SMN is good damage, but still has serious quality-of-life, fantasy, and design issues

[Eorzean_username]

First of all, to get this out of the way: As of Patch 5.3x, do I think that Summoner needs any adjustments or buffs to its numerical output?

NO! In fact, Summoner might still be a bit too strong numerically, but definitely not by enough of a margin to really imbalance anything at this point. In terms of damage output, for both personal and raidwide dps, Summoner is currently very strong and can easily find a place in just about any team for high-level play. So, let's move along.

What problems does Summoner currently have?

Summoner has bizarre and deep-rooted design issues that can make it an absolute chore to play for players with any kind of reaction-time delays, due to Internet connection, hardware, physical disability, or etc.

Also, the Summoner playstyle is utterly counter-intuitive; it is either difficult or impossible to figure out how to play correctly without detailed instructions and explanations that are only available in guides that are authored by a small handful of dedicated players who could probably have gotten employment as NSA codebreakers during the Cold War.

More subjectively, but still of significant personal issue to me, is that many aspects of the Summoner design and rotation still do not live up the "Summoner fantasy" as it has traditionally been represented in Final Fantasy games.

Issues: Egis

• Egis are unappealing.
  • At no point in any prior Final Fantasy game did I feel that being a "Summoner" was represented by having a grotesque-looking piece of neon-colored candy sluggishly floating behind me.
  • The Demi-Summons — Bahamut and Phoenix — represent a true Final Fantasy Summoner "fantasy": bringing forth the temporary embodiment of a great and powerful mythical creature to serve you in battle.
  • Egis, in contrast, seem to be a relatively-failed attempt to imitate the Demon Minions used by World of Warcraft Warlocks, a leftover design aspect from how the 2.0 / ARR Summoner design was basically trying to be "WOW Warlock, but in FFXIV".
• Egis are sluggish and unresponsive.
  • FFXIV's engine does not seem to be able to handle pet AI well, and Egis continue to be plagued by sluggish and unpredictable response times that makes them tedious and frustrating to have to reply on rotationally.
  • For example, in currently-standard Summoner openers, 4 Egi-Assault actions, Devotion, and Enkindle are all used within a very short time frame. Sometimes, these will all resolve successfully by the 6th GCD of the opener. Other times, the Egi's AI will simply become confused and overwhelmed, and delay the last Egi-Assault until the 7th or even 8th GCD, causing frustrating delays in the playstyle.
  • Or as an another example, Egi's sluggish responsiveness means that Egi-Assaults, which were partially placed on the GCD to make weaving OGCDs (Abilities) more practical for Summoners, actually have to be avoided as weave tools in many cases because the laggy Egi response will cause actions such as Egi-Assault or even Devotion or Enkindle to simply be wasted and not happen if something causes the Egi to despawn (such as a Demi-Summon), sometimes even multiple seconds after giving it the command.
  • Or as yet another example, let's say you have Ifrit-Egi active. You press Egi-Assault 2 while your egi is next to the boss, but the Tank suddenly moves the boss across the room. Ifrit lagged on "understanding" the command. Now, you helplessly watch Ifrit perform Flaming Crush in a radius around it where nothing is standing, completely wasting an entire GCD of potency.
  • Or, let's have another example. You activate Devotion right on time, to coordinate with your party's raid buffs. But your egi gets confused and lags a little. Then the Tank moves the boss across the room. Your egi now decides it will move all the way across the room before actually activating Devotion, desyncing it from the raid buffs and possibly causing Devotion's radius to now not even affect some of the players in your party.
• Egis are needlessly convoluted and annoying to optimize.
  • Ifrit-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 1 and 2 targets.
  • But Ifrit-Egi's "Flaming Crush" has 50% damage falloff against targets beyond the first. This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 actually does the most damage against 2 targets, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
  • Likewise, Garuda-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 3 or more targets.
  • But Garuda-Egi has a cast time on its auto-attack, which can unpredictably cause even more frequent weird lags and delays in executing Egi-Assaults, Devotion, and Enkindle.
  • Additionally, Garuda-Egi insists on staying at range and using its ranged auto-attack. This means that Garuda-Egi requires extra attention and micro-management to ensure it is in range of the party whenever it decides to finally activate Devotion.
  • Furthermore, Garuda-Egi — despite being designed as the "aoe" egi — does either equal or slightly less damage than Titan-Egi with Egi-Assault 2, and also does so as a target-centered ground aoe that takes 9 seconds to resolve.
  • This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 again actually does the most damage against 2, or even more, targets in almost all situations, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
  • Additionally, Ifrit-Egi's Enkindle is a tiny conal-radius attack. Conal attacks are difficult to aim properly even when they originate from a player-controlled character. Putting a tiny conal attack on a sluggish Egi, that tends to position itself in strange and seemingly-arbitrary locations, is very frustrating, especially because the potency lost in auto-attacks — and the cost to a player's attention bandwidth — while trying to position Ifrit-Egi to execute the cone correctly during an encounter means that the conal effect is frequently wasted, ignored, or not worth utilizing effectively.
  • Furthermore, Titan-Egi's "Enkindle" does the same potency as Ifrit-Egi's, while also being a circular aoe centered on Titan-Egi, making it much more practical to execute, and is just directly more potency than Garuda-Egi's Enkindle for aoe.
  • Due to all of these combined factors, Egis have the additional nuisance factor added of optimal play being to juggle back and forth between all three for tiny but clear potency gains in a number of situations where the player is already distracted and preoccupied. I think that is an irritating design decision, and it makes me view Egis are even more of an annoying, tacked-on, busy-work, chore.

Suggested solutions: Egis

• I favor an extreme solution here, because I really honestly hate Egis: I think that Egis should be removed entirely, and the Summoner job firmly refocused on Demi-Summons. In my opinion, Egis are rotational clutter and design bloat that contribute nothing positive to the Summoner rotation, and have been completely-supplanted by Demi-Summons in terms of fulfilling the Summoner "fantasy".
• If removing Egis completely is not acceptable, then I think that all interaction with them should be removed. Convert them into fully-passive effects, such as Dark Knight's Living Shadow, that do not need to be micro-managed or given commands, and do not have any aspect of the Summoner player's actual rotation be dependent on an Egi's pet-AI responsiveness.
• "But that would take away the cute Carbuncle following me around! I hate you!"
  • Okay I am sympathetic to that, I guess, but I think this could be resolved by just giving Summoners either an aesthetic summon effect (that has no effect on combat), or Summoner-specific Minions that are awarded based on the game tracking your completion of Arcanist and Summoner Quests.
  • In any case, I have to be honest, I am willing to accept being hated for taking your Carbuncle away, if it means that I never have to interact with a laggy Egi AI blob during combat ever again, ever.

