garuda-Egi's Enkindle for aoe.
  • Due to all of these combined factors, Egis have the additional nuisance factor added of optimal play being to juggle back and forth between all three for tiny but clear potency gains in a number of situations where the player is already distracted and preoccupied. I think that is an irritating design decision, and it makes me view Egis are even more of an annoying, tacked-on, busy-work, chore.

Suggested solutions: Egis

• I favor an extreme solution here, because I really honestly hate Egis: I think that Egis should be removed entirely, and the Summoner job firmly refocused on Demi-Summons. In my opinion, Egis are rotational clutter and design bloat that contribute nothing positive to the Summoner rotation, and have been completely-supplanted by Demi-Summons in terms of fulfilling the Summoner "fantasy".
• If removing Egis completely is not acceptable, then I think that all interaction with them should be removed. Convert them into fully-passive effects, such as Dark Knight's Living Shadow, that do not need to be micro-managed or given commands, and do not have any aspect of the Summoner player's actual rotation be dependent on an Egi's pet-AI responsiveness.
• "But that would take away the cute Carbuncle following me around! I hate you!"
  • Okay I am sympathetic to that, I guess, but I think this could be resolved by just giving Summoners either an aesthetic summon effect (that has no effect on combat), or Summoner-specific Minions that are awarded based on the game tracking your completion of Arcanist and Summoner Quests.
  • In any case, I have to be honest, I am willing to accept being hated for taking your Carbuncle away, if it means that I never have to interact with a laggy Egi AI blob during combat ever again, ever.

Issues: Enkindle

• At this point, Enkindle is keybind and design bloat.
• The true "big awesome attack" button, that provides a big splashy point in the rotation, has shifted into being Enkindle Bahamut and Enkindle Phoenix.
• The Egi Enkindle is now a rather tacked-on, forgettable "kitchen sink" button that gets smashed as soon as it lights up, to keep it coordinated with raid buffs, and otherwise adds pretty much nothing to the rotation except yet another keybind and cooldown to track, and yet another OGCD to clutter up the weave space.
• Additionally, Enkindle is annoying to use: it's disabled during Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix, meaning that even slight distractions or delays on Enkindle's activation can cause it to drift dramatically out-of-sync with the rotation, and easily lose uses, or pressure the player into delaying Bahamut or Phoenix, which is unappealing and unfun.
• Even further, the clunkiness of Enkindle being tied to Egis that despawn means that the rotation must do bizarre and counter-intuitive behaviors such as sometimes deliberately not summoning Bahamut on-time in order to allow Enkindle to finish its cooldown and be used.

Suggested solutions: Enkindle

I think that Enkindle Egi should be removed entirely, to clean up the Summoner design space and allow room for more interesting keys and actions that aren't an awkward, laggy, fire-and-forget button-slap every 2 minutes.

Issues: Devotion

• I think that Devotion is a bizarre and boring cooldown that does not seem to fit the Summoner "fantasy", nor does Summoner as a job really "need" a raid buff.
• More objectivey, Devotion is a raid buff — which therefore encourages it to be timed precisely and consistently — that is produced via an Egi command, which therefore results in it being timed erratically and sluggishly and with a frustratingly-unpredictable responsiveness.

Suggested solutions: Devotion

• I would personally advocate for Devotion to be removed entirely. It feels like unnecessary, tacked-on action bloat.
• If you still want Summoner to bring raid support, make it radiate passively while Demis are summoned, or... something.
• Or, at least make the Summoner raid support an actual summon, in line with traditional Final Fantasy Summoners — for example, a button that summons Carbuncle to provide the raid with Magic Damage Reduction, or Unicorn to heal the raid, or etc. Something that feels cool and exciting and fits the "fantasy", rather than bizarre and bland. Look at Dancer's Shield Samba and Curing Waltz — those are examples of job utility that feel fun, flavorful, and fantasy-fitting.
• If nothing else, at least de-couple Devotion from Egis, and just make it an effect — like Embolden, Battle Litany, etc. — that originates from the Summoner player, and is applied immediately on keypress.

Issues: Energy Drain and Aetherflow

• At this point, both Energy Drain and Aetherflow feel like bizarre, tacked-on "legacy" features that are no longer significant to Summoner gameplay, and no longer define the job's "fantasy".
• Energy Drain is just a nuisance OGCD — the correct response in very nearly all situations is simply to smash Energy Drain the moment it lights up (inside the next non-clipping weave slot, of course). It is not interesting, it's really not very fun either, it's... just a formality, or a chore.
• Likewise, Energy Siphon is even worse — pointless and unsatisfying button bloat, that's almost exclusively used on dungeon trash packs and, for the vast majority of players, could be deleted from their hotbars without any serious consequence.

Suggested solutions: Energy Drain and Aetherflow

• I think that Summoner's design could be streamlined and cleaned up by simply removing both the Aetherflow Gauge and the Energy Drain / Energy Siphon actions, allowing space for more interesting and "Summoner-fantasy" actions and keybinds.
• Then, you can retain very nearly the same gameplay effect as Energy Drain / Aetherflow currently provide, by converting Fester into an action with 2 charges and a 15s cooldown, and make it share that cooldown with Painflare.

Issues: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare

• Removing the damage bonus from Dreadwyrm Trance has resulted in it degenerating into a bizarre "I guess I can weave a few more OGCDs" button, or "That just sounds like Deathflare with extra steps".
• Technically, Dreadwyrm Trance can be used to move freely for a long period of time during complex mechanics. But realistically, doing this will badly-disrupt and desynchronize the Summoner rotation, because ending Dreadwyrm Trance is required to begin Summon Bahamut. So using Dreadwyrm Trance as a movement tool becomes similar to a Black Mage "holding" Triplecast past its cooldown for upcoming movement — heavily-discouraged as a sub-optimal crutch in almost all situations.
• This has led Dreadwyrm Trance into a bizarre and counter-intuitive status of being a "minimize your time inside this buff" action, which is especially confusing for players that haven't found a current guide to Summoner yet, because the Job Gauge makes a big and fancy showing of the fact that Dreamwyrm Trance is active — suggesting that the player wants to get full use out of it, when in reality the player almost always wants to fluff around for at most a few GCDs, and then counter-intuitively end the buff with ~60% of its timer still remaining.
• In my opinion, this is a very disappointing and unsatisfying design state for Dreadwyrm Trance to have fallen into. I think that the gameplay was more interesting and engaging when getting every last GCD inside the Dreadwyrm timer was still a goal. At this point, the action seems to exist more out of relict formality than any seriously-justified place in the design space.

Suggested solutions: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare

• Possibility 1: add a Damage Up, or other persuasive bonus, back to Dreadwyrm Trance, to motivate and reward utilizing its full duration.
• Possibility 2: remove Dreadwyrm Trance, and simply replace it with Deathflare, on a 55s cooldown, that enables Summon Bahamut upon use. This is a pretty lame "solution", but at least it removes one piece of unnecessary button bloat. Realistically, I'm adding this possibility just to show how pointless and redundant having both Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare as keys has become at this point.
• Possibility 3: mirror the design of Firebird Trance, and have Dreadwyrm Trance last 20s and automatically Summon Bahamut upon activation.
• I personally would favor Possibility 3, since this would also make the Summon Bahamut period significantly more streamlined, straightforward, intuitive, and consistent (due to all GCDs being instant). Additionally, Deathflare feels outdated and redundant now that Demi-Bahamut and Akh Morn are actual parts of the Summoner rotation.
• "But doing this would mess up the flexibility of the Summoner rotation in high-level play!"
  • This is a legitimate observation. Summoner currently relies on exploiting the discretionary time gaps between activating Dreamwyrm Trance, and utilizing Deathflare, and then further utilizing Summon Bahamut, to adjust and tailor its rotation around a number of different potential encounter designs and situations.
  • However, I hold the — potentially-unpopular — opinion that allowing a job's rotation to become infested with bizarre, convoluted, and counter-intuitive design aspects that are only really useful to, or usable by, players operating at a very high level of relative skill, is ultimately not a healthy way to design for a game that has a very broad playerbase with a very broad distribution of skill and capability.
  • ie, by significantly simplifying the Trance system to be a 1:1 ratio of "Dreadwyrm = Bahamut" and "Firebird = Phoenix", I think that Summoner's rotational design would also become significantly more intuitive and accessible.

