Summoner: An action or a dot?

[HeulGDarian]

When I talk about action or a dot I'm talking about the summon/pet itself. I love the dot system of Summoner and Scholar. In my opinion this game could do with more dot jobs. My issue is that the summon itself (the egis) are boring as dot "pets" that stay at your side the entire fight. Then they go and make the job even more convoluted with the demi primal system with bahamut/phoenix. But once again I have to point out, this is about the summon and its function, Leave the summoner skills as they are. As stated in the full OP, should summons be dots or a 1 time big attack summon using your job gauge (as they were in past classic FFs, except for a few like X, XI, and XII).
Some made a really great point here, the version of Summoner that has its summon at its side is not actually summoning but instead they're just walking around with a pet. A summon is a temporary entity that's supposed to return to its point of origin, that's not what we see with XIV's Summoner.

You can make a summon interesting and have it stay at your side believe it or not. Its just a hierarchy where egis are made from a part of your aether , and demis are made from aether you trance . If we had rouse then we could maybe get an upgrade where they transform into a more powerfull form, as of now the spells we can play around are assault 1 and 2 , devotion, enkindle and their auto. Ill agree on that they dont have a "summoning" like demi bahamut where you actively have to trance, something that is less than half of what it was after they butchered aetherflow out of us, it still hurt us gameplay wise btw. However one attack summons feel like going backwards , After 10 came out going back into old style summons just feels bad, and yes i will take egis over that any time, cause egis look like they will be upgraded.

[Amnmaat]

I just harken back to the origin of summoning in rpgs and ask thee to harken back to what the purpose of summoning vs having a pet is all about. You guys would be more at home with Beastmaster than with Summoner, from how I'm analyzing your preferences.
I can instantly understand why they said they would make Beastmaster a limited job now, because we already have a pet job and some don't want to seem to let go of their pet ifrit, garuda, titan.

Thought there would be more support for one attack summons, interesting that there's not.

[MariaArvana]

Thought there would be more support for one attack summons, interesting that there's not.

If you want to get technical, Summoners are in fact -summoning- all the time in FF14, its just not something huge and flashy is all outside of trances.

Also honestly, one and done attacks are boring imo. Trances & egis are much more exciting because there's a whole ton more interactivity with them than just pushing a button and watching a fancy animation. Which also quite frankly, wouldn't work in FF14 anyway. People already complain about certain Lb3's blocking AOEs from being visible due to how grandiose their animations are(Caster LB3, AST LB3), there's no way any form on 'grandiose one and done' animation would capture the same majesty as old FF summoning without causing the same issues, meaning their 'grand attacks' would basically be on the same level as Enkindle; a small, quick animation that would be a disservice in trying to emulate old FF SMN. (which also brings up the point that part of the fun of old SMN was seeing these ridiculous 30s+ animations, where in FF14 a pack could easily be dead before such an animation could finish.)

I also found infinitely more fun with FF10's & FF12's summons (and FF13's, to an extent) than any of the old FF's purely for the same reason; having them stick around and actually feel like they're fighting with the party is much more fun personally.

[Amnmaat]

If you want to get technical, Summoners are in fact -summoning- all the time in FF14, its just not something huge and flashy is all outside of trances.

Also honestly, one and done attacks are boring imo. Trances & egis are much more exciting because there's a whole ton more interactivity with them than just pushing a button and watching a fancy animation. Which also quite frankly, wouldn't work in FF14 anyway. People already complain about certain Lb3's blocking AOEs from being visible due to how grandiose their animations are(Caster LB3, AST LB3), there's no way any form on 'grandiose one and done' animation would capture the same majesty as old FF summoning without causing the same issues, meaning their 'grand attacks' would basically be on the same level as Enkindle; a small, quick animation that would be a disservice in trying to emulate old FF SMN. (which also brings up the point that part of the fun of old SMN was seeing these ridiculous 30s+ animations, where in FF14 a pack could easily be dead before such an animation could finish.)

I also found infinitely more fun with FF10's & FF12's summons (and FF13's, to an extent) than any of the old FF's purely for the same reason; having them stick around and actually feel like they're fighting with the party is much more fun personally.

The irony is that the pets that stick around like demi bahamut/phoenix block the view more than a 5 second 1 time attack by a Summoner would. No one is asking for the 1 time attack summon to go through a 20 seconds attack, Heaven on high had the right idea; quick 3 second attack that looks great then they disappear. Of course it would be balanced so they don't cover the screen like that, it would be a smaller version and would appear more naturally on the field.
What you're describing with FFX, XII, and XIII is Beastmaster. Next time they make a FF mmo I'd really like them to release both Summoner and Beastmaster at the same time so people understand the difference. Square enix seems to be cannibalizing Beastmaster with Summoner in every FF since X for no real reason, they should separate them.

