I'll have to preface that I really like Solar Bahamut, then again I like dragons, so I might be biased.

But hey, Rica's at it with the same take as pre every expansion when the whining arises!

People really needed to accept that FF XIV Summoner would never be the same as FF XI Summoner or summoners from other main titles with dozens of summons years ago. Job Design is tightly knit to Lore in this game, and those people actually reading Job Quests know that in the world of FF XIV, the amount of primal aether a summoner can bind is limited. Or, in our case, 3 Egis. They brought the Trance Phases to play around the limit a little bit, but as had been confirmed in Lore interviews later, we can summon Phoenix and Bahamut because their aether completely drenches Eorzea and influenced the WoL by slowly osmosing into them before we technically got our first Egi - hence why the limit was reached after 3 Egis.

So, let's take another look at the Lore - we need to subdue a Primal/absorb the aether to actually be able to summon it. Which means that every primal hidden away in optional content is off the table - Odin and Alex as some people want, for example. Also, by having Bahamut's aether already, I suppose changing it with the power of Dynamis is possible, especially since summons are influenced by the summoner and their beliefs.

Could they just retcon the Lore and rewrite the Job Quests? Possibly. But after another 2 years, it's time to face the reality that this is what they want Summoner to be in the context of FF XIV, and it had been hinted at quite often. We can't just expect stuff from the other games to hold true here, or else we would have DPS DRK and Tank SAM.


Also, calling that new thing a reskin... well, it's another Bahamut, but reskinned model? The skeleton, maybe, and FF XIV does that a lot.

I do really lament not getting Leviathan and Shiva, as they're among my favourites, but it is what it is. (And I miss Heavensward SMN and my DoTs, but that dream is dreamed.)