SMN 5.1 Job adjustments

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Originally Posted by Nemekh

If it's just this, then it is not iron jaws single target and only applies for the dots spread to targets around the source used for Bane. What this does mean is that it will be really good for 2 target situations and even more targets provided you can infer which spread target has the 100% strength DoTs to bane again off of.

However, we do not know if Bane's CD will remain as is and the snapshotting will need to be tested thoroughly.

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Bane already applies the 60% reduced potency to all targets beyond the first, and the duration reset only affected them as well, so I doubt it'll be used in the manner you describe here. It's still more DPS to just time the reapplications of the original set of DoTs with new applications of Tri-Disaster or hardcast Bio/Miasma. It would need the iron jaws effect to be worth attempting at all, and I suspect they'd make that reapplication work in the same way as the rest to save on dev time, meaning it'd have the same 60% reduction and full duration reset, and therefore not be worthwhile compared to hardcasting on 2 targets provided enough time was available for full ticks.

By beyond the first, it's the first additional target spread to, not the source being the first. Bane is Source, 100%, 40%, 40%, 40%... 40% up to the 15th additional target beyond the source. This was something verified on release. On 2 targets it absolutely will be a consideration. Hard casting a set is already such a huge cost because of how strong our GCDs are vs ticks and Miasma on hit damage.

The flexibility of movement that should come from these changes is something to be really happy about. While there may be less buttons to press, I can see high-level play involving a sort of mini-game to never have to use a Ruin II cast by always having Ruin IV stacks available, especially during the tail-end of Bahamut's duration.

I do question with all of these instant casts the longterm future of Dreadwyrm Trance though. With this change, DWT feels wholly redundant as simply an instant cast buff since the assaults will be able to help weave Energy Drain and Fester and the goal is already to try to end DWT as fast as possible anyway. It seems like something too big for them to try and mess with during this expansion but I definitely see the Dreadwyrm and Bahamut portion of the rotation becoming the thing they can't ignore when answering job complaints moving forward.

I'm really hoping that they're improving the command prompt of the Egi assaults so they go off instantly as any other gcd would, because as mentioned by another poster earlier in the thread (sorry cant link as I'm on mobile) weaving enkindle and devotion as well as waiting for ruin 4 procs will be awkward and messy

Also I'm okay with these changes as long as egi response is addressed and egi assaults are at least on par with ruin 3 potencies

I'm sure many will be pleased with these adjustments but personally I feel these changes were quite tone deaf towards what many of the summoner communities were looking for. It seems like all they heard was "Summoner is too busy, just lessen the amount of buttons they have to press by putting egi-assaults on the GCD." The only big improvements I see with these changes is a bit more increased mobility, which is certainly a net positive, and that this will certainly lessen the carpal tunnel complaints.

But it still doesn't address the multitude of complaints that so many of us has had. It doesn't address the consistent pet and summon ghosting issue that has plagued the job since it's inception. It doesn't address the rigidity of the rotation after Stormblood being so free flowing after making aetherflow a targeting attack. It doesn't fix how disjointed the kit feels where half the mechanics of the job do not have any affect on the other. It doesn't address how awkward Dreadwyrm Trance feels to use (heck if anything it makes it feel even more pointless then before). It doesn't address any of the problems with Devotion not activating or missing out on many party members. It doesn't address demi Summons still having to follow us around like lost puppy dogs when every summoner and their grandmother and their grandmothers cat have been asking them to make them stationary since they were added in 4.0.

Now I'm ranting and I try to make my feedback far more constructive. Basically all this is, is a band-aid. It makes a frantic mess of a job a playable mess of a job. It feels like what they did for MCH last expansion, where they make at least the job playable and worth the work you put in, and a minority of players may still enjoy it, but in the end the entire job needs a top down rework. I hope that means they put the same thoroughness and care into reworking SMN as they did MCH.

It'll beinteresting to see how these changes actually feel. I do agree with Rika on a lot of her points though and feel like this is just a band-aid to cover up a biiger underlying issue. Summoner since it's inception this XIV has been a bit wonky, never quite feeling right. Yes it's been fun to play but it has never really given us that "Summoner" feeling properly. With the implimentation of Demi Primals it feels like we are beginning to get that feeling, however slowly. I feel like the Demi Primal rotations are going to become the new staple of the SMN rotation with egi's playing less of an upfront roll and dots and procs being there to fill the gaps between phases. I love Summoner and I am very interested to see where it goes, but for now I await the 5.1 changes to see if it makes the job feel better. The current SMN model, while fun, feels so frantic and I hope this helps to tone that down a bit.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

But it still doesn't address the multitude of complaints that so many of us has had.