Issues: Enkindle

• At this point, Enkindle is keybind and design bloat.
• The true "big awesome attack" button, that provides a big splashy point in the rotation, has shifted into being Enkindle Bahamut and Enkindle Phoenix.
• The Egi Enkindle is now a rather tacked-on, forgettable "kitchen sink" button that gets smashed as soon as it lights up, to keep it coordinated with raid buffs, and otherwise adds pretty much nothing to the rotation except yet another keybind and cooldown to track, and yet another OGCD to clutter up the weave space.
• Additionally, Enkindle is annoying to use: it's disabled during Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix, meaning that even slight distractions or delays on Enkindle's activation can cause it to drift dramatically out-of-sync with the rotation, and easily lose uses, or pressure the player into delaying Bahamut or Phoenix, which is unappealing and unfun.
• Even further, the clunkiness of Enkindle being tied to Egis that despawn means that the rotation must do bizarre and counter-intuitive behaviors such as sometimes deliberately not summoning Bahamut on-time in order to allow Enkindle to finish its cooldown and be used.

Suggested solutions: Enkindle

I think that Enkindle Egi should be removed entirely, to clean up the Summoner design space and allow room for more interesting keys and actions that aren't an awkward, laggy, fire-and-forget button-slap every 2 minutes.

Issues: Devotion

• I think that Devotion is a bizarre and boring cooldown that does not seem to fit the Summoner "fantasy", nor does Summoner as a job really "need" a raid buff.
• More objectivey, Devotion is a raid buff — which therefore encourages it to be timed precisely and consistently — that is produced via an Egi command, which therefore results in it being timed erratically and sluggishly and with a frustratingly-unpredictable responsiveness.

Suggested solutions: Devotion

• I would personally advocate for Devotion to be removed entirely. It feels like unnecessary, tacked-on action bloat.
• If you still want Summoner to bring raid support, make it radiate passively while Demis are summoned, or... something.
• Or, at least make the Summoner raid support an actual summon, in line with traditional Final Fantasy Summoners — for example, a button that summons Carbuncle to provide the raid with Magic Damage Reduction, or Unicorn to heal the raid, or etc. Something that feels cool and exciting and fits the "fantasy", rather than bizarre and bland. Look at Dancer's Shield Samba and Curing Waltz — those are examples of job utility that feel fun, flavorful, and fantasy-fitting.
• If nothing else, at least de-couple Devotion from Egis, and just make it an effect — like Embolden, Battle Litany, etc. — that originates from the Summoner player, and is applied immediately on keypress.

Issues: Energy Drain and Aetherflow

• At this point, both Energy Drain and Aetherflow feel like bizarre, tacked-on "legacy" features that are no longer significant to Summoner gameplay, and no longer define the job's "fantasy".
• Energy Drain is just a nuisance OGCD — the correct response in very nearly all situations is simply to smash Energy Drain the moment it lights up (inside the next non-clipping weave slot, of course). It is not interesting, it's really not very fun either, it's... just a formality, or a chore.
• Likewise, Energy Siphon is even worse — pointless and unsatisfying button bloat, that's almost exclusively used on dungeon trash packs and, for the vast majority of players, could be deleted from their hotbars without any serious consequence.

Suggested solutions: Energy Drain and Aetherflow

• I think that Summoner's design could be streamlined and cleaned up by simply removing both the Aetherflow Gauge and the Energy Drain / Energy Siphon actions, allowing space for more interesting and "Summoner-fantasy" actions and keybinds.
• Then, you can retain very nearly the same gameplay effect as Energy Drain / Aetherflow currently provide, by converting Fester into an action with 2 charges and a 15s cooldown, and make it share that cooldown with Painflare.

Issues: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare

• Removing the damage bonus from Dreadwyrm Trance has resulted in it degenerating into a bizarre "I guess I can weave a few more OGCDs" button, or "That just sounds like Deathflare with extra steps".
• Technically, Dreadwyrm Trance can be used to move freely for a long period of time during complex mechanics. But realistically, doing this will badly-disrupt and desynchronize the Summoner rotation, because ending Dreadwyrm Trance is required to begin Summon Bahamut. So using Dreadwyrm Trance as a movement tool becomes similar to a Black Mage "holding" Triplecast past its cooldown for upcoming movement — heavily-discouraged as a sub-optimal crutch in almost all situations.
• This has led Dreadwyrm Trance into a bizarre and counter-intuitive status of being a "minimize your time inside this buff" action, which is especially confusing for players that haven't found a current guide to Summoner yet, because the Job Gauge makes a big and fancy showing of the fact that Dreamwyrm Trance is active — suggesting that the player wants to get full use out of it, when in reality the player almost always wants to fluff around for at most a few GCDs, and then counter-intuitively end the buff with ~60% of its timer still remaining.
• In my opinion, this is a very disappointing and unsatisfying design state for Dreadwyrm Trance to have fallen into. I think that the gameplay was more interesting and engaging when getting every last GCD inside the Dreadwyrm timer was still a goal. At this point, the action seems to exist more out of relict formality than any seriously-justified place in the design space.

Suggested solutions: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare

• Possibility 1: add a Damage Up, or other persuasive bonus, back to Dreadwyrm Trance, to motivate and reward utilizing its full duration.
• Possibility 2: remove Dreadwyrm Trance, and simply replace it with Deathflare, on a 55s cooldown, that enables Summon Bahamut upon use. This is a pretty lame "solution", but at least it removes one piece of unnecessary button bloat. Realistically, I'm adding this possibility just to show how pointless and redundant having both Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare as keys has become at this point.
• Possibility 3: mirror the design of Firebird Trance, and have Dreadwyrm Trance last 20s and automatically Summon Bahamut upon activation.
• I personally would favor Possibility 3, since this would also make the Summon Bahamut period significantly more streamlined, straightforward, intuitive, and consistent (due to all GCDs being instant). Additionally, Deathflare feels outdated and redundant now that Demi-Bahamut and Akh Morn are actual parts of the Summoner rotation.
• "But doing this would mess up the flexibility of the Summoner rotation in high-level play!"
  • This is a legitimate observation. Summoner currently relies on exploiting the discretionary time gaps between activating Dreamwyrm Trance, and utilizing Deathflare, and then further utilizing Summon Bahamut, to adjust and tailor its rotation around a number of different potential encounter designs and situations.
  • However, I hold the — potentially-unpopular — opinion that allowing a job's rotation to become infested with bizarre, convoluted, and counter-intuitive design aspects that are only really useful to, or usable by, players operating at a very high level of relative skill, is ultimately not a healthy way to design for a game that has a very broad playerbase with a very broad distribution of skill and capability.
  • ie, by significantly simplifying the Trance system to be a 1:1 ratio of "Dreadwyrm = Bahamut" and "Firebird = Phoenix", I think that Summoner's rotational design would also become significantly more intuitive and accessible.

