Summoners: Please give us actual summons to make us feel like a Summoner please.

[Destati]

As my first FF game Final Fantasy X was the first time I had seen Summon(er)s portrayed in the series and remains to be my favorite incarnation of the bunch, particularly in terms of aesthetics and story. Now, I get gameplay mechanics and balance are very much a thing in FFXIV, but SMN as a whole has always felt... very underwhelming to me. When I think Final Fantasy Summoners I associate it with grand monsters, not ill-defined chicken nuggets and jalapenos. I'd love to be able to have monsters that look more like the primals themselves follow me around, and be able to adjust their sizes so I can have them be as big as Bahamut-Egi (still sore that I can only have the coolest-looking one we have for only a few seconds at a time). And even more than that I'd love more variety. Give us Ravana, Susano, Ramuh, Sephirot and all the other primals as glamour already, if not fully-fledged Egi.

[SieyaM]

I definitely feel the summoner frustration. I wanted to be a summoner when I first started playing but once I got around to actually getting the job SMN I left it, just wasn't a good fit for me and wasn't what I expected it to be. They have been talking about doing something for SMN regarding Egis for a few years now, but who knows what will actually happen if anything. After all they also said they wouldnt gender lock races again, so you can't really believe anything they tell you.

[LineageRazor]

Why does the tank pet feel completely useless? it's slow, takes ages to get agro and dies so fast it feels pointless to use?

Titan-egi USED to be much more viable as a tank. In ARR, Titan-egi could easily hold hate against a SMN, and provided real competition even against real tanks. Many times as SMN, when the tank D/C'd or abandoned duty, I was able to carry on through the dungeon using Titan-Egi to tanik.

Over time, though, players have gotten higher and higher potency damage rotations - but Titan-Egi hasn't changed at all. Titan's enmity output can no longer keep up with, well, anyone. Worse, SMN's rotation now includes summoning Bahamut - and when that happens, Titan-egi is dismissed, and loses all accumulated enmity.

Titan-egi is only good for tanking, and due to the way players' abilities have progressed, he's not even good for that anymore. Titan-Egi either needs new abilities or old abilities boosted (probably the latter - but a SMN job trait that boosts Egi damage could handle this nicely). Titan-Egi also needs Provoke - or better yet, Ultimatum - so that he can get back in the game once Bahamut is done. Either that, or have Bahamut-Egi share Titan's enmity, so that HE can tank until Titan returns (that's a tall order, though; Bahamut-Egi is not currently targetable or damageable, and so would be a pretty unfair tank).

Basically, as Titan-Egi currently stands, he is worthless. He was built for a task he can no longer perform. The devs either need to overhaul him so that he can perform his task again - or give him a new task to perform. Most likely, though, they'll just sweep him under the rug, like they've done since Heavensward...

[HeyMcFly]

I agree 100% - Even if the summons were as small as they still are but with the Glamours that make the Garuda Egi actually look like Garuda & not a booger crystal. Or Ifrit as his actual form ingame & not a red blob. I pretty much stayed away from Summoner in XIV & have never played it or considered playing it because their summons are really, really ugly and lackluster.

[Unscene]

booger crystal

I love this.

[AlphaFox]

I like the idea of what they did for Yuna in Dissidia Duodecim. The partial appearance of the summon to perform an attack, would actually make us seem or feel more like a real summoner, having control over the primal. Using just enough power to control parts of them but not fully bring forth the full power to have them roam. Plus with Blue mage, the skills are already in the game and usable so it could open the pathway to let the summoner cast Eruption with Ifrit's arm slamming down, Ramuh's Thunderbolt with just his arm manifesting and raising his rod, Garuda's wings forming and flapping for the vortex spell and so on. Though this would then in turn involve redoing all the previous Summoner quests.

[Burningskull]

I like the idea of what they did for Yuna in Dissidia Duodecim. The partial appearance of the summon to perform an attack, would actually make us seem or feel more like a real summoner, having control over the primal. Using just enough power to control parts of them but not fully bring forth the full power to have them roam. Plus with Blue mage, the skills are already in the game and usable so it could open the pathway to let the summoner cast Eruption with Ifrit's arm slamming down, Ramuh's Thunderbolt with just hit arm manifesting and raising his rod, Garuda's wings forming and flapping for the vortex spell and so on. Though this would then in turn involve redoing all the previous Summoner quests.

I've been saying that for years ><

[Haxaan]

I like the idea of what they did for Yuna in Dissidia Duodecim. The partial appearance of the summon to perform an attack, would actually make us seem or feel more like a real summoner, having control over the primal. Using just enough power to control parts of them but not fully bring forth the full power to have them roam. Plus with Blue mage, the skills are already in the game and usable so it could open the pathway to let the summoner cast Eruption with Ifrit's arm slamming down, Ramuh's Thunderbolt with just his arm manifesting and raising his rod, Garuda's wings forming and flapping for the vortex spell and so on. Though this would then in turn involve redoing all the previous Summoner quests.

I 100% agree with this. Leave the play style the same as it is right now, just change the animations for the abilities to look like we are summoning the primal to do said attack. That way you don't have to worry about people not being able to see because a physical summon is to big and obstructs your view. The Egi system is really kind of silly at this point, and the only thing Summoner is missing from making it feel like a summoner is the appearance of the summons. Change the visuals and we're good.

[HeyMcFly]

I would be okay with ugly chibi summons, you can actually tell its the summons VS. red blobs/ booger crystals
Or just small versions of the primals.

[Bright-Flower]

I'm sure this would never happen, but part of me wishes that the arcanist stuff could be divorced from summoner.

I love the Aetherflow system with the limited charges for strong abilities. I like the bio/miasma dots, I like the runic symbols taht appear for ruin spells etc.

But I don't like the summoner stuff. I don't like demi bahamut, and I prefer the carbuncles over egis.

Makes me wish that they would split summoner off into a 'proper summoner' type job and arcanist could be its own thing with the stuff I listed above. I know it won't though especially with smn/sch already splitting from a base class.