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It would be nice if they gradually fix those things in the new patches but knowing how they handled things before, I think we'll have to wait until the next expansion for them to fix the 'major' issues.

Honestly SMN never needed a rework to begin with, just simple QoLs like the Bane rework and instant-applying DoTs. They should've worked on the issues like the pet response and Demi behavior that's been complained about for 2 years. I really hope they revert some things back like what they did to bowmage, especially Aetherflow.

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Originally Posted by Rika007

I'm sure many will be pleased with these adjustments but personally I feel these changes were quite tone deaf towards what many of the summoner communities were looking for. It seems like all they heard was "Summoner is too busy, just lessen the amount of buttons they have to press by putting egi-assaults on the GCD."

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"Slower is better. Let's move all abilities onto the GCD!" - No one.
*A sudden moment of auditory clarity* - Devs

*Egi Ruin and Dancerja follow accordingly.*

EAs being moved to the GCD was one of our expected changes over at The Balance. The EAs will be replacing other GCDs in the rotation while being 4 cpm/min less. It achieves their intended goal of reducing how busy the job presently is. It's certainly a boon for higher ping players who do not have to clip as severely. Things are being addressed one step at a time.

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Originally Posted by SWB

Also I'm okay with these changes as long as egi response is addressed and egi assaults are at least on par with ruin 3 potencies

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Do we know why the egi response is so slow compared to our demi summons which I never heard of having this problem?

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Originally Posted by Vitreus

Do we know why the egi response is so slow compared to our demi summons which I never heard of having this problem?

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Because, like with SCH, they're still treated as pet GCDs but also as your oGCD, and because of that the pet needs to finish whatever they just did and THEN they'll do what you told them to. It is a dumb system. If they want them to be treated like pet GCDs then put them back on the pet hotbar, it you want them to be my oGCD I have to weave in, then it needs to happen instantly regardless of what the pet is doing.

Pet abilities for both SMN and SCH never should have been removed from the pet hotbar. Now we likely have to wait until next xpac for them to be put back there.

I've only just recently starting messing around with my SMN and it didn't take long for ghosting and delayed actions from pets to infuriate me. Demi summons following me around is another biggie that just kills optimization potential for SMN. Makes me wonder how high a skilled SMN could push their DPS without these issues.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Pet abilities for both SMN and SCH never should have been removed from the pet hotbar. Now we likely have to wait until next xpac for them to be put back there.

I've only just recently starting messing around with my SMN and it didn't take long for ghosting and delayed actions from pets to infuriate me. Demi summons following me around is another biggie that just kills optimization potential for SMN. Makes me wonder how high a skilled SMN could push their DPS without these issues.

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Honestly the Demi's feel even worse to me this expansion even though they technically were never on the petbar at all. At least with Bahamut last expansion as long as I didn't move till after the first akh-morn I was able to almost time all my weaves in a way that basically forced him to stay in place as long as I didn't move to far. But now without the oGCD weaving within the Demi phases and the need to do the full animation when they enter I feel like I have no control over the summon at all.

At this point, summons are basically glorified spell animations. It wouldn't be unreasonable to just remove their physical placement entirely, and have them just float around like persistent spell effects.

I will miss throwing Egi Assaults into combos, however I will enjoy having something to do beside spam Ruin during CDs.
I really thought Ruination was a fun combo with Dreadwyrm to burst DPS, although the effect itself was somewhat mediocre. Now that it's gone though and Tri has its own damage, I'll probably use it a lot more.
I love the changes to Bane and shorter cooldowns sound fun. So overall, I like these changes.

If anything I just feel like they're still completely missing what makes a fun Summoner class. I continue to maintain FFXI did it malms better... But I still like this SMN for what it is.

NB4 "play FFXI then!" I do. Sometimes.

So, the idea of 'combos' brings up the idea of working in tandem with summons, and the first thing that came to mind for me was the gimmicky puppet fighters common in Arcsys fighting games. Something like Guilty Gear's Zato 1/Eddie or Blazblue's Clover. Now, this is all very reaching and pulled out of my ass as a concept, but whatever.

So, in the mentioned Arcsys characters, these puppet characters function off of a mechanic collequially known as 'negative edge.' Basically, these puppet characters functioned as two entities at once, the primary character and their puppet. When you pressed a button, the character used a move. When you released the button, the puppet would perform a move. The end result being that both pressing and releasing the button give you different functions for your character.

