It is time to get rid of them SE...

[Airget]

It would be interesting to replace "Ruin" with Egi Assault, design SMN around the idea of swapping out pets to build up Trance rather than using Aetherflow.

Maybe do something where each pet applies a Debuff that increases the potency of the following pet, when the timer on X Debuff wears off a Y Debuff is placed on the target allowing you to apply another debuff to empower the next pets actions.

Flowing something like Ifrit>Garuda>Titan>Ifrit and rotating through them til you build the ability to use trance, then with the combination of Trance/Egi Aether you can summon Bahamut/Phoenix.

[Dyvid]

And I don't understand the people who want to change a fundamental aspect of a job simple because it doesn't line up with their ideals of what it is suppose to be. This is by far the most responsive I've seen pets since the job came out in August 2013. I'm having no issues from when I command my pet to attack to when it actually performs the move. Further more, EAI and EAII along with Enkindle and Devotion makes it feel like the player is more involved with it's pet rather than sic and forget. Do Egis' and Demi's still have issues that need to be address? Sure, but they are far some the broken mess people are making them out to be.

I'm going to genuinely sincere here now, have people who hate Egi's given MCH a try? You build up battery gauge then call your Demi-Robot who auto attacks until the timer is finished. It sounds exactly like what people are looking for.

[Trensharo]

Bullcrap.

They have never been more of a pet class than they have right now. You actually have to manually command them to do things, instead of sic, forget and enjoy your third dot. They even react to your commands now as long as you don't spam the buttons like a lunatic. Don't give me that "muh tank egi" rubbish. No one used Titan, especially at Lvl70 when Demi-Bahamut became a thing. Heck, you never used him at any 50 or 60 anyway because he couldn't keep hate off you with even the most rudimentary damage you pumped out.

The only problem at the moment is damage, which is a easy potency/ pet damage calculation fix. And the abrupt difficulty spike between Stormblood and Shadowbringers, which is a more nuanced problem.

1. Summoners are barely a pet class. Egis basically do nothing and they don't really need to exist for Egi Attacks to function, frankly. They're there for looks and flavor only. Class is basically a gimp wizard that spams 100 buttons for mediocre results.

2. Temp pets like Bahamut and Phoenix have been a thing since the days of EverQuest, and even that game implemented them better (not deleting your permanent pet, not following you around being useless if you have to dodge anything or move, etc.).

The class only feels like more of a pet class than ever if you basically have played nothing but FFXIV - since you would not have experienced what an actual pet class feels like.

This is only a small step beyond Wizard Familiars.

[Dyvid]

I am talking in majority about the mechanics and the flow of using the egis in our gameplay and you are talking about ideals and fundamental of classe, who is tied to his own vision here?

Yes they are more responsive but far from being good, no wonder when we looks where we come from and to the cost of those abilities being tied to our own kit, when before the egis was real pets whith actions separated from us, if you feel more like a pet classe now you have some issues, but maybe you was playing sic before.

As it stand you are to blind enjoying your pet job fantasy who is not in reality to see the real issues, and as for asking Summoner mains from long to try out MCH it was pitiful from you mister pet's white knight.

Define what a pet class is in an MMO? Your the expert on MMO design apparently so do tell. Me, I'm playing the job that SE designed and enjoy playing it but if that is forcing my vision onto their design so be it I guess.

Oh, and I could care less whether you are happy or miserable in the jobs you play. I was trying to give you some friendly advice and you reply with pissy attitude and not so clever retort. Don't worry, i'm not going to reply to anything else you post because cleverly your not here for a honest discussion.

[Xyr]

The Summoner name is really misleading, it is more like affliction warlock in WoW. If anything, the summoner should be more like pet style witch doctor from diablo 3. Where they have numerous spells and attacks that summons a creature to attack, even if its not summoning another pet. For example, the way magicites work in deep dungeon, "cast spell x to summon Ifrit and deal x fire damage to surrounding enemies."

