Summoner - What it needs.

[Khryseis_Astra]

How would you even add 4 additional summons, making it 9, while meaningfully differentiating them, adhering to button limits and the 2 minute cycle?

I wouldn’t add 4 personally, I’d add more summons in triads, using the existing gem buttons. Levi, Shiva, Ramuh for starters, although realistically, maybe that’s as far as they’d ever go, but I could live with that because the set of elemental primals would finally be complete. They would switch out depending on what Demi they’re linked to, or alternatively split into astral/umbral teams that could be switched between by adding just one extra button for that specific purpose. So only adding one button total.

As far as “meaningfully differentiating” them, they would have their own attacks based on their primals, just like the 3 gem summons we already have. It’s not “just a reskin” unless you think Ifrit is just a reskin of Titan already. In fact, I would have the abilities of each team be the reason for why you’d want to use one team over another at any given time, just keeping the potencies roughly in the same ballpark. As someone who has a love/hate relationship with the 2 minute meta, this approach would still fit, but in your other minute you’d have the 3 new gems instead of just repeating Ifrit/Titan/Garuda. Which is probably why this would be the best we could hope for in the current framework, even though those gem buttons could be switched out to any number of triads of summons. But it’s highly unlikely they’d add on another chain to the rotation, so the only way I see us getting more summons after that would be if higher levels let us pick and choose between available skills/summons to attach to the gems.

[HanakoTheGoth]

I wouldn’t add 4 personally, I’d add more summons in triads, using the existing gem buttons. Levi, Shiva, Ramuh for starters, although realistically, maybe that’s as far as they’d ever go, but I could live with that because the set of elemental primals would finally be complete. They would switch out depending on what Demi they’re linked to, or alternatively split into astral/umbral teams that could be switched between by adding just one extra button for that specific purpose. So only adding one button total.

As far as “meaningfully differentiating” them, they would have their own attacks based on their primals, just like the 3 gem summons we already have. It’s not “just a reskin” unless you think Ifrit is just a reskin of Titan already. In fact, I would have the abilities of each team be the reason for why you’d want to use one team over another at any given time, just keeping the potencies roughly in the same ballpark. As someone who has a love/hate relationship with the 2 minute meta, this approach would still fit, but in your other minute you’d have the 3 new gems instead of just repeating Ifrit/Titan/Garuda. Which is probably why this would be the best we could hope for in the current framework, even though those gem buttons could be switched out to any number of triads of summons. But it’s highly unlikely they’d add on another chain to the rotation, so the only way I see us getting more summons after that would be if higher levels let us pick and choose between available skills/summons to attach to the gems.

kinda like blue mage where you can pick and choice your gems i mean you fought them in 1 v 1 battle made them submit i dont see why not