Issues: Demi-Summons

• Not active enough, and not enough of them.
  • This is not an objective design concern, so much as a personal "fantasy" complaint: if I am playing a "Final Fantasy Summoner", I don't want to summon disappointing little Egi blobs, I don't want to have only two summons available for the entire game, and I don't want to only be able to Summon something for 33.33-repeating-of-course % of my time in combat.
  • I would much prefer if Summoner gameplay was redesigned to be about chaining one Demi-Summon into another, non-stop, for the entire duration of a combat encounter. This would make me finally, truly feel like a "Summoner" while playing one in Final Fantasy XIV.
  • I would also much prefer if there were more than... two... Demi-Summons, such as Demi-Ifrit, Demi-Garuda, Demi-Titan, or even Demi-Bismarck, Demi-Shiva, Demi-Ramuh, or even Demi-Atomos, Demi-Alexander, Demi-Thordan, Demi-Hades, Demi-Zodiark... I know that I'm probably beginning to get carried away now, but it's so much more exciting to imagine feeling like a real "Final Fantasy Summoner", with a full array of Summons to call forth.
• Excessively-punishing to players with any amount of input or reaction latency.
  • This one is most definitely an objective design concern, and it is a severe one, perhaps one of the most severe design issues currently affecting the Summoner job.
  • Let's start by examining Demi-Bahamut:
    • In order to cause Demi-Bahamut to use Wyrmwave 8 times inside each 20s summon period, the average player must be extraordinarily precise with their GCD usage, as well as aggressively spamming/queueing GCDs.
    • Any tiny hesitation or delay is almost guaranteed to lose the 8th Wyrmwave, causing a small but definite potency loss that adds up to a large amount over the course of an encounter, and very likely leading many players with too much latency in hardware, Internet connection, or reaction time to simply give up on the job at high levels of play, or resign themselves to doing disappointing dps.
    • This issue is further compounded by multiple frustrating issues that still plague Demi-Bahamut:
      • It insists on following the Summoner after almost any movement.
      • It insists on turning to follow the player, unless the player chooses bizarre and unintuitive movement paths to respond to mechanics.
      • It turns very slowly, both away from the target, and back toward the target.
      • It cannot activate Wyrmwaves while facing away from its target.
      • Its AI cannot handle both moving and activating Enkindle Bahamut's Akh Morn, causing it to do absolutely nothing if Akh Morn is waiting to happen but the Demi-Bahamut AI is trying to follow the player.
      • Any Wyrmwaves that were supposed to happen during a movement-delayed Akh Morn will very likely not happen, especially if Demi-Bahamut also has to turn around and face the target again after it stops moving.
      • Wyrmwaves can only be queued in small quantities and have an ~1.5s internal delay in activation, meaning that small errors at any point during the 20s Summon Bahamut period can very easily lead to unrecoverable loss of the 8th (or even 7th) Wyrmwave.
    • The overall effect of all of these problems is that it is stressful, frustrating, and confusing for many players to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves at all, and for even more players to consistently be able to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves in actual content, even if they seem to be pressing all of their buttons on-time and in the correct order.
    • Furthermore, because many other players can — for reasons of better latency, better hardware, better reflexes, etc — consistently achieve 8 Wyrmwaves without issue, it has become the de-facto standard that Summoners feel they must hold themselves to in high-level play in order to "pull their weight" in their dps slot, and in turn those that cannot are likely to feel stressed and inadequate.
    • All of these issues are then further exacerbated by the fact that it is potency-optimal to use 4 hard-cast Ruin 3s inside Summon Bahamut periods for any GCD that doesn't require an instant cast (ie, both Enkindle Bahamut weaves, and the last two GCDs, due to Wyrmwave delay issues), causing an even tighter and more unforgiving margin for error during the Summon Bahamut period, due to the severe and unrecoverable cost that results from any interruption or clipping of any of the Ruin 3 hard-casts.
  • Next, let's examine Demi-Phoenix:
    • Demi-Phoenix has the same issues as Demi-Bahamut in terms of insisting on following the player, turning too much and too slowly and being unable to resolve actions while turned away from its target, delaying actions due to movement, and pushing Scarlet Flames out of existence due to movement or Enkindle Phoenix / Revelation delays.
    • But, additionally, Demi-Phoenix has another problem:
      • After being summoned, it has to activate "Everlasting Flight", a design-unnecessary "flavor-based" minor raid healing effect.
      • However, Demi-Phoenix cannot accept Scarlet Flame triggers during the period of time that it is activating Everlasting Flight.
      • This means that any Summoner player that attempts to — intuitively — weave Firebird Trance into the same place in their GCD as other buffs... such as Summon Bahamut... followed by — intuitively — immediately using their first Fountain of Fire GCD, will unrecoverably lose an entire Scarlet Flame activation, because the first Fountain of Fire damage event will occur while Demi-Phoenix is still sitting around trying to figure out how to cast Everlasting Flight.
      • Therefore, adding even more clunk, awkardness, and bizarre, arcane, counter-intuitive behavior to Summoner's rotation, any Summoner player that wants to achieve 8 Scarlet Flames per Firebird Trance period must do one of the following things that almost no one would figure out without consulting an external guide source to tell them what to do:
        • Single-weave Firebird Trance at a bizarre position halfway through the GCD that basically no other buff, action, or weave in the game wants to be used at, so that enough of Demi-Phoenix's initial time is "wasted" that it can finish casting Everlasting Flight before the player GCD finishes.
        • Triple-weave Firebird Trance with two other OGCDs, in a blatant violation of one of the most significant principles drilled into every single player's head by every single guide about the game that they read for every single job — never weave more than two OGCDs inside an instant-cast GCD — because Demi-Phoenix is so buggy and weird that the player wants to deliberately clip their own GCD to try to make sure that the next one starts after Everlasting Flight is finished.
        • Use Firebird Trance at a normal point in the GCD for weaving buffs, but then sit on the next GCD and do nothing for ~0.5s — again, violating another basic principle of XIV rotational gameplay — so that, once again, Demi-Phoenix is hopefully done with Everlasting Flight by the time the player actually presses a button again.
        • All of these methods are made even worse and more convoluted by the issue that every single one cannot rely on the GCD/Action queue to happen at the "correct" time, and therefore must be adjusted for each individual player's latency, causing large discrepancies in which players can successfully use which methods, and in how long they need to wait for the methods that they can use, and... etc, etc, etc.
  • Overall, the effect of all these issues is to make Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix feel more like tense, bizarre, frustrating, stressful chores, than exciting and rewarding high points of the rotation.
  • As a Summoner player finds guides to explain these counter-intuitive and secretive elements, and becomes more aware of the rotation details, and attempts to improve his or her play at a high level, then they will very likely become more and more stressed and conscious about whether or not their 8th Wyrmwave, or 1st or 8th Scarlet Flame, is being lost due to any number of absurdly-unforgiving reasons, many of which are almost outside of the player's control, or require a level of micro-management and adaptation to the server and engine and Pet AI's quirks that (I think) no other job needs to deal with and, I also think, absolutely no job should have to deal with in a game that is ostensibly designed to be "accessible".

