The long international nightmare of the Summoners has ended this evening. Tonight marked the 66th Live Letter From the Producer for Final Fantasy XIV. The stream covered a number of job and combat changes coming to the game with the November launch of the Endwalker expansion.
For a very long time, Summoners called Primals into battle, but it wasn’t the same Primals that players faced in Trials and dungeons. Instead, these were cuter, smaller, safer iterations of those same characters. It was a sad state of affairs.
No longer! Now Summoners can summon and invest themselves with small versions of the actual Primals! The Job Actions preview video showed Garuda, Ifrit, and Titan in their actual forms, albeit slightly smaller than their encounter forums. According to FFXIV director and executive producer Naoki Yoshida, you’re not summoning the actual Primals. Instead, you’re infusing gems with their power. The names of the three are slightly different as well: Ifrit Ruby, Titan Topaz, and Garuda Emerald.
Before, the Summoner rotation was moving back and forth between Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix. Now in-between those, you can summon the three Primals, who will enhance you with elemental abilities. Ifrit has skills with long cast times, but high damage, while Titan has instant abilities that allow you to move around. Finally, Garuda’s abilities are instant, but need to be placed. You can use them in any order, but you have to use all three before you switch back to Demi-Bahamut or Demi-Phoenix. You need to be smart about when you use each summon.
With the new focus, Square Enix has also decided to drop damage-over-time (DOT) skills as a focus of the Summoner job. Regardless, being able to channel the power of the three original Primals is great news for Summoners everywhere.
I’m not personally a Summoner myself, but it was definitely the most exciting change in the Job Actions preview video, outside of more detailed looks at Sage and Reaper. We’ll be covering all the changes presented in tonight’s Live Letter From the Producer and the upcoming Endwalker media preview right here on Fanbyte! I hope you’re as excited as we are! Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker will be launching on November 19, 2021.
