It's almost a certainty that your turn off losses will be excessive without the solid low-Z turn off provided by pnp xtors
Many have tried to design simple xfmr gate drive for high power levels, almost all have failed - pnp's etc are so cheap - why not ensure decent product life?
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p.s. ringing is a function of all the L in series to the gate and back, including the drive Tx, if you can keep this to < 300nH then the ringing might be a non problem - gate Zeners will clip and dissipate some of the energy and give you a square wave at the gate, turning off large FET die quickly requires ~ 1-2 amp in <50nS, assuming a 12V drive the max L can be (v/L = di/dt) 240nH, to get to 1A in 20nS, even a good pnp struggles to get to 1A in 50nS...