Suggested solutions: Demi-Summons

• Any number of fundamental changes could help make Demi-Summons into significantly less stressful and frustrating points in the rotation:
  • Remove Everlasting Flight completely, or add the Demi-Phoenix healing effect into the summon period in a way that does not require an action to be activated by Demi-Phoenix itself (for example, by having every Scarlet Flame produce a small raidwide heal).
  • Allow Wyrmwave, Scarlet Flame, Akh Morn, and Revelation to be activated while the Demi-Summon is not facing its target.
  • Allow Akh Morn and Revelation to be activated while moving.
  • Make Demi-Summons stop following the Summoner player, and remain stationary at the point where they are summoned.
  • Make Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame true "auto attacks" that automatically occur against the Demi-Summon's current target, at an interval that guarantees 8 will occur over the course of a 20s summon period.
  • Remove Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame entirely, and rebalance that potency into Demi-Summons's Akh Morn and Revelation, possibly with a lowered cooldown on Enkindle Bahamut / Enkindle Phoenix (to make the redistributed potency less bursty and more spread-out).
• As for fantasy changes, while this is obviously outside the scope of the current expansion, in 6.0 I would like to see Summoner become more "Bard-like" in the sense of its rotation being about constantly moving between different Demi-Summons.
  • For example, as Bard cycles Wanderer's Minuet > Mage's Ballad > Army's Paeon over 80s, Summoner could have a long 180s cycle:
    • 20s Fire (Demi-Ifrit) > 20s Wind (Demi-Garuda) > 20s Lightning (Demi-Ramuh) > 30s Astral (Demi-Phoenix)
    • 20s Earth (Demi-Titan) > 20s Water (Demi-Leviathan) > 20s Ice (Demi-Shiva) > 30s Umbral (Demi-Bahamut)
    • or you could instead go through "Light" and "Dark" elements, and culminate in Demi-Hydaelyn and Demi-Zodiark.
    • or you could make each element summon a random associated Primal that the player has the Achievement for defeating, for example Fire could be Demi-Ifrit or Demi-Ravana, Water could be Demi-Leviathan or Demi-Bismarck or Demi-Susanoo, Earth could be Demi-Titan or Demi-Sephirot... etc.
  • Then, filler actions like Ruin and damage-over-time effects could change into different elemental "flavors" based on the current Demi-Summon, similar to how Demi-Phoenix converts Ruin 3 into Fountain of Fire. Bahamut could provide Ruin and Outburst, in keeping with his themes of unaspected umbral destruction. And so forth.

... Okay.
I think that covers most of my current major frustrations, issues, and delusional hopes and dreams for Final Fantasy XIV Summoner.

To be clear:

• I really like the overall Final Fantasy series Summoner job. Along with Blue Mages, it's one of the most-used Jobs that I have historically utilized in Final Fantasy games, because I just really like the concept, the idea, the visuals, collecting all the summons, etc.
• However, I have to admit that, ever since ARR / 2.0, the Final Fantasy XIV interpretation of Summoner has been very frustrating and disappointing to me, capturing basically none of the wonder, excitement, or fantasy of the implementations of the job in other games in the Final Fantasy series.
• I think that Demi-Bahamut in Stormblood and Demi-Phoenix in Shadowbringers have been huge steps in the correct direction, but for me, the job is still plagued by annoying off-kilter elements that detract from the fantasy — such as Egis, and a bizarre emphasis on WOW Warlock-like damage-over-time management — and excessively sensitive, punishing, and frustrating design elements that make the job a stressful chore to play consistently in high-level content.
• Overall, I hope that at least some part of this wall-of-post will prove useful or motivating to the developers for informing the future development of Summoner, because overall I truly enjoy playing Final Fantasy XIV and its combat content, and my goal here is ultimately to try to make the gameplay, fantasy, and accessibility of the Summoner job better and more fun. That's why I was motivated to finally sit down, for way too long, and express myself about these issues — I like FFXIV, I like Summoner, and I want to be able to feel more excited and satisfied with Summoner inside FFXIV.

[ItMe]

Also, the Summoner playstyle is utterly counter-intuitive; it is either difficult or impossible to figure out how to play correctly without detailed instructions and explanations that are only available in guides that are authored by a small handful of dedicated players who could probably have gotten employment as NSA codebreakers during the Cold War.

This hit me deep.
It also made it difficult to be flexible with SMN. Anytime my rotation is interrupted it starts to fall apart. I have such a hard time adapting with SMN I just swapped to MCH.

[ItMe]

Sorry about the double post,Simon mobile and can't edit my last one...
I can't touch on everything you brought up, but I wanna highlight this and say I agree.

Issues: Devotion

• I think that Devotion is a bizarre and boring cooldown that does not seem to fit the Summoner "fantasy", nor does Summoner as a job really "need" a raid buff.
• More objectivey, Devotion is a raid buff — which therefore encourages it to be timed precisely and consistently — that is produced via an Egi command, which therefore results in it being timed erratically and sluggishly and with a frustratingly-unpredictable responsiveness.

Suggested solutions: Devotion[LIST][*]I would personally advocate for Devotion to be removed entirely. It feels like unnecessary, tacked-on action bloat.[*]If you still want Summoner to bring raid support, make it radiate passively while Demis are summoned, or... something.[*]Or, at least make the Summoner raid support an actual summon, in line with traditional Final Fantasy Summoners — for example, a button that summons Carbuncle to provide the raid with Magic Damage Reduction, or Unicorn to heal the raid, or etc. Something that feels cool and exciting and fits the "fantasy", rather than bizarre and bland. Look at Dancer's Shield Samba and Curing Waltz — those are examples of job utility that feel fun, flavorful, and fantasy-fitting.[*]If nothing else, at least de-couple Devotion from Egis, and just make it an effect — like Embolden, Battle Litany, etc. — that originates from the Summoner player, and is applied immediately on keypress.

Heck, Phoenix comes with sustain. They could introduce a 3rd big summon that just has devotions effect while it's out.

[SweetPete]

I agree with everything you said. I especially love the idea of having summoner specific minions that you can’t take into battle that just follow you around since many people love the aesthetic of pets following them. Also, I’ve been saying since stormblood that it’s time for egis to go. The pet AÍ just sucks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pressed egi-assault and nothing happens. Just waste of GCD and damage no less. It’s very annoying. If you have high ping forget summoner. You dps will tank very fast. I hope in 6.0 it’s summoners turn for a rework. It really needs it. People love it so much because the damage is so good. That’s fine and all but like you, I want that summoner fantasy fun too. Let me summon Shiva, Bismarck, Leviathan, Ramuh etc. Great read and again totally agree with you 200%

[Seraphor]

Sorry about the double post,Simon mobile and can't edit my last one...
I can't touch on everything you brought up, but I wanna highlight this and say I agree.



Heck, Phoenix comes with sustain. They could introduce a 3rd big summon that just has devotions effect while it's out.

Alexander please.
Lore: time shenanigans allow you to access Alexander's aether wherever and whenever you are.

[HeulGDarian]

Another one, cause the first 100 didn't get the point across that a lot of people do not want THIS

Lets start

the Summoner playstyle is utterly counter-intuitive; it is either difficult or impossible to figure out how to play correctly without detailed instructions and explanations that are only available in guides that are authored by a small handful of dedicated players who could probably have gotten employment as NSA codebreakers during the Cold War.

More subjectively, but still of significant personal issue to me, is that many aspects of the Summoner design and rotation still do not live up the "Summoner fantasy" as it has traditionally been represented in Final Fantasy games.

Summoner isnt that difficult , even though difficulty is also subjective and differs from person to person, Its difficult enough to be fun but not NSA codebreakers hard.
The summoner fantasy that you people keep screaming contradicts what you guys want to do. A summon is a God ,in many of the iterations when a summon is out it means business, even though the playstyle of old ffs is made that in a way that you can spam them , they werent meant to be spammed. not only that each summoner is different, changes from game to game and only in a handfull they didnt have another system added to them.
The actual defining feature of smn is how powerfull the summons are and the myriads effect it can produce that no other job can replicate. in order to do that Summons need to be rare not spammy. This game circumvents this by adding a powerlevel to summons, and instead of adding another jobs spells it gives it its own spell line. disagree all you want this summoner is a summoner.

