So, the summoner...

[PriyaJugulataris]

Okay, Evie was a special case and I'm glad they did because scythe evie is still the baddest bitch around.
I posted my vote for a change on the Leviathan thread so I'll just repost it here.
Consider the following:
Ifrit buffs party wide physical damage, Titan buffs party wide physical defense, Garuda buff party wide magical damage, Ramuh buff party wide magical defense, Leviathan buffs party wide heals, Shiva debuffs enemies. (These would be abilities, not innate traits)
These changes alone would make for Summoners to use more than one summon. If the summon's abilities aren't interconnected and on the same timers, on top of DoT's you'd be switching between summons in order to best benefit your party. Now of course this is just an idea, and would require a great deal of balancing so as to not to guarantee Summoners a spot in every party. But, with proper timing, this base idea would make the summoner have to switch between summons in order to best benefit their team. Shiva out before major moves to debuff the enemy, Titan/Ramuh out to help mitigate partywide AoE's. Leviathan out right after to help with heals. Based of your party, you'd have be making choices between Ifrit and Garuda for max damage. There's a lot of possibilities even within this simple idea.

[Tarukun]

I like the OP's idea for Enkindle. An alternative to a 20-second lockout would be to give enkindle a 10 second cast time which cannot be affected by Swiftcast. Or, create a requirement before using enkindle (99 stacking buffs from pet attacks or something).

I always thought summoner would be very interesting if, instead of a pet class, you would simply take complete control over the pet as if it were your character for a limited time with its own abilities (YOUR complete set of job abilities), and during that time your character would become controllable as if it were the pet. But, like others have said, it's probably too late to change now.

[Kyreanna]

I agree with the sentiment that summoners need to be worked on a little...but I don't think I'm in agreement with HOW.

First off, let me just say that I like the summoner job as it is.
Throughout the history of FF games, the summoner has always been an "in addition to" job. There might have been more, but the only characters I can recall at the time of this post that were dedicated Summoners were Rydia, Garnet, Eiko, and Yuna. Rydia was a black mage with the ability to summon, the other 3 were white mages with the ability to summon. This is the first game I've seen that a summoner job was a job in and of itself, with no influence from the other schools of magic, or wasn't taken over completely by the companion's action sets.

That being said, I would like to see some adjustments to how the summoner interacts with the summoned creature, and I have ideas that might help make Ifrit a viable companion again.

Almost every summoned creature has had an elemental affinity that influences its skill set, and also what it can and cannot be used effectively against. To bring that into the mechanics present in FFXIV, I would suggest adding an "Additional Effect: Elemental Damage" to the summoner's key DoTs based on which companion is out, in addition to implementing elemental strength/weakness components to monsters we battle against.

Also, I think it would be a good idea to adjust the pets themselves so that their potency is entirely dependent on how many DoTs the summoner has applied to the companion's immediate target, ranging from 0 to ??? potency, much like how Fester works.

[Darkstride]

Mobs and bosses will likely never have Elemental strengths/weaknesses because of the limited access to elements in general. If a mob is weak against Water...well guess what, only CNJ/WHM can do that. If you have an enemy resistant to Fire, you automatically lock out THM/BLM as being viable. There would have to be wider use of elements than just adding strengths and weaknesses.

And P.S. I hate that there is no Edit button on mobile and that quoting someone counts as part of your character limit. Ugh.

[PenutButter]

I find it very hard to take these threads seriously, almost of them is just ridiculous buffs to their class because of their "me, me, me" mentality.

Also, Ifrit-egi is more DPS than Garuda-egi in certain fights if you can position and manage him correctly. "Contagion" is not as great as people make it out to be, you get like 2.5 cast of ruin and that's pretty much it. Its great to use with bane in AoE situations but other than that, its just a minor convenience and minor DPS increase. Garuda's true advantage is that she is ranged and therefore much easier to handle.

Someone suggested using Contagion and than Swiftcasting to switch to Ifrit, then swifting Garuda back in once Contagion is up again but that is such a pain.

[Samsta]

I find it very hard to take these threads seriously, almost of them is just ridiculous buffs to their class because of their "me, me, me" mentality.

I already explained how the buff wouldn't be ridiculous, and "my" class? I dunno about that, I don't even main summoner.

Also, Ifrit-egi is more DPS than Garuda-egi in certain fights if you can position and manage him correctly. "Contagion" is not as great as people make it out to be, you get like 2.5 cast of ruin and that's pretty much it.

