Summoner Redesign 2.0 Shadowbringers Edition

[Anvaire]

The summoner questline makes only sense until you have collected the first three primals, from then on it felt completely rushed to go directly next to Bahamut,

We don't get Ramuh, leviathan et al because we are unable to absorb more than 3 base types of Aether. We have Bahamut because his aether was infused into everything and we have attuned to it. As Bahamut and Phoenix aether was dispersed at the same time during the calamity (Bahamut's on his death, Phoenix to restore Eorzea) we also phoenix's aether. Though it is not said, directly this is the conclusion I came to (in regards to phoenix)

Trances were a way to circumvent the inability to internalise more than 3 types of aether. The lore book 1 states

"Dreadwyrm Trance
Certain egi require an impossible quantity of life force to manifest as a separate entity. This technique was devised to circumvent such mortal limitations, allowing the summoner to harness the power of the elder primal Bahamut by infusing his own being with the essence of the mighty Dreadwrym."

While egi's are stated as
"EGI is the name given to conjured avatars of the summoner. Only a practitioner whose aether has been stained by the essence of a primal can thenceforth shape their own energies into a willful embodiment of the original entity's dominant aspect."

Terraflare (LB3) is explained as

"Terraflare: an offensive magick that echoes the ruinous blasts of light unleashed by the Elder Primal Bahamut. All those who Bathed in the dreadwrm's scattered aether during the Seventh Umbral Calamity possess the latent potential to master this mighty summoner spell."

All of these go to explain why we gain the skills in the order that we do. The reason, I think, we cannot summon Demi-Alexander is that we never actually defeated it fully. There was no implosion of aether and therefore nothing we could trance to achieve the required aether to create a demi primal. Alexander lost to us, but he was a projection. It then sealed itself off outside of time thus meaning there is no aether to draw upon. At least that is my take on it.

All in all, the lore around the job makes sense. The biggest conflict seems to be in the ideology of "what is a Summoner?" Traditionally it would summon sentient beings to do its bidding. In XIV we summon a shade with the essence of the being, it can look the same and possess similar ability but ultimately it is a simulation and as it is a creation using the aether of the summoner, it can never truly be as powerful as the original. Demi Bahamut and Phoenix, work slightly different as it is the channelling of the aether around them to achieve the trance and then the summon. (Not sure how this works on the first though - Osmosis I guess?)

Overall I am not saying your vision for summoner wouldn't work, but I think it would break the lore of the job. Summoner currently has its problems and the root is in too many systems that on their own are fine generally, but when brought together they make an incredibly clunky and busy job. My own thought on resolving this isn't a complete overhaul, but rather the streamline or removal of one or two of these systems and the optimisation of the others to make it flow better. Where I to choose, it would be dots that went or were adjusted and perhaps aetherflow/energy drain - though I do like this system. My reasons for this choice is that we have moved so far from arcanists. Dots don't tie into our kit much, they are just there. I think the change with ruin was an attempt to bring cohesion but it ultimately failed. Not because the idea was bad but because it was another system on top of a large load of systems with too many 30 0r 60 sec cooldowns. Taking them away would ease some of the clunkiness, but also alleviate the busy feel of the job while retaining a lot of its core functionality. There are of course other ways to achieve this. But I think this would be the simplest way. Also if hey rolled the damage from dots into Bahamut/ phoenix / deathflare I think it would make those segments feel much more rewarding, at least in theory.

[Kaiserdrache]

Yes, my concept would change the lore of the summoner, it would mean that it story quests would need to be adapted to match again in returnthe skills that you learn.
We have with Machinist and other classes that lost with 5.0 alot of skills already some cases, where it is practically needed, because of story and skills not matching together anymore always.

Lore needs to be changed and rewritten, if neccessary to fix such substancial errors and if you want to make fundamental gameplay changes to bring conceptionally a class back onto the right path, so that playing it makes more fun, fits in theme better, than before and so on, just like how SE exactly did that with the Machinist.
There they also made no stop in front of any Machinist lore that was eventually linked to everthing they removed and changec on the class, to make it more fun to play, they just did it, ignoring the fact that they might destroy some old class lore.

Gameplay Functionality always > Lore, because lore can always easily be fixed later, once the gameplay functions how it should do to fit also the theme of the class - sorry to say that again, but skills like Bio, Miasma, Energy Drain/Siphon, Tri-Disaster ect just fit not to the theme of a Summoner.
A summoner conjures things up to attack enemies, like a summoned rain of meteorites, or a summoned blackhole out of the void, they are not specialized like Greenmages into Alteration Magic to fight with a myriad of condition changing spells like Bio, Miasma, Blind, Frog, Confusion, Silence, Inact and health leeching skill.
And if a summonr isn't attacking self, then a summoner helps his summons and buffs them, as the Avatars are here in this case the mechanic, which deals, or should in fact deal the most damage, not the player character self, the summoner is more support for the summons that make the biggest DPS.
If Summoners can have now only 3 different Base Ethers, or basically can use at any given time only up to 3 different Base Ethers, is just a question of how you interpretate that limitation as a game mechanic.
I do interpretate this as a summoner is able to summon up to maximum 3 Avatars, as summoning more would be too exhausting for the summoner's body ether to maintain the copues from the essence of the primals.

In my opinion its explanation enough to have been just in contact with a primal's essence of ether and being an intelligent enough summoner to know how to make usage of this to be able to summon Avatars of the Primals. I think it is absolutely no neccessary need to have to defeat a primal just to be able to summon their Avatars. It has to be just enough to have had just contact with their ether essence, what can be literally be explain by having been attacked by a primals limit break being the key moment, where you get in contact with the essence, as the limit break is a primal's signature move, the key essence on what you think first when you hear the name of a Primal

If I hear Alexander, I must always think first on Holy Judgment.
Having survived it is more than proof enough to have been in contact with Alexander's Ether Essence, same as much as it is enough to have been in contact with Bahamut's Terraflare.
Aside of that, we came even now again in contact with Alexanders Ether Essence by actually defeating the by Cid from the future handmade Alexander Clone, called Tycoon in the Crystal Twins Dungeon
So if even a Machinist like Cid can work with the Essence of Alexander in the future, then should Summoners easily be able to summon Alexander as High Avatars now too.

It just feels not being right now to be able to summon Bahamut and Phoenix, but not also Alexander too as being one of the most iconic summons from FF, one that is of same power like Bahamut, and literally the only one that can stop Bahamut, if neccessary, which is also beautifully shown for example in FF9, where only Alexander is able to protect a town being otherwisely annihilated by Bahamut. No other summon could have done that.