Issues: Egis
Egis are unappealing.
At no point in any prior Final Fantasy game did I feel that being a "Summoner" was represented by having a grotesque-looking piece of neon-colored candy sluggishly floating behind me.
The Demi-Summons — Bahamut and Phoenix — represent a true Final Fantasy Summoner "fantasy": bringing forth the temporary embodiment of a great and powerful mythical creature to serve you in battle.
Egis, in contrast, seem to be a relatively-failed attempt to imitate the Demon Minions used by World of Warcraft Warlocks, a leftover design aspect from how the 2.0 / ARR Summoner design was basically trying to be "WOW Warlock, but in FFXIV".
Egis are sluggish and unresponsive.
FFXIV's engine does not seem to be able to handle pet AI well, and Egis continue to be plagued by sluggish and unpredictable response times that makes them tedious and frustrating to have to reply on rotationally.
For example, in currently-standard Summoner openers, 4 Egi-Assault actions, Devotion, and Enkindle are all used within a very short time frame. Sometimes, these will all resolve successfully by the 6th GCD of the opener. Other times, the Egi's AI will simply become confused and overwhelmed, and delay the last Egi-Assault until the 7th or even 8th GCD, causing frustrating delays in the playstyle.
Or as an another example, Egi's sluggish responsiveness means that Egi-Assaults, which were partially placed on the GCD to make weaving OGCDs (Abilities) more practical for Summoners, actually have to be avoided as weave tools in many cases because the laggy Egi response will cause actions such as Egi-Assault or even Devotion or Enkindle to simply be wasted and not happen if something causes the Egi to despawn (such as a Demi-Summon), sometimes even multiple seconds after giving it the command.
Or as yet another example, let's say you have Ifrit-Egi active. You press Egi-Assault 2 while your egi is next to the boss, but the Tank suddenly moves the boss across the room. Ifrit lagged on "understanding" the command. Now, you helplessly watch Ifrit perform Flaming Crush in a radius around it where nothing is standing, completely wasting an entire GCD of potency.
Or, let's have another example. You activate Devotion right on time, to coordinate with your party's raid buffs. But your egi gets confused and lags a little. Then the Tank moves the boss across the room. Your egi now decides it will move all the way across the room before actually activating Devotion, desyncing it from the raid buffs and possibly causing Devotion's radius to now not even affect some of the players in your party.
Egis are needlessly convoluted and annoying to optimize.
Ifrit-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 1 and 2 targets.
But Ifrit-Egi's "Flaming Crush" has 50% damage falloff against targets beyond the first. This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 actually does the most damage against 2 targets, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
Likewise, Garuda-Egi does the most auto-attack damage against 3 or more targets.
But Garuda-Egi has a cast time on its auto-attack, which can unpredictably cause even more frequent weird lags and delays in executing Egi-Assaults, Devotion, and Enkindle.
Additionally, Garuda-Egi insists on staying at range and using its ranged auto-attack. This means that Garuda-Egi requires extra attention and micro-management to ensure it is in range of the party whenever it decides to finally activate Devotion.
Furthermore, Garuda-Egi — despite being designed as the "aoe" egi — does either equal or slightly less damage than Titan-Egi with Egi-Assault 2, and also does so as a target-centered ground aoe that takes 9 seconds to resolve.
This means that Titan-Egi's Egi-Assault 2 again actually does the most damage against 2, or even more, targets in almost all situations, even though Titan-Egi is otherwise designed as the low-damage, "defensive" Egi.
Additionally, Ifrit-Egi's Enkindle is a tiny conal-radius attack. Conal attacks are difficult to aim properly even when they originate from a player-controlled character. Putting a tiny conal attack on a sluggish Egi, that tends to position itself in strange and seemingly-arbitrary locations, is very frustrating, especially because the potency lost in auto-attacks — and the cost to a player's attention bandwidth — while trying to position Ifrit-Egi to execute the cone correctly during an encounter means that the conal effect is frequently wasted, ignored, or not worth utilizing effectively.
Furthermore, Titan-Egi's "Enkindle" does the same potency as Ifrit-Egi's, while also being a circular aoe centered on Titan-Egi, making it much more practical to execute, and is just directly more potency than Garuda-Egi's Enkindle for aoe.
Due to all of these combined factors, Egis have the additional nuisance factor added of optimal play being to juggle back and forth between all three for tiny but clear potency gains in a number of situations where the player is already distracted and preoccupied. I think that is an irritating design decision, and it makes me view Egis are even more of an annoying, tacked-on, busy-work, chore.
Suggested solutions: Egis
I favor an extreme solution here, because I really honestly hate Egis: I think that Egis should be removed entirely, and the Summoner job firmly refocused on Demi-Summons. In my opinion, Egis are rotational clutter and design bloat that contribute nothing positive to the Summoner rotation, and have been completely-supplanted by Demi-Summons in terms of fulfilling the Summoner "fantasy".
If removing Egis completely is not acceptable, then I think that all interaction with them should be removed. Convert them into fully-passive effects, such as Dark Knight's Living Shadow, that do not need to be micro-managed or given commands, and do not have any aspect of the Summoner player's actual rotation be dependent on an Egi's pet-AI responsiveness.
"But that would take away the cute Carbuncle following me around! I hate you!"
Okay I am sympathetic to that, I guess, but I think this could be resolved by just giving Summoners either an aesthetic summon effect (that has no effect on combat), or Summoner-specific Minions that are awarded based on the game tracking your completion of Arcanist and Summoner Quests.
In any case, I have to be honest, I am willing to accept being hated for taking your Carbuncle away, if it means that I never have to interact with a laggy Egi AI blob during combat ever again, ever.
Issues: Enkindle
At this point, Enkindle is keybind and design bloat.
The true "big awesome attack" button, that provides a big splashy point in the rotation, has shifted into being Enkindle Bahamut and Enkindle Phoenix.
The Egi Enkindle is now a rather tacked-on, forgettable "kitchen sink" button that gets smashed as soon as it lights up, to keep it coordinated with raid buffs, and otherwise adds pretty much nothing to the rotation except yet another keybind and cooldown to track, and yet another OGCD to clutter up the weave space.
Additionally, Enkindle is annoying to use: it's disabled during Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix, meaning that even slight distractions or delays on Enkindle's activation can cause it to drift dramatically out-of-sync with the rotation, and easily lose uses, or pressure the player into delaying Bahamut or Phoenix, which is unappealing and unfun.
Even further, the clunkiness of Enkindle being tied to Egis that despawn means that the rotation must do bizarre and counter-intuitive behaviors such as sometimes deliberately not summoning Bahamut on-time in order to allow Enkindle to finish its cooldown and be used.
Suggested solutions: Enkindle
I think that Enkindle Egi should be removed entirely, to clean up the Summoner design space and allow room for more interesting keys and actions that aren't an awkward, laggy, fire-and-forget button-slap every 2 minutes.
Issues: Devotion
I think that Devotion is a bizarre and boring cooldown that does not seem to fit the Summoner "fantasy", nor does Summoner as a job really "need" a raid buff.
More objectivey, Devotion is a raid buff — which therefore encourages it to be timed precisely and consistently — that is produced via an Egi command, which therefore results in it being timed erratically and sluggishly and with a frustratingly-unpredictable responsiveness.

