summoner please don't take anything for it please improve the summoner

[OvernightSiren]

I'm fine if SMN steps away from being a pet job. I'd prefer it to be a pet job, but I'm fine if it's not.

I do want it to feel like a Summoner though and I like the direction they're currently going in with a rotation of summons. Most Summoners in past FF games don't operate like pets, you just summon a creature and it does a short animation.

That being said, the idea of SMN rotating through a combo of one summon, then another summon, etc. is really appealing and it seems like they're doing that now with Bahamut and Phoenix but just cycling through two summons simply isn't enough.

I think Summoner should be retooled to cycle between Bahamut and Phoenix (as "the big summons" and have all of their other abilities be redesigned to be themed after summons.

Like instead of "Bio" make the DoT "Hellfire" so it's a burning damage over time instead of poison. They could even change the spell animation to be fiery and put an animation of Ifrit's head over the Summoner when they cast it (similar to how Bahamut's head appears over your head when you use Deathflare). Think of it as Yuna in Dissidia Duodecim, she casts her summons' attacks and when she uses them a brief animation of a part of her summons appears with her.

[Achantion]

Edit: reworded my comment.

SMN has many issues and is a Frankenstein of all the different expansions. However that doesn't mean it is hard to fix.

Solution
The job feels great to use at 60, so just build upon that foundation. Which funnily enough, they did with Phoenix. It is only Bahamut that feels out of place and tacked on.

Basic Changes

• Merge Summon Bahamut into DWT, and change Ruin 3 and Outburst into something Bahamut related during DWT.
• Fix the Egi's ghosting issue, and the Demi's puppy behavior.
• Change Tri-disaster and DWT/FBT to a 1 minute cooldown.
• Return Shadow Flare
• Merge Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix into Enkindle
• Personally? I'd suggest de-coupling Scarlet Flame and Wyrmwave from the SMN's attacks, just let them do these automatically without delays. I'd also change the Enkindle ability to how the MCH's Automaton Queen Pile Bunker works.

This would result in a much cleaner play style, that "feels complete" at 60 and just gets enhanced along the way. Granting it a far stronger identity and sticking to it. How I would see this is the following way:

My vision for this

• Core rotation is now complete at 60, higher levels expend upon this without tacking on new subsystems
• Remove Deathflare
• Give DWT its damage increase back
• At 70 Bahamut Is summoned during DWT, much like Phoenix is during FBT. Change Ruin 3 to Ruin 4 and Outburst to Painflare.
• At 80 Phoenix enters the game

You now have a core identity that is easy to expend (The replacement skills don't need to be cosmetic changes only), and duo to a tiny ability squash (Painflare, Deathflare, Summon Bahamut, Enkindle Bahamut) have design space to add more summon themed abilities like devotion to use in-between trances without creating problems for console players.

The root of all evil
The current SMN (pre 70) play very much like the antithesis of a Summoner we know and love. It primarily focusing on sustained low damage through the use of "poison"-like abilities instead of heavy burst.

It's quite obvious this is done because of the Arcanist. The base class needed to contain elements of both these jobs and thus certain elements that where needed for the SCH have bled over into the SMN and vise versa. For the Summoner to be fixed, the Arcanist either needs to be revised and taken away from either the SMN or the SCH (giving a different base class to the remaining one).

Personally I'd have loved to see the SMN act like an MMO version of Dissidia 1/Duodecim's Gabranth. An ebb-and-flow between very low damage, defences and movement and absurdly high, with some devotion-like abilities to fill the gap. How feasible this would be however, is a discussion for another thread.

[Enkidoh]

Most Summoners in past FF games don't operate like pets, you just summon a creature and it does a short animation.

Unfortunately summons in the FF series haven't functioned like that since FFIX - FFX started the 'summons are pets that stay on screen' thing and SE have made them so ever since. Even FFVII Remake changed them to pets (despite even Compilation titles having them as a spell that does it's thing in a cutscene and then disappears). FFXI particularly had SMN as a pet Job, and so it's this in particular that has created a kind of expectation of FFXIV players how SMN should function, despite Yoshi's own dislike of pet Jobs in general.

SMN here in FFXIV also was always going to be hamstrung by FFXIV's very lore about the Primals that was laid out back in FFXIV version 1.0 (which did not have a player SMN Job) - from minute one the player is told "Primals=BAD", that the traditional FF summons were being summoned by beastmen only, and because of that even mentioning summoning is verboten. So creating a player-made SMN was always going to be a difficult task, not helped by the aforementioned player expectations.

It's kind of like the wizard situation in The Lord of the Rings Online (developers couldn't have wizard as a player class due to established lore of LotR's universe that said there were only a few wizards around, and so the developers came up with a psuedo-wizard class which chuck potions to create minor spells), so this is hardly an unusual occurance in MMOs.