Issues: Demi-Summons

• Not active enough, and not enough of them.
  • This is not an objective design concern, so much as a personal "fantasy" complaint: if I am playing a "Final Fantasy Summoner", I don't want to summon disappointing little Egi blobs, I don't want to have only two summons available for the entire game, and I don't want to only be able to Summon something for 33.33-repeating-of-course % of my time in combat.
  • I would much prefer if Summoner gameplay was redesigned to be about chaining one Demi-Summon into another, non-stop, for the entire duration of a combat encounter. This would make me finally, truly feel like a "Summoner" while playing one in Final Fantasy XIV.
  • I would also much prefer if there were more than... two... Demi-Summons, such as Demi-Ifrit, Demi-Garuda, Demi-Titan, or even Demi-Bismarck, Demi-Shiva, Demi-Ramuh, or even Demi-Atomos, Demi-Alexander, Demi-Thordan, Demi-Hades, Demi-Zodiark... I know that I'm probably beginning to get carried away now, but it's so much more exciting to imagine feeling like a real "Final Fantasy Summoner", with a full array of Summons to call forth.
• Excessively-punishing to players with any amount of input or reaction latency.
  • This one is most definitely an objective design concern, and it is a severe one, perhaps one of the most severe design issues currently affecting the Summoner job.
  • Let's start by examining Demi-Bahamut:
    • In order to cause Demi-Bahamut to use Wyrmwave 8 times inside each 20s summon period, the average player must be extraordinarily precise with their GCD usage, as well as aggressively spamming/queueing GCDs.
    • Any tiny hesitation or delay is almost guaranteed to lose the 8th Wyrmwave, causing a small but definite potency loss that adds up to a large amount over the course of an encounter, and very likely leading many players with too much latency in hardware, Internet connection, or reaction time to simply give up on the job at high levels of play, or resign themselves to doing disappointing dps.
    • This issue is further compounded by multiple frustrating issues that still plague Demi-Bahamut:
      • It insists on following the Summoner after almost any movement.
      • It insists on turning to follow the player, unless the player chooses bizarre and unintuitive movement paths to respond to mechanics.
      • It turns very slowly, both away from the target, and back toward the target.
      • It cannot activate Wyrmwaves while facing away from its target.
      • Its AI cannot handle both moving and activating Enkindle Bahamut's Akh Morn, causing it to do absolutely nothing if Akh Morn is waiting to happen but the Demi-Bahamut AI is trying to follow the player.
      • Any Wyrmwaves that were supposed to happen during a movement-delayed Akh Morn will very likely not happen, especially if Demi-Bahamut also has to turn around and face the target again after it stops moving.
      • Wyrmwaves can only be queued in small quantities and have an ~1.5s internal delay in activation, meaning that small errors at any point during the 20s Summon Bahamut period can very easily lead to unrecoverable loss of the 8th (or even 7th) Wyrmwave.
    • The overall effect of all of these problems is that it is stressful, frustrating, and confusing for many players to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves at all, and for even more players to consistently be able to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves in actual content, even if they seem to be pressing all of their buttons on-time and in the correct order.
    • Furthermore, because many other players can — for reasons of better latency, better hardware, better reflexes, etc — consistently achieve 8 Wyrmwaves without issue, it has become the de-facto standard that Summoners feel they must hold themselves to in high-level play in order to "pull their weight" in their dps slot, and in turn those that cannot are likely to feel stressed and inadequate.
    • All of these issues are then further exacerbated by the fact that it is potency-optimal to use 4 hard-cast Ruin 3s inside Summon Bahamut periods for any GCD that doesn't require an instant cast (ie, both Enkindle Bahamut weaves, and the last two GCDs, due to Wyrmwave delay issues), causing an even tighter and more unforgiving margin for error during the Summon Bahamut period, due to the severe and unrecoverable cost that results from any interruption or clipping of any of the Ruin 3 hard-casts.
  • Next, let's examine Demi-Phoenix:
    • Demi-Phoenix has the same issues as Demi-Bahamut in terms of insisting on following the player, turning too much and too slowly and being unable to resolve actions while turned away from its target, delaying actions due to movement, and pushing Scarlet Flames out of existence due to movement or Enkindle Phoenix / Revelation delays.
    • But, additionally, Demi-Phoenix has another problem:
      • After being summoned, it has to activate "Everlasting Flight", a design-unnecessary "flavor-based" minor raid healing effect.
      • However, Demi-Phoenix cannot accept Scarlet Flame triggers during the period of time that it is activating Everlasting Flight.
      • This means that any Summoner player that attempts to — intuitively — weave Firebird Trance into the same place in their GCD as other buffs... such as Summon Bahamut... followed by — intuitively — immediately using their first Fountain of Fire GCD, will unrecoverably lose an entire Scarlet Flame activation, because the first Fountain of Fire damage event will occur while Demi-Phoenix is still sitting around trying to figure out how to cast Everlasting Flight.
      • Therefore, adding even more clunk, awkardness, and bizarre, arcane, counter-intuitive behavior to Summoner's rotation, any Summoner player that wants to achieve 8 Scarlet Flames per Firebird Trance period must do one of the following things that almost no one would figure out without consulting an external guide source to tell them what to do:
        • Single-weave Firebird Trance at a bizarre position halfway through the GCD that basically no other buff, action, or weave in the game wants to be used at, so that enough of Demi-Phoenix's initial time is "wasted" that it can finish casting Everlasting Flight before the player GCD finishes.
        • Triple-weave Firebird Trance with two other OGCDs, in a blatant violation of one of the most significant principles drilled into every single player's head by every single guide about the game that they read for every single job — never weave more than two OGCDs inside an instant-cast GCD — because Demi-Phoenix is so buggy and weird that the player wants to deliberately clip their own GCD to try to make sure that the next one starts after Everlasting Flight is finished.
        • Use Firebird Trance at a normal point in the GCD for weaving buffs, but then sit on the next GCD and do nothing for ~0.5s — again, violating another basic principle of XIV rotational gameplay — so that, once again, Demi-Phoenix is hopefully done with Everlasting Flight by the time the player actually presses a button again.
        • All of these methods are made even worse and more convoluted by the issue that every single one cannot rely on the GCD/Action queue to happen at the "correct" time, and therefore must be adjusted for each individual player's latency, causing large discrepancies in which players can successfully use which methods, and in how long they need to wait for the methods that they can use, and... etc, etc, etc.
  • Overall, the effect of all these issues is to make Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix feel more like tense, bizarre, frustrating, stressful chores, than exciting and rewarding high points of the rotation.
  • As a Summoner player finds guides to explain these counter-intuitive and secretive elements, and becomes more aware of the rotation details, and attempts to improve his or her play at a high level, then they will very likely become more and more stressed and conscious about whether or not their 8th Wyrmwave, or 1st or 8th Scarlet Flame, is being lost due to any number of absurdly-unforgiving reasons, many of which are almost outside of the player's control, or require a level of micro-management and adaptation to the server and engine and Pet AI's quirks that (I think) no other job needs to deal with and, I also think, absolutely no job should have to deal with in a game that is ostensibly designed to be "accessible".

Suggested solutions: Demi-Summons

• Any number of fundamental changes could help make Demi-Summons into significantly less stressful and frustrating points in the rotation:
  • Remove Everlasting Flight completely, or add the Demi-Phoenix healing effect into the summon period in a way that does not require an action to be activated by Demi-Phoenix itself (for example, by having every Scarlet Flame produce a small raidwide heal).
  • Allow Wyrmwave, Scarlet Flame, Akh Morn, and Revelation to be activated while the Demi-Summon is not facing its target.
  • Allow Akh Morn and Revelation to be activated while moving.
  • Make Demi-Summons stop following the Summoner player, and remain stationary at the point where they are summoned.
  • Make Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame true "auto attacks" that automatically occur against the Demi-Summon's current target, at an interval that guarantees 8 will occur over the course of a 20s summon period.
  • Remove Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame entirely, and rebalance that potency into Demi-Summons's Akh Morn and Revelation, possibly with a lowered cooldown on Enkindle Bahamut / Enkindle Phoenix (to make the redistributed potency less bursty and more spread-out).
• As for fantasy changes, while this is obviously outside the scope of the current expansion, in 6.0 I would like to see Summoner become more "Bard-like" in the sense of its rotation being about constantly moving between different Demi-Summons.
  • For example, as Bard cycles Wanderer's Minuet > Mage's Ballad > Army's Paeon over 80s, Summoner could have a long 180s cycle:
    • 20s Fire (Demi-Ifrit) > 20s Wind (Demi-Garuda) > 20s Lightning (Demi-Ramuh) > 30s Astral (Demi-Phoenix)
    • 20s Earth (Demi-Titan) > 20s Water (Demi-Leviathan) > 20s Ice (Demi-Shiva) > 30s Umbral (Demi-Bahamut)
    • or you could instead go through "Light" and "Dark" elements, and culminate in Demi-Hydaelyn and Demi-Zodiark.
    • or you could make each element summon a random associated Primal that the player has the Achievement for defeating, for example Fire could be Demi-Ifrit or Demi-Ravana, Water could be Demi-Leviathan or Demi-Bismarck or Demi-Susanoo, Earth could be Demi-Titan or Demi-Sephirot... etc.
  • Then, filler actions like Ruin and damage-over-time effects could change into different elemental "flavors" based on the current Demi-Summon, similar to how Demi-Phoenix converts Ruin 3 into Fountain of Fire. Bahamut could provide Ruin and Outburst, in keeping with his themes of unaspected umbral destruction. And so forth.

... Okay.
I think that covers most of my current major frustrations, issues, and delusional hopes and dreams for Final Fantasy XIV Summoner.

