I love where Summoner is at right now

[Horobi]

What about removing ruin4 procs from egi assaults, and add it as an additional effect to ruin3 while Bahamut is summoned?

"Ruin 3 : deals 200 potency damage. Additional effect : while bahamut is summoned, also grants you a further ruin stack, up to 4."

While at it, halve akh morn potency while halving its cooldown. This way, you'd end up with a customed rotation while bahamut is out :
ruin3 > ruin4 > akh morn > ruin3 > ruin 4 > akh morn > repeat.

While I see the bang for buck of egi assaults in AoE situation thanks to garuda, in single target situation they are pretty irrelevant sadly, damage wise and visually.

[Valmaxian]

Summoner shouldn't have to play Flight of the Bumblebee just to keep up with everybody else who's playing Gymnopedie No 1.

I LOVED this analogy.

I’m not sure if it would be super busted, but what if Ruin III got the Malefic treatment and had a faster cast time to alleviate double weaves? Or upgrade to Ruin IV straight up and forget the egi assault proc system entirely? Perhaps a spell speed increase on egi assault execution? I don’t mind being busy, but I’d say it’s fair to expect a payoff for all that work!

[TakumiHarada]

Flexibility? No. The whole 2-minute rotation is fixed like 4.x MCH. SMN is now one of the least flexible jobs in 5.0x.

[Nemekh]

Flexibility? No. The whole 2-minute rotation is fixed like 4.x MCH. SMN is now one of the least flexible jobs in 5.0x.

SMN theorycrafters discussed at length that it would be this way before the expansion was released. Players told us to wait and see. We waited, we saw, it was how we expected and predicted. This is our least flexible iteration ever.

[XValenusX]

I just started playing SMN 3 weeks before ShB launched at the request of my new static. From learning the old motions to learning the new ones I personally feel that the job's base flow is great, but its QoL is lacking. Ghosting Buffs, Baha's obnoxious need to be right next to you to do anything which flubs WW (especially this tier) and DoT falloff being "req" for optimal performance just makes you shake your head. It's great fun to play but it makes you wonder why Titan is even a thing, why ruin 2 makes you miserable every time you cast it and the general meanings of life (or why you cast devotion because I forgot to move you and it benefits absolutely no one, ala Levi)

I hope come 5.1 the overhaul just fixes the problems without destroying the playstyle people are familiar with in this state of the game. QoL over Overhaul

[Taranok]

Yea, no. Delete Egi for the simple fact of deleting Egi is just poor excuse for fixing issues. You are claiming triage mode but want to cut off the leg because it has a broken toe.

Egi Assault are bad because it's sole purpose right now is to proc Ruin IV so don't have Egi proc Ruin IV. They should be nothing more than command the pet to use an ability like Enkindle and Aetherpact. Furthermore the errors are human created by trying to jam 4 abilities into 1 sec. Of course a command is going to be missed giving FFXIV net code. If anything SE needs to add a 1.5 to 2.5 sec recast on them.

SE's goal right now should be make Dreadwyrm Trance and Demi-Bahamut mirror what they did with Firebird Trance, and then figure out how to add the aetherflow build phase from 3.X and 4.X back into the rotation. Clearly Egi damage formula also needs adjustment to improve it's DPS output.

There are a billion other reasons why I'd want to remove egis.

They're thematically bad, controlling them doesn't feel good, they don't enhance the experience of being a summoner, they're largely forgettable outside of their mandatory ability usage, and this was actually true since ARR, I sometimes can't even tell if I summoned it or not until I attempt to cast EA or Enkindle or Aetherpact, it induces terrible delay and error throwing, which has been true since ARR albeit not quite so visibly. If you deleted egis outright, and only kept Aetherpact of all of the buttons, centered on the summoner, the class would flow better just off that alone, and with the pitiful damage from egis merged into the SMN's base toolkit, it would feel better anyways.

Then, the only pets SMN would have would be demi summons, and the demis actually feel really, really good as a summon.

So deleting egis to fix issues is a good excuse when egis are a complete and utter failure to the class as a whole outside of the specific flavor text of "This class couldn't have real summons, so we gave them egis until we figured out how to make them actually summoners." They're a bandaid stopgap solution for when the devs didn't have a real clue of how to make summoners summoners and now that they have a better fix, there's no reason to keep it around other than nostalgia and lore, especially when the egi abilities have caused and are still causing so many headaches.

[Exodus-E]

There are a billion other reasons why I'd want to remove egis.