Now, FFXIV obviously wouldn't be able to function based on holding and releasing the buttons. But the core concept itself could bear fruit for the Summoner itself. Egi Assault oGCD skills could be empowered and consolidated with some SMN core GCD skills. When the SMN uses a GCD, it changes into the egi assault oGCD. Using the corresponding oGCD 'releases' the skill, returning it to its original state. Ideally speaking, every GCD function should be a skill the Summoner itself uses, and every oGCD belonging to the summon.

But hey, I'm just spitballing. No matter how they do it, I just want SMN to be fun and viable. End of the day, there are two key factors I want to take priority:

1. Pressing lots of buttons feels nice, I always want to be doing something, and I enjoy feeling like I'm pressing the most buttons in the room. However, each of those button presses needs to feel meaningful in its functionality, rather than just busywork (which the current egi-assaults are)
2. Priority-based skill usage instead of a more rigid rotation makes optimal play and decision making more rewarding.

I'd also appreciate big badass celestial creatures blasting my enemies into the aether in big badass fashion, but I'd appreciate making the class worth playing at all first.

.....I don't remember SMN ever doing combos..unless they want MNK's combo system I mean. Stormblood's SMN was more streamlined, easy to understand your rotation, yet punishing if you are ko'd. Shadowbringers pre-SMN is very clunky, the rotation is questionable. So the "combos" by double weaving egi assaults during your "rotation" isn't the best to play the job to the point most of SMN players don't even like it. Even changing E.Assaults to a oGCD spell with the same cast time with ruin 2/3 will give you less buttons to do, but it still needs work to make it more enjoyable to play. Energy drain/siphon not satisfying to use. I still want Demi-bahamut to spawn during DWT the way that Demi-phoenix to spawn during FWT.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

.....I don't remember SMN ever doing combos..unless they want MNK's combo system I mean.

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Combos do not have to be a rigid sequence of GCD skills...

Comboing between caster and pet, as in having synergetic effects or unlocks between pet actions and caster actions, is still comboing.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Combos do not have to be a rigid sequence of GCD skills...

Comboing between caster and pet, as in having synergetic effects or unlocks between pet actions and caster actions, is still comboing.

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So basically it's assumption way of combing, but in the devs idea..no such thing.

Are you all ignoring what a mess summoner is below 80? The role quests are all tuned to the tank pet who no longer tanks. The summoners dps is embarrassingly low, to the point that groups do not want summoners and summoners cannot complete msq’s that every other class has no problem with.

Summoner has always been my favorite class but returning to the class at early levels is heartbreaking. Please consider the class prior to 80.

Things at lower levels can definitely be looked at more closely for sure, but a lot of these problems when people talk about quests being too hard - the players have been seriously under-geared. Even when they were current many quests were done without Titan having to tank for us, but with Ifrit or Garuda egi with more level and content appropriate gear. Our lower level dps has changed a lot, and in some regards is actually higher. There's a lot of moving parts with all the potency + mechanical changes and it all depends on where in the levelling process you look at.

The biggest loss, however, remains the gutting of Egi damage, which at lower levels they form a much higher % of total damage. Cripple them and yes it really does hurt lower levels more.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

So basically it's assumption way of combing, but in the devs idea..no such thing.

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A combo as I have always understood it is a sequence of skills wherein the benefit of the sequential skill is dependent on the previous. In fighting games for instance, the benefit would be an unblockable series of attacks. "Sequential" being the keyword there as the skills would always have to follow one after the other. In FFXIV, I believe the term "skillchains" is widely accepted for how the combo system works.

However, if we were to declassify a sequence of skills such as Horoscope>>Aspecected Helios>>GCD>>GCD>>Horoscope into what I would probably call "broken combos" (the benefit of the sequential skill can take place after other skills are used), then even the technical combos the game uses can be considered broken as ogcds are often weaved between them.

IOW... combo schmombo ;p

Preliminary notes are VERY promising. Working on a news update for akhmorning to discuss the changes. Watch this space!

I'm actually rather pleased that the suggestion I made around the time the expansion dropped to reduce the cooldown timer of the Trances by at least five seconds was actually put into effect. Having Tri-Disaster refresh a few seconds earlier should alleviate quite a bit of the issues as far as keeping DoTs up in line with our rotation. DoT potencies are also slightly increased, which along with a 300 potency hit when Tri-D lands could maybe be enough to offset the loss of Ruination, but then number-crunching isn't my specialty so I couldn't say for sure.

