SE we got to talk about summoner

[Kurando]

Even then Demi-summons are kinda clunky at times, so adding more we would just be going from underwhelming Carbuncles/Egis to screen-filling beasts that don't do anything unless you use the relevant action/spell(s) to command them to. The MCH Automaton Queen does a better job at being independent and doing damage without the player having to actually interfere (aside from calling it). A lot of the SMN kit needs changing, but whether that will happen we'll just have to wait....

[Len]

If everything is a demi summon then that just takes away the wow factor of demi summons. Unless you mean you want egis to use the demi auto attack system which would be fine. Plus even if they do that i don't think they would give us more summons like other summoners want.

In my scenario, egis are removed. The original trio (Ifrit, Garuda, Titan) appear as more visually impactful (not necessarily demi) summons we call on for certain spells (previously egi assaults) and disappear after they use their attack. Example: Ifrit appears behind us, blasts fire at the enemy and fades away.

Similar to how they appear in this official artwork:

[Sathona]

I would throw this in the DPS forums where it is more likely to be seen by the correct devs who I assume troll through those forums for good suggestions. I picked up Summoner recently and it is pretty fun to play through.

Its more of a power fantasy issue than fundamentally the summoner itself, but i could be wrong, i only recently lvl'd it to 80 and had a blast.

[Lilyth]

I like current SMN. Bite me.

[Kaliesto]

Here is what I think could be better for Summoner (though my words obviously won't mean much to the devs as a single individual), but might as well give my opinion on it.


Why not just remove pets and pet commands entirely, and rework them all as Summon attacks in rotation similar to Bahamut, etc? I agree they're too similar to Red Mages, and their non-summoner spells are very useless.

Also change the original pets into minions, so they're not completely removed for players that like them.

[Feidam]

Current summoner is too clunky to play for long periods. Heavensward smn was nice and smooth. Then came Demi summons. While the Phoenix summon is gorgeous and I like that we channel some Phoenix power the whole kit just feels disjointed. Don’t think Demi summons are the way to go the phases are already getting a bit long in the tooth. Not sure what I recommend here as I think a complete rework might be needed to get out of this hole.

[Jadedsins]

I just want to summon knight of the round and just have flashy looking spells but instead of spells make them cool looking summons.

[Savagelf]

what i like see done is simple

you have 4-5 carbruncle to chose for each with they elemental damage and when they summon your debuff become basic on elemental you chose. ever so often you get Ice if you chosen diamond carbruncle slow those ice symbol build up to 3 then you can summon Shiva to field she has 30 second to doing damage then she gone and diamond carbruncle returns. The Egi are replace by simalar system to the demi yet different. for example you can glamour Shiva, Ifrit, Garuda, and other Primes you make them look like ff series comparts for example 30 second i could have Shiva but it could be FFX Shiva on feild instead ffxiv shiva instead. this fix glamour for Primes, and allow Square Enix show other form of Prime for across ff titles give fun put they favorite form in.

for Scholar I like see your favorite Pixie for Shadowland take on permit resident as your Pixie as scholar your heals and that of your pixie equal to all of white mage or other jobs. you get summon you get summon Feo Ul as your Pixie to help with heal slight a step up for your usaully Pixie.

also replace summoner lb 3 with summon Bahumat or Phoenix

and scholar heal lb 3 with Titania the Feo Ul version

[Shougun]

Its more of a power fantasy issue than fundamentally the summoner itself, but i could be wrong, i only recently lvl'd it to 80 and had a blast.

They've done a lot since ARR, but my main compliant back then boiled down to a visual statement. If you compared every single FF summoner / summon instance, including FFXI, FFXIV had just missed the mark in a large way. The visual narrative was exceptionally consistent, with basically zero deviation, and it was a visual narrative that was really cool - then suddenly it gets swiped not in half but in like a quarter. It was a pretty bad visual representation, imo. The egi, being these chibi art was fine in the sense it was cute chibi art but not fine to make a compelling continuation of the narrative. Of course sometimes you mix things up because it may be stale, but usually you want to mix things up to be better- and at least imo that was strongly not the case. Much worse visually.