To be clear:

• I really like the overall Final Fantasy series Summoner job. Along with Blue Mages, it's one of the most-used Jobs that I have historically utilized in Final Fantasy games, because I just really like the concept, the idea, the visuals, collecting all the summons, etc.
• However, I have to admit that, ever since ARR / 2.0, the Final Fantasy XIV interpretation of Summoner has been very frustrating and disappointing to me, capturing basically none of the wonder, excitement, or fantasy of the implementations of the job in other games in the Final Fantasy series.
• I think that Demi-Bahamut in Stormblood and Demi-Phoenix in Shadowbringers have been huge steps in the correct direction, but for me, the job is still plagued by annoying off-kilter elements that detract from the fantasy — such as Egis, and a bizarre emphasis on WOW Warlock-like damage-over-time management — and excessively sensitive, punishing, and frustrating design elements that make the job a stressful chore to play consistently in high-level content.
• Overall, I hope that at least some part of this wall-of-post will prove useful or motivating to the developers for informing the future development of Summoner, because overall I truly enjoy playing Final Fantasy XIV and its combat content, and my goal here is ultimately to try to make the gameplay, fantasy, and accessibility of the Summoner job better and more fun. That's why I was motivated to finally sit down, for way too long, and express myself about these issues — I like FFXIV, I like Summoner, and I want to be able to feel more excited and satisfied with Summoner inside FFXIV.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Also, the Summoner playstyle is utterly counter-intuitive; it is either difficult or impossible to figure out how to play correctly without detailed instructions and explanations that are only available in guides that are authored by a small handful of dedicated players who could probably have gotten employment as NSA codebreakers during the Cold War.

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This hit me deep.
It also made it difficult to be flexible with SMN. Anytime my rotation is interrupted it starts to fall apart. I have such a hard time adapting with SMN I just swapped to MCH.

Sorry about the double post,Simon mobile and can't edit my last one...
I can't touch on everything you brought up, but I wanna highlight this and say I agree.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Issues: Devotion

• I think that Devotion is a bizarre and boring cooldown that does not seem to fit the Summoner "fantasy", nor does Summoner as a job really "need" a raid buff.
• More objectivey, Devotion is a raid buff — which therefore encourages it to be timed precisely and consistently — that is produced via an Egi command, which therefore results in it being timed erratically and sluggishly and with a frustratingly-unpredictable responsiveness.

Suggested solutions: Devotion[LIST][*]I would personally advocate for Devotion to be removed entirely. It feels like unnecessary, tacked-on action bloat.[*]If you still want Summoner to bring raid support, make it radiate passively while Demis are summoned, or... something.[*]Or, at least make the Summoner raid support an actual summon, in line with traditional Final Fantasy Summoners — for example, a button that summons Carbuncle to provide the raid with Magic Damage Reduction, or Unicorn to heal the raid, or etc. Something that feels cool and exciting and fits the "fantasy", rather than bizarre and bland. Look at Dancer's Shield Samba and Curing Waltz — those are examples of job utility that feel fun, flavorful, and fantasy-fitting.[*]If nothing else, at least de-couple Devotion from Egis, and just make it an effect — like Embolden, Battle Litany, etc. — that originates from the Summoner player, and is applied immediately on keypress.

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Heck, Phoenix comes with sustain. They could introduce a 3rd big summon that just has devotions effect while it's out.

I agree with everything you said. I especially love the idea of having summoner specific minions that you can’t take into battle that just follow you around since many people love the aesthetic of pets following them. Also, I’ve been saying since stormblood that it’s time for egis to go. The pet AÍ just sucks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pressed egi-assault and nothing happens. Just waste of GCD and damage no less. It’s very annoying. If you have high ping forget summoner. You dps will tank very fast. I hope in 6.0 it’s summoners turn for a rework. It really needs it. People love it so much because the damage is so good. That’s fine and all but like you, I want that summoner fantasy fun too. Let me summon Shiva, Bismarck, Leviathan, Ramuh etc. Great read and again totally agree with you 200%

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Sorry about the double post,Simon mobile and can't edit my last one...
I can't touch on everything you brought up, but I wanna highlight this and say I agree.



Heck, Phoenix comes with sustain. They could introduce a 3rd big summon that just has devotions effect while it's out.

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Alexander please.
Lore: time shenanigans allow you to access Alexander's aether wherever and whenever you are.

Another one, cause the first 100 didn't get the point across that a lot of people do not want THIS

Lets start

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

the Summoner playstyle is utterly counter-intuitive; it is either difficult or impossible to figure out how to play correctly without detailed instructions and explanations that are only available in guides that are authored by a small handful of dedicated players who could probably have gotten employment as NSA codebreakers during the Cold War.

More subjectively, but still of significant personal issue to me, is that many aspects of the Summoner design and rotation still do not live up the "Summoner fantasy" as it has traditionally been represented in Final Fantasy games.

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Summoner isnt that difficult , even though difficulty is also subjective and differs from person to person, Its difficult enough to be fun but not NSA codebreakers hard.
The summoner fantasy that you people keep screaming contradicts what you guys want to do. A summon is a God ,in many of the iterations when a summon is out it means business, even though the playstyle of old ffs is made that in a way that you can spam them , they werent meant to be spammed. not only that each summoner is different, changes from game to game and only in a handfull they didnt have another system added to them.
The actual defining feature of smn is how powerfull the summons are and the myriads effect it can produce that no other job can replicate. in order to do that Summons need to be rare not spammy. This game circumvents this by adding a powerlevel to summons, and instead of adding another jobs spells it gives it its own spell line. disagree all you want this summoner is a summoner.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Issues: Egis
Egis are unappealing.
At no point in any prior Final Fantasy game did I feel that being a "Summoner" was represented by having a grotesque-looking piece of neon-colored candy sluggishly floating behind me.
The Demi-Summons — Bahamut and Phoenix — represent a true Final Fantasy Summoner "fantasy": bringing forth the temporary embodiment of a great and powerful mythical creature to serve you in battle.
Egis, in contrast, seem to be a relatively-failed attempt to imitate the Demon Minions used by World of Warcraft Warlocks, a leftover design aspect from how the 2.0 / ARR Summoner design was basically trying to be "WOW Warlock, but in FFXIV".
Egis are sluggish and unresponsive.
FFXIV's engine does not seem to be able to handle pet AI well, and Egis continue to be plagued by sluggish and unpredictable response times that makes them tedious and frustrating to have to reply on rotationally.
For example, in currently-standard Summoner openers, 4 Egi-Assault actions, Devotion, and Enkindle are all used within a very short time frame. Sometimes, these will all resolve successfully by the 6th GCD of the opener. Other times, the Egi's AI will simply become confused and overwhelmed, and delay the last Egi-Assault until the 7th or even 8th GCD, causing frustrating delays in the playstyle.
Or as an another example, Egi's sluggish responsiveness means that Egi-Assaults, which were partially placed on the GCD to make weaving OGCDs (Abilities) more practical for Summoners, actually have to be avoided as weave tools in many cases because the laggy Egi response will cause actions such as Egi-Assault or even Devotion or Enkindle to simply be wasted and not happen if something causes the Egi to despawn (such as a Demi-Summon), sometimes even multiple seconds after giving it the command.
Or as yet another example, let's say you have Ifrit-Egi active. You press Egi-Assault 2 while your egi is next to the boss, but the Tank suddenly moves the boss across the room. Ifrit lagged on "understanding" the command. Now, you helplessly watch Ifrit perform Flaming Crush in a radius around it where nothing is standing, completely wasting an entire GCD of potency.
Or, let's have another example. You activate Devotion right on time, to coordinate with your party's raid buffs. But your egi gets confused and lags a little. Then the Tank moves the boss across the room. Your egi now decides it will move all the way across the room before actually activating Devotion, desyncing it from the raid buffs and possibly causing Devotion's radius to now not even affect some of the players in your party.
Egis are needlessly convoluted and annoying to optimize.
Ifrit-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 1 and 2 targets.
But Ifrit-Egi's "Flaming Crush" has 50% damage falloff against targets beyond the first. This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 actually does the most damage against 2 targets, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
Likewise, Garuda-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 3 or more targets.
But Garuda-Egi has a cast time on its auto-attack, which can unpredictably cause even more frequent weird lags and delays in executing Egi-Assaults, Devotion, and Enkindle.
Additionally, Garuda-Egi insists on staying at range and using its ranged auto-attack. This means that Garuda-Egi requires extra attention and micro-management to ensure it is in range of the party whenever it decides to finally activate Devotion.
Furthermore, Garuda-Egi — despite being designed as the "aoe" egi — does either equal or slightly less damage than Titan-Egi with Egi-Assault 2, and also does so as a target-centered ground aoe that takes 9 seconds to resolve.
This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 again actually does the most damage against 2, or even more, targets in almost all situations, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
Additionally, Ifrit-Egi's Enkindle is a tiny conal-radius attack. Conal attacks are difficult to aim properly even when they originate from a player-controlled character. Putting a tiny conal attack on a sluggish Egi, that tends to position itself in strange and seemingly-arbitrary locations, is very frustrating, especially because the potency lost in auto-attacks — and the cost to a player's attention bandwidth — while trying to position Ifrit-Egi to execute the cone correctly during an encounter means that the conal effect is frequently wasted, ignored, or not worth utilizing effectively.
Furthermore, Titan-Egi's "Enkindle" does the same potency as Ifrit-Egi's, while also being a circular aoe centered on Titan-Egi, making it much more practical to execute, and is just directly more potency than Garuda-Egi's Enkindle for aoe.
Due to all of these combined factors, Egis have the additional nuisance factor added of optimal play being to juggle back and forth between all three for tiny but clear potency gains in a number of situations where the player is already distracted and preoccupied. I think that is an irritating design decision, and it makes me view Egis are even more of an annoying, tacked-on, busy-work, chore.
Suggested solutions: Egis
I favor an extreme solution here, because I really honestly hate Egis: I think that Egis should be removed entirely, and the Summoner job firmly refocused on Demi-Summons. In my opinion, Egis are rotational clutter and design bloat that contribute nothing positive to the Summoner rotation, and have been completely-supplanted by Demi-Summons in terms of fulfilling the Summoner "fantasy".
If removing Egis completely is not acceptable, then I think that all interaction with them should be removed. Convert them into fully-passive effects, such as Dark Knight's Living Shadow, that do not need to be micro-managed or given commands, and do not have any aspect of the Summoner player's actual rotation be dependent on an Egi's pet-AI responsiveness.
"But that would take away the cute Carbuncle following me around! I hate you!"
Okay I am sympathetic to that, I guess, but I think this could be resolved by just giving Summoners either an aesthetic summon effect (that has no effect on combat), or Summoner-specific Minions that are awarded based on the game tracking your completion of Arcanist and Summoner Quests.
In any case, I have to be honest, I am willing to accept being hated for taking your Carbuncle away, if it means that I never have to interact with a laggy Egi AI blob during combat ever again, ever.
Issues: Enkindle
At this point, Enkindle is keybind and design bloat.
The true "big awesome attack" button, that provides a big splashy point in the rotation, has shifted into being Enkindle Bahamut and Enkindle Phoenix.
The Egi Enkindle is now a rather tacked-on, forgettable "kitchen sink" button that gets smashed as soon as it lights up, to keep it coordinated with raid buffs, and otherwise adds pretty much nothing to the rotation except yet another keybind and cooldown to track, and yet another OGCD to clutter up the weave space.
Additionally, Enkindle is annoying to use: it's disabled during Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix, meaning that even slight distractions or delays on Enkindle's activation can cause it to drift dramatically out-of-sync with the rotation, and easily lose uses, or pressure the player into delaying Bahamut or Phoenix, which is unappealing and unfun.
Even further, the clunkiness of Enkindle being tied to Egis that despawn means that the rotation must do bizarre and counter-intuitive behaviors such as sometimes deliberately not summoning Bahamut on-time in order to allow Enkindle to finish its cooldown and be used.
Suggested solutions: Enkindle
I think that Enkindle Egi should be removed entirely, to clean up the Summoner design space and allow room for more interesting keys and actions that aren't an awkward, laggy, fire-and-forget button-slap every 2 minutes.
Issues: Devotion
I think that Devotion is a bizarre and boring cooldown that does not seem to fit the Summoner "fantasy", nor does Summoner as a job really "need" a raid buff.
More objectivey, Devotion is a raid buff — which therefore encourages it to be timed precisely and consistently — that is produced via an Egi command, which therefore results in it being timed erratically and sluggishly and with a frustratingly-unpredictable responsiveness.