The potency increases on Ifrit will hopefully add up as well, but time will tell. It will be interesting working with the new Egi Assaults, to say the least. I think in the long run it'll help clean things up, but since the EAs are on GCD I imagine you really only need to worry about using one of them as far as Ifrit is concerned, since the potency of both attacks seems to be the same. The only difference is Flaming Crush being an AoE, but that shouldn't matter since we have Garuda who's presumably still the better AoE pet option. That said, Garuda lost a bit of potency with it's main Wind Blade attack, but also gained considerably more potency for her other attacks. Titan got some buffs to potencies and its shield, but I still see his use being rather situational.

I found it odd they'd reduce Painflare's potency at first until I read further and found that new trait to increase Outburst's potency. Interesting, to say the least. The immediate Wyrmwaves upon summoning Bahamut is actually something that should be very helpful. I hope this means he'll be overall more responsive, but again time will tell. Another nice touch is being able to see your pet on the party list again, though it is still untargetable. Losing the pet is a lot more rare these days, but it's still good to be able to better keep track that its still out and about without having to look around the battlefield for it. I actually had no idea Phoenix could be targeted at all until I saw these patch notes, which is an oddity imo but I suppose it'll be moot after the patch. Everlasting Flight gets a one second extension as well, if you care about that for some reason.

I still don't want to jump to conclusions before I can actually try things out. Even so, I think these notes are overall a step in the right direction.

5.10 Summoner Preliminary Patch Notes News Update

Why do they keep doing the same with SMN over and over again? Every freaking expansion they release a broken class and then halfway through they either make it very strong or downright overpowered.

Let's just forget the numbers for a moment though.

Why on freaking earth does SMN start as a convoluted unedible mess mechanically speaking and ends up super simplified and smoother later on EVERY TIME.

Who is in charge of this class? Because they're tripping on the same stone repeatedly.

I also tire of the rework rebalance yoyoing, but for now, I am very content with the proposed changes.

Most of what I outlined as problematic in my 5.0 review video has been resolved, addressed or tweaked leaving a fraction of the original list.

All I am getting is that SE still doesn't know how to make a PET USING CLASS work right. Some of the changes are nice, some of the nerfs aren't. Whoever is in charge of "fixing" the summoner should REALLY take a good, long look at how other MMO's balance their pet-using classes.

Since their "main" competition out here in the West is WoW - then they should extrapolate from how Blizzard built their pet classes and see what they can bring to the table. All they're effing doing is make changes for the END-GAME party setup and not so much on solo-play and leveling. There's not much variation and the "most useful" at "end game" comes down to Garuda (for standard AOE) and Ifrit (as Titan is only situational - at least to me).

I still hate the fact that there's zero versatility when it comes to a pet being unique - all 3 normal ones are DPS, not a single Tank/Healer/DPS/Crowd Control difference between the 3 of them before pulling out Bahamut. Where the EF is the "support" and utility summoners bring? I feel that the way SE is trying to "appeal" to the OCD-DPS-crowd that want fewer buttons to push and are only concerned about damage numbers, they completely got rid of what a summoner is at its core: using pets to combine with their attacks depending on which summon is out strategically.

When a Red Mage can kite and kill faster than you on the field WITHOUT a pet, then you KNOW something is wrong as summoners are basically below now in damage - especially in fights where you need to keep moving. There's also the fact a Red Mage can actually HEAL better as a dps caster thanks to dual cast, it makes physick a joke since it doesn't scale the same way a scholar's physick does. Hell, a scholar's pet "EOS" (not counting Selene since they basically nerfed her six feet under in versatility) is even more useful as an actual pet than all 3 of the summoner's pets (barring Bahamut/Phoenix) combined. As it is - at least to me - they've been moving away from the actual definition of what a summoner is in-game with every "fix".

Whatever it is now in the game that calls itself a "summoner", isn't one.

Free mobility is ALWAYS nice and its great that bahamut will bank a wyrmwave now, and Tri-Disaster having 300 potency is a buff on single targets iirc. But for Egi Assaults...


You're basically spending 4 gcds doing nothing in the opener now (those were already instant cast because DWT) and 150 extra pet potency is less impressive in action than on paper for giving up a Ruin 3 to use. Yeah you can stack Ruin IV procs now but you barely need them for anything without weaving Egi Assaults so they're just... there. It's better than not having them but it's still comes off as kinda odd.


Plus these being on the gcd is going to create knock-on effects down the line because they're now twice as slow to dump. 2 of the current savage fights have enough downtime that you have to demi-summon immediately after the boss returns, but you're just going to be stuck sitting on these new egi assaults anyways. They're still dead skills 1/3rd of the time because demi-summons.


