The whole Summoner "has been re-worked" is sad

[RiceisNice]

If we try to give more summons with different functionalities, it'd just lead to the same problem we'd have now; no one ever uses titan in a raid environment, garuda is superior to ifrit in survivability, etc etc.

Unless they were given an ability to freely swap summons on a cooldown to change abilities depending on the circumstances, sorta like monk fists.

[NovaLevossida]

I think from reading this thread, the biggest thing holding summoner back is the apologists.

[Dualblade]

If we try to give more summons with different functionalities, it'd just lead to the same problem we'd have now; no one ever uses titan in a raid environment, garuda is superior to ifrit in survivability, etc etc.

Unless they were given an ability to freely swap summons on a cooldown to change abilities depending on the circumstances, sorta like monk fists.

Something that is more immediate then swiftcast>summon, yes I think that could help. Certainly it can help with Titan, since while it shouldn't be needed if for some reason the tank(s) end up going down getting Titan out there very quickly (and having some way to get up the aggro list fast) could see him atleast having a good place to play.

Same for Ifrit and Garuda, I have been seeing Ifrit more often these days but it could add a little more depth for summoners if there were times even in the middle of a fight that one was favored, then switched to another being favored.

I'm also still looking forward to what is being added, as its more like what summons have been in previous FF games and hopefully won't just be limited to Bahamut, but hopefully there will be a way to strike a balance between that and egi's. But getting smn's up to par is probably the bigger concern.

[Luvbunny]

What I think would help, is to create "aura" or "avatar's favor" effect. Titan then can have more defensive aura and AOE physical defense/damage reduction, helpful for big bad main bosses. Ifrit can have attack up, double attack, or enfire for additional damage. Garuda can have haste, evasion and block rate up. Carbuncle can bring magic damage down, magic defense up, esuna-ga, and boost regen effect by 20%. FFXI has some nifty tricks, why not repurpose those for FF14.

Assuming you have three summoners in your party, one can use Titan to help reduce damage, the other uses Ifrit to boost attack up by 15%, and one can use Garuda to for haste + evasion up. By utilizing all three, your party will get boost more damage, and get to damage more often.

[Arkann]

It changed because it's an entirely different spell with its
own summon, not a reskin.

It's exactly the same spell, with a reskin.

There.

Um... yeah, actually it is. If it's a reskin, like they said,
then abilities will be unaffected. This is pretty much knowledge 101. I'm really not
sure how much more obvious it could be. Perhaps a giant glowing neon sign is in
order.

As for your point regarding Summons skills, they ARE actually different from their
Arcanist counterparts. Albeit, subtly. There's a rename and a new icon across the
board (Shining Topaz becomes Mountain Buster, for example), and some of the potencies change.

Same spell, with a reskin, renamed abilities, AND NEW ANIMATIONS. Carbuncle was replaced by Titan and got new animations, same thing for Emerald/Garuda, and the same thing WILL happen again if you glamour it to something else. Wait no, the devs are evil and will make Shiva spit fire because they feast on SMN's tears.

And about new functions: SMN already as a battle raise, a healing spell, a bind, a debilitating ability (Virus), some mitigation (Eye for an Eye, Slow from Shadow Flare), and with our new abilities, we'll be able to burst and AOE much more efficiently. I don't see what else we need (and why would SMNs have so much more utility than any other class?). Stoneskin from Titan ? We're not a WHM. Silence ? Congrats if you can get your Egi to react in time, same goes for Ifrit's stun. A water puddle for Leviathan ? We already have Shadow Flare. Stun for Ramuh ? Ifrit has it. Sleep ? Ha. Haste ? Fairy territory. Regen ? Fairy territory. MP/TP refresh ? Bard territory, and they have to sacrifice their DPS in order to maintain their songs. Sacrificing 20% of our Egi's DPS would be laughable.

[Lemuria]

It's exactly the same spell, with a reskin.

You did actually look at it didn't you? Let's take a closer look.

Gust: 90 Potency, Wind Blade: 100 Potency. Bonus damage for Garuda
Downburst: 80 Potency, Aerial Slash: 90 Potency. Bonus damage for Garuda

Furthermore, it's worth mentioning that the element remains the same. It's still Wind based damage. What good would it do to give Shiva an attack which looks like Blizzard only to deal Wind damage? Furthermore, there's no reason to believe they will even give us any new summon 'glamor'. In all likelihood we'll just get the choice between Garuda or Emerald Carbuncle and Titan or Topaz Carbuncle.

[RiceisNice]

You did actually look at it didn't you? Let's take a closer look.

Gust: 90 Potency, Wind Blade: 100 Potency. Bonus damage for Garuda
Downburst: 80 Potency, Aerial Slash: 90 Potency. Bonus damage for Garuda

Furthermore, it's worth mentioning that the element remains the same. It's still Wind based damage. What good would it do to give Shiva an attack which looks like Blizzard only to deal Wind damage? Furthermore, there's no reason to believe they will even give us any new summon 'glamor'. In all likelihood we'll just get the choice between Garuda or Emerald Carbuncle and Titan or Topaz Carbuncle.

It's not like elemental damage even matters in PvE or even PvP.

[Alberel]

You did actually look at it didn't you? Let's take a closer look.

Gust: 90 Potency, Wind Blade: 100 Potency. Bonus damage for Garuda
Downburst: 80 Potency, Aerial Slash: 90 Potency. Bonus damage for Garuda

Furthermore, it's worth mentioning that the element remains the same. It's still Wind based damage. What good would it do to give Shiva an attack which looks like Blizzard only to deal Wind damage? Furthermore, there's no reason to believe they will even give us any new summon 'glamor'. In all likelihood we'll just get the choice between Garuda or Emerald Carbuncle and Titan or Topaz Carbuncle.

Garuda-egi and Emerald Carbuncle do magic damage, not wind damage. The skill descriptions are just flavour-text seeing as Yoshi made a big point of removing elemental damage types from player skills and simply making them all a generic 'magic damage' type.

The bonus damage is honestly negligible and if it were of any hindrance to their pet glamour system they could easily change it so that they are the same.

It's also worth pointing out that Ramuh-egi already exists with a full animation set due to his use in the Ramuh primal battle. He actually existed before ARR even released as he was datamined during beta. Based on that I don't think it's much of a stretch to think it likely the devs had already made a Leviathan-egi and Shiva-egi prior to their decision to not give us any new pets. Their desire to implement this pet glamour system is likely an intent to try and give us the egis that they've already made whilst avoiding the complications of balance issues.

Honestly my only issue at this point is when we'll be getting this new system as SE has stated plans to implement many things over the last couple of years that never saw the light of day.

[Lemuria]

Garuda-egi and Emerald Carbuncle do magic damage, not wind damage. The skill descriptions are just flavour-text seeing as Yoshi made a big point of removing elemental damage types from player skills and simply making them all a generic 'magic damage' type.

This is false, and easily shown by using elemental resistance materia in PvP. Spells are indeed aligned with their respective elements. The reason we as players don't notice as much is because most enemies have the same base rate of resistance for every element.

But at the end of the day, a reskin is still just that. If it doesn't actually make a difference to combat then it's still about as useless as ever and only serves to appease the fashion-conscious players who don't actually care how effective they are as long as they look cool doing it.

[Cakekizy]

What's wrong with having multiple pets that are situationally useful?