Summoner is already a pretty simplified and new-player friendly job. So it'd be interesting to see what they do for it.
Maybe it will just be summoner as we know it but its summons are now consolidated onto one button for example. Or maybe evolved summoner will just be nothing but summons, even stuff we never summoned before.
Evolved Summoner speculation
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04-28-2026, 02:08 PMChasingstarsEvolved Summoner speculation
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04-28-2026, 02:27 PMSweetPeteDamage buff= RemovedQuote:
Originally Posted by Chasingstars
Raise= Removed
Carbuncle will most likely attack again.
More summons.
I think we will have summons that are specifically for attacking and summons that are specifically for support like. I also believe we will be able to change the skin of summons to since they adding that feature. -
04-28-2026, 02:43 PMCarighan
If I had my wish the summons would now be on a single button that pulls them in a random order. Hence there's actual gameplay, if you can't use Ifrit but the game gives you Ifrit, gotta make due with that and play around the long cast times. And then ideally it's now two random sets of minor summons, the other is Shiva+Leviathan+Odin or so.
And then 2-4 actual damage buttons (nuke, slower nuke, instant cast on a CD, DoT with cast time), and all four do not deal damage and all four are modified by the current summon. Instead their "damage" uses a new color, and this feeds a bar of the current summon. And say with Ifrit they're slower to cast but have a stronger effect. They're "empowering" skills. Fill the bar enough, and attacks for the summon unlock that oGCD abilities (another 1-3 per summon) trigger the summon to execute. Naturally as these happen once every 5-15 seconds they cause massive single damage amounts or huge DoTs ticking for crazy numbers or for 60 seconds or so. Summon ideally also uses the biggest unlocked attack on its own when it disappears.
So damage is only "Summon arriving" + "Unlocked summon attack" manually (or when it disappears).
Major summons work the same way, but the feed-attacks also deal some damage. Phoenix 3-bar full attack is an area raise.
Okay that's all very unrealistic.
Drop the bar / execute / no-damage parts, just give me 2-4 damage abilities that the current summon modifies, put the summons in random order so I got actual gameplay to play because I have to play around whatever summon the game insists on giving me at the worst possible time, and give me another 1-3 abilities that are oGCD and are "pet commands", letting the current summon or carby do something. I'd be happy with that, too. -
04-29-2026, 02:34 AMChasingstarsYeah true. Personally I kind of want to change bahamut into Odin with that ability skin.Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetPete
So basically:Quote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
Ruin (and what it morphs into)
Demi-summon (phoenix, bahamut. Maybe things like odin)
Gem Summon (titan, ifrit, garuda. Along with stuff like ramuh and shiva)
Rite (and its morphs)
Ruin (and its morphs)
Outburst/Tri-Diaster
Lucid Dreaming
Swiftcast
Surecast
I personally think that'd be fun. -
04-29-2026, 02:14 PMSyferU
To be fair I think it's gonna be similar to paladin, where little of the actual rotation changes in Evolved mode.
Searing Light will definitely kick the bucket though.
Also I hope the raise will be gone but thats just a personal thing. -
04-29-2026, 09:25 PMMinali
I have to admit, random summons would be the least appealing thing to me I could think of. I don't want to play a Summoner to just summon some random cool looking pet but to utilize the differences of each primal in the best way to tackle a specific problem, and Summoner has been this for ages in the Final Fantasy Franchise. In some games like FF8, if I recall it correctly, one summon was more a specific attack and that was it. (I don't remember if you could spam it or had to load up a bar for a summon though.) In FF10, each summon had two or so thematic attacks and a big limit break, and you were hoping it reaches the limit break before getting nuked. xD
Completely random summoning would be neither of these and take away every possible player agency and option for strategy whatsoever. I'd rather not have this. If I understand it correctly, it would require players to work against their own job instead of with it, being more about "damage control" as in damage the "wrong" primal would cause than actually utilizing their primals as valuable battle companions. This doesn't really seem fun to me at least.
