Quote Originally Posted by rewd View Post
The game is called Final Fantasy XIV, not Final Fantasy The Norm. They can and should take some freedom when it comes to job design (as they already did, many times, with plenty of jobs).

A norm, when it comes to Summoner, doesn't exist. Summoners work in different ways in different games. The only thing they have in common is - not suprisingly - that they summon things.

People always liked to use FFXI as an argument as to why XIV's SMN is 'wrong' because it was missing XI's big summons. I'm sure the same people aren't using XI as an argument as to why Carbuncle needs to attack again, although that's what it does in XI too. Weird, uh.

Not to mention that new SMN is far from the 'norm' too, unless we want to act like a summoner becoming a geomancer is how it has always worked in Final Fantasy.

"Classic FF summoner", "norm" and all that are arguments that should have died a long time ago.
You are absolutely correct that FFXI Summoner's Carbuncle can deal damage. It can deal small amounts of damage whenever you summon him before you go on to obtain your main summons: Ifrit, Shiva, etc. His attack abilities are Poison Nails, Holy Mist, Meteorite, and Searing Light. Otherwise, he leans towards support abilities. As he has done so in the majority of his appearances. Funny how one of the more popular versions of Summoner is one of the standards people hold FFXIV's summoner to.

In any case summon magic in general has a traditional way of working wherein we summon the thing, it does the attack, and then leaves. If it works great as a pet that can hang around that's fantastic. Egis however were useless and their appearance has been a meme for the past 8 years. Why was Titan suddenly reduced to a chicken nugget when he is the God of Earth in some games? Why was poison magic dealing more damage than the actual summons, the point of the job?

We are not hurting in terms of offensive summon magic though everyone agrees that we would like to have more pets. They are probably coming in the future, now that the job has a clear and focused goal. Please look forward to it!