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

[TankHunter678]

Personally I am of the opinion of changing egis to function as the Demi-primals rather then being a constant pet. Just make it so that in the higher levels the Egis upgrade completely into Demis visually. Basically treating the egi form as being the strongest form we could draw at the time, but they get upgraded to full demis later as we have gotten stronger and can unleash a stronger version of them.

This could also allow for other primals to be brought in. You could have a demi rotation of Ifrit>Garuda>Titan>Bahamut>Levi>Ramuh>Shiva>Phoenix. Thus you are constantly summoning primals to perform big moves like in other FF games. Other options for more primal summons also include being able to make some of the longer cooldown skills be one time summons or change some skills into cooldown ones that are applied via the summon. To use an example remove Physick and in its place put in a 60-120 sec cooldown ability that Summons Demi-Lakshmi to heal the party.

[dinnertime]

Egis are a permanent fixture of this game's lore/setting, regardless of whether you like them or not.
Anything else regarding SMN is fair game, so long as it works with them (especially with the existence of Trances -> Demi-Primals).

Lore should never be an excuse to prevent the developers from changing/improving things with gameplay, especially when a job is involved. That is just bad practice. This game has past lore retconned multiple times now to fit with present content so they can totally work around it.

A lot of people are asking if they can upgrade the Egi summons into Demi Primals, or make Egi's function just like Demi's instead of outright removing them and I think this approach will make it fit seamlessly into the job's lore.

[Daralii]

Lore should never be an excuse to prevent the developers from changing/improving things with gameplay, especially when a job is involved. That is just bad practice. This game has past lore retconned multiple times now to fit with present content so they can totally work around it.

A lot of people are asking if they can upgrade the Egi summons into Demi Primals, or make Egi's function just like Demi's instead of outright removing them and I think this approach will make it fit seamlessly into the job's lore.

I'm pretty sure their point was that it would require them to change and/or rewrite every single job quest from 30 to 52, more if you wanted to extend it to the Flames' anti-primal squad.

[Exodus-E]

I'm pretty sure their point was that it would require them to change and/or rewrite every single job quest from 30 to 52, more if you wanted to extend it to the Flames' anti-primal squad.

Those, as well as what was established in their encyclopaedias, official artworks/renders, and various other stuff.

[dinnertime]

I'm pretty sure their point was that it would require them to change and/or rewrite every single job quest from 30 to 52, more if you wanted to extend it to the Flames' anti-primal squad.

I've already answered this in the last line. They can always keep Egi's but overhaul them in gameplay to fit like Demi Primals since that's what people have been asking. That way, they'll only need to add up to the lore instead of rewriting it.
I'm repeating myself here, they've retconned lore before, so it's not impossible for them to change the SMN quests. Lore isn't an excuse to keep things set in stone.

[Taranok]

I've already answered this in the last line. They can always keep Egi's but overhaul them in gameplay to fit like Demi Primals since that's what people have been asking. That way, they'll only need to add up to the lore instead of rewriting it.
I'm repeating myself here, they've retconned lore before, so it's not impossible for them to change the SMN quests. Lore isn't an excuse to keep things set in stone.

Yes, and this is why my favored suggestion is to add trances to summoner all the way at level 4 when you get the emerald carbuncle, and make the carbuncle the summoned payoff during the trance rotation. And then slowly swap out pets as you level. They can keep ifrit-egi as is, or turn it into a demi-ifrit of its own regard and just call it an egi because it's a weaker manifestation than the demis. And obviously at 70 you unlock demi-bahamut, and at 80 demi-phoenix.

If you work the class right, you can keep the egis or carbuncles around in various oGCDs as well. It's not the kind of thing that needs to be outmoded as you level up, you just move away from the permanent poorly implemented pet that is basically a DoT in favor of the better system they want of using oGCDs.

And because we're at it, reduce the total number of oGCDs and rewrite the lore as necessary to fit the new system, which if done correctly will be minimal instead of a complete do-over.

[CapricaLangley]

Honestly I didn't read the whole thread but I always wondered why the Egi's weren't handled as the summons from FFXI.

[Valmarus]

Honestly I didn't read the whole thread but I always wondered why the Egi's weren't handled as the summons from FFXI.

I'd like to see a tip more towards this end though with a few changes. I'd like to see the ward/rage charges that came in to FFXI later on for smn. I'd also like to see the removal of the superseeding of egis.