So far they seemed to have tried to go with the FF10 like style and doubled down on that with the rework in EW. I like the general idea and appreciated the rework but of course this comes with the downside that you might not have that many summons at your disposal, especially not without some button bloat. Additionally to this making it kind of a thing that summoning each primal once would be the best course of actions between each demi summon made it incredibly strict, and which order you choose doesn't really matter much in many fights. Therefore my hopes for Evolved would be that it's getting 1) more freeform in the choice of summons, so you have this tactical element from Shb and other FF titles back, and b) to get more summons.
Sadly this is kind of a "have a cake and eat it" situation. If they make all summons into what the demis are now for a more strategic gameplay, it would be a lot of little stances and a lot to juggle. (And possibly also harder to make them distinct enough. The gazillion summons worked so well in standalone games because of this whole elemental stuff we don't have in FFXIV for a good reason.) Perhaps trying out the FF8 route might be a good way for a change to get more summons into but prevent button bloat? Although I would miss having my summons hang around for a bit, but who knows, maybe it doesn't even have to be one or the other and there's some middle ground to be found.
Maybe they could take some inspiration from Monk? Don't know if it's still in the current iteration of Monk because I haven't touched that in DT yet but in Shb or EW (my memory starts to blur a little) you had one button changing based on the buttons you pressed before, Masterful Blitz. When they introduced the whole Nadi stuff that also had an impact on the gauge. The Nadi stuff was still kind of restrictive because same with Evolved Bard you had to have done both combos for the big thing, so that's not ideal.
Okay, throwing some ideas on the wall, would be interesting to know what other Summoners think about it. Any "Press button 1" or so is purely for explanatory choice, not "it needs to be the first skill" or whatever.:
1) We get that EW Nadi thing for the bigger demi summons, but instead of Lunar Nadi and Solar Nadi and having to have both, you can make a choice:
If you press 1-2-3, you get Bahamut, if you press 4-5-6 you get Phoenix. (Or 3-2-1 throwing some Ninja mudra thing in the mix but I know mudras are a complex system for many and might not be working for the current target audience of the job. But as said, I'm not picky about the buttons, make it 2-2-2 and 3-3-3 for all I care, leaving 1-1-1 for standard ruin spam/carby attacks).
I'm not a big fan of Solar Bahamut, imo this should've been Quetzalcoatl or Quetzalcoatl-by-another-name because it would suit the lore much better and is an established summon from the FF series, but if it sticks around, the same concept applies.
2) You have a skill like Masterful Blitz and depending on what other buttons you press, you can get all sorts of primals, or primal attacks, whatever suits. First ones coming to mind are ofc our established three, Ifrit, Titan and Garuda.
3) Primal themed attacks either like these situational things they had for Paladin (the clemency and cover thing) or as simple oGCDs or procs.
I know one concern of the devs regarding adding more primals would be the question what to do with them, for example if - going by the old system - you would have Ifrit-> Garuda->Titan -> Demi-Bahamut -> Shiva -> Ramuh -> Leviathan -> Demi-Phoenix. Making the second rock candy collections not just different looking clones can be tricky, considering many of the distinct effects of the single player games are a downside in FFXIV due to how the system works. (Bind or Sleep are nice in solo duties but in a dungeon they make grouping up mobs a lot harder for a tank, for example.) However, I think there's still some wiggle room and maybe there are some neat effects to be found in the Logos Actions in Eureka, Lost Actions in Bozja or the Phantom Jobs in Occult Crescent, or maybe even Blue Mage, that are neither based on disruptive mechanics like Heavy nor on these kinds of team synergies the devs want to get rid off. How about Shiva causing a blind status effect for 5 seconds? How about Leviathan causing poison or a vulnerability to physical damage for a short while? In my opinion there's still plenty of room for creative ideas of how other primals could add to the game without simply being "DPS attack as single target or AOE" in another flavour and making the appearance of more summons a great addition without being too taxing mechanically.
We also already have some oGCDs who are just named stuff like "Fester" as a reference to that previous Green Mage style Summoner, they could be given a different flavour. (Tbh I don't know why they haven't changed their names with the EW rework but it is what it is.)
As said, just some ideas I have, some suggestions following these core ideas of more summons but also more player agency and situational gameplay like they seem to try to achieve going by the first early stage examples they showed. Doesn't have to be all three ideas at once either, simply mentioning some options.
