[ Dev Requests ] Player Suggestions for Future Summoner Reworks

[Roda]

The biggest two for me:
1, don't take away me fighting alongside my carbuncle companion. I like pet casters. Having a familiar is important to me. Don't let imperfect execution scare you into thinking it can't ever work. Pet classes are a staple to mmos, and removing that niche would be a misstep for xiv imo.
2, Don't make the summons do all the damaging work for me. I want to cast my own spells, and have my summon be a patner to supplement my damage, not have it be the entirety of my interaction with the target.

Now for the more nitty-gritty stuff.

• Resource managment and dot management is fun but the way current summoner goes about it is kinda really backwards? Summons are all just on cooldown timers that are 100% passive to your engagement with the rotation. There is ZERO thought put into using your big summons outside of managing ghosting. The most engaging challenge to playing summoner right now is just ruin 4 managment which is just an allowance to move without losing DPS and to spend in bahamut phase to avoid using ruin 2 for weaving. The gameplay is fun, but the identity is confused.
• Having different pet summons for different situations is fun! But I think "single target" vs "AoE" vs "I give you a shield and waste a ruin IV and do no damage" is a pretty weak implementation of it. I'd rather have my carbuncle selection be based off of utility and supporting my group instead of me noticing if there's 3 or more monsters in a cluster at once. Something like we were doing in stormblood with garuda buffing magic damage and ifrit buffing physical. I think there's a lot of potential with that design philosophy. (bonus points if your pet choice changes how you interact with your -big summon- abilities!) ((all I'm saying is I want to summon a melee dps carbuncle and then go into odin trance and wield zantetsuken :P))
• I want a proper tanking pet again dangit! I want it to be able to hold agro for me, I want to have to manage it a bit and I want to be able to heal it! Pet casters are fun!
• Not only have more egi glamours, but give us quests, hidden quests even with puzzles, to go find and earn them! Let me use my class to interact with the world and get cool effects that affect the expression of my character. It is an RPG after all, and you don't have to limit a job to get cool fluffy flavor.
• Y'all never think big enough for the LB3 rework. Summon both hydaelyn and zodiark for the lb3. Cmon. (or maybe just randomly choose between the available primals. I'd like to summon alexander too lmao)
• Like I said I do LIKE smn having dots be a part of its identity (because wha tis a pet but a dot who's your friend?) but I'd like to see them get an upgrade in the next expansion like whm got their dps abilities updated in ShB to be more in-line with their class. Something like we see in Bozja spoilers where you send out a spell of tempering/corruption. Because the poison aesthetic is kinda misplaced after arcanist.
• another thing with dots is that I actually didn't mind fester ruins in that I liked that dot management interacted with the other parts of our rotation instead of "is dot applied? if no, apply dot" I'd like to see dots have a similar interaction with a gauge as BRD dots or DNC esprit. (probably something building to the big summons)

I made a rage concept of what I wish smn was back at the start of ShB when SMN was physically painful to play. Maybe I'll give it another pass and post it again here.