Should Summoner...

[RiceisNice]

Summoner as it is now, it's mixed with the property of call a companion bassed on the primal aether (if i remmeber correctly the lore) and the ability to channel the Dreadwyrm aether through our being to unleash the skills Heavensward gave us. They also stated theyr dessire to focus on the Summoner abilities than the Pets he is alowed to call. With those cards in the table they can manage to give us some neat skills with more summoning flavor, we could even Trance Ifrit, Garuda or Titan in a future.

Having said that, i wouldnt mind to have more primals to choose from.

I understand the lore as it is, but if we have manage to move the aether of Bahamut, the character should be able to move every other primal power in the same fashion.

PD: Sorry for my bad english.

Only after the primal in question already blew up Eorzea in the same fashion Bahamut did.

[Greedalox]

In the lower levels, yes, they were glorified healers with small heals and big MP pools. But in the 50's is when you start soloing bombs and beastman (beastmaster) pets (low HP, high exp, hit like trucks but avatars/summons took less dmg than players). Then at some point (for me, Boyahda Tree) you team up with beastmasters using fenrir's eclipse bite in pet parties. After that it was more bomb kiting. I definitely took that 50+ route after having to heal because it was more fun and you were a SUMMONER abusing things summoners could do, and not just cast heals from your subjob to be allowed access to a party for experience points.

That's the problem though, we as summoners were forced to have slower experience due to being unwanted, I played mainly Smn and Brd in XI and leveled the bulk of the way to 75 as Smn soloing bombs, gobbies and Snolls and whatever else was suicidal. The difference between Bard and Summoner in LFG was being asked to party while /anon and waiting 7+ days for a party as SMN. We were forced to abuse a solo play style akin to a meh BST not because we wanted to (Maybe some of us did!), but because of SE's not so stellar design on the class. I'm not saying that SMN didn't have value or wasn't fun, I'm just saying that they weren't this OMG amazing depiction of a pure pet class, they had some major flaws.

When 3+ mobs were dying a minute in a decent EXP party and you could only nuke once a minute, it certainly showed the glaring issues. They were actually more beneficial in a BAD exp group that could only kill one monster every minute or so.

[Zhamkyong]

Only after the primal in question already blew up Eorzea in the same fashion Bahamut did.

Lets have another Calamity then!

But no, i believe you are able to tune up for the Trance because you can "sense" and "move" the primal aether of Bahamut. It works at the same fashion of the ritual used at the 3 summons we are allowed to use right now. Instead of "calling" a Primal we use his powers through his "Aether". Because of he is an Elder Primal, i believe. But it's still Aether, so that kind of thing open a lot of possibilities, including forces such as Odin for example.

But... I want more Summons to choose from as any other Summoner out there, the downside of having a lot of choices are the work behind of the balance of each one of them. My hopes are on the Glamour system. If we are lucky, we might get that glamour through quest to call forth more Egis in the place of the ones we have now. That would be cool.

[MagiusNecros]

I really don't want glamour. I want more pet actions. Even making Titan's Earthen Ward party wide like radiant shield would be preferred.

All glamour does is different skin on an egi but same skills.

But if that's what you want by all means...

[Zhamkyong]

I really don't want glamour. I want more pet actions. Even making Titan's Earthen Ward party wide like radiant shield would be preferred.

All glamour does is different skin on an egi but same skills.

But if that's what you want by all means...

They would have to add more slots to the hotbar for that if you want more actions on the pets, though i agree with you. I would like to ser more pet changes\actions added to them. I just think de wont see that happening anytime soon.

[Volsung]

Yes and no. I say this because the whole veil of bahamut system, gives us something to do while aetherflows are used up, providing us with less downtime and more firepower. If we just had more pets there might still be an issue of an "empty" feeling while there are no aetherstacks to use.

Having said that, I think while moving forward we should definitely get more summons that provide slightly different roles. What do we have now? Tank, phys dps, and magic dps. Both the dps are a little different, potency and utility (hard to beat contagion + bane)

Now the question comes up, will remaining summons come from the original 6 easily identifiable primals/elements, or will possible summons be from the expanded xiv universe (bismark, ravana, and whoever else is added in 4.0)

I think two possible roles to add with pets should still add dps, but maybe also have 1 for support (buffs and maybe a weak heal) and 1 for enfeebles (stun, slow, paralyze, def down etc) This way smn is still focused on dps but the pets can still vary from existing pets.

I would personally love to see more things like enkindle, takes up one ability slot and lets all the pets use an ability. Thank you for fighting ability bloat.

[Alaltus]

I think contagion's current effect should be a Summoner trait. That way you aren't constantly having to reapply dots and can put more attention into commanding the pet. Beef up the pets a bit more and pull back other actions that would otherwise take up your time over commanding your pets. I haven't gotten trance/dread wyrm ability yet but by all means keep it as is. They need to further differentiate the Egis currently they all overlap far too much. Garuda and Ifrit need to decide which one of them will use single target damage skills and which one will use aoe damage skills and stop sharing them so it's clear which you use in any given situation. Titan could find a use in party play if he could steal emnity in a snap, so if the tank goes down a SMN can quickly throw him at the boss and distract it long enough to either kill him or revive the tank.

[Morningstar1337]

Couldn't that be fixed later in the game? I mean, if our character has aether limits, wouldn't having something that could channel the extra aether required for more summons work? Like a crystal of some sort, similar to the white auracite used to seal and destory the Ascians, only it absorbs and stores either the aether flowing around Eoreza or our character's own aether overtime.

Well its possible that

Hraesvelgr's Eye, aka a Limitless wellspring of aether was embedded in the WoL, meaning we would have more aether to use for that purpose, and thus More egis. It would at least explain the egi glamours

[Duelle]

Let me start by putting this here.

As someone with no emotional attachment to SMN (since I don't main it), I'll say that I agree with you, OP. SMN should have kept the focus on pets instead of getting what is essentially the FFXVI version of Metamorphosis. At least, to me it's a little early to give SMN meta when the pet system could have used additions/adjustments.

I would have liked to see the devs set up an elemental wheel (conceptually, not mechanically) so that you have Ifrit, Garuda and Shiva as one elemental wheel. Leviathan, Titan and Ramuh would make up the second elemental wheel. Then additional primals we run into could enter the game as cooldowns for SMN (like Ravana-egi temporarily attacking the target before debuffing the enemy, or Bismarck-egi temporarily hovering high over the enemy and dealing AoE damage). Once you establish a strong and well-designed pet system, then you can introduce something like Metamorphosis/Dreadwyrm Trance and not feel like the devs are abandoning pets.

[Xiozen]

I agree with the OP. Perhaps we should rename the job from Summoner to something else... not sure what MMORPG class this type of job with fit... maybe "hexer"... do away with egi's and just give the job various DoTs... for dps casting...

Summoner this is definitely not. Just look at the summons you're able to cast in FFXI:

Summonable Avatars (the bread and butter summons, with tons of abilities and blood pacts (special abilities))

Carbuncle
Ifrit
Titan
Leviathan
Garuda
Shiva
Ramuh
Fenrir
Diabolos
Odin
Alexander
Cait Sith
Atomos

Summonable Elemental Spirits (yes, they cast spells and defend you if you're attacked)

Fire Spirit
Earth Spirit
Water Spirit
Air Spirit
Ice Spirit
Thunder Spirit
Light Spirit
Dark Spirit

And these follow you around (for those unfamiliar with FFXI summoner, just youtube it for a ton of vids). Yea, graphic-wise its not as pretty as FFXIV but for a game at what 15 years and still going... it's got a lot to love (I still play).