[Ranylyn]

I've put my post in a spoiler tag simply so people can feel free to ignore it; it's long and probably contains unpopular opinions.

First up, for a little bit of backstory, I've always been a summoner enthusiast. One of my first RPGs was Final Fantasy 4, and Rydia was my favorite party member in it for her summons. So needless to say, I've always had summoners on the go in SL2.

I personally have had absolutely zero problems with Youkai in the new system; I find that between Total Control allowing proper tactics so the youkai can be designed to be more specialized, and the changes to elemental attack (especially how the new Youkai skill scaling works,) as well as Youkai Skills not skyrocketing in cost as they level up so Energy Transfer is actually worth a damn, they're actually better than ever before.

Using Izabe as an example; it's low HP is because of it's range. It doesn't need to face the kind of danger that something with much closer range would endure. If an enemy player were to disengage from the summoner and chase after Izabe, it shouldn't take 3 turns to drop a summon who can attack from that far away, since the summoner could just unsummon it to keep it safe. Map-wide attacks like Magaisendo and Wretched Oil are still an issue, but there's nothing wrong with something having counters. Izabe also basically prevents the use of Shared Pain with it's low HP, a powerful drawback for it's advantages, and as a single bonded Youkai, also gets dragged back into the fray with Ritual Sword.

It may seem like there's more bad than good with Izabe, but also consider the Great Reckoning patch notes:

For Evoke Skills, where appropriate; (FP scaling costs down, damage formula is now caster's 100% + (Youkai Level/25, *100)% Elemental ATK. At level 60 this is 340% of Elemental ATK.

Below, I've given a Level 50 Izabe with 33 faith a shot at a Jammer Cave Jammer, just to get a number to do math with.

Izabe's turn.
Jammer takes 106 Light damage.

Sure, once you factor in someone with 40 res and 30% Light Resist, this may seem pretty weak, just like literally any other elemental stuff in the resist meta. But keep in mind, it's working with only 300% of it's potential 340% scaling, and is still 7 stat points short of the one in the first post of the thread. The other thing to consider is... it's "extra" damage. The summoner is still doing things on their own.

As for not allowing Youkai Friendship to drop unless you give them gifts? Please don't punish bonders who want to level youkai and keep them unbonded by killing them off repeatedly. Instead, simply make it so youkai friendship does not drop in PVP specifically, because quite frankly, who WOULDN'T go take out that Izabe to get it out of the way?