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A lot of people like egis or tbf they like carbuncles. They are a reason some people picked up the job, being that it is a pet class.
The problem with the Ai has been discussed before, Gutting the whole thing isnt the solution getting a better Ai is. In fact the old egi system was better ai wise. But since this is the direction they wanted to head asking once again to fix the pet ai is the way to go.
Also, the egis arent needlessly convoluted , yes slipstream sucks and titan ea2 is better but because its such a minimal gain the only time you will ever use titan for aoe, is Ultima Ultimate and only in one spot. So anything besides that is boils down to ifrit single target and 2 targets garuda for 3+.
Also Also you say if they dont get removed they should instead become a passive buff like darkside. That is basically removing them. And again micro management is a point of appeal.
About enkindle How is it a button bloat, you can not like it but you cant call it a button bloat. Not only that but you say the true powerfull attack is the blue and orange light beam, Dude garudas enkindle looks ten times better, especialy when said true powerfull attacks are simply deathflare 2 more times and reskinned another 2.
On Devotion
again with calling stuff button bloat and you also ask that this also becomes a passive. Also timing it is a necessity for all buffs not just summoners.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Issues: Energy Drain and Aetherflow
At this point, both Energy Drain and Aetherflow feel like bizarre, tacked-on "legacy" features that are no longer significant to Summoner gameplay, and no longer define the job's "fantasy".
Energy Drain is just a nuisance OGCD — the correct response in very nearly all situations is simply to smash Energy Drain the moment it lights up (inside the next non-clipping weave slot, of course). It is not interesting, it's really not very fun either, it's... just a formality, or a chore.
Likewise, Energy Siphon is even worse — pointless and unsatisfying button bloat, that's almost exclusively used on dungeon trash packs and, for the vast majority of players, could be deleted from their hotbars without any serious consequence.
Suggested solutions: Energy Drain and Aetherflow
I think that Summoner's design could be streamlined and cleaned up by simply removing both the Aetherflow Gauge and the Energy Drain / Energy Siphon actions, allowing space for more interesting and "Summoner-fantasy" actions and keybinds.
Then, you can retain very nearly the same gameplay effect as Energy Drain / Aetherflow currently provide, by converting Fester into an action with 2 charges and a 15s cooldown, and make it share that cooldown with Painflare.
Issues: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare
Removing the damage bonus from Dreadwyrm Trance has resulted in it degenerating into a bizarre "I guess I can weave a few more OGCDs" button, or "That just sounds like Deathflare with extra steps".
Technically, Dreadwyrm Trance can be used to move freely for a long period of time during complex mechanics. But realistically, doing this will badly-disrupt and desynchronize the Summoner rotation, because ending Dreadwyrm Trance is required to begin Summon Bahamut. So using Dreadwyrm Trance as a movement tool becomes similar to a Black Mage "holding" Triplecast past its cooldown for upcoming movement — heavily-discouraged as a sub-optimal crutch in almost all situations.
This has led Dreadwyrm Trance into a bizarre and counter-intuitive status of being a "minimize your time inside this buff" action, which is especially confusing for players that haven't found a current guide to Summoner yet, because the Job Gauge makes a big and fancy showing of the fact that Dreamwyrm Trance is active — suggesting that the player wants to get full use out of it, when in reality the player almost always wants to fluff around for at most a few GCDs, and then counter-intuitively end the buff with ~60% of its timer still remaining.
In my opinion, this is a very disappointing and unsatisfying design state for Dreadwyrm Trance to have fallen into. I think that the gameplay was more interesting and engaging when getting every last GCD inside the Dreadwyrm timer was still a goal. At this point, the action seems to exist more out of relict formality than any seriously-justified place in the design space.
Suggested solutions: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare
Possibility 1: add a Damage Up, or other persuasive bonus, back to Dreadwyrm Trance, to motivate and reward utilizing its full duration.
Possibility 2: remove Dreadwyrm Trance, and simply replace it with Deathflare, on a 55s cooldown, that enables Summon Bahamut upon use. This is a pretty lame "solution", but at least it removes one piece of unnecessary button bloat. Realistically, I'm adding this possibility just to show how pointless and redundant having both Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare as keys has become at this point.
Possibility 3: mirror the design of Firebird Trance, and have Dreadwyrm Trance last 20s and automatically Summon Bahamut upon activation.
I personally would favor Possibility 3, since this would also make the Summon Bahamut period significantly more streamlined, straightforward, intuitive, and consistent (due to all GCDs being instant). Additionally, Deathflare feels outdated and redundant now that Demi-Bahamut and Akh Morn are actual parts of the Summoner rotation.
"But doing this would mess up the flexibility of the Summoner rotation in high-level play!"
This is a legitimate observation. Summoner currently relies on exploiting the discretionary time gaps between activating Dreamwyrm Trance, and utilizing Deathflare, and then further utilizing Summon Bahamut, to adjust and tailor its rotation around a number of different potential encounter designs and situations.
However, I hold the — potentially-unpopular — opinion that allowing a job's rotation to become infested with bizarre, convoluted, and counter-intuitive design aspects that are only really useful to, or usable by, players operating at a very high level of relative skill, is ultimately not a healthy way to design for a game that has a very broad playerbase with a very broad distribution of skill and capability.
ie, by significantly simplifying the Trance system to be a 1:1 ratio of "Dreadwyrm = Bahamut" and "Firebird = Phoenix", I think that Summoner's rotational design would also become significantly more intuitive and accessible.