I know it sounds a bit much and I know many players who discovered Summoner in EW and DT value its simplicity, but in my opinion, depending on how it's done, this hasn't to contradict these ideas I mentioned. And I myself certainly don't need this patchwork job back that it was in Shb, where one of the egis was only marginally helpful in some solo fights, one in few mob pulls, and it felt way more like a green mage with all those poison dots, a green mage who happened to have mini-Ifrit floating next to them. However, the version it is now is very streamlined and quite strict with the timing, and very heavily created with the two minute meta in mind, especially since DT. (And this whole thing of having your rotation reset is also even less fun now when the rotation is 4 minutes long. I miss seeing Phoenix in new battle content.) So it's likely it is going to change either way, even for Reborn a little, unless it wants to be the last 2 (or 4) minute rotation job standing. Which would go against the plans the devs mentioned at the Fan Fest. And considering a simplification in buttons etc. is what they are trying to achieve anyway, I am sure whatever they do with the job is going to have this general idea in mind.
Edit: I don't really feel strongly about keeping or losing resurrection. It depends a bit on how healing would work in future content (or reworked older content). It prevented many wipes since I started playing, but if the healing would improve to the point less raises would be necessary, or starting over would be a bigger help than trying to wiggle through with two or three players alive at the same time, losing it would be fine by me. But I also don't play content more "hardcore" than old Unreal trials, so no clue how vital this is in savage or ultimate, and how much a removal would hurt that experience. -
04-30-2026, 08:15 AMChasingstars
So as a thought, maybe its being approached wrong for summoner? Like one of the big things about summoner is that when it hits level 70, it just does obsence levels of damage and that is primarily because of demi-bahamut and the abilities from bahamut. So maybe the real answer is that we do away with the old gem system and its just demi-summons all the way down, with what were gem summons just being now demis. Like after you get one demi, you enter the next one as like the summon demi-bahamut morphs into summon demi-ifrit. After demi-gardua? Demi-phoenix. And then goes back to demi-bahamut. That if a player wants, they can just reskin their demis.
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04-30-2026, 11:01 AMKhryseis_Astra
What I’ve always wanted is to get the full set of elemental summons as gems, so adding Shiva, Ramuh and Leviathan. My favorite iteration of this would be splitting them into their astral/umbral alignments, along with a phase shift button to switch between teams.
Being that the SMN gem system is already fairly condensed, I could see them removing some of the more “filler” spells like Ruin or Necrotize (and probably our rez like it or not…) in favor of giving a greater number of summons to support the job fantasy. I still wouldn’t be surprised to see a Lunar counterpart to Sol even if they do add more gem summons, which could take a number of forms, though my money’s on Shinryu or Odin if they go that route. Or they could take it in the direction of 16, and give us the full elemental cast of summons (plus light and dark) with a few spells for each one.
What I don’t want to see is the summons many of us have been begging for forever, to only appear as animation skins. I don’t want to glamour the same three summons into three other summons. I want the full elemental cast, and after PCT, it seems reasonable enough that SMN could finally get that. -
04-30-2026, 02:17 PMmallleable
It's funny that even with the evolved system capping out at around 16 buttons, they still have room for a summon Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva actions. Like the summon Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan buttons could transform into the new primals after being used.
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04-30-2026, 03:00 PMRoda
Since evolved brd is so close to the current smn design, i'm really praying for the job to go back to being a pet class with summons staying around long term and having interesting interactions.