[ArcaneCarbuncle]

I'll keep my Egi, thank you very much.

I've always loved the concept of summoning, but the way earlier iterations of the Job present it as more of a gimmicky Black Mage has always felt lackluster.
It wasn't until summoning became more interactive that It truly started to shine, so i feel going back one-hit-wonder summoning would be a disservice to not only the job but the concept a a whole.

Given the Jobs evolution towards interactivity I always thought that a pet class would be a nice fit for the Job in an MMO, so I'm pretty happy with the general idea and think it functions well enough as this game iteration of Summoner.
Its certainly not flawless, there's plenty of things they could do better; but it's far from broken enough to require a complete overhaul - which should always be a last resort anyway. Most issues are either fixable or unrelated to the Egi in the first place, and any complaints about the aesthetics will hopefully be adressed whenever Egi-Glam are rolled out (which they've recently confirmed they are still working on btw.)

I would also like to point out that the FF-Franchise as a whole didn't survive as long as it did by blindly clinging on to tradition; the games have never been afraid to change and evolve concepts, ideas and Jobs depending on the setting, medium and technology at the time, and if I'm reading this thread - heck even the entire Forum sometimes - I feel some people would do good remembering that.
Don't get me wrong; It's fine to not like the way this game handles Summoner (or any job for that matter), but asking the devs to change it completely when theres clearly plenty of people enjoying at least the basic idea is not.

[MirronTulaxia]

I mean, I think you could have Egis and still make a more proper Summoner. It doesn't have to be an either or kind of thing.

[BlitzAceRush]

I think even if they changed nothing, some thematic reworking could do wonders for the Summoner fantasy, just dressing the egi's up a bit to look more akin to their true forms would help and then getting rid of Ruin and the dots and replacing them with themed abilities for each of the primal's, they can do the exact same thing but It'd just feel more Summoner'y if my attacks were coming from them more.
Using Garuda as an example: Ruin 3 is now Feather rain, same cast time, same damage only the spell comes from her not me. Ruin 2/4 Air slash/Twin gales, still instant, just comes from her. Obviously I'd like more changed but even if they did nothing gameplay wise and just this I think it would really change the feel to feel more like a Summoner and less a dot mage with pets.

[MirronTulaxia]

I... have zero idea what you're trying to argue with that. Like... that different jobs do different things? Fun? That's really moot. It has nothing to do with the argument you made.

[HeulGDarian]

I... have zero idea what you're trying to argue with that. Like... that different jobs do different things? Fun? That's really moot. It has nothing to do with the argument you made.

Why do you make me explain shit twice =.=
ok let me take everything from the start.
In your opinion this summoner isnt a summoner in line with the rest of the summoners.
Your comparison point is the times summoner was a standalone job, ff3, 5, 11, tactics , you then take the character based games , remove everything that isnt a summon and keep that as the pure summoner experience.
I disagree on you on this , cause your rule in order to work must exclude more than half the games, i instead take the fact that most of them give you more spells and tell you that summoner does more than just summon. The ff14 summoner fits inside that definition , and it is a pure summoner cause they took the spells they d usually give him ,in order to give summoner a magic repertoire of his very own, effectively splitting summoner from blm and whm which had been tied many times in the past. such as ff6 ff 9 , ff 4 , ff 3 (yes ill keep putting in sage cause he uses summons) and ff10.
You go ahead and say the same definition works on whm as well and here i tell you why it works on summoner and not whm. Summoner plays a bigger role than whm or blm, blm having an exception in ff9. In almost every game summons are different. as in espers from ff6 arent the same thing as eidolons in ff9 , summoning is something that gets rewritten depending the story. whm on the other hand doesnt have this restriction.

[MirronTulaxia]

Why do you make me explain shit twice =.=
ok let me take everything from the start.
In your opinion this summoner isnt a summoner in line with the rest of the summoners.
Your comparison point is the times summoner was a standalone job, ff3, 5, 11, tactics

Er... my comparison point is the history of the job in general, yes. Because even in games it's a hybrid it still has a clear representation.

And the list is a bit larger than that. You want to cite IV, IX, and X. I can cite... III, V, XI, T, TA, TA2, Dimensions, RK, likely some others. And the ones in IV, IX, and X still are clearly hybrid characters, but they do have a clear Summon versus other job aspect.