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Aetherflow system ill agree to you is completely detouched, in fact it is completely different from what aetherflow stood for, if they want to still keep trance as the clock they should indeed remove it cause it doesnt do anything. However the old aetherflow clock would fix all of the current rigid issues cause all of them were produced by its removal , if anything this is the most important change that needs to happen. Removing aetherflow as a clock was undeniably a huge mistake on every aspect.
Also yes siphon is indeed a button bloat

On trance , again with calling stuff a button bloat , at this point the whole gameplay up until the summon bahamut button has been called a button bloat. You cant remove trance without screwing the dot cycle which was already screwed when aetherflow got removed and we had trance as a 60 second clock.
Also if there is one place that isnt convoluted on the summoner rotation its the freedom that having trance being detouched from bahamut provides, its not usefull only in high level, its usefull in any kind of fight that screws summoner over with its downtime
not only that you say that they shouldnt design jobs with high skill in mind. The game has a crapton of jobs that are easy and streamlined for people to learn , we dont need another one added to the pile . said difficulty is why a lot of players pick it over red mage and if the ACCESSIBILITY changes the game provided towards the healers and tanks is that people dont like having nothing to do on a job, if gameplay is the meat then the difficulty of it is the salt , there should be options of difficult and rewarding jobs
it just happens that summoner is one of them.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Issues: Demi-Summons
Not active enough, and not enough of them.
This is not an objective design concern, so much as a personal "fantasy" complaint: if I am playing a "Final Fantasy Summoner", I don't want to summon disappointing little Egi blobs, I don't want to have only two summons available for the entire game, and I don't want to only be able to Summon something for 33.33-repeating-of-course % of my time in combat.
I would much prefer if Summoner gameplay was redesigned to be about chaining one Demi-Summon into another, non-stop, for the entire duration of a combat encounter. This would make me finally, truly feel like a "Summoner" while playing one in Final Fantasy XIV.
I would also much prefer if there were more than... two... Demi-Summons, such as Demi-Ifrit, Demi-Garuda, Demi-Titan, or even Demi-Bismarck, Demi-Shiva, Demi-Ramuh, or even Demi-Atomos, Demi-Alexander, Demi-Thordan, Demi-Hades, Demi-Zodiark... I know that I'm probably beginning to get carried away now, but it's so much more exciting to imagine feeling like a real "Final Fantasy Summoner", with a full array of Summons to call forth.
Excessively-punishing to players with any amount of input or reaction latency.
This one is most definitely an objective design concern, and it is a severe one, perhaps one of the most severe design issues currently affecting the Summoner job.
Let's start by examining Demi-Bahamut:
In order to cause Demi-Bahamut to use Wyrmwave 8 times inside each 20s summon period, the average player must be extraordinarily precise with their GCD usage, as well as aggressively spamming/queueing GCDs.
Any tiny hesitation or delay is almost guaranteed to lose the 8th Wyrmwave, causing a small but definite potency loss that adds up to a large amount over the course of an encounter, and very likely leading many players with too much latency in hardware, Internet connection, or reaction time to simply give up on the job at high levels of play, or resign themselves to doing disappointing dps.
This issue is further compounded by multiple frustrating issues that still plague Demi-Bahamut:
It insists on following the Summoner after almost any movement.
It insists on turning to follow the player, unless the player chooses bizarre and unintuitive movement paths to respond to mechanics.
It turns very slowly, both away from the target, and back toward the target.
It cannot activate Wyrmwaves while facing away from its target.
Its AI cannot handle both moving and activating Enkindle Bahamut's Akh Morn, causing it to do absolutely nothing if Akh Morn is waiting to happen but the Demi-Bahamut AI is trying to follow the player.
Any Wyrmwaves that were supposed to happen during a movement-delayed Akh Morn will very likely not happen, especially if Demi-Bahamut also has to turn around and face the target again after it stops moving.
Wyrmwaves can only be queued in small quantities and have an ~1.5s internal delay in activation, meaning that small errors at any point during the 20s Summon Bahamut period can very easily lead to unrecoverable loss of the 8th (or even 7th) Wyrmwave.
The overall effect of all of these problems is that it is stressful, frustrating, and confusing for many players to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves at all, and for even more players to consistently be able to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves in actual content, even if they seem to be pressing all of their buttons on-time and in the correct order.
Furthermore, because many other players can — for reasons of better latency, better hardware, better reflexes, etc — consistently achieve 8 Wyrmwaves without issue, it has become the de-facto standard that Summoners feel they must hold themselves to in high-level play in order to "pull their weight" in their dps slot, and in turn those that cannot are likely to feel stressed and inadequate.
All of these issues are then further exacerbated by the fact that it is potency-optimal to use 4 hard-cast Ruin 3s inside Summon Bahamut periods for any GCD that doesn't require an instant cast (ie, both Enkindle Bahamut weaves, and the last two GCDs, due to Wyrmwave delay issues), causing an even tighter and more unforgiving margin for error during the Summon Bahamut period, due to the severe and unrecoverable cost that results from any interruption or clipping of any of the Ruin 3 hard-casts.
Next, let's examine Demi-Phoenix:
Demi-Phoenix has the same issues as Demi-Bahamut in terms of insisting on following the player, turning too much and too slowly and being unable to resolve actions while turned away from its target, delaying actions due to movement, and pushing Scarlet Flames out of existence due to movement or Enkindle Phoenix / Revelation delays.
But, additionally, Demi-Phoenix has another problem:
After being summoned, it has to activate "Everlasting Flight", a design-unnecessary "flavor-based" minor raid healing effect.
However, Demi-Phoenix cannot accept Scarlet Flame triggers during the period of time that it is activating Everlasting Flight.
This means that any Summoner player that attempts to — intuitively — weave Firebird Trance into the same place in their GCD as other buffs... such as Summon Bahamut... followed by — intuitively — immediately using their first Fountain of Fire GCD, will unrecoverably lose an entire Scarlet Flame activation, because the first Fountain of Fire damage event will occur while Demi-Phoenix is still sitting around trying to figure out how to cast Everlasting Flight.
Therefore, adding even more clunk, awkardness, and bizarre, arcane, counter-intuitive behavior to Summoner's rotation, any Summoner player that wants to achieve 8 Scarlet Flames per Firebird Trance period must do one of the following things that almost no one would figure out without consulting an external guide source to tell them what to do:
Single-weave Firebird Trance at a bizarre position halfway through the GCD that basically no other buff, action, or weave in the game wants to be used at, so that enough of Demi-Phoenix's initial time is "wasted" that it can finish casting Everlasting Flight before the player GCD finishes.
Triple-weave Firebird Trance with two other OGCDs, in a blatant violation of one of the most significant principles drilled into every single player's head by every single guide about the game that they read for every single job — never weave more than two OGCDs inside an instant-cast GCD — because Demi-Phoenix is so buggy and weird that the player wants to deliberately clip their own GCD to try to make sure that the next one starts after Everlasting Flight is finished.
Use Firebird Trance at a normal point in the GCD for weaving buffs, but then sit on the next GCD and do nothing for ~0.5s — again, violating another basic principle of XIV rotational gameplay — so that, once again, Demi-Phoenix is hopefully done with Everlasting Flight by the time the player actually presses a button again.
All of these methods are made even worse and more convoluted by the issue that every single one cannot rely on the GCD/Action queue to happen at the "correct" time, and therefore must be adjusted for each individual player's latency, causing large discrepancies in which players can successfully use which methods, and in how long they need to wait for the methods that they can use, and... etc, etc, etc.
Overall, the effect of all these issues is to make Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix feel more like tense, bizarre, frustrating, stressful chores, than exciting and rewarding high points of the rotation.
As a Summoner player finds guides to explain these counter-intuitive and secretive elements, and becomes more aware of the rotation details, and attempts to improve his or her play at a high level, then they will very likely become more and more stressed and conscious about whether or not their 8th Wyrmwave, or 1st or 8th Scarlet Flame, is being lost due to any number of absurdly-unforgiving reasons, many of which are almost outside of the player's control, or require a level of micro-management and adaptation to the server and engine and Pet AI's quirks that (I think) no other job needs to deal with and, I also think, absolutely no job should have to deal with in a game that is ostensibly designed to be "accessible".
Suggested solutions: Demi-Summons
Any number of fundamental changes could help make Demi-Summons into significantly less stressful and frustrating points in the rotation:
Remove Everlasting Flight completely, or add the Demi-Phoenix healing effect into the summon period in a way that does not require an action to be activated by Demi-Phoenix itself (for example, by having every Scarlet Flame produce a small raidwide heal).
Allow Wyrmwave, Scarlet Flame, Akh Morn, and Revelation to be activated while the Demi-Summon is not facing its target.
Allow Akh Morn and Revelation to be activated while moving.
Make Demi-Summons stop following the Summoner player, and remain stationary at the point where they are summoned.
Make Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame true "auto attacks" that automatically occur against the Demi-Summon's current target, at an interval that guarantees 8 will occur over the course of a 20s summon period.
Remove Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame entirely, and rebalance that potency into Demi-Summons's Akh Morn and Revelation, possibly with a lowered cooldown on Enkindle Bahamut / Enkindle Phoenix (to make the redistributed potency less bursty and more spread-out).
As for fantasy changes, while this is obviously outside the scope of the current expansion, in 6.0 I would like to see Summoner become more "Bard-like" in the sense of its rotation being about constantly moving between different Demi-Summons.
For example, as Bard cycles Wanderer's Minuet > Mage's Ballad > Army's Paeon over 80s, Summoner could have a long 180s cycle:
20s Fire (Demi-Ifrit) > 20s Wind (Demi-Garuda) > 20s Lightning (Demi-Ramuh) > 30s Astral (Demi-Phoenix)
20s Earth (Demi-Titan) > 20s Water (Demi-Leviathan) > 20s Ice (Demi-Shiva) > 30s Umbral (Demi-Bahamut)
or you could instead go through "Light" and "Dark" elements, and culminate in Demi-Hydaelyn and Demi-Zodiark.
or you could make each element summon a random associated Primal that the player has the Achievement for defeating, for example Fire could be Demi-Ifrit or Demi-Ravana, Water could be Demi-Leviathan or Demi-Bismarck or Demi-Susanoo, Earth could be Demi-Titan or Demi-Sephirot... etc.
Then, filler actions like Ruin and damage-over-time effects could change into different elemental "flavors" based on the current Demi-Summon, similar to how Demi-Phoenix converts Ruin 3 into Fountain of Fire. Bahamut could provide Ruin and Outburst, in keeping with his themes of unaspected umbral destruction. And so forth.
... Okay.
I think that covers most of my current major frustrations, issues, and delusional hopes and dreams for Final Fantasy XIV Summoner.

