The problem with Summoners

[Akiza]

The Arcanist and Summoner are disconnected from each other and Summoner's extension from Arcanist seems forced. The Summoner harnesses Energy of the Primal's and reshape it into a biddable Avatar which translates to Egi in Allagan. There is no reason why Summoner's don't have Elemental spells since they can channel the Energy of the Primals. I'm pretty sure judging by the story Summoner will get the ability to reshape the Egi into the Primals just like White Mage will get Holyra and Black Mage will get Flare Star.

[SoloWingMetatron]

The lore of ARR states the Primals are the physical manifestations of elemental Aether (Ifrit = Fire Aether, Titan = Earth Aether, and so on) and the lore of the Summoner is that they can channel a portion of the Primals Aether to call forth the Egi.

So it really makes no sense where all these current abilities (Bio, Miasma) fall in place in terms of lore. These abilities are a contradiction to the Summoners discipline of channeling elemental Aether. It would make more sense to give the Summoner a series of elemental abilities that are dictated by which Egi is in play at any given time. So the Summoner essentially draws their personal abilities from the Egi in play. So if Ifrit is in play the Summoner would gain Fire based abilities, Titan earth based abilities, and Garuda wind based abilities. They could still be D.O.T based attacks of course just with that elemental overlay in order to give the Egi more of a focus and for the lore of the job to match up with the actual game play.

[Sequora]

So it really makes no sense where all these current abilities (Bio, Miasma) fall in place in terms of lore. It would make more sense to give the Summoner a series of elemental abilities that are dictated by which Egi is in play at any given time. So the Summoner essentially draws their personal abilities from the Egi in play. So if Ifrit is in play the Summoner would gain Fire based abilities, Titan earth based abilities, and Garuda wind based abilities. They could still be D.O.T based attacks of course just with that elemental overlay in order to give the Egi more of a focus and for the lore of the job to match up with the actual game play.

I've been saying this since ARR was released lol. I don't think the devs really care enough to change it though.

[SoloWingMetatron]

I've been saying this since ARR was released lol. I don't think the devs really care enough to change it though.

Yeah it's almost as if due to the Summoner's iconic image of being an OP job of wonder they are purposefully holding themselves back from doing more with the job in fear of making it outshine the others. Which I think is a legitimate concern to have for an MMO. But at least in FF11 they addressed that by making it one of the hardest jobs to unlock (if not the hardest). However the job in ARR as it stands is essentially just a "trophy job" that is just there to look pretty and have no real substance. There also seems to be a large quantity of players asking for some kind of change to the job, so I think it is something the devs will have to address in some fashion at some point.