A lot of people like egis or tbf they like carbuncles. They are a reason some people picked up the job, being that it is a pet class.
The problem with the Ai has been discussed before, Gutting the whole thing isnt the solution getting a better Ai is. In fact the old egi system was better ai wise. But since this is the direction they wanted to head asking once again to fix the pet ai is the way to go.
Also, the egis arent needlessly convoluted , yes slipstream sucks and titan ea2 is better but because its such a minimal gain the only time you will ever use titan for aoe, is Ultima Ultimate and only in one spot. So anything besides that is boils down to ifrit single target and 2 targets garuda for 3+.
Also Also you say if they dont get removed they should instead become a passive buff like darkside. That is basically removing them. And again micro management is a point of appeal.
About enkindle How is it a button bloat, you can not like it but you cant call it a button bloat. Not only that but you say the true powerfull attack is the blue and orange light beam, Dude garudas enkindle looks ten times better, especialy when said true powerfull attacks are simply deathflare 2 more times and reskinned another 2.
On Devotion
again with calling stuff button bloat and you also ask that this also becomes a passive. Also timing it is a necessity for all buffs not just summoners.

Issues: Energy Drain and Aetherflow
At this point, both Energy Drain and Aetherflow feel like bizarre, tacked-on "legacy" features that are no longer significant to Summoner gameplay, and no longer define the job's "fantasy".
Energy Drain is just a nuisance OGCD — the correct response in very nearly all situations is simply to smash Energy Drain the moment it lights up (inside the next non-clipping weave slot, of course). It is not interesting, it's really not very fun either, it's... just a formality, or a chore.
Likewise, Energy Siphon is even worse — pointless and unsatisfying button bloat, that's almost exclusively used on dungeon trash packs and, for the vast majority of players, could be deleted from their hotbars without any serious consequence.
Suggested solutions: Energy Drain and Aetherflow
I think that Summoner's design could be streamlined and cleaned up by simply removing both the Aetherflow Gauge and the Energy Drain / Energy Siphon actions, allowing space for more interesting and "Summoner-fantasy" actions and keybinds.
Then, you can retain very nearly the same gameplay effect as Energy Drain / Aetherflow currently provide, by converting Fester into an action with 2 charges and a 15s cooldown, and make it share that cooldown with Painflare.
Issues: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare
Removing the damage bonus from Dreadwyrm Trance has resulted in it degenerating into a bizarre "I guess I can weave a few more OGCDs" button, or "That just sounds like Deathflare with extra steps".
Technically, Dreadwyrm Trance can be used to move freely for a long period of time during complex mechanics. But realistically, doing this will badly-disrupt and desynchronize the Summoner rotation, because ending Dreadwyrm Trance is required to begin Summon Bahamut. So using Dreadwyrm Trance as a movement tool becomes similar to a Black Mage "holding" Triplecast past its cooldown for upcoming movement — heavily-discouraged as a sub-optimal crutch in almost all situations.
This has led Dreadwyrm Trance into a bizarre and counter-intuitive status of being a "minimize your time inside this buff" action, which is especially confusing for players that haven't found a current guide to Summoner yet, because the Job Gauge makes a big and fancy showing of the fact that Dreamwyrm Trance is active — suggesting that the player wants to get full use out of it, when in reality the player almost always wants to fluff around for at most a few GCDs, and then counter-intuitively end the buff with ~60% of its timer still remaining.
In my opinion, this is a very disappointing and unsatisfying design state for Dreadwyrm Trance to have fallen into. I think that the gameplay was more interesting and engaging when getting every last GCD inside the Dreadwyrm timer was still a goal. At this point, the action seems to exist more out of relict formality than any seriously-justified place in the design space.
Suggested solutions: Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare
Possibility 1: add a Damage Up, or other persuasive bonus, back to Dreadwyrm Trance, to motivate and reward utilizing its full duration.
Possibility 2: remove Dreadwyrm Trance, and simply replace it with Deathflare, on a 55s cooldown, that enables Summon Bahamut upon use. This is a pretty lame "solution", but at least it removes one piece of unnecessary button bloat. Realistically, I'm adding this possibility just to show how pointless and redundant having both Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare as keys has become at this point.
Possibility 3: mirror the design of Firebird Trance, and have Dreadwyrm Trance last 20s and automatically Summon Bahamut upon activation.
I personally would favor Possibility 3, since this would also make the Summon Bahamut period significantly more streamlined, straightforward, intuitive, and consistent (due to all GCDs being instant). Additionally, Deathflare feels outdated and redundant now that Demi-Bahamut and Akh Morn are actual parts of the Summoner rotation.
"But doing this would mess up the flexibility of the Summoner rotation in high-level play!"
This is a legitimate observation. Summoner currently relies on exploiting the discretionary time gaps between activating Dreamwyrm Trance, and utilizing Deathflare, and then further utilizing Summon Bahamut, to adjust and tailor its rotation around a number of different potential encounter designs and situations.
However, I hold the — potentially-unpopular — opinion that allowing a job's rotation to become infested with bizarre, convoluted, and counter-intuitive design aspects that are only really useful to, or usable by, players operating at a very high level of relative skill, is ultimately not a healthy way to design for a game that has a very broad playerbase with a very broad distribution of skill and capability.
ie, by significantly simplifying the Trance system to be a 1:1 ratio of "Dreadwyrm = Bahamut" and "Firebird = Phoenix", I think that Summoner's rotational design would also become significantly more intuitive and accessible.

Aetherflow system ill agree to you is completely detouched, in fact it is completely different from what aetherflow stood for, if they want to still keep trance as the clock they should indeed remove it cause it doesnt do anything. However the old aetherflow clock would fix all of the current rigid issues cause all of them were produced by its removal , if anything this is the most important change that needs to happen. Removing aetherflow as a clock was undeniably a huge mistake on every aspect.
Also yes siphon is indeed a button bloat

On trance , again with calling stuff a button bloat , at this point the whole gameplay up until the summon bahamut button has been called a button bloat. You cant remove trance without screwing the dot cycle which was already screwed when aetherflow got removed and we had trance as a 60 second clock.
Also if there is one place that isnt convoluted on the summoner rotation its the freedom that having trance being detouched from bahamut provides, its not usefull only in high level, its usefull in any kind of fight that screws summoner over with its downtime
not only that you say that they shouldnt design jobs with high skill in mind. The game has a crapton of jobs that are easy and streamlined for people to learn , we dont need another one added to the pile . said difficulty is why a lot of players pick it over red mage and if the ACCESSIBILITY changes the game provided towards the healers and tanks is that people dont like having nothing to do on a job, if gameplay is the meat then the difficulty of it is the salt , there should be options of difficult and rewarding jobs
it just happens that summoner is one of them.