To be clear:
I really like the overall Final Fantasy series Summoner job. Along with Blue Mages, it's one of the most-used Jobs that I have historically utilized in Final Fantasy games, because I just really like the concept, the idea, the visuals, collecting all the summons, etc.
However, I have to admit that, ever since ARR / 2.0, the Final Fantasy XIV interpretation of Summoner has been very frustrating and disappointing to me, capturing basically none of the wonder, excitement, or fantasy of the implementations of the job in other games in the Final Fantasy series.
I think that Demi-Bahamut in Stormblood and Demi-Phoenix in Shadowbringers have been huge steps in the correct direction, but for me, the job is still plagued by annoying off-kilter elements that detract from the fantasy — such as Egis, and a bizarre emphasis on WOW Warlock-like damage-over-time management — and excessively sensitive, punishing, and frustrating design elements that make the job a stressful chore to play consistently in high-level content.
Overall, I hope that at least some part of this wall-of-post will prove useful or motivating to the developers for informing the future development of Summoner, because overall I truly enjoy playing Final Fantasy XIV and its combat content, and my goal here is ultimately to try to make the gameplay, fantasy, and accessibility of the Summoner job better and more fun. That's why I was motivated to finally sit down, for way too long, and express myself about these issues — I like FFXIV, I like Summoner, and I want to be able to feel more excited and satisfied with Summoner inside FFXIV.

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Ok heres the thing, facing the target isnt that much of a problem especially with the camera option that doesnt make you walk backwards but instead turn and run.
Bahamut ai has been steadily improving, even with movement bahamut will get the attacks out if you sequenced it correctly so the only attack that can get screwed by movement is the second akh morn
on pheonix i wont argue the weave is completely convoluted, however not as much as you make it out to be. Youre not missing anything on the single weave , cause we already have too much weaving space and nothing to weave into them.
the triple and hold is completely convoluted though.

Now to your suggestions. Youre basically asking them to make them like automaton queen, so you ask that they copy the copy of bahamut. also to make that kind of spammy akh morn it would have to be a potency that would make the egi enkindle look strong.

I completely disagree with the making them like Bard, What you have presented is a job that will simply have a "Demi" that will do an auto and some completely weak ability on the power level of egis so that it looks spammy. I understand the want for more demis , i also want to have more demis , but for demis to feel good they need to be rare so that they can be more powerfull and they need the egis so that they feel like an upgrade. It is the only reason people keep comparing the 2 whether they do it consciously or not. It might sound fun but this job you described is a job that would become extremely boring , it would be just animations of extremely weak reskined editions of the same thing in order to be balanced and if they had passive buffs on top of that akin to bard then even those would be extremely weak. This isnt a what the ff summoner stands for , if you want more demis then ask for variety not quantity.

I don’t agree. I think the OP explained it very well. Summoner has allot of issues right now and it doesn’t feel like a fantasy summoner. Right now it does really strong damage and that’s not a bad thing. I don’t agree with you saying Demi primals should be a rare thing. We are in our 3rd expansion and we should feel more powerful. It’s like keeping elements on white mage. It’s gone light base holy now. What’s wrong with summoner going Demi primal? The pet AI sucks. SE have tried multiple times to get it right and they just can’t. So just scrap it and move on with what works. Demis work. Or if you do decide to keep the pets make it so they do their own thing and don’t have to be micromanaged. That way we shouldn’t t have any issues with abilities In que or just straight being ignored by the pet etc. I just thinks it’s time for major changes to summoner. Rework needs to happen.

Nah Heul is right on everything here, save that Egi are unstable at high ping. The problem is lag spikes and overcrowding eat their inputs, nothing more than that. Weave a non-pet skill between Egi Assaults and Enkindle/Devotion and it resolves fluidly.
I hate the Demi’s more for being stuck on heel AI when the Egi autos generally make them MORE stable, not less.

I would personally be really interested in SMN if the egis were simply removed and the playstyle revolved around more Demi summons. That said because egis are nowadays practically walking dots carrying slow-responsive abilities for you. They are branded pets, but in reality they are no longer such a thing.

Part of me also wants to believe that we never heard again about Egi-glamours anymore because they would remove egis in 6.0 (catering to the Demi sumons) thus making it not a worth time investment.

But in the light of that happening, the egis and carbuncles should defnitely be available as cosmetic spells for the SMN.

To me, I want the current Demi’s to alter the rotation more when they do appear, and to not move unless they have to in order to avoid dismissal. The Egi themselves actually are consistent (if annoying to reposition). I do agree that DWT needs more purpose but it’s on SE to make it useful beyond movement or automatically upgrade into Summon: Bahamut via a trait or two. Phoenix’s issues would be solved by making Everlasting Flight an oGCD we can trigger when we want but it honestly works fine the way it does now. The triple weave isn’t required, just beneficial.

Considering egi's are just vassals for throwing out moves, so no actual interaction we might as well be throwing out the spells themselves, I'm not sure why the summons themselves don't become attacks. Summoning Ifrit could put a fire dot on the target, titan is an aoe nuke, guruda would be what we lost with shadowflare with a ground based aoe dot. And this would open up more of the primals to be used as well.

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

Considering egi's are just vassals for throwing out moves, so no actual interaction we might as well be throwing out the spells themselves, I'm not sure why the summons themselves don't become attacks.

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This, though. I've been thinking this for years. Leave Carbuncle as a full-time pet and autosummon him on job change, for those who would miss Carbuncle. Have him just be an extra always-on auto-attack. Replace him during Demi-summon phases as is already the case.

Then, make the summoner's spells poof Demi-primals into existence for one-off attacks. For example, upon becoming SMN,

• Replace Ruin with Call: Strike. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence for a single strike.
• Replace Outburst with Call: Burst. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence for an AoE attack.
• Replaced Bio with Call: Sap. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence to inflict the target with a DoT.
• Etc.

Classically a "Call" spell should summon a random Demi-Primal from among those the player has defeated, but of course specific Demi-Primals could be assigned to specific actions. So basically, while your Carbuncle buddy is out slapping things with his tail, you're summoning a sequence of Demi-Primals who appear, do one attack, and then disappear. When you get to a Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix phase, Carbuncle is replaced with Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix, and as you continue to summon one-off Demi-Primals, your Demi-ElderPrimal contributes their attacks as well.

With no meaningful changes to the way SMN plays, this change would drastically realign them stylistically to the classical image of a Final Fantasy summoner.

I wouldn't mind if Summoner was reworked to be sorta like Yuna from Dissidia, egis/summons pop out just for individual attacks rather than being pseudo pets. Then you can make more of Summoner's skills summon themed even.

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

Considering egi's are just vassals for throwing out moves, so no actual interaction we might as well be throwing out the spells themselves, I'm not sure why the summons themselves don't become attacks. Summoning Ifrit could put a fire dot on the target, titan is an aoe nuke, guruda would be what we lost with shadowflare with a ground based aoe dot. And this would open up more of the primals to be used as well.

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So basically remove pets from FFXIV's pet job.....

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Originally Posted by Rongway

This, though. I've been thinking this for years. Leave Carbuncle as a full-time pet and autosummon him on job change, for those who would miss Carbuncle. Have him just be an extra always-on auto-attack. Replace him during Demi-summon phases as is already the case.

Then, make the summoner's spells poof Demi-primals into existence for one-off attacks. For example, upon becoming SMN,

• Replace Ruin with Call: Strike. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence for a single strike.
• Replace Outburst with Call: Burst. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence for an AoE attack.
• Replaced Bio with Call: Sap. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence to inflict the target with a DoT.
• Etc.

Classically a "Call" spell should summon a random Demi-Primal from among those the player has defeated, but of course specific Demi-Primals could be assigned to specific actions. So basically, while your Carbuncle buddy is out slapping things with his tail, you're summoning a sequence of Demi-Primals who appear, do one attack, and then disappear. When you get to a Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix phase, Carbuncle is replaced with Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix, and as you continue to summon one-off Demi-Primals, your Demi-ElderPrimal contributes their attacks as well.

With no meaningful changes to the way SMN plays, this change would drastically realign them stylistically to the classical image of a Final Fantasy summoner.

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I like the idea of SMN spells either being a Call or a Summon Demis... But not for the spammable abilities like Ruin or Bio, just because I suppose the whole summoning animation would become quite annoying after a while. That's just an impression, though.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I like the idea of SMN spells either being a Call or a Summon Demis... But not for the spammable abilities like Ruin or Bio, just because I suppose the whole summoning animation would become quite annoying after a while. That's just an impression, though.

