Thread: Fix Summoner Once and For All in 6.0 Please!

I wouldn't be surprised to see them gut the Pet mechanic entirely but still give the players the Carbuncle and Egi throughout the Class and Job Quests. Make the Carbuncle automatically summoned and always available, and make any Pet abilities come from the ACN/SMN directly. No more ghosting abilities, no more being locked out of Devotion during Demi-Bahamut, just cast the abilities directly with no Pet AI involved. Plus, as mentioned, the Carbuncles/Egis would still be around so just create a BLU Spellbook type deal for ACN/SMN that lets them choose what they want out at the moment. Pet AI has been bad for years now and so this is probably the easiest solution for SE.

An FC mate of mine suggested this so I will just copy paste it here as he put this on a reddit post:

I personally don't see the leap in logic that makes one assume the Egi's are going away when the translated quote says:

"Currently Summoner as a job is reaching somewhat of a breaking point when it comes to the overall play mechanics, so we've halted work on Egi-glamour for the time being to shift focus."

Jumping the gun and saying the pets are done for is a bold claim if this is the basis for the argument as most of SMN and SCH ghosting issues surround the transitions between the trance pets (such as the Demis and Seraph) and mashing pet GCDs with their respective oGCDs (such as EA -> Aetherpact/Enkindle -> EA) .

Most of SMN's current problems lie in it having no clear focus and when it comes to removing anything off of the class, i could make a better argument for the Demi summons being removed and instead having Summon 1, 2, and 3 all upgrade into the summons SMN has from the Demis (ie Ifrit -> Bahaumut, Garuda -> Phoenix, and Titan turns into (meme ahead don't kill me) Alexander).

This would also solve issues related to Egi-Glamour as now each of those summons has a new glamour option related to it from the upgrade and would mean that the devs would not need to work on Egi-glamour as they would now be in essence reusing assets that exist in game. For those concerned about the sizes of these new persistent summons, if this is the direction the team were to go i would expect them to default Bahaumut to small and add in a small option for Phoenix and the player can decide whether they want big summons.

For those who say that the pets are the issue, BRD's gameplay currently is similar to those who suggest SMN should be a trance mage and it too is a class in dire need of a rework.

Originally Posted by Xeronia

For those who say that the pets are the issue, BRD's gameplay currently is similar to those who suggest SMN should be a trance mage and it too is a class in dire need of a rework.

Let's not try to say that the song rotation cycle is the reason Bard players are unhappy. The core of Bard's rotation is not the issue, it's still the same one from Stormblood where it was one of the most popular and loved classes in the game. Bard players only want a rework to the support kit that got absolutely axed coming into Shadowbringers so that the new shiny toy Dancer could shine.

Those of us who have an issues with Pets don't just want to see them axed, we've just given up on them ever being done right. Summoner has been my main caster class since 2.0, I've swapped off Bard and raided on summoner in two separate expansions. I've been through every single rework that they've done on those damn Egi's and honestly I just don't believe the dev team can do it right. Of all the mechanics on Summoner that has bloated the class so much, they are the only one I don't see a good potential reworking that makes feasible sense that the dev team can pull off without issue.

Here's a wild idea.....Merge SCH into SMN.

This new SMN will give the player character mostly healing and utility based abilities, with the summons doing all the dps.

I am starting to think people who want egi glamours and fIxEd PeT Ai only enjoy the idea of the job because clearly you arnt playing it (or playing it well) or you would want that egi deleted by a thousand Ahk Mhorns because that pet AI will never be fixed okay lets settle that debate now because if it was doable it would already be fixed not here we are going into another expansion and the pet is just as responsive as it was in HW. cast Aetherpact while trying to summon phoenix...I want to go back to summoner but not until they can shift the class focus away from egi and more into summons.

Originally Posted by Aomine1992

I am starting to think people who want egi glamours and fIxEd PeT Ai only enjoy the idea of the job because clearly you arnt playing it (or playing it well) or you would want that egi deleted by a thousand Ahk Mhorns

Everyone is different and comes to each class wanting something different out of it.
There is no debate that needs settling because you can't convince people that sincerely enjoy egi they're "wrong," and the egi fans can't convince people to enjoy egi if ones hates them.

I am just saying pets/egis have been a part of the ff14 Summoner identity since launch and to remove it instead of improve it would be a massive mistake to me and honestly not really in line with the recent class reworks. Ninja still has Mudras after they were changed in ShB as it is a key part of class identity, Monk got it's death penalty removed and kept Grease Lightning as a trait instead of a clunky build up mechanic, Astrologian kept it's card but they got changed on ShB launch. All these classes largely kept their identity, I see no reason to remove Summoners when it could be improved upon.

Originally Posted by Exodus-E

Excuse you?

I've been maining SMN for around 7 years now (and I do know how to play it well, thank you very much), and I love everything about it (its lore, its aesthetics, its Egis, etc.).
Which is exactly why I've been VERY vocal about my displeasure on the lack of (proper) Egi glamours, which we've been promised for so very, very long.

So you're obviously wrong there.

Also "away from Egi and more into summons"?
Lore-wise, it's waaay too late for that, considering that:

1. Primals themselves are extremely hazardous and unable to be controlled through "conventional" means.
2. The SMN job is an "anti-Primal" discipline that uses the essences of Primals against them (through the use of tamable constructs based on them).

The closest you'll get to "summons" are the Demi-Summons, and even then they're pretty much "extensions" of their respective Trances (that also rely on Egis as a "base").

okay you mained it since it came out....so did many others who want drastic changes to the class, like not only those people but the literally development team hates the job mechanics, the job really has no more growth, what will they do next just throw summon demi alexander while maintaining the rigid system of mini rotations within a big weird rotation...DWT, Bahamut, Pheonix, Alenxander(or whaterever else). The job has reached its breaking point and that's so obvious it showed when Shadowbringers first started and honestly was prevalent in SB as well look at the balancing issues that caster face time and time again and its usually because SMN is either in a really bad place or way to strong the pet potency is all over the place.

lore will be fine because what you said is true ultimately the lore revolves around SMN using the essence of primals but through the HW story then they move towards using that power to actually summon the powers of said primals themselves...I can bet you that the dev team is going to drastically change pets whether you want it or not because from their point of view its a nightmare that is why you will probably never get the egi glamour or wont see it till late in the expansion when the egi is reduced to ash or a timed turret like MCH.

Originally Posted by Xeronia

I am just saying pets/egis have been a part of the ff14 Summoner identity since launch and to remove it instead of improve it would be a massive mistake to me and honestly not really in line with the recent class reworks. Ninja still has Mudras after they were changed in ShB as it is a key part of class identity, Monk got it's death penalty removed and kept Grease Lightning as a trait instead of a clunky build up mechanic, Astrologian kept it's card but they got changed on ShB launch. All these classes largely kept their identity, I see no reason to remove Summoners when it could be improved upon.

I don’t think pets are going away. What people are debating over is how they will function. Personally I don’t think SE will change much aesthetically or functionally about most of the kit apart from Pet AI itself and maybe how we target certain abilities. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make Summoners target abilities on the pet directly, such as Devotion. Where I think they will focus their attention is on exposing pet AI or tuning up its responsiveness and trimming buttons that are already mutually exclusive.