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04-30-2026, 03:06 PMCarighanSadly one of a handful of very few actually consistent rules for MMORPG design is that as they age, they either remove or neuter their pet classes. It always happens. Even DAoC removed even their Necromancer as it used to be and re-implemented it, and that class had conceptually solved the pet-class problem by making you the pet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roda
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04-30-2026, 03:08 PMRodaListen, I'm gonna SB!SMNcope until I die.Quote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
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04-30-2026, 04:24 PMSupersnow845RuneScape added a pet class at 25 years old so it’s not impossibleQuote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
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04-30-2026, 09:52 PMMinaliMay I ask how RuneScape's general design for their pet class is? I've never played that game but would be interested how they managed it and if it might serve as inspiration. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Supersnow845
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04-30-2026, 10:25 PMSupersnow845RuneScape’s pet class is a hilarious take on a necromancer, basically it functions where there is three core “branches” of necromancyQuote:
Originally Posted by Minali
-summons
-offensive magic
-support magic
You have 4 pets you can summon, a skeleton attacker, a phantom guardian, a ghost that heals you and a zombie that blows up. However at extremely high levels you get a skill that basically lets you summon all of them at once. You can control each of them to do a limited set of actions but they will also just do their core actions alone (the fact you can summon all of them is balanced by needing an expendable resource to keep them on the field which works with RuneScape but doesn’t work in 14). Meanwhile you as the necromancer have offensive and support magic. Offensive magic works quite similarly to WOW’s basic Freeform rotations. Support magic includes both field magic (teleports and the like) and other combat useful magic like the ability to reduce damage by 20%, the ability to turn a heal into a reflection damage skill, give you access to defensives via a pseudo shield or augment your summons
RuneScape btw doesn’t have a trinity, it has a combat triangle so of course this class is DPS, healer and tank in one but overall it’s a really well designed class -
05-01-2026, 12:26 AMMinaliThanks for the explanation! This sounds quite fascinating. :D Having more than one on a field... Now that's an interesting angle. Not sure how well this would work for FFXIV though (not to mention other stuff sort of contradicting the trinity ofc). Imagining an Alliance Raid with a lot of summoners all having the 2 Bahamuts and 1 Phoenix on the field for the lulz is a hilarious thing I would love to see exactly once. But I'd have trouble dodging attacks that way for sure, when I don't see anything anymore. xDQuote:
Originally Posted by Supersnow845
Jokes aside though, some brainstorming:
Summoning them and then having them do their core thing is kind of what we had in Shadowbringers, and afaik some version prior to this, which even had hit bars for them. Can't talk about pre-Shadowbringers though, I wasn't around at that time. One issue was movement, Ifrit had to float to the enemy first etc. and there was an issue with the big ones I forgot. Having them spawn right next to the boss might have helped but I suppose if it would be that easy instead of giving us commands for this, they would have tried that already. And there was of course the issue that some of them simply were more helpful than others depending on content. Why summon Titan with his fancy shields into an arena when you have one to two healers with you who can do this while you DPS more? So I'm not sure "throw multiple on the field and forget about them" or so would be a thing the devs would try again.
I wonder if some kind of synergy between the summons would be interesting? Not in a "you need to have all three to summon a demi" kind of way or so, not a dependency like this. Whatever forces you to summon all things to activate a big thing makes any kind of variety in the single things redundant and would be not much different than what we have now, or what they demonstrated for Bard (and isn't really good there either, but that's a different discussion in a different forum thread.) That would remove the point of having summons for different situations because in most fights it would be completely irrelevant, as it is already.
I'm more thinking of, idk, Ifrit making single target fire, Garuda making a wind AOE, but if summoned together they make a big fire AOE or whatever. Which could be limited with cooldowns, or making the big combined attack would unsummon both or so. (That kind of magic is surely taxing for our little friends!) Then you would have to decide if you want continued attack from either Ifrit or either Garuda, or if you'd rather have the big bang and then switch to a different summon...?
Tbh I'm not really sure where I'm going with this here, not entirely convinced of this, just randomly throwing ideas out of the open. And if there would be such a big attack, there would be of course the point that you could also just make this a Shiva coded ice attack as oGCD with a long cooldown (pun half intended). Combining two already existing summons would reduce the need for bringing in new summons.
(Also it sounds kind of like my idea with combining the same buttons differently for different summons, just with a more fancy animation and maybe some independent action of an egi.) -
05-01-2026, 01:09 AMCarighan
Also they were just the small stuff. I'd really be more in favor of akin to FF7, we summon a big one, then it is around / does minor attacks, then we do stuff to fill a bar, it does its big stuff or an even bigger thing if we fill that in time. Which summon we get is either random or semi-random (i.e.: Pull a random 2 options out of a hat of 12+).
