Evolved Summoner speculation

[JazzySerendipity]

I really enjoyed the former summoner. It felt like I was performing an actual ritual that landed a big payout. That said I would actual be fine with the current setup if every action was a summon. I would love to see leviathan and think he would make a much better forward rush than Ifrit. I would like to see a Chocobo/Mog summon that mimicked the White Mage rescue ability. Shiva would be interesting as maybe an ice armor spell. I think phoenix should be made into the resurrection spell.

That said if nothing else, I would be really happy, and really appreciate some Summoner quests to unlock egi glamours and just be able to fully customize my summons.

[Chasingstars]

Thinking on it more, like the only other way I can think they would "evolve" summoner more is by consolidating its buttons and merging the purposes of those buttons.

Like instead of having Ruin III and Tri-Disaster, we just have Ruin that also does aoe damage like Tri-Disaster. Or maybe merging Phyisk and Radiant Aegis where you get a heal but also a charge-based barrier. Or making Ruin IV into a buff that makes your next Ruin III do more damage. Or doing what I said with Ruin III and Tri-Diaster but for Energy Drain and Fester when it comes to Energy Siphon and Painflare. Or for like Rite and Catastrophe during the gem phases (IE: Ruby Rite and Ruby Catastrophe). And like having Aethercharge and Aether Flow and Enkindle being merged so that you press the button to summon Demi-Bahamut, then again to do Akh Morn, and then again to Deathflare. For the gems themselves of like which ARR primal to summon (garuda/ifrit/titan), maybe its done through the summon carbuncle button, that when activated again your other buttons transform temporarily to be the summon you want to use for that time.

And that would trim summoner down by 11 buttons.

Not saying it would be the best idea, still just trying to contemplate how they would even do an evolved summoner.

EDIT: I guess the only way it could be absolutely silly would be everytime we do a demi summon, we just summon phoenix and solar bahamut and demi-bahamut together and they each auto attack and do their things when ordered to do damage of Akh Morn (1500p) + Exodus (1500p) + Revelation (1300p) + Deathflare (500p) + Sunflare (1000p), plus also the healing from Phoenix. Then with the gem summons, same silly thing, Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit just show up together and each do their big attack before leaving.

[Khryseis_Astra]

As far as button count goes, depending on what is added and/or removed, I could see the gem buttons staying as is, but they change out for different triads if we finally get our other three elemental gems, or potentially even more triads down the road. Add one button to switch teams. Keep all Demis and their special abilities on one button, and hopefully we don’t get any further Demis without getting a triad of gems to go along with them! Kinda keeps them even with PCT’s two palettes by giving SMN two gem triad teams along elemental lines, and where PCT has paintings, we have our Demis. I know I compare to PCT a lot, but seeing what they did there made me realize just how much more SMN could potentially have! We already have space in the current rotation, we would just get more variety of summons, instead of repeating the core 3 over and over.

If Physick stays (but I doubt it), they could finally fix it to scale with INT so it was actually useful in a clutch, and have it share a button with Sol’s Lux. We could save another button by just having our Carby respawn when we do, or combining the Summon/Away buttons. I’m kinda hoping we keep the rez the way it is, but I wouldn’t be too upset if they linked it to Phoenix and you gained rez charges from that, as long as they don’t put a hard time limit on it, which is my main issue with Lux being tied to Sol.

I’m kind of indifferent as to what is done with the plain Ruins, Necrotize, etc… if we got more gems we wouldn’t really need many “filler” spells. I’d prefer to have everything be a summon of some kind, and that’s not hard to do if they finally build on the framework of the rework.

[Dyvid]

Well I can already take five buttons away from the get-go; Gemshine & Precise Brillance (no reason ruin and outburst can't do the same job), add Fester & Painflare to follow ups to Energy Drain & Energy Siphon, Astral Flow > Enkindle Demi. We can even merge Primal onto one button. Point is it starting to get thin in what the job actually offere in terms of abilities. Keep trimming and it could have just 8 buttons.

It's funny that Yoshi-P mentioned SWG : NGE because that is exactly what he did to Summoner and after playing FFXVI you can see where the inspiration came from. The key issue anytime you do a redesign like this that you have to stay true to the core job design; BLM switches from Fire/Ice, RDM cast dualcast to get 50 on W/B magic, and SMN was a pet/dot mage that built toward Demi. Then EW up ended that design where you don't have pets, dots, and open with Demi.

I don't think they need to copy WoW and have 12 "pets" out at the same time because that extreme, but they need to marry the Old Design with the New Desgin. Primals should do more than just enkindle then leave, even if it's just a scripted rotation for 15sec. Elemental attunements need more than just two abilities. Demi should be earned, not given.

I posted before that they should use FFXIV's Elemental Wheel as a blueprint on how the mechanic works.

Casting Wind > Fire > Ice unlocks Bahamut
Casting Lightning > Water > Earth unlocks Phoenix

Wind and Lightning should stay 1.5s have two dots plus AoE ground DoTs plus a standard attack spell
Fire and Water have longer cast time as current but add two more spells
Earth and Ice should stay the same but maybe something else to make it feel unique

They should be just stand alone, no pet summons like Bismark, Ravana, Odin, etc that is basically an OGCD spell. I can see Bismark doing a splash dive onto the target, Odin doing a riding dash, you get the point.

[Khryseis_Astra]

I posted before that they should use FFXIV's Elemental Wheel as a blueprint on how the mechanic works.

Casting Wind > Fire > Ice unlocks Bahamut
Casting Lightning > Water > Earth unlocks Phoenix

Wind and Lightning should stay 1.5s have two dots plus AoE ground DoTs plus a standard attack spell
Fire and Water have longer cast time as current but add two more spells
Earth and Ice should stay the same but maybe something else to make it feel unique

I definitely like them being split along the elemental wheel, and if they’re doing away with the 2-minute meta, building up to the Demis would feel more satisfying to me. I would also like to choose between astral and umbral teams, so it’s not a totally static rotation and allows for more freedom.

[Allegor]

Personally, the change I want to see the most is separating Bahamut and Phoenix (and Solar Baha, I guess...) like in PvP, so we're free to summon either at our convenience, rather than being stuck in a set order.