Why are SMNs not getting new Egi?

[Shouko]

Get a new friend, that one is sharing wrong knowledge lol

Wasn't a friend, just a mentor when I got back into the game that I had talked to, not even on the same server as the guy anymore so it's not a big deal.

[Silver-Strider]

All the current pets have the same criteria
1 CC skill
1 AoE skill (2 if you include Enkindle)
1 Buff skill
The CC skill is often irrelevant as it's used primarily as an extra attack that's kept on CD when applicable for extra damage from the pet. Any new egi could have knockbacks, stuns, silence, sleep, etc effects and it would be no different, so long as it did damage. The AoE skill would also be largely inconsequential as to what it is.

The problem lies more with the Buff skill. For the longest time, Garuda was the only pet used because Contagion, its buff skills, was more powerful than anything Ifrit could ever hope to match and only with SB did this change by making Contagion a nice skill but not the "end all, be all" skill it once was. Now, picture this issue but with 6 egis instead of the 2 currently available (Titan isn't viable as far as DPS is concerned). How do you make all these pets viable without tilting the balance in favor of 1 over the others? If any one of those pet's abilities is underwhelming, it will instantly be made obsolete by the community and never seen again, outside the oddball player that does it for the challenge or cause the pet looks cool, etc. that it's probably just easier (not to mention cheaper) to just stay as it is.

[dinnertime]

How do you make all these pets viable without tilting the balance in favor of 1 over the others? If any one of those pet's abilities is underwhelming, it will instantly be made obsolete by the community and never seen again, outside the oddball player that does it for the challenge or cause the pet looks cool, etc. that it's probably just easier (not to mention cheaper) to just stay as it is.

That's why I want to see an overhaul to SMN's pet/Summoning system. Something like Bard songs, they are temporary and have long cooldowns so you rotate through 3 of them. At least the first one does exist in the form of Demi-Bahamut.

[Draxxion]

We have ranged dps and melee dps already so what more do we need? Anything more will end up ignored like the titan egi and would give a false sense of varity as well as lead to balancing issues. In the end everyone would still use the egi that gives the biggest dps.

Egi glamours though it comes down to what they have time to work on. Considering a new egi appearance would only really benefit the summoner in question who uses said glamour then it is easy to see it is not a priority. You can argue then why did music playing come out for bard? That actually is something everyone can enjoy even if they don't do it themselves. You can listen to the music a bard plays. Seeing a new egi glamour doesn't give you the same satisfaction.

[Dyvid]

Snip

The reason they said back in 2015 on why they couldn't add new summons was because they couldn't figure out how to add new one and make them relevant. Through out FFXIV Garuda was the end all Egi because of her old ability to extend DoTs. SE finally address this problem in 4.0 and we now have two useful pets. Also a lot of people wanted to use carbuncle again, mainly because I think everyone liked the design, thus Egi Glamour was born and sadly seemed to die soon after launch.

The best thing we can do at this point is push SE on adding new Egi's to the Egi Glamour system. I suggest SE divide the Egi's Glamour system up into two caterogies; Melee and Ranged. In this way the community doesn't have to guess if you are using Summon I or Summon III and the dev don't have to try and make each Egi into a once style fits all approach. Starting now Titan and Ifrit would be melee and Garuda would be Ranged; Carby is what it is and shouldn't be changes.

Melee:
Leviathan
Ravana
Sephirot
Susano
Zurvan

Ranged:
Shiva
Ramuh
Bismarck
Sophia
Lakshmi

[MercuryAcetylene]

that all seems fine and dandy... but when is Selene getting an upgrade?

wrong thread... I know.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

snip

Good suggestion, but to keep the roots of Summoner true to the ARR style for time's being, I suggest the following glamour options:

Melee - Ifrit <--> Leviathan
Ranged - Garuda <--> Ramuh
Tank - Titan <--> Shiva (in sword + shield mode)

Regarding the "lack" of demi-primals, you need to remember two things:
1.) Even the model of Bahamut took strains to create for optimization. Demi-Bahamut looks fairly different to the real one.
2.) Demi-summons will most likely be based on "Prime" primals, such as Bahamut Prime and Alexander Prime. That said, I can see Alexander Prime being a thing, even if only as glamour to Bahamut.

[Dyvid]

Good suggestion, but to keep the roots of Summoner true to the ARR style for time's being, I suggest the following glamour options:

Melee - Ifrit <--> Leviathan
Ranged - Garuda <--> Ramuh
Tank - Titan <--> Shiva (in sword + shield mode)

Regarding the "lack" of demi-primals, you need to remember two things:
1.) Even the model of Bahamut took strains to create for optimization. Demi-Bahamut looks fairly different to the real one.
2.) Demi-summons will most likely be based on "Prime" primals, such as Bahamut Prime and Alexander Prime. That said, I can see Alexander Prime being a thing, even if only as glamour to Bahamut.

The issue with that and why I suggest to glamour just attacker and caster is because Summon II is rarely used by Summoner; restricted to mainly solo content or open world events that doesn't have a tank. Also if you look at both Ifrit and Titan Egi, they have very similar action animation to the point that you coult glamour Titan to Summon III today and the devs would only need to remove the AoE ground effect. Also Sephirot Egi is already in the game.

[Desril]

No SMN casts physic either, but we still have it. As for the buff skill, there are ways to make it balanced with the others, and right now no one uses anything but sicfrit anyway. Yes, having 6 summons would be a pain to balance, and most likely every patch that rebalanced them would result in 1 or 2 that were going to be used over the others. And then the next patch would see which ones are in the spotlight change. That's better than 4 years of Garuda, and then a total swap to Ifrit.

Additionally, as you say, the pet with the highest DPS will be used. So when the people who run the numbers find out how much stronger one pet is than the others, you have numbers for how much the other pets need buffed to stay competitive.

As for buff skills, there are plenty of status effects that aren't being used much, particularly by SMNs. Ramuh might, for example, have lower DPS than Garuda but be able to apply a magic vulnerability debuff to boost raidwide damage. Obviously the number would need to be carefully watched so it didn't become too powerful, but that's what patches are for.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Incorporating the remaining ARR primals as Egi's would be cool if they can differ between at least Garuda and Ifrit because there's probably no reason to have multiple Tank egi's such as adding debuffs like others have said. Not seeing a reason to include every primal ever as while Summoner has historically been about summoning some big thing who wants to try and work out which egi is good for a given situation with a billion egi's and that's not even getting into the development stuff?

Also getting a new summon ability every other level doesn't leave much room for non-summon abilities unless XIV makes like XV and goes beyond a level cap of 99 and even then at ten levels per expansion it would be messy.

A Phoenix Egi which already exists in-game (never seen it outside of its name on the enemy list) would be cool. Lower damage than Garuda-egi, but perhaps and maybe tied to a trait, a sort of auto-life ability for the summoner so if they die, the egi may die too and revive the summoner and put that summon ability on a cooldown or something to prevent a theoretically immortal summoner and keep it as a sort of oh shit button.