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05-02-2026, 06:44 AMAzurarokMaybe they'll make Reborn mode based off SB~ShB SMN while Evolve mode a cleaned up EW/DT SMN and make people die inside since the big assumption is that Reborn mode will die eventually.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roda
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05-02-2026, 07:09 AMRodaMaybe, or maybe BST is a beta test for more complex pet mechanics for other variations on pet jobs! :oQuote:
Originally Posted by Azurarok
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05-02-2026, 07:13 AMBabyYoda
I think they will remove Ruin III and replace it with summon
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05-04-2026, 09:15 AMAzurarok
Is it just me or did they change the summons to leave by fading out rather than flying up with 7.5? At least with Garuda/Titan/Ifrit.
Wondering if that has anything to do with future changes for the job. -
05-04-2026, 05:55 PMCarighan
You're right. Just logged in to test, the summons land as before, and major summons still play their desummoning animation as before (or at least Temu Bahamut did) but the minor summons just fade out where they stand. Huh. Might also just be a bug of course.
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05-05-2026, 06:51 AMMercuryDI put that in the in-game bug forum last week. I don't like making the summons smaller than normal size but this is making it temptingQuote:
Originally Posted by Azurarok
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05-05-2026, 11:24 AMunjourneyed
Off topic, but missing animations for certain summons is listed as a known issue for patch 7.5.
Quote:
An issue with arcanists and summoners wherein executing actions with certain pets results in an incorrect motion displaying when the summoned pet leaves the battlefield.
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05-05-2026, 01:20 PMAzuraroklooks like it is a bug. Do wonder how that happened thoughQuote:
Originally Posted by unjourneyed
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05-08-2026, 08:36 AMSyferU
Thinking a bit more about it, evolved jobs are also about giving the player more freedom in how they want to play and SMN already has that, for example allowing you to choose between Ifrit, Garuda and Titan in whatever order you want.
So I have even less of an Idea what they want to simplify about it. -
05-08-2026, 11:16 AMMercuryDYou only have that freedom after Bahamut/Phoenix, really. After Sol you pretty much always use Titan because he's strongest under raid buffs. On top of that, you're also locked to a rigid cycle where mechanics can result in you entirely skipping parts of your rotation.Quote:
Originally Posted by SyferU
Evolved mode can honestly be the thing that finally fixes SMN after 2 expacs of little development. There's a lot of potential ways to make it interesting and I honestly can't help but ruminate on what I would want! -
05-08-2026, 11:22 AMAzurarok
Main thing they'll probably address somehow would be when you can use Bahamut/Phoenix. The main issue with the job right now is what to do when you run out of gem summons but don't want to use Bahamut because some downtime is coming up soon, where you'd just be stuck spamming RuinIII for a bit.
With raid buffs out of the way we at least don't have to be annoyed by having to use normal Bahamut/Phoenix on raid buffs as opposed to Solar, but I kinda expect Solar to become an upgrade to normal Bahamut while keeping normal Bahamut available as an egi glamour/action skin. -
05-18-2026, 06:27 AMSilverDragoonI rly would love the Summoner to be more complicated again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chasingstars
Its so boring atm!
Permanent summons, i want dots back, and some real gameplay..not only press 1-2...:/
Former Summoner was so much fun!
And the egi should attack again.
Yes please :) let the Egi be active again.Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetPete
But i do not like your idea that the Rezz/Raise should be gone. Thats some part of the Summoners spell history and should stay.
+++Quote:
Originally Posted by Carighan
I rly like your post pal!
And i also miss my dots, an active pet :) and a more flexible and active gameplay, where you could do mistakes that rly reduce your dmg overall.
Your idea just sound very nice and if you do not know which summon would appear next, good players had some chance to shine/play better again.
Also good old spell Shadowflare should come back <3
I have played Summoner in ARR, HW, later SHB and now and i rly loved him the most in HW and SHB. Dunno why they had to make him so boring and easy :/
I loved to have many dots and rly nice gameplay.
But for me: A summoner without an active perma pet is no real summoner.