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I agree.
I think Outburst, Painflare and Tri-disaster could afford to be 'summoning' animations, and you could decouple Devotion from egi's as suggested and turn that into it's own summon as well, but then the question is which summons?
Do we summon a temporary Bahamut for Painflare? Or would that be weird and redundant, and possibly clash with Demi Bahamut?

If they retooled the skills into different things you could potentially have:

Outburst > Thunderstorm
Painflare > Hailstorm
Tri-disaster > Gyre Spume (inflicts its own DoT, that acts the same as Bio/Miasma combined, same total potency, same boost to Fester, etc.)
Devotion > Mooglesong

This would give an animation for all of the ARR primals, minus Odin. But it would likely require tweaks to the job quests.
I wouldn't expect full 'summoning animations' though, more like brief flashes of a demi version of that summon using it's skill.

I agree with some of the issues listed in the OP, but when the "solution" is to just delete the job and create something new from the ground up (which is essentially what you're advocating for when you suggest the removal of the majority of the job's abilities?), then I can't help but think that maybe the job just isn't for you.
That isn't to take away from your clear effort here. But there are a lot of jobs I like the fantasy of, but I'm not a fan of the gameplay, and vice verse. But my reaction isn't that they should delete those jobs and rebuild them in a way that would suit me better. Idk.
Some of the complaints have merit. I can't deny those fundamental issues. But many of the proposed solutions go way too far imo. It isn't that they aren't feasible, but that they don't feel reasonable.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

So basically remove pets from FFXIV's pet job.....

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If the pets are causing a majority of the problems then YES, get rid of them.

They've had over 7 years to get this right.

But, hey, with one of the NPCs in 5.35 being a Beastmaster maybe they have big plans for pet classes in 6.0.

Egi could function more like stances, altering the Summoners toolkit depending on which stance is "summoned."

The pet could still float around behind you, and be changed to a carbuncle if you so desire, but the actions would come from the Summoner.
For example, Garuda-Egi changing Ruin I & IV to Howling Ruin I & IV, turning them into AoE skills.

An ability to let them have a brief moment as demi-summons would be nice. Inferno Trance letting little Ifrit-egi grow up and whoop some ass as Demi-Ifrit would be cool.

I'm stuck between recognizing it's not what summoner "should be" and also enjoying how the job feels to play. The egi issues, while better, do need more work.

As long as summoner stays fun I dont really care, as long as they send bane over to bard

i know u feel.....i know

Generally the idea of a 'pet' class feels redundant when your interactions are laggy as crap. That's what SMN is right now.

When spamming Assaults, you can get inputs eaten(Or, worse, Ifrit has to WALK ALL THE WAY OVER and do a thing before chasing the boss ALL THE WAY BACK). They've had a lot of time to try and fix it, and it's like they hadn't even thought to just remove them outright as others have said repeatedly over the years since Stormblood.

I'd be all for giving SMN just Three Skills dedicated to Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda in particular that are one-off summons with a CD attached. SMN already has plenty to manage, but it shouldn't be punished for pressing buttons it's supposed to in rotation. For example: Flaming Crush. You hit Flaming Crush, Ifrit goes to do it. If you try to use the same one again before he can get it off(or if the pet is still dedicated to an auto) then it becomes stuck in the queue. Enkindle in particular is notorious for getting stuck in the pet's queue of actions. By tying those skills to SMN it'd make things responsive enough to where they aren't feeling like it's a punishment for pressing buttons in their rotation(no ghosting).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xiaoki

If the pets are causing a majority of the problems then YES, get rid of them.

They've had over 7 years to get this right.

But, hey, with one of the NPCs in 5.35 being a Beastmaster maybe they have big plans for pet classes in 6.0.

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Except pets aren't the major problem, people just want to hide behind that excuse. If it was it would be the least played job in the game year after year. I've been on the forums a long long time and see Summoner post after post. The number one issue isn't function but form. People are upset that "Summoner" isn't what they envisioned and thus wants it changed to their whim regardless if players actually enjoy it or not. SMN plays better now than it ever did 7 years ago, and while it may have copied Vanilla WoW's Warlock design both classes/jobs have evolved far beyond those early days.

There is no doubt that FFXIV game engine has issue when it comes to network code and no doubt that the devs didn't really plan around those limits when designed pet feedback, but design around the limit can be done and can fix minor issue with pet A.I. problems.

Honestly I which people would just post they want better Egi designs than posting remove all Egi. You don't burn down a house because it needs a fresh coat of paint.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Except pets aren't the major problem, people just want to hide behind that excuse. If it was it would be the least played job in the game year after year.

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Depends on what you're talking about.

To a Reg Joe Blow without ACT and who (like most players) doesn't do demanding content then playing the job suboptimal isn't a problem cause it's not something they "see". What they see is that the job CAN do some of the highest DPS on FFlogs and has objectively the most mobility of any caster (casting time being the draw back that casters have to work around) and a free Healer as a 2-for-1 deal.

Balance and job/ game design wise? Pets and the pet system DO cause a majority of their problems for the devs. The devs are always doing massive reworks for Smn because of how janky the foundation of this pet system is for them in this game. It's kinda funny how many things Smn juggles to "work" as a concept. That's why it got a baby nerf, the devs know that it deals too much damage at high level play for the amount of things it's allowed to do and the freedoms it has compared to the other casters ... but they can't make it do too low DPS or else no one would put up with all the clunk.

The devs aren't perfect by any means, they struggle to design and balance stuff just like anyone would. As someone who only started playing DPS this Expac I was shocked to find out that Ranged were given cast times for an expansion.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

SNIP

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Sorry but I just don't buy it. If the job played like hot garbage, people wouldn't play it since there are other jobs that are equal in terms of FFLOG DPS output. I honestly believe play it because at the end of the day they enjoy playing it.

The FFXIV game engine and the pet system is what it is but the dev fail to predict then design around it's limitations. Further more they hesitate to fix the glaring problem after a new expansion and you really see big changes after the X.1 series.

I said at the early on set of 5.0 that Ifrit needs a gap closer and to remove his AoE to avoid "miss". Further more long duration Egi DoT Attacks don't work that well now that they get removed once a Demi-Pet is summoned, a fix would be adjusting the duration to fit into a projected rotation. Personally I would change how the Egi Assault system works all together were as Aetherflow is the resource to perform Egi Assault, change it back to OGCD, and each is Egi Assault has a 5 second cooldown. Further more I would have combined Death Trance with Demi Bahamut and make it would similar to Demi Phoenix phase.

Demi-Pet A.I. suffer from an auto follow issue since 4.0 that the Dev just don't seem to understand how to fix or don't care to fix it. You either control them via pet hotbar or make them auto attack "Target my Target".

As I said before, 5.0 introduced a good tool set but the tools where just tossed in the box without any thought on how it should be organized. 5.0 needed a rotation design in phases to make it feel good. 40s Egi Phase followed by a 20s Demi Phase. Egi Phase is were you do all your Assaults and Enkindle with timers that match, focus on keeping DoTs up and prepping for Demi Summon. Demi Phase is where you focus on casting Trance spells and Demi Enkindles.

I mostly agree with Dyvid here. Trances and Summons need consolidation. Devotion needs to be sourced from the Summoner, and Drain/Siphon/Fester/Painflare need to be reworked via upgrades. Restoring Aetherflow would actually help here honestly.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

I mostly agree with Dyvid here. Trances and Summons need consolidation. Devotion needs to be sourced from the Summoner, and Drain/Siphon/Fester/Painflare need to be reworked via upgrades. Restoring Aetherflow would actually help here honestly.

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It actually needs decoupling not consolidation. Because its extremely rigid and screws you over depending the fight.
In order for that to happen and for people who like the transform spells during demi phase to be happy. They should move the transformation into the the demi and not the trance like it is now, they should rework the trance.
Maybe they can make it so that trance transforms the ogcds like people seem to want. This would also make it so that fester painflare and the rest of the spells dont need to be meaninglessly reworked to adher to aesthetics that lack knowledge of the depth and importance Summoner had throughout the series.
As for the egis, they will get an upgrade sooner or later , if they go for the rule of 3 with the demis and try to spread it through 2 mins then the egis timer will yet again be halved so for their dmg to stay on par it needs to be doubled which means it will need to be on par with demis. Basically homogenizing the 2 dps wise but with different mechs, which is what the point of the egis is, a different flavour of demis, and it is why they will never ever make them the same as demis.
Now unless they change the system in order to give us option on what we want to summon instead of this tower of babylon chain that makes the rotation go to the stratosphere. We will get a third tier of summons what that tier will be is up to interpretation, It needs to be stated that summoner as long as he has aether he can do anything, transformation into a primal form isnt out of the picture nor is summoning an even bigger summon.

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Originally Posted by HeulGDarian

It actually needs decoupling not consolidation. Because its extremely rigid and screws you over depending the fight.

