Summoner Class needs a serious revamp

[BoboTheHobo]

I haven't been playing smn for very long but I would love to see a pet lb of some sort.

[Mimilu]

Summoner's fine, it's the egis/pets that are lackluster. At the end-game, you use Garuda most of the time, and she's pretty much just walking turrets that you occasionally use to blast Contagion at things. Ifrit suffers from being a melee that you have to constantly place in order to dodge attacks, having a spike-damaging move when he never get's aggroed, and has a stun-fetish that is very detrimental to your tanks. And poor Titan rarely sees any play at end-game because end-game is a team sport.
I mean, if SE got rid of the egis and gave us Contagion, Summoner's gameplay wouldn't change at all, which is kind of bad, considering the "summons" are suppose to be the selling point of the class.
They don't need to be primals or anything, just make them more then just another one of our DoT, maybe give them some utility or better offensive attacks that we can throw into our rotations.

[FrozenSoupZOMG]

Actually i always wondered this. Why didn't Summoners have their own limit break like summon the full fledge form of what ever egi your using and then do their special attack like Hellfire for Ifrit. That would have been awesome.

[Lazypete]

IMHO I came to FF with the goal of having a summoner, after leveling to around 15 I was depressed and changed to BLM (and so happy to have done it) once my BLM was 50 I gave the summoner/scholar a try and ended up leveling the class with the scholar which I found more fun to play and more rewarding (experience wise, not xp, but player experience)

In the end the summoner class should have been a corner stone of the franchise, just as the BLM and the DRG are. But the mecanic missed it all.
We need BIG ASS MUTH%^&( Summons that are cool... no some minion that doesn't impress anyone.

[Akiza]

The main issue with the job is that it is not a Summoner it's a Warlock dressed as a Summoner. They need to have the pets take center stage and the dots take a back seat for Summoner's. They need to add more skills that buff the pet. Also they need to add a skill that buffs the pet so it take on the form of their parent primal for 30s draining all the Summoner's MP and 3 aether flow stacks with a instant recast time.

[Amarathval]

The main issue I have with Summoner is the fact that the Ifrit-Egi is worthless, Garuda does the same thing as Ifrit but is ranged, has contagion, and doesn't stun. If your soloing and worried about taking damage you will use the Titan-egi who also has a stun. Ifrit also has his Thorns/Damage reflection ability that never does anything because he never has threat.

Honestly I'd be happy if they would just re-work the Ifrit-egi, make each egi have a specific role like...
Garuda can be the "Ranged single target dps Egi" which it pretty much is.
Titan can be the "Tank egi" which it is.

Ifrit can be the "AoE Egi" change his stun attack to not stun but and AoE DoT instead, change his worthless thorns shield into another AoE/Gap closer(Ifrit charge anybody?) maybe even make his basic attack cleave? more or less just have Ifrit-egi be a giant AoE damage ball, no CC, no worthless buffs. this would at least give him some situations were he is useful.

[Calyanare]

The main issue I have with Summoner is the fact that the Ifrit-Egi is worthless

Ifrit is FAR from worthless, he just requires more micromanagement than Garuda. I actually prefer Ifrit in T4 (when I get to DPS; I'm normally the resident SCH) since most things die so fast in there that Contagion isn't super useful, and Ifrit has a nice AoE attack (that I've macroed to Bane). I actually come close to matching our BLM's damage, and my SMN's ilevel is slightly lower.

[Akiza]

1st. They should redesign the Egis so they look like smaller scale versions of their parent primal instead of giant sprites because as of now Carbuncle and Topaz are more detailed than the Egis.
2nd. Add more pet buffs and add a buff so the Egis become their parent Primals for 30s.
3rd Add more pet abilities
A. Ifrits Egi remove radiant shield and add Incinerate. Add radiant plumes, eruption and a passive ability burning dots
B. Titan Egi add weight of the land, Bombs, goal, geocrush and passive ability Stone skin on Summoner
C. Garuda Egi add summon tornados, down bursts , wind gust and passive ability which increases skill speed and movement.

[Gormogon]

Since Summoners aren't gonna change I don't see why it's so hard to implement some sort of system where the limit break gauge can at least do Summoners justice in terms of visuals by allowing the job to summon the full form of said primals for the level 3 limit breaks. Those animations for Garuda, Ifrit, Titan, and Odin already exist. Ramuh is already in and we'll be getting more summons later such Leviathan in 2.2. We can have level 1 and 2 limit breaks stem from the lower level summons such as Demon Wall, Diabolos, Moogle King, Siren, and maybe Doomtrain and Alexander if they are gonna be introduced soon.

There really needs something that give the iconic summoner something to stand out and with the whole "strategy" being the lore behind Summoner at least having the limit break customizable to meet that situational need I'd say it would be a big bonus.

While it's a lot of summons at least 1-2 can be more unique to fit that situational stratagem except for the level 3 limit breaks where they will focus more on doing that big AoE damage at the expense of having that nice visual animation. Unless however there's a Primal that ends up having that single target animation that can stand out. From there it's just getting the static to agree weather or not the summoner should limit break over the Blm/Dps.

[zeez]

They combined red mage and summoner from FF11. Just like 90% of this game is just a tweaked reworded version of FF11. They even have 3 starting cities similar races, this game almost feels like its FF11 but enough random name changes main story and quest differences to make it new. It would have been a much better design to make a summoner about the pet. Give summoner minor dot power and strong healing and add the red mage class next to the blm under THM where it belongs.