Regarding summons in FFxiv

[Iagainsti]

It would be horrible for PvP, especially with all the SMNs running around now(Dam, that burst is sweet). Imagine SMN avatars large enough for players to "hide in" causing you to target the egi itself, waste your burst, meanwhile they unload on you? No thank you. Also, they aren't the Primals but aether manipulated to act as a familiar with the inherent abilities of the primal, so I think their look is spot on for what they're suppose to be; similar in shape but corporeal as to accentuate the fluidity that the aether is.

[Blueyes]

It is the way it is because lore.

Really lore can be used to explain anything. For example, it could said that "a Summoner strives to harness the power of a primal in such a way that does not harm the land, but doing so takes a tole on their own lifeforce." Hence a larger avatar could be called forth, but invokes a perpetual mana cost much like in FFXI, or like Darkside for Dark Knight.

I won't say that Summoner is poorly designed. It is one of my favorites, but it's combat style feels more like how I imagine a Necromancer would function. (Dealing damage through poisons while commanding a weak undead minion.) In my opinion I believe Summoner could have been made into something that truly made it feel like a Summoner. For example, I believe there is room for more avatar types than the three we have been presented. You can have one for sustained damage, burst damage, and area damage. Each one of those would have situational advantages, but going beyond that, we have one that is a tank, but it wouldn't be worthless to have one with healing capabilities as they would be useful for solo situations in which we know Titan won't be able to hold aggro. There could even be one with support capabilities that would be called forth when necessary, much like when a Bard sings Paeon or Ballad, then the Summoner would switch back to a damage focused avatar. Those are six potential types that could be used and those could be represented by the core six Primals. If we were to take the concept of perpetual cost and run with it even Carbuncle could still have use having no or little cost. When resources are low you would switch to Carbuncle until you regain a sufficient amount of MP, at which point you can call forth one of the high cost/high damage avatars that's appropriate for the situation at hand. After a period of glory you will be forced to switch back to Carbuncle and the cycle would repeat. I imagine it being more similar to the way Dark Knight works as opposed to Black Mage where you have more freedom to choose how and when you expend your resources.

If I were to be honest with myself, I do wish Summoner was introduced to us differently from what we received, however I don't think a major overhaul would be appropriate at this point in time. I know there are players waiting for a "real" pet job to be added to the game and I can imagine Beastmaster being the one most likely to deliver, but deep down I know that I feel like I'm still waiting for a real Summoner job to be added to the game. My hope would be that SE is open to the idea of introducing a second job with the capability of summoning in the form of the Evoker job. The possibility of that happening would be years away with so many jobs already on the priority list, but it's still what I hope to see someday.

To talk on point about the size of the egis, where I stand is that their current size (and design in general) is disappointing, but something on the scale of FFXI would be too much. The ones in FFXI are pretty epic by comparison and I know we all want to feel that way, but I understand their reasoning for keeping their size small which was a concern about screen clutter. I feel like there is room for a happy medium with a size around that of a small Au Ra, perhaps. I would also really appreciate it if the egis more closely resembled their Primal counterpart. I get how artist style is subjective and that there are people who like the way they look, but I'm with the crowd that wishes they were more impressive.

[wertykelpie]

. I get how artist style is subjective and that there are people who like the way they look, but I'm with the crowd that wishes they were more impressive.

your ideas are awesome i hope devs hear you i would love that summoner would be just as you describe it to be. i bet alot of people would love it too

[karateorangutang]

To talk on point about the size of the egis, where I stand is that their current size (and design in general) is disappointing, but something on the scale of FFXI would be too much. The ones in FFXI are pretty epic by comparison and I know we all want to feel that way, but I understand their reasoning for keeping their size small which was a concern about screen clutter. I feel like there is room for a happy medium with a size around that of a small Au Ra, perhaps. I would also really appreciate it if the egis more closely resembled their Primal counterpart. I get how artist style is subjective and that there are people who like the way they look, but I'm with the crowd that wishes they were more impressive.

It would really depend on the content. For stuff like 4 man and 8 mans then I could totally get behind a slightly bigger egi. Imagine if you had 12 SMN's though in something like crystal tower. That could be a bad sitation.

[Tilgung]

Real Pet Job

Unfortunately I don't see any way at all this could be implemented. The very nature of how the fights in this game are designed are very anti pet, much less a very important, very powerful pet.

And such a pet would need to be reasonably frail for balance sake. Because let's be honest, a pet outputting near SMN tier damage with high durability is absolutely insane. It'll be 2.0 BRD all over again.

[Leonus]

hi there i want to say to yoshi that please review summons in ffxiv and watch closely those in FFXI if a older game made it right why this newer version cannot?
i can only think disreguard for the job itself, the egis dont look like summons , make it a little bigger and revamp their look because garuda looks like flying bananas and titan a bunch of limons and dont want to call fruits to my aid we want real summons, i understand the lore doenst permit those big ones of the fights a lesser version of those of the fights, same design, would be ...

I'd rather have more enjoyable content than just smns getting bigger summons.
The moment they get in the way of me being able to see what feel I need to see on my screen, is the moment I would ask for the egi look back.

[Spellbinder]

I'm just going to put this here, since people don't use the search function.

(Un)Official Summoner Feedback Thread [3.0 Edition]

I would greatly appreciate it if people kept things civil, and in a single thread.

[randysquirrel]

I wouldn't want a huge summon on the field the whole time, and I don't just mean because of the obvious annoyance it would be visually. imo, the fun of summons were they were something flashy that could be used every so often, not all the time. Maybe the egis could use some re-work, but I'd like to see maybe just enkindle be changed so instead it called forth the full summon (not egi) to appear, do his move, then fk off again

[BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY]

i don't know... and have always thought summoning in FFXI was outright absurd. the entire player-base shouldn't be able to summon the same primal. an Egi of the primal makes TONS more sense.

all-in-all, i don't think our Egi's need any visual revamp. i would much rather see an improved AI and a larger variety of Egi's to summon. or maybe some unique progression/upgrade system. maybe through upgrades we can have the Egi take on more of a likeness from the original primal.

[Shurrikhan]

I honestly like how they look currently just fine, partly because they made it quite clear that we've no where near the power to summon even a miniature primal, only a small manifestation of aether aspected similarly to one.

What I do mind is that their controls/response times are clunky and all three pets combined still provide little added dps, options, or complexity (about as much as Blank/Legsweep, a single trait, and auto-attacks would for another job). Or, to put it another way, I dislike that they're not remotely dynamic. I'd really like to be able to spend some of my Aetherflow stacks on the pet (e.g. buffing the pet and/or performing egi-specific strong attack/effect) or from it (each Egi granting a unique caster buff, for instance), with animations befitting them. As far as how that would fit the egi models themselves, perhaps a bit more detail at the start, and then more features added as you spend Aether on them, while remaining equally abstract in appearance, rather than being quite in the likeness of their source primal.

If someone had told me prior to info about Bahamut Trance that we were getting an Aethertrail system, where Aetherflow stack expenditures would leave behind a further, associated stack, I would have thought that this would pair especially well with spending aether stacks on pets, since then the -trail stacks then be elementally-based, allowing for unique mixing and matching of certain elemental buffs, and back then we were under the assumption that we'd be getting access to all six elements' egis.