The different perma pets like tank, dps and maybe support pet would make the job much more intresting even in groups. So if you want: Put out support/healer egi, another one a dps, and a 3. a tank egi to give groups (if a tank is there) some shields etc. and still can tank for the solo Summoner :) -
05-18-2026, 03:32 PMseolhyun
ruin filler button. 6 minor summon buttons with cast times and the summon comes out and does an attack (ifrit, garuda, titan, shiva, levi, ramuh). fills up a bar to use a greater summon that has a longer cast time. every minor summon cast stacks up ruin 4s.
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05-20-2026, 02:08 AMJazzySerendipity
I really enjoyed the former summoner. It felt like I was performing an actual ritual that landed a big payout. That said I would actual be fine with the current setup if every action was a summon. I would love to see leviathan and think he would make a much better forward rush than Ifrit. I would like to see a Chocobo/Mog summon that mimicked the White Mage rescue ability. Shiva would be interesting as maybe an ice armor spell. I think phoenix should be made into the resurrection spell.
That said if nothing else, I would be really happy, and really appreciate some Summoner quests to unlock egi glamours and just be able to fully customize my summons. -
05-21-2026, 03:45 AMChasingstars
Thinking on it more, like the only other way I can think they would "evolve" summoner more is by consolidating its buttons and merging the purposes of those buttons.
Like instead of having Ruin III and Tri-Disaster, we just have Ruin that also does aoe damage like Tri-Disaster. Or maybe merging Phyisk and Radiant Aegis where you get a heal but also a charge-based barrier. Or making Ruin IV into a buff that makes your next Ruin III do more damage. Or doing what I said with Ruin III and Tri-Diaster but for Energy Drain and Fester when it comes to Energy Siphon and Painflare. Or for like Rite and Catastrophe during the gem phases (IE: Ruby Rite and Ruby Catastrophe). And like having Aethercharge and Aether Flow and Enkindle being merged so that you press the button to summon Demi-Bahamut, then again to do Akh Morn, and then again to Deathflare. For the gems themselves of like which ARR primal to summon (garuda/ifrit/titan), maybe its done through the summon carbuncle button, that when activated again your other buttons transform temporarily to be the summon you want to use for that time.
And that would trim summoner down by 11 buttons.
Not saying it would be the best idea, still just trying to contemplate how they would even do an evolved summoner.
EDIT: I guess the only way it could be absolutely silly would be everytime we do a demi summon, we just summon phoenix and solar bahamut and demi-bahamut together and they each auto attack and do their things when ordered to do damage of Akh Morn (1500p) + Exodus (1500p) + Revelation (1300p) + Deathflare (500p) + Sunflare (1000p), plus also the healing from Phoenix. Then with the gem summons, same silly thing, Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit just show up together and each do their big attack before leaving. -
05-21-2026, 05:01 AMKhryseis_Astra
As far as button count goes, depending on what is added and/or removed, I could see the gem buttons staying as is, but they change out for different triads if we finally get our other three elemental gems, or potentially even more triads down the road. Add one button to switch teams. Keep all Demis and their special abilities on one button, and hopefully we don’t get any further Demis without getting a triad of gems to go along with them! Kinda keeps them even with PCT’s two palettes by giving SMN two gem triad teams along elemental lines, and where PCT has paintings, we have our Demis. I know I compare to PCT a lot, but seeing what they did there made me realize just how much more SMN could potentially have! We already have space in the current rotation, we would just get more variety of summons, instead of repeating the core 3 over and over.
If Physick stays (but I doubt it), they could finally fix it to scale with INT so it was actually useful in a clutch, and have it share a button with Sol’s Lux. We could save another button by just having our Carby respawn when we do, or combining the Summon/Away buttons. I’m kinda hoping we keep the rez the way it is, but I wouldn’t be too upset if they linked it to Phoenix and you gained rez charges from that, as long as they don’t put a hard time limit on it, which is my main issue with Lux being tied to Sol.
I’m kind of indifferent as to what is done with the plain Ruins, Necrotize, etc… if we got more gems we wouldn’t really need many “filler” spells. I’d prefer to have everything be a summon of some kind, and that’s not hard to do if they finally build on the framework of the rework.