SMN is good damage, but still has serious quality-of-life, fantasy, and design issues

[Rongway]

Considering egi's are just vassals for throwing out moves, so no actual interaction we might as well be throwing out the spells themselves, I'm not sure why the summons themselves don't become attacks.

This, though. I've been thinking this for years. Leave Carbuncle as a full-time pet and autosummon him on job change, for those who would miss Carbuncle. Have him just be an extra always-on auto-attack. Replace him during Demi-summon phases as is already the case.

Then, make the summoner's spells poof Demi-primals into existence for one-off attacks. For example, upon becoming SMN,

• Replace Ruin with Call: Strike. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence for a single strike.
• Replace Outburst with Call: Burst. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence for an AoE attack.
• Replaced Bio with Call: Sap. Poofs a Demi-Primal into existence to inflict the target with a DoT.
• Etc.

Classically a "Call" spell should summon a random Demi-Primal from among those the player has defeated, but of course specific Demi-Primals could be assigned to specific actions. So basically, while your Carbuncle buddy is out slapping things with his tail, you're summoning a sequence of Demi-Primals who appear, do one attack, and then disappear. When you get to a Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix phase, Carbuncle is replaced with Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix, and as you continue to summon one-off Demi-Primals, your Demi-ElderPrimal contributes their attacks as well.

With no meaningful changes to the way SMN plays, this change would drastically realign them stylistically to the classical image of a Final Fantasy summoner.