Quote Originally Posted by dezzmont View Post
its interesting for you to say that Egis are weak but Demis are strong when Egis are more damage output than either Demi (though, admittedly not both). For perspective, apparently the output of the egi is on par with the output of Bard's song mechanics of Bloodletter and Pitch Perfect, and this is ignoring Ruin IV entirely.

They aren't weak at all, they are as strong as many job's 'main' mechanics, its just that they are visually so terribly designed most people wouldn't ever notice because you get so little visual impact from hitting an egi assault button it feels like nothing, despite it actually being a weavable 250 potency (ok, pet scaling being what it is, probably 200) attack, which is extremely strong for a weave and you having the ability to hit that weave every 15 seconds.

Dots make sense for summoner in a few ways thematically (For example, carbuncle in FF is historically a DOT summon, so them being our first """"Summon"""" despite lorewise not being a summon makes it work a bit better), and they aren't actually detracting that much from the Egi. Its just that the Egi, again, looks so freakin baaaaaaad. Its on par with Bootshine in terms of hiding how much its actually doing for you and creating a very lackluster feel to them.

I personally think the fact we DON'T have Demis up all the time is important to the mechanical feel of SMN AND making it feel like a summoner. Summoners in FF overall don't just 'have' their summons, they are in the games generally either that game's limit-break system and are character specific (ex: Snow in FF13 summons Shiva), are super spells that have huge charge times or mana costs (Ex: 6 and 7), or are a character's 'ultimate ability' that override's the party and is not meant to be generally used because it has serious weaknesses (ex: FFX). The concept of 'charging up' the demi via trances and mostly fighting personally is actually EXTREMELY FF summoner, and while its kinda bad there isn't a good thematic link between dreadwyrm trance into summoning Bahumat (and maybe holding dreadwyrm aether should give you a little glow to make it more clear you 'charged up' the summon), it actually makes a lot of sense thematically and mechanically the summoner has to 'earn' Bahumat and Phoenix (and, if we ever get egi-glams, maybe other glammed demis as well, so its more clear a demi is just a 'powered up' egi).

This is why I am not a fan of proposed SMN reworks despite generally sitting in the 'Actually no SMN is in a really bad spot right now.' It MECHANICALLY feels a LOT like a summoner! Its just that what the visuals prioritize and creates in game doesn't at all.

Its just that nuance is hard and language is imprecise and 'The character animations undersell what is happening too much' is a really fiddly opinion that no one is going to naturally reach unless they just happen to look and go 'hey wait Flaming Crush and Crimson Cyclone are actually a LOT of potency that come off cooldown VERY fast, despite the animations being so downplayed I can't even see them while looking for them and it feeling like nothing happens besides me getting Ruin IV when I hit this button."
When you completely ignore uptime sure Egis deal more damage than Demis. They're still weaker. It's not all about visuals, the fact that they're out all the time makes them less meaningful and the fact that their abilities are ogcd makes them feel unimpactful. Like you said with Demis, it's important that they're not out all the time and I don't think we should always have a Demi out because those are special moments, but we could bring up the Egis a bit and make them more special.

The main reasons I like the idea of a rotating Egi system are to add more variety, utility, and interactions with summons to the job. We would still always have an Egi out but they could at least do something cool upon summon so they're less of an afterthought, only to be utilized in between the "important" spells (as spells on the gcd have more weight to them).

I do really like the idea of putting more emphasis on Trance again to make summons feel more impactful as stated in my first post here, and if our lesser summons could be involved in the process rather than temporarily discarded in favor of something stronger, all the better.

Also I've always known Carbuncle to cast Reflect on the party, not sure where it being a dot summon comes from. (FFXI maybe? Haven't played that one.)