Quote Originally Posted by Ririta View Post
Between 10 job exclusive spells (5 from ARR and 5 from HW), they could've added more summons, but at this point I'll accept even being separated from scholar if it meansI'll finally get my Leviathan.
As said like the quote I quoted, I am positive it has something to do with it. They feel restricted and it is like some wall that is sitting there to give it a good work around to let us be true summoners. They seem to lack creativity to work around the sharing balance issues or simply really considering spiliting them. regardless I still find it funny how FFXI stayed more true the nature and not a DoT mage.

Quote Originally Posted by ElHeggunte View Post
Unless something changed drastically since I quit halfway through WotG, I don't think XI's SMN would be very well received here. XI's SMN was treated as a glorified healer that only brought out Avatars just long enough to cast a Pact before dismissing them again. Though now that I think about it, that's how the Summoner is typically portrayed throughout most of its different iterations in other Final Fantasy games: occasionally bringing out a summon for a big, expensive spell (that often times had RNG elements if you weren't using it with specific items or abilities) and otherwise they spent the rest of their time acting as support.
Early on that happened because they had no DPS, it is worse then a MCH DPSing only in wildfire but that be a good idea how it was. You gave mediocre burst damage every literal minute that could be mimicked by one spell from a BLM. So to give summoners a use in a party vs none at all, they could do the weak burst damage then heal as they wait for something to do.

In FFXIV, 1.0 ideas a summoner could do that only instead of having the filler be healing, it could been magic DPS from THM and its own. This was helped by the fact personal stat effected damage where for SMN in FFXI it did not for a long time till they gave -BP gear and have summoning skill effect damage. It changed a lot but there was still too much downtime making it a heal assist during downtimes.