[Miziliti]

Part of why I love Stormblood SMN was that my pet is there to proc Ruin IV for me ready to use. Now, not only I need to tell them to proc for me, but also pray it actually procs (spoiler alert: no proc). It's like my pet just lost all its intelligence and can't do anything for me. It triggers me so much. Pet class are usually known for being busy, but before changing pet commands into player actions, SMN itself was already busy enough. If devs are going to integrate whole pet commands onto player action, they could at least further tweak the job actions to balance out with the extra pet commands. It's like no one think things through. Not to mention pet are no longer visible in party list. Its presence are as thin as air and it's hilarious.

You know what? I actually prefer to summon Chocobo instead. My bird is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more useful.

[Taranok]

It would be interesting to replace "Ruin" with Egi Assault, design SMN around the idea of swapping out pets to build up Trance rather than using Aetherflow.

Maybe do something where each pet applies a Debuff that increases the potency of the following pet, when the timer on X Debuff wears off a Y Debuff is placed on the target allowing you to apply another debuff to empower the next pets actions.

Flowing something like Ifrit>Garuda>Titan>Ifrit and rotating through them til you build the ability to use trance, then with the combination of Trance/Egi Aether you can summon Bahamut/Phoenix.

Let's not do this. The issue is that swapping pets is already a massive hit to DPS. Enough so that even though Garuda's EA2 hits a lot harder than Ifrit's EA2, you never want to swap it out because even losing a single auto is terrible.

If they want to add pet swapping like this to the game, it would be better to just keep it to oGCDs with temporary summons just for flavor, not making it a primary mechanic, unless the goal is to turn the pets into stances and swapping them basically doesn't cost the player any downtime due to the swap. But at that point, they're not really pets anyways, just an annoying gimmick stance mechanic, and just having the current trance system we have now expanded but on a faster cycle would overall play and feel better.

[ShadowNyx3]

Now that egis can't die, there's no reason for them to exist as a separate entity. For anyone who sees them as little more than an extra DoT, you are now seeing what the purpose of micro-management of the egis prior to 5.0 was, to keep your "extra DoT" alive so that you were earning all of that damage from your pet.

Without the threat of death on an Egi, there is no need to even recognize they exist outside of their placement for Devotion or if you're optimizing, having them start close to a target to begin attacking faster. Is it any wonder they feel like dead weight?

[Atamis]

Completely agree. Always hated the "Egi" concept. They look stupid, feel terrible, and operate like a rusty door hinge. Being able to glamour them all into randomly colored carbuncles was the first indication they abandoned the pet idea, and giving the summer the abilities the egi previously did on auto attack was frankly the nail in the coffin for pets, they are now one step away from being phased out entirely.

I am hoping they continue with the "demi" summons. While Bahamut being split into two parts feels terrible, Phoenix in particular feels great. I always look forward to that summon. It gives a party wide buff (which I wish was stronger and maybe auto ressed the nearest floor warmer), Has a simple rotation which allows for emergency plays given its spell speed perk, and looks true to concept.

I think if they adopted this "trance" aspect it would set the FFXIV summoner apart from previous versions while still remaining true to what people expect from the job. If i were in control of class design I would make the trance action off cooldown. A new gauge added that tracked current aether element based off certain spells (Aoe would align wind, Single target fire, ect) and after spending two aether flows you can to trance that primal. Ruin, your dots, and aoe, would switch to that primal's abilities and it behaves like a lesser form of the Demi summons, use "Deathflare" to end the trance and the primal does their signature ability. Giving you one Bahamut/Phoenix aether, or Demi aether to differentiate them.

Just using the "trance" aspect in general, I think, would be a far better and unique summoner option with many gameplay possibilities if they choose to put effort into summoner like they have dancer. One based entirely off of trance would leave future options open to many other primal appearances in our kit as many could just be cosmetic changes. The three button combo the current Phoenix uses is simple enough to work for everything and allows every primal to be properly represented. It's robust enough you could add melee themed primals and just have the summoner be in melee range to use those abilities, hopefully with the damage increase to make up for the danger.

[Reimmi]

I agree, remove egis and make the entire "pet" focus be the big summons
They can't take hits for you anymore, they're just mobile dots at this point. at least let all the pets be spectacles like a summoner should have