Issues: Demi-Summons
Not active enough, and not enough of them.
This is not an objective design concern, so much as a personal "fantasy" complaint: if I am playing a "Final Fantasy Summoner", I don't want to summon disappointing little Egi blobs, I don't want to have only two summons available for the entire game, and I don't want to only be able to Summon something for 33.33-repeating-of-course % of my time in combat.
I would much prefer if Summoner gameplay was redesigned to be about chaining one Demi-Summon into another, non-stop, for the entire duration of a combat encounter. This would make me finally, truly feel like a "Summoner" while playing one in Final Fantasy XIV.
I would also much prefer if there were more than... two... Demi-Summons, such as Demi-Ifrit, Demi-Garuda, Demi-Titan, or even Demi-Bismarck, Demi-Shiva, Demi-Ramuh, or even Demi-Atomos, Demi-Alexander, Demi-Thordan, Demi-Hades, Demi-Zodiark... I know that I'm probably beginning to get carried away now, but it's so much more exciting to imagine feeling like a real "Final Fantasy Summoner", with a full array of Summons to call forth.
Excessively-punishing to players with any amount of input or reaction latency.
This one is most definitely an objective design concern, and it is a severe one, perhaps one of the most severe design issues currently affecting the Summoner job.
Let's start by examining Demi-Bahamut:
In order to cause Demi-Bahamut to use Wyrmwave 8 times inside each 20s summon period, the average player must be extraordinarily precise with their GCD usage, as well as aggressively spamming/queueing GCDs.
Any tiny hesitation or delay is almost guaranteed to lose the 8th Wyrmwave, causing a small but definite potency loss that adds up to a large amount over the course of an encounter, and very likely leading many players with too much latency in hardware, Internet connection, or reaction time to simply give up on the job at high levels of play, or resign themselves to doing disappointing dps.
This issue is further compounded by multiple frustrating issues that still plague Demi-Bahamut:
It insists on following the Summoner after almost any movement.
It insists on turning to follow the player, unless the player chooses bizarre and unintuitive movement paths to respond to mechanics.
It turns very slowly, both away from the target, and back toward the target.
It cannot activate Wyrmwaves while facing away from its target.
Its AI cannot handle both moving and activating Enkindle Bahamut's Akh Morn, causing it to do absolutely nothing if Akh Morn is waiting to happen but the Demi-Bahamut AI is trying to follow the player.
Any Wyrmwaves that were supposed to happen during a movement-delayed Akh Morn will very likely not happen, especially if Demi-Bahamut also has to turn around and face the target again after it stops moving.
Wyrmwaves can only be queued in small quantities and have an ~1.5s internal delay in activation, meaning that small errors at any point during the 20s Summon Bahamut period can very easily lead to unrecoverable loss of the 8th (or even 7th) Wyrmwave.
The overall effect of all of these problems is that it is stressful, frustrating, and confusing for many players to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves at all, and for even more players to consistently be able to achieve 8 Wyrmwaves in actual content, even if they seem to be pressing all of their buttons on-time and in the correct order.
Furthermore, because many other players can — for reasons of better latency, better hardware, better reflexes, etc — consistently achieve 8 Wyrmwaves without issue, it has become the de-facto standard that Summoners feel they must hold themselves to in high-level play in order to "pull their weight" in their dps slot, and in turn those that cannot are likely to feel stressed and inadequate.
All of these issues are then further exacerbated by the fact that it is potency-optimal to use 4 hard-cast Ruin 3s inside Summon Bahamut periods for any GCD that doesn't require an instant cast (ie, both Enkindle Bahamut weaves, and the last two GCDs, due to Wyrmwave delay issues), causing an even tighter and more unforgiving margin for error during the Summon Bahamut period, due to the severe and unrecoverable cost that results from any interruption or clipping of any of the Ruin 3 hard-casts.
Next, let's examine Demi-Phoenix:
Demi-Phoenix has the same issues as Demi-Bahamut in terms of insisting on following the player, turning too much and too slowly and being unable to resolve actions while turned away from its target, delaying actions due to movement, and pushing Scarlet Flames out of existence due to movement or Enkindle Phoenix / Revelation delays.
But, additionally, Demi-Phoenix has another problem:
After being summoned, it has to activate "Everlasting Flight", a design-unnecessary "flavor-based" minor raid healing effect.
However, Demi-Phoenix cannot accept Scarlet Flame triggers during the period of time that it is activating Everlasting Flight.
This means that any Summoner player that attempts to — intuitively — weave Firebird Trance into the same place in their GCD as other buffs... such as Summon Bahamut... followed by — intuitively — immediately using their first Fountain of Fire GCD, will unrecoverably lose an entire Scarlet Flame activation, because the first Fountain of Fire damage event will occur while Demi-Phoenix is still sitting around trying to figure out how to cast Everlasting Flight.
Therefore, adding even more clunk, awkardness, and bizarre, arcane, counter-intuitive behavior to Summoner's rotation, any Summoner player that wants to achieve 8 Scarlet Flames per Firebird Trance period must do one of the following things that almost no one would figure out without consulting an external guide source to tell them what to do:
Single-weave Firebird Trance at a bizarre position halfway through the GCD that basically no other buff, action, or weave in the game wants to be used at, so that enough of Demi-Phoenix's initial time is "wasted" that it can finish casting Everlasting Flight before the player GCD finishes.
Triple-weave Firebird Trance with two other OGCDs, in a blatant violation of one of the most significant principles drilled into every single player's head by every single guide about the game that they read for every single job — never weave more than two OGCDs inside an instant-cast GCD — because Demi-Phoenix is so buggy and weird that the player wants to deliberately clip their own GCD to try to make sure that the next one starts after Everlasting Flight is finished.
Use Firebird Trance at a normal point in the GCD for weaving buffs, but then sit on the next GCD and do nothing for ~0.5s — again, violating another basic principle of XIV rotational gameplay — so that, once again, Demi-Phoenix is hopefully done with Everlasting Flight by the time the player actually presses a button again.
All of these methods are made even worse and more convoluted by the issue that every single one cannot rely on the GCD/Action queue to happen at the "correct" time, and therefore must be adjusted for each individual player's latency, causing large discrepancies in which players can successfully use which methods, and in how long they need to wait for the methods that they can use, and... etc, etc, etc.
Overall, the effect of all these issues is to make Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix feel more like tense, bizarre, frustrating, stressful chores, than exciting and rewarding high points of the rotation.
As a Summoner player finds guides to explain these counter-intuitive and secretive elements, and becomes more aware of the rotation details, and attempts to improve his or her play at a high level, then they will very likely become more and more stressed and conscious about whether or not their 8th Wyrmwave, or 1st or 8th Scarlet Flame, is being lost due to any number of absurdly-unforgiving reasons, many of which are almost outside of the player's control, or require a level of micro-management and adaptation to the server and engine and Pet AI's quirks that (I think) no other job needs to deal with and, I also think, absolutely no job should have to deal with in a game that is ostensibly designed to be "accessible".
Suggested solutions: Demi-Summons
Any number of fundamental changes could help make Demi-Summons into significantly less stressful and frustrating points in the rotation:
Remove Everlasting Flight completely, or add the Demi-Phoenix healing effect into the summon period in a way that does not require an action to be activated by Demi-Phoenix itself (for example, by having every Scarlet Flame produce a small raidwide heal).
Allow Wyrmwave, Scarlet Flame, Akh Morn, and Revelation to be activated while the Demi-Summon is not facing its target.
Allow Akh Morn and Revelation to be activated while moving.
Make Demi-Summons stop following the Summoner player, and remain stationary at the point where they are summoned.
Make Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame true "auto attacks" that automatically occur against the Demi-Summon's current target, at an interval that guarantees 8 will occur over the course of a 20s summon period.
Remove Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame entirely, and rebalance that potency into Demi-Summons's Akh Morn and Revelation, possibly with a lowered cooldown on Enkindle Bahamut / Enkindle Phoenix (to make the redistributed potency less bursty and more spread-out).
As for fantasy changes, while this is obviously outside the scope of the current expansion, in 6.0 I would like to see Summoner become more "Bard-like" in the sense of its rotation being about constantly moving between different Demi-Summons.
For example, as Bard cycles Wanderer's Minuet > Mage's Ballad > Army's Paeon over 80s, Summoner could have a long 180s cycle:
20s Fire (Demi-Ifrit) > 20s Wind (Demi-Garuda) > 20s Lightning (Demi-Ramuh) > 30s Astral (Demi-Phoenix)
20s Earth (Demi-Titan) > 20s Water (Demi-Leviathan) > 20s Ice (Demi-Shiva) > 30s Umbral (Demi-Bahamut)
or you could instead go through "Light" and "Dark" elements, and culminate in Demi-Hydaelyn and Demi-Zodiark.
or you could make each element summon a random associated Primal that the player has the Achievement for defeating, for example Fire could be Demi-Ifrit or Demi-Ravana, Water could be Demi-Leviathan or Demi-Bismarck or Demi-Susanoo, Earth could be Demi-Titan or Demi-Sephirot... etc.
Then, filler actions like Ruin and damage-over-time effects could change into different elemental "flavors" based on the current Demi-Summon, similar to how Demi-Phoenix converts Ruin 3 into Fountain of Fire. Bahamut could provide Ruin and Outburst, in keeping with his themes of unaspected umbral destruction. And so forth.
... Okay.
I think that covers most of my current major frustrations, issues, and delusional hopes and dreams for Final Fantasy XIV Summoner.