Ifrit-egi is never more dps than garuda, burning strike is buggy and even if it wouldn't be contagion plus the fact that mobs have higher physical than magical resistance would still make garuda a better dps, even the time that it takes for ifrit to get to melee range is lost dps as garuda can just start casting right away, there is a thread on this issue.

EDIT: I realised that my reasoning on contagion is a bit flawed, but nevertheless it is a great dps boost, especially when it adds up on longer fights, as you have to reapply your dots less often.

[Scyris]

I personally feel the dots need their potency lowered a tiny bit but also do some frontloaded damage. Most of the time, the mob is only half dead before i manage to cast my 3 dots, makes me feel really weak in comparason. I've had people ask me why my dps as my 37 smn is so low, then I have to explain to them its dot based with very little direct damage other than ruin or fester. I feel they need to remove the aerther flow cost from fester, and maybe up its cooldown to 15s. I mean when I hear Tri-disaster I kinda expect some sort of impressive nuke, not some 20 potency piece o'crap. Then again this game has alot of worthless skills in it that seem to be there for no reason other than devs got lazy. Bards have 3 aoe's with all about the same potency is a prime example. I don't care if it can sometimes make another aoe free. its a 15% chance which is really low. I barely ever see it proc. We don't need 3 skills that do the exact same thing.

[Nova_Dresden]

tri-disaster
I think everyone knows why this spell needs a change, it's just pretty much useless, it has cool animation and it's a job skill but it's just another spell that pretty much has no use. I don't think it's good to have very situational spells like this, sure it's good to have spells that are only usable in certain scenarios but I can't really think any use to this spell, bind is pretty crappy at the moment.

I don't PvP (because frankly I LOATHE PvP) but if the ability to mark targets is possible and debuff durations are the same all you need to do is to DoT up a melee then macro the bind1 marker to Tri-Disaster with a sound call and party message to not attack the marked target. Voila. A bound (for 20 seconds if durations are the same) melee still taking full damage from DoTs that don't break the bind effect. Forces healer to either heal them through it while you try to kill them or they try to spam esuna/leeches to remove all DoTs and break the bind.

Ifrit-egi should change to Debuffer, no point for Summoner to have 2 DPS because Garuda will be always most powerful pet Summoner can have (unless Leviathan in future patch prove more useful than Garuda)

Make it able to cast debuffs reduced target P.def and M.def OR P.atk and M.atk in cost of itself low and slow atk so its something usefulness on hard content like Coils of Bahamut

Don't quite think that would work. All "debuffs" in this game like slow, stun, and blind and the like have diminishing returns and eventually hit a point of full resist if overused in a fight (get stun-happy people on Ifrit fights and watch the fun happen when Eruption can't be stunned.) I don't think "debuff class" is even viable in this game. I think Ifrit needs some retools and maybe a faster attack speed.

Summoner (and White Mage, more appropriately) now have access to Blizzard II. It's silly to have two moves that serve mostly the same purpose, especially considering one is a (epically named) job skill.

Blizzard II - 0y range, 5y radius, 8s Bind
Tri-Disaster - 25y range, 20s Bind
They're not really that interchangeable.

[AmyNeudaiz]

Do you really not see the issue with access to a mini limit break every 5 minutes...? Burst damage of 1800 is effing ridiculous you can 1 shot conflag in Twintania almost with that.....

[Samsta]

Do you really not see the issue with access to a mini limit break every 5 minutes...? Burst damage of 1800 is effing ridiculous you can 1 shot conflag in Twintania almost with that.....

Sure, my idea is debatable, what I would focus on is the overall damage boost it gives, which wouldn't be op at all on 5 min cd, if caster uses his lb1 on bosses is it a game breaking damage? No it is not, sure it is a nice damage and you can see bosses health bar dropping a little, but it is nothing amazing, damage like that can already be unleashed pretty fast by saving all your buffs on a certain occasion.

Example: let's say you want to do titan HM with 4 summoners because of the newly designed enkindle, they all save it for heart phase, the total damage from all the enkindles would be 6000 potency, which is a little more than melee lb2 (5000). Now think about how much the heart's health bar moves when melee uses lb2 on it. You still have plenty of damage to deal after that, and now all the summoners deal very little dps for the next 30 secs as they don't have their pets out, it would essentally be the same as saving your normal buffs/aetheflows on that occassion, nothing game breaking but very cool and still extremely helpful dps boost. It would make summoners feel like they are actually summoners. of course they could all save it for the end of the heart phase, and it would basically act as an extra melee lb2, which is extremely helpful, but that would make phase 5 long and summoning the pet would be pretty irritating.