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I disagree. Aetherflow and Demi-Bahamut worked just fine in SB despite being interlocked. The problem there was Rouse and Devotion conflicting with Bahamut (a problem we still have) and Aetherflow locking out DWT and vice versa. The key is to have a -singular ability that isn’t directly tied to damage- act as a bridge through the rotation, then Merging Trance and Summon: Bahamut actually solves all of the problems with the current rotation being locked behind Trance. If Aetherflow always lets us ready the next Trance or Summon in the cycle and gives us stacks for Fester/Painflare while the use of Trance/Summon in of itself cycles our rotation, then we prevent most of the problems we currently have. Hell, I feel SE could even reintroduce Rouse and/or Spur as low level alternative versions of Trance to bring the overall concept down to ARR ‘s part of the curve again if they wanted.

In addition we can also merge Enkindle, Deathflare, and Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix into one button. The only thing separating those three buttons in practice is the context of Trance/Egi/Demi to begin with, which we can reference when needed. The result is we have keyed the rotation to the same 20:40 split each minute, ensured everything cycles properly, and used a common thread of context sensitive buttons to eliminate a ton of bloat while streamlining things for the average player. And we’ve given SE more room to grow the rotation both at low -and- high levels. And apart from the lack of Aethertrail timers this is basically how SMN’s core rotation functioned back in HW, where I’d argue it was its most stable and engaging. The only other button in need of a change then is Tri-Disaster, which would work fine with a CD of 40s and two charges anyways.

To me, that’s SMN’s best case scenario for ensuring long term growth, but the overhaul that comes with it might be enough to kick out a new Demi-primal, hence why I’d prefer fleshing out what we have further.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

I disagree. Aetherflow and Demi-Bahamut worked just fine in SB despite being interlocked. The problem there was Rouse and Devotion conflicting with Bahamut (a problem we still have) and Aetherflow locking out DWT and vice versa. The key is to have a -singular ability that isn’t directly tied to damage- act as a bridge through the rotation, then Merging Trance and Summon: Bahamut actually solves all of the problems with the current rotation being locked behind Trance. If Aetherflow always lets us ready the next Trance or Summon in the cycle and gives us stacks for Fester/Painflare while the use of Trance/Summon in of itself cycles our rotation, then we prevent most of the problems we currently have. Hell, I feel SE could even reintroduce Rouse and/or Spur as low level alternative versions of Trance to bring the overall concept down to ARR ‘s part of the curve again if they wanted.

In addition we can also merge Enkindle, Deathflare, and Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix into one button. The only thing separating those three buttons in practice is the context of Trance/Egi/Demi to begin with, which we can reference when needed. The result is we have keyed the rotation to the same 20:40 split each minute, ensured everything cycles properly, and used a common thread of context sensitive buttons to eliminate a ton of bloat while streamlining things for the average player. And we’ve given SE more room to grow the rotation both at low -and- high levels. And apart from the lack of Aethertrail timers this is basically how SMN’s core rotation functioned back in HW, where I’d argue it was its most stable and engaging. The only other button in need of a change then is Tri-Disaster, which would work fine with a CD of 40s and two charges anyways.

To me, that’s SMN’s best case scenario for ensuring long term growth, but the overhaul that comes with it might be enough to kick out a new Demi-primal, hence why I’d prefer fleshing out what we have further.

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Sure aetherflow is good enough of a clock to completely fix all the problems coupling those 2 has. However to me this consolidation is effectively the removal of trance which doesnt matter that much considering the leveling allows for trance to exist, like firebird trance. Also tridi wouldnt need any changes cause the reset still exists even on the coupled firebird trance.
Ye i actually dont have any problems with this. I do still wish however we would still get them decoupled cause with that we get yet another layer of safety ( with the ability to end it early and free movement) and maybe we can get some more interactions with the kit such as egi powerup or even a system that could give options to choose what to summon.


But fair enough you make a good point :p

Meanwhile my biggest gripe with 5.x Summoner is definitely how detached everything feels, all because they changed how Aetherflow, the very foundation of the job, worked. I don't really care if they bring it back or delete it entirely for something that works the same or similarly (but better), Summoner feels like a chore to play ever since these changes along with other lingering problems it has like pet action ghosting, the Egi Assaults, lack of flexibility etc.

People asking for only cosmetic/thematic changes along with design overhauls isn't going to help Summoner in any way, especially when design overhauls just replace things and not necessarily fix the problem. Also the current iteration of FFXIV Summoner already does a good job in making it feel traditional and less of a disease mage like it used to be.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

snip

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Well for 6.0 my ideal design would be a rotation built around two phases; Egi Phase and Demi/Trance Phase. Full rotation would be 2 minutes; Egi = 40s -> Bahamut = 20s, Egi 40 -> Phoenix 20.

Demi Phase
In order to fix Demi A.I Behavior, they have to be set to auto attack. It's the only way to fix them from follow the player around in a fight. This can be done with Attack my Target command devs program in or give Demi a petbar. I'm think Auto Attack would be 2s giving 10 total during the summon window

Demi Bahamut should be more akin to 4.0; Ruin III would become Ruin IV and Outburst to Painflare but you don't alternate like FB Trance. Instead spells and abilities would have a __% chance of upgrade wyrmwave to Akh Morn. His Enkindle would them be changed to Tera Flare since that is his ultimate. Maybe add a small group buff like damage increase by 1% while Demi Bahamut is out.

Demi Phoenix would remain the same.

Egi Phase
This phase is about applying and upkeep of DoTs. Add a third DoT back, Virus. Tri-Disaster (3 DoTs) would work the same but Fester would not only damage but also extend DoT duration by 10s. Fester would be a normal OGCD with 20s recast timer (3 in one minute like 2.0)

This phase is also about commanding your Egi. Egi Assault would use Aetherflow as a resource. Energy Drain would will give you 2 charges of Aetherflow with a maximum stack of 4. Egi Assault would go back to OGCD with 10s recast timer.
Egi would be broken into two groups; Single Target and AoE.
Single Target pet Egi Assualt 1 would have a built in gap closer and Egi Assualt 2 would be a normal attack. This should help keep Egi close to the target and reduce "misses" from Egi Assaults.
AoE Pet would be same.
Enkindle would be reduced to 60c cooldown.
Oh and increase walk speed to 1.5

New Summons:
As mentioned before Egi Assault use Aetherflow for a resource but this would also build up a Gauge = 8 equals full.
A new summon, Tempus, that acts as the one and done attack. You would have two choices; Tempus Odin and Tempus Alexander were as Odin is Single Target and Alexander is AoE. Rather than Aetherflow build up the ability, the gauge would determine the power of the Tempus Summon. They would share 120s cooldown. This would also not desummon Egi or Demi.

Other changes and additions:
Egi Tanks are removed and replace with new spell Sephirot's Boon that gives a defensive shield. Appearance would be a Sephirot spell animation but effect is instant.
Devotion is replaced with Moogle Blessing. Again it's player based instant but with a Good King Mog appearance.

Egi Glamour would be divided into two group: Melee and Caster. Melee would be Carbuncle Red/Gold, Titan, Ifrit, or Shiva. Caster would be Carbuncle Blue, Garuda, Ramuh, or Leviathan. Redesign current Egi to be a little bigger and maybe look something different from Original Primals in the game. This has been the number one complaint since 2.0. You can even add /resize option to help other players with appearance like Demi Bahamut has.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

Meanwhile my biggest gripe with 5.x Summoner is definitely how detached everything feels, all because they changed how Aetherflow, the very foundation of the job, worked. I don't really care if they bring it back or delete it entirely for something that works the same or similarly (but better), Summoner feels like a chore to play ever since these changes along with other lingering problems it has like pet action ghosting, the Egi Assaults, lack of flexibility etc.

People asking for only cosmetic/thematic changes along with design overhauls isn't going to help Summoner in any way, especially when design overhauls just replace things and not necessarily fix the problem. Also the current iteration of FFXIV Summoner already does a good job in making it feel traditional and less of a disease mage like it used to be.

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I'm in full agreement, removing the Aetherflow to me was absolutely something that took a lot of enjoyment out of the class, and worse until the rework to egi assaults made the job nearly unplayable. The rework made the job playable but removed all flow and rhythm to the rotation, and the hilarious thing is, everyone's biggest complaint about the job, how rigid, busy and long the opener was in Stormblood, they actually made it worse. It's even busier, has absolutely no room for a skilled player to adjust on the fly for the mechanics of the fight, and is only a few GCD's shorter to get to your big burst. To me it's hilarious that SMN is the only job that you could remove any of their significant mechanics, like say Egi's, dot's, or aetherflow attacks and it would only take minor reworking to get the others work and keep a similar rotation. That shows how disjointed the job is. If you removed the jumps from DRG, it's whole rotation breaks down. If you removed Ice phase from black mage, the whole job has to be redesigned. Mudra's from Ninja's, Greased Lightning from Monk, Repetioir procs on Bard. Every other DPS jobs mechanics are intrinsically tied together.

But Summoner.... If we removed Egi's today completely. All it would take is replacing the Assaults with Ruin 4 as a charged action and nothing about the job changes. If we removed aetherflow entirely, it literally would have no effect on the overall rotation except making it slightly less busy. Compare that to 4.0 SMN when every mechanic was so perfectly tied together and built on top of each other.... I've had a year to get used to it and I still can't believe how much they mucked it up.