What I envisioned for Summoner

[Enkidoh]

Summoner to me is not a pet class, it is a class that when needed can call forth beings of immense power to aid them for a duration and then be removed from the field. Examples being Final Fantasy 7 and 8. ( yeah they never had specific roles in those games but it worked brilliantly. Even 10 was pretty good building up to the Aeons final ability ).

Unfortunately, since FFX it indeed has been a pet class - having said that, pre FFX summoning was little more than a flashier magic spell with a nice graphic/animation. That style of spell worked well for the older games which had strict turn-based combat, but in more modern action orientated titles, that seems decidedly old-fashioned, especially as battle is usually far more feverish than it once was, thus summons remaining on the battlefield.

And the kicker is the player would never be able to call forth 'beings of immense power' as you termed them, as how the game's lore has been written, just does not allow that. Primals require enormous amounts of aether to summon normally, and require multiple summoners summoning at once - the actual player SMN Job is simply a short-cut that is summoning a slither of a Primal's essence that assumes a rough imitation of the Primal.

Leave the pet classes to new jobs such as the Ranger if it ever gets released or a wyvern for the dragoon.

DRG isn't getting a wyvern in XIV - again the game's lore wouldn't allow that even if it was considered. And RNG is traditionally just a glorified ARC with extra sniping abilities. I don't know where you got the idea they're a pet Job.

The Summons themselves must be attained like they have been so far, with quests that make them feel like it was a hard slog but also very very rewarding. I would also like the amount of summons to be increased and for each Summon called forth to have a specific unique selling point.

Although it's obvious the player will be getting more summons in the future, it's firstly dependent on SMN's abilities altering those of it's base class (ACN) - apparently this is half the reason why Ramuh and Leviathan aren't being given 'egi' forms for SMN yet - because Jobs only have five Job abilities, and ACN only has two for summoning, with the third given by SMN, they would have to spend a lot of time altering and re-balancing SMN's ability structure in order to accommodate extra egis. So it's more likely you won't see extra summons til at least when the level cap is raised (sometime next year I imagine).

Ifrit: Summon forth The Lord of the inferno - Deals massive single target Dps with Hellfire.

Titan: Summon forth The Lord of the Crag - Creates an impenetrable Rock Skin around the tank giving invulnerability for unspecified amount of time, whilst dealing small aoe damage when he was summoned via his Earthquake when he lands or erupts on the battlefield.

Leviathan: Summon forth The Lord of the Whorl - using the tumultuous waves of the ocean, Leviathan creates a Tsunami which deals massive AOE damage and causes an unspecified Debuff to all those caught in it's path.

I could go on and suggest plenty of Summons and what there specific utility/damage could be to fulfill different roles and situations as the potential is Huge!.

The SMN's Primal-egis already do this with the level 50 SMN Job ability 'Enkindle' - makes the egi use their parent Primal's 'signature' spell/move. And because that ability can only be used occasionally it keeps the spells balanced. This is what you're not understanding - single player FF titles are different from an MMO in that the developers can get away with having incredibly powerful spells and abilities, but in an MMO, classes and Jobs have to be properly balanced so as not to break the game by giving one Job or spell more potency over an other, an important part of ARR's whole design.

Now your probably thinking what do we do as summoners when we dont have our primals with us?. Well like I said earlier we would be building up our focus to unleash another primal ( time it takes unspecified ) with our damage capabilities. Now seeing as we will be partly up close and personal a choice of weapon will be needed and a few come to mind.

I suggest a staff/kendo style weapon, or if going all out a greatsword. Running into battle with a summon at your back with a greatsword....the imagery to me is great but I am sure there are other weapons you guys could come up with which fits better to summoner lore /FF!!.

In the end this is just what I have in my head, it's what I feel the summoner should have been. Instead we have a summoner with sprites and a dot mechanic. I'm sure that's not what everyone had in mind when they released the info about summoner coming to FF14.

That's just not possible I'm afraid, given a Job uses it's base class's weapon, and due to the Armoury System used in XIV, each class is identified with only one weapon type - SMN's weapon type is grimoire. Wooden staves are the weapon type for CNJ/WHM and metal rods are THM/BLM I'm sorry to say. It's a restrictive system to be sure, but that's ARR's Legacy which players actually voted to keep - one of the first things Yoshi-P asked the Community when he took over as Producer and Director was did players want the Armoury System scrapped in favour of a FFIII/V/XI/Tactics style Job system, or to keep the Armoury System with it's classes identified by a weapon type and just add Jobs as an extension of that. Players voted for the later. So yeah, that's democracy for you.