What I envisioned for Summoner

[Blackcanary]

Ok, quick suggestion that might appease those who say that Primals would be too big (even though they can be scaled down like in FFXI) and Yoshi-P who says that Avatars didn't look powerful in FFXI because if there were multiple Summoners in the same area with the same avatar out then they didn't look very impressive (though I fail to see how making Egis look like candy and corn fixes this) and doesn't require a huge rework of the job.

How about when a Summoner uses Enkindle (which is on a 300 second timer) then the Egi temporarily takes on the appearance of a shrines down primal? Still not quite what we want in terms of gameplay style but it's a start and wouldn't take that much work and Enkindle would feel more powerful, like how the signature move should be.

That's a really good idea for that time limit they look like there parent just not as big as there parent.

[Blackcanary]

If you want a "Final Fantasy" summoner without Dots then you'll be casting for a minute to do an LB3 level of damage when the primal comes out and shits on everything. And then do it again, and again every minute since thats all they did in FF3-9.
If you want X/XI/XII summoning then you might as well get rid of the player avatar.
If you want OMGBIGEPIC shit following you around make a Roe on another account and set it to follow.

Ok I'm guessing you never played 11 Your summon stayed out and followed you depending on how much MP you had since keeping it out would drain your MP.

[Blackcanary]

Or you can just be a little smart and guess that the dev won't overhaul it ? They can create a new class/job to be more like the summoner of FFXI or whatever but they will never change the Summoner. At least not in the near future. You can't overhaul and totally change a job mechanic just like that. Not when a lot of people like it.

Common sense, use it.

But they can make little changes here and there so it isn't a warlock dressed up in Summoner gear. And make it mainly a PET class with Dots. And fix what need to be fixed. And i think those so called people that you state are just dealing with it and don't careless if it changed or not. Also if the devs wanted to do a complete over haul they can Summoner was never in the beta. And until the first exp pack comes out FFXIV ARR is still in a BETA form since SE keep changing different things even War i think it was had an update to fixes something.

[Edellis]

The most engaging summoner in any Final Fantasy game was most definitely Yuna from FFX because you had direct control of the monster.

FFXII Espers are somewhat like these Egi primals. But the reason they aren't full-fledged is because the Primals in this game are actually story elements, and summoners aren't rare, unlike in say FF9 where Bahamut can kill 3 main characters but still be summoned by Garnet because she's the only one who's supposed to be able to do it.


I kind of want endgame summoners to be able to summon the legit, full-fledged forms of the Primals, but it probably won't happen anytime soon. I'd wager something like that would require a limit break gauge, or a sacrifice from your party members to be able to do it.

[Kyreanna]

Maybe the closest comparison in your mind is WoW's Warlock. But consider this.

In the FF universe, there are 6 Properties of Magic (that I can think of at this posting). The categories into which every spell fits is "Elemental vs. Unaspected", and within that we have Destructive, Restorative, Debilitative, and Enhancement. Every caster and summon monster has ever held true to this magical construct over the years.

In the case of FFXIV - Elemental Destructive Magic is covered primarily by BLM, and to a lesser extent WHM. Elemental Restorative Magic is a WHM's specialty. Unaspected Restorative Magic goes to SCH. Which leaves SMN with what? Alone, we are Unaspected Debilitative Magic (what FF13 referred to as Saboteur) with a minor in Unaspected Destructive. Our pet adds to this by giving us what should be Elemental Destructive/Debilitative, but the elemental part is as yet lacking in this game.

We are our own niche now. There is no need to overhaul the job just because it's unfamiliar. A few little tweaks to increase pet interaction and an elementals-based reason to get more of them and we should be fine.