That said I've played all the jobs at each expansion, and FFXIV ARR summoner played really well. Mechanically there was nothing I felt wrong with it. I just felt it was a very.. 'not good' representation, in the sense that it neither captured nor improved the essence of what summoner had super consistently shown in the past (boiling down to summoning great, and sometimes super silly or cute, creatures, to do great things - the rest of summons and summoners has been mild-ly inconsistent like if healer, damage dealer, effects, pets, one offs, etc. I think it's currently fine too yet it could be smoothed and it does seem like it's bursting at the seams so in general having to 'grow' the job is going to need tweaks anyways.

Yoshida had wanted this open world summon content where like a FC could capture a summon and then use it later, and I imagine some of this concept may have impugned on summoner. Certainly could have been a cool concept but regardless I feel strongly, like I could make presentation on the history and visual narrative of the job and it's not "mostly opinion", I mean I'd nervously sweat my way through it, but I'd do it ! lol, that FFXIV initially failed to capture the visual essence of a 'Final Fantasy' summoner and didn't re-invent it in a way that was subverting any expectations in an interesting way, but did make a fun to play job and mechanically did a capture a lot of the history a FF Summoner (damage dealer, healer, ish, loads of use cases, etc, honestly they kind of overpower the mechanical side lol- balance wise the job has tended to be treated fairly well to the point of sometimes making others a bit jealous).

Addition of the dread wyrm trance, demi, etc, I think were all great steps in the right direction of capturing that visual narrative and generally have been happy the work they've done to try and (imo) correct course. I thought the healing attached to phoenix was really cool- it is hard to notice right away but an aoe 100 potency 21 second regen is not nothing at all, very cool, I hope they could do light touches of that for the other primal related spells (when possible, bahamut has always been about damage so I'm not surprised or expecting it to change, but maybe a trash mob cc and other ideas for other spells- giving them extra tinge of primal specific flavor could be neat). Although sometimes I do wonder if they had done a ground up remake like MCH if it wouldn't be this absolutely insanely gorgeous treat to play. Yes yes you still can't 1:1 scale, I've never wanted that, I've never found that reasonable, and I've never seen anyone actually request that, but you could still dabble your foot in the "over the top". It's what has been done with the job post 50 in essence, but I think you could have done more without damaging the screen readability, of course that'd be extra costs and risks, and personally I think changing someone's job significantly after they've grown to like it is quite dangerous as it's full of potential unfortunate outcomes.

I do like that they've got this mechanical cross of multiple summoners through the series, pets and one offs, though I think too many are generic unrelated primal skills (imo there is no great benefit and just lost opportunity by keeping concepts like bio up later in levels, maybe early on in arcanist, but quickly I think things should begin to be all tinged in primal power, as each skill not related is an opportunity lost not to tell the story of a summoner's grand 'other world being' power). Especially as you do need to keep some not as crazy (for screen readability), so having more opportunities to touch on the narrative, imo, is much better than just a couple. Also probably a bit late to put in thoughts of cool ideas now, they're approaching the end of Endwalker - any shifts would probably be seen as a nuisance now.

Of course I've bias on what does or does not happen but most simply I think, especially as the mechanics seem to tell the story of all summoners, that - stick to the visual commentary that it should strive to tell the story of a job that calls on 'great' other worldly beings to do great things. As said even the first variation of SMN I think was quite playable (enjoyable to play, disappointing to look at- which again is a comment on ARR SMN, they've made improvements over time). Before Yoshida realized that NA had some pretty bad lag for titan's sand attack it was basically SMN that allowed me not to toss my keyboard lol.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

I'd love it to function more like FFT- with frequent, short summons either like we have for Bahamut/Phoenix right now, and perhaps occasional massive summons. But, as is, all the current summons fit the story and it's fairly clear even having a few summons available is a tremendous feat.

I don't really think having it act like a traditional pet class where the pet has health/aggro, etc... would be great, it just adds more hotkeys in what is already a job with so many hotkeys, and while maybe that'd be fine for kb+mouse, on ps5 pet management would be brutal if they had health and we needed to constantly be adjusting them so they don't die to boss abilities.