Give us back actual pets that are actually in the field taking damage and able to get between us and the enemy. This has really screwed up smn solo ability in my experience. I've never really viewed pets dying as a huge problem for SCH or SMN, nor have the SCH mains i've talked to, they can move them around if needs be and resummoning them is insignificant. If the general community really thinks this is a problem give SCHs an ability that shields their pet from damage if you really must.

Honestly I'd say spells wise I'd say keep the dots. I'd like to see ruin relegated to something to use if you can do nothing else, reduce its potency and give us more pet actions and a ward/assault charge pool and allow us to choose what actions to use from a selection rather than just each action havings it own charges. Give us a seelction of debuffs and pure damage for assault and some support for ward (sch replaces rage with "boon" (cures) for faeries maybe?).

Get rid of the whole titan and garuda superseeding carby. I've always hated this. Since sch has carby too you could make him a pet that specialises in buffs/mitigation. Make topaz carby physical damage resistance and emeral magic damage resistance maybe? Honestly anybody who says they never used titan or topaz to tank never really challenged themselves in what they were soloing. I always found them very useful.

I think one of the major underlying problems is the game has been oversimplified, especially when it comes to stats. We don't have gear with stats that can apply to pets. I'd really like to see this sort of gear introduced for smn. Ward/rage charge rate +, pet damage +, pet defence +.

[Valmarus]

I'd also make bahamut something that doesn't feature so heavily that it's considered normal rotation damage. Make the guage fill a lot more slowly and its maintenance less built into the rotations. Have it charge through the use of the avatars themselves rather than managing aetherflow. Make it more like a mini limit break guage, with 2 levels. Take away phoenix. I'd actually like to see a system that forces us to choose, when this guage is full to level 1 we can either use this precious resource to summon Bahamut for pure unfettered raw damage or allow us to sit on it. If it reaches level 2 we get him for an extended time or maybe a stronger version for the same amount of time. If a smn dies whilst this guage is full at level 2 it automatically summons phoenix for aoe fire damage and aoe raise (with enough health so people don't instantly die again). I'm sure they could balance it, maybe make the charge required to get from 1 to 2 be 2-3x more expensive than 0-1. That's down to them, but I feel like such a system would make these fragments of supposedly extremely powerful entities feel a little more special as opposed to part of your normal damage rotation.

I don't mind that smn does good dot spells and I don't think that should change but I think what you're doing in the huge space between should be a lot more pet focused and should be a lot more focused on the ordinary pets that weaving in bahamut to your normal damage.

I feel like smn should be hybrid DD and support. I've always felt a bit confused as to why this game doesn't have support jobs. And the support abilities that some jobs did have have been slowly eradicated form the game. People DO like to play those types of jobs. Bard was one of the most popular jobs in FFXI (partly down to how easy it was to get a party on bard but people did genuinely enjoy it). They enjoy balancing the buffing of others rather than mindlessly hitting the mob and they don't care when that is the only thing the job can do. Not everybody has to be hitting the damn mob to be effectively contributing.

[CapricaLangley]

I'd like to see a tip more towards this end though with a few changes. I'd like to see the ward/rage charges that came in to FFXI later on for smn. I'd also like to see the removal of the superseeding of egis.

The fact is that if we take a look at the roots of the job, it's clear that it was intended as a pet DPS, and this is why it originally was, and still is to an extent, entirely built around dots. You place dots so you can dance between summons and use their toolkits, right? But it doesn't work like that, and with every expansion they shifted the class identity towards a more streamlined magical DPS.

I don't think it's a bad choice in itself, but when you choose to embark on that tuning journey you need to shift the roots of the job, starting from level 1. Playing summoner from level 1 to 50 is a job, from 50 to 60 is another job, from 60 to 80 is an entirely new job. The result of that caludron is that you feel like actions are working one against each other, you have to micromanage an absurd number of resources during downtime, you risk to lose tons of damage because things don't line up.

It's pretty clear that the original concept was: place you dots, summon carbuncle and use something reflect-like, summon ifrit and use hellfire, use another egi as a standard DPS then refresh your dots and adjust according to encounter situations. It was a lot more complicated than what FFXIV ended up being. IMHO something like that would have beeen 10 times better for job identity. Now, the easiest solution is rework the starting toolkit and getting rid of redundant elements, and this is why we are in a thread suggesting to remove egis.