To be clear:
I really like the overall Final Fantasy series Summoner job. Along with Blue Mages, it's one of the most-used Jobs that I have historically utilized in Final Fantasy games, because I just really like the concept, the idea, the visuals, collecting all the summons, etc.
However, I have to admit that, ever since ARR / 2.0, the Final Fantasy XIV interpretation of Summoner has been very frustrating and disappointing to me, capturing basically none of the wonder, excitement, or fantasy of the implementations of the job in other games in the Final Fantasy series.
I think that Demi-Bahamut in Stormblood and Demi-Phoenix in Shadowbringers have been huge steps in the correct direction, but for me, the job is still plagued by annoying off-kilter elements that detract from the fantasy — such as Egis, and a bizarre emphasis on WOW Warlock-like damage-over-time management — and excessively sensitive, punishing, and frustrating design elements that make the job a stressful chore to play consistently in high-level content.
Overall, I hope that at least some part of this wall-of-post will prove useful or motivating to the developers for informing the future development of Summoner, because overall I truly enjoy playing Final Fantasy XIV and its combat content, and my goal here is ultimately to try to make the gameplay, fantasy, and accessibility of the Summoner job better and more fun. That's why I was motivated to finally sit down, for way too long, and express myself about these issues — I like FFXIV, I like Summoner, and I want to be able to feel more excited and satisfied with Summoner inside FFXIV.

Ok heres the thing, facing the target isnt that much of a problem especially with the camera option that doesnt make you walk backwards but instead turn and run.
Bahamut ai has been steadily improving, even with movement bahamut will get the attacks out if you sequenced it correctly so the only attack that can get screwed by movement is the second akh morn
on pheonix i wont argue the weave is completely convoluted, however not as much as you make it out to be. Youre not missing anything on the single weave , cause we already have too much weaving space and nothing to weave into them.
the triple and hold is completely convoluted though.

Now to your suggestions. Youre basically asking them to make them like automaton queen, so you ask that they copy the copy of bahamut. also to make that kind of spammy akh morn it would have to be a potency that would make the egi enkindle look strong.

I completely disagree with the making them like Bard, What you have presented is a job that will simply have a "Demi" that will do an auto and some completely weak ability on the power level of egis so that it looks spammy. I understand the want for more demis , i also want to have more demis , but for demis to feel good they need to be rare so that they can be more powerfull and they need the egis so that they feel like an upgrade. It is the only reason people keep comparing the 2 whether they do it consciously or not. It might sound fun but this job you described is a job that would become extremely boring , it would be just animations of extremely weak reskined editions of the same thing in order to be balanced and if they had passive buffs on top of that akin to bard then even those would be extremely weak. This isnt a what the ff summoner stands for , if you want more demis then ask for variety not quantity.

[SweetPete]

I don’t agree. I think the OP explained it very well. Summoner has allot of issues right now and it doesn’t feel like a fantasy summoner. Right now it does really strong damage and that’s not a bad thing. I don’t agree with you saying Demi primals should be a rare thing. We are in our 3rd expansion and we should feel more powerful. It’s like keeping elements on white mage. It’s gone light base holy now. What’s wrong with summoner going Demi primal? The pet AI sucks. SE have tried multiple times to get it right and they just can’t. So just scrap it and move on with what works. Demis work. Or if you do decide to keep the pets make it so they do their own thing and don’t have to be micromanaged. That way we shouldn’t t have any issues with abilities In que or just straight being ignored by the pet etc. I just thinks it’s time for major changes to summoner. Rework needs to happen.

[Grimoire-M]

Nah Heul is right on everything here, save that Egi are unstable at high ping. The problem is lag spikes and overcrowding eat their inputs, nothing more than that. Weave a non-pet skill between Egi Assaults and Enkindle/Devotion and it resolves fluidly.
I hate the Demi’s more for being stuck on heel AI when the Egi autos generally make them MORE stable, not less.

[Raikai]

I would personally be really interested in SMN if the egis were simply removed and the playstyle revolved around more Demi summons. That said because egis are nowadays practically walking dots carrying slow-responsive abilities for you. They are branded pets, but in reality they are no longer such a thing.

Part of me also wants to believe that we never heard again about Egi-glamours anymore because they would remove egis in 6.0 (catering to the Demi sumons) thus making it not a worth time investment.

But in the light of that happening, the egis and carbuncles should defnitely be available as cosmetic spells for the SMN.

[Grimoire-M]

To me, I want the current Demi’s to alter the rotation more when they do appear, and to not move unless they have to in order to avoid dismissal. The Egi themselves actually are consistent (if annoying to reposition). I do agree that DWT needs more purpose but it’s on SE to make it useful beyond movement or automatically upgrade into Summon: Bahamut via a trait or two. Phoenix’s issues would be solved by making Everlasting Flight an oGCD we can trigger when we want but it honestly works fine the way it does now. The triple weave isn’t required, just beneficial.