They're thematically bad, controlling them doesn't feel good, they don't enhance the experience of being a summoner, they're largely forgettable outside of their mandatory ability usage, and this was actually true since ARR, I sometimes can't even tell if I summoned it or not until I attempt to cast EA or Enkindle or Aetherpact, it induces terrible delay and error throwing, which has been true since ARR albeit not quite so visibly. If you deleted egis outright, and only kept Aetherpact of all of the buttons, centered on the summoner, the class would flow better just off that alone, and with the pitiful damage from egis merged into the SMN's base toolkit, it would feel better anyways.

Then, the only pets SMN would have would be demi summons, and the demis actually feel really, really good as a summon.

So deleting egis to fix issues is a good excuse when egis are a complete and utter failure to the class as a whole outside of the specific flavor text of "This class couldn't have real summons, so we gave them egis until we figured out how to make them actually summoners." They're a bandaid stopgap solution for when the devs didn't have a real clue of how to make summoners summoners and now that they have a better fix, there's no reason to keep it around other than nostalgia and lore, especially when the egi abilities have caused and are still causing so many headaches.

While I won't (entirely) disagree with some of your grievances regarding Egis, I will take issue with that part in bold.
Especially since it all comes back to the usual "summoners in previous FF games" argument, which has been repeated ad-nauseam.

How can they be "thematically bad" if they're *fully* integrated into this game's lore?
Not to mention that removing them would also upset those who actually do care about them (myself included).

Really, it'd be more sensible/realistic to adjust them rather than outright remove them...

[dinnertime]

...Let's not kid ourselves. Egis are an embarrassing, laughable representation of summons in a Final Fantasy game. Lore doesn't matter here. The lore about them is whatever, the problem is how they look. It's a perfectly valid reason for people to be upset about that.

Appearances aren't even the biggest problem of Egis anyway. They've been complained about constantly for being the clunkiest part of the job since its inception and unsurprisingly still is. They need to drop the Egi concept and go with something that actually works. Of course this is subjective, but even with its current problems, Demis feel a lot better to use and are well-received than Egis were, especially right now with the Egi Assault and Aetherpact/Devotion clunkiness situation.

It's time for a change. Be it aesthetic or gameplay, let people ask for it.

[CrimsonGunner]

i said it before and il say it again, the Egi System just needs major QoL fixes to be good and appropriate.
i don't believe deleting egi like that is an answer or that their theme is really bad but changes to their core mechanics is a must.

for the aesthetic issue of the egi and lack of summons,it can be fixed with a proper egi glamour system.
True that the egi could use some changes to their appearance(a bit more details or again make them look more like their primal selfs) but if summoner had a proper Egi glamour system with actual picks rather then just switch to a different color carbuncle(which also has its bugs) i believe it will put at ease most of us that hate the fact we only have up to 3 egis and 2 demi summons as well as how those egi looks cause they could pick the one they think looks better.

as for the egi core mechanics like i said ,it needs Major QoL improvements but i wouldn't deem the concept as bad rather if QoL changes cannot be done then there must be a rework to their core completely.

the changes that will improve the current egi mechanic ,in my opinions are:
1. egi damage need to properly scale with the summoner damage and have a proper dps impact.(major fix)
2. 0 delay upon executing EA/devotion upon pressing, the egi stops and just execute the skills.(Major fix)
3. maybe give egi a dash jump to far targets once we press EA/Enkindle.(QoL)
4.give the egi a much more meaningful part in the kit instead of just sacrifice and tying EA to ruin IV procs. like giving a buff to the summoner based on what egi we summone or maybe empower ruin based on the summon. (optional)
5.make EA able to cast during cast time(only after 1 and 2 are fixed ,its shogun idea)
6.make devotion activate from summoner or make it a self buff that increase both summoner and pet dps.

as for demi mechanic,Demi is well received because there isn't that much bugs with its core system: his attacks are tied to the summoner casting making it much more reliant on our output with less buttons to press, except for prioritizing movement demi actually execute his attacks and enkindle immediately after cast(with a slight delay when demi appears due to summon animation) and i think damage wise they scale right with the summoner damage.

the solution to egi shouldn't be removing them completely but rather fix their core mechanic and implement QoL fixes.
either they fix EA problems or if that's not possible then change the egi mechanic to resemble how demi work(since demi has less delay problems) cause the issues egi has are extremely sever and impact heavily on our role as dps.

[Madoka]

I would prefer a glamour system over a bunch of actual summons. They can't even make 3 balanced, having a dozen or something would be pointless.

Just gimme some cute SD versions of summons like some of the minions (but not just reused models. Unless they steal them from WoFF, that'd be fine) and I'd be happy with aesthetics