Summoner AoE also got a stealth hit since I doubt Tri-Disaster is 300 potency no fall-off AoE, so thats a lot of potency Outburst is losing over dungeon runs. But I could be wrong, and I'll gladly take a flat 300 potency aoe.

These really don't do anything to fix the pet mechanicss fighting against each other for attention, the ghosting, or the dumb ai. I am not impressed.

Egi Assaults, assuming caster pet scaling, are approximately on parity with Ruin III while giving Further Ruin for the upgraded Ruin IV. Using them will just be prior to Trances in general for movement &/or weaves. Being instant allows them to be used in the new opener prior to DWT, delaying it more suitably to typical Trance timings.

Outburst will be changed to 90p. It's a gain for content before Lv. 78 vs now.

They also fixed Demi-Bahamut's inability to Wyrmwave immediately after being summoned.

Please do go over the listed changes in the notes and in my digest. Saying they didn't do anything to mechanics fighting amongst themselves is false.

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Originally Posted by AdamWarlocke

All I am getting is that SE still doesn't know how to make a PET USING CLASS work right. Some of the changes are nice, some of the nerfs aren't. Whoever is in charge of "fixing" the summoner should REALLY take a good, long look at how other MMO's balance their pet-using classes.

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Well to be honest with how the game is designed/coded it's obvious they're having a hard time with making it so pet-oriented and have tried to step away from it with each expansion, and I think it's a good thing because anything that involves the pets (especially the egi) at the moment is a source of clunkiness and frustration. Not that I don't like it being a pet job, but I do like the direction SMN is going with Trances and Demi.

That and there's really no point in a healing pet. Play SCH for that, and a tank pet is counteracts Demi summon and was largely ineffective or outright useless ever since 2.x. To me the new Titan is more than welcome.

And I have to disagree, it's more of a Summoner than it is back then, with a more promising approach like Trances and Demi that I hope they continue in the next expansion.

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Originally Posted by AdamWarlocke

All I am getting is that SE still doesn't know how to make a PET USING CLASS work right. Some of the changes are nice, some of the nerfs aren't. Whoever is in charge of "fixing" the summoner should REALLY take a good, long look at how other MMO's balance their pet-using classes.

Since their "main" competition out here in the West is WoW - then they should extrapolate from how Blizzard built their pet classes and see what they can bring to the table. All they're effing doing is make changes for the END-GAME party setup and not so much on solo-play and leveling. There's not much variation and the "most useful" at "end game" comes down to Garuda (for standard AOE) and Ifrit (as Titan is only situational - at least to me).

I still hate the fact that there's zero versatility when it comes to a pet being unique - all 3 normal ones are DPS, not a single Tank/Healer/DPS/Crowd Control difference between the 3 of them before pulling out Bahamut. Where the EF is the "support" and utility summoners bring? I feel that the way SE is trying to "appeal" to the OCD-DPS-crowd that want fewer buttons to push and are only concerned about damage numbers, they completely got rid of what a summoner is at its core: using pets to combine with their attacks depending on which summon is out strategically.

When a Red Mage can kite and kill faster than you on the field WITHOUT a pet, then you KNOW something is wrong as summoners are basically below now in damage - especially in fights where you need to keep moving. There's also the fact a Red Mage can actually HEAL better as a dps caster thanks to dual cast, it makes physick a joke since it doesn't scale the same way a scholar's physick does. Hell, a scholar's pet "EOS" (not counting Selene since they basically nerfed her six feet under in versatility) is even more useful as an actual pet than all 3 of the summoner's pets (barring Bahamut/Phoenix) combined. As it is - at least to me - they've been moving away from the actual definition of what a summoner is in-game with every "fix".

Whatever it is now in the game that calls itself a "summoner", isn't one.

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WoW is the WORST example in class design ever, the pet classes are terrible with years old glitches, heck. Every class is terrible in WoW now.

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Originally Posted by Siete

WoW is the WORST example in class design ever, the pet classes are terrible with years old glitches, heck.

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Except their pets have been far, far more responsive than ours since at least, what, Wrath? For shi*s and giggles I tanked heroics as a Beast Master back in Wrath, with no issues consequent to poor pet responsiveness. Boar's Speed or any of the similar Mists effects or WoD-Legion talents blew our pet mobility and re-activeness out of the water. Heck, their pet bar is just an extra bar; pet skills start there by default, but you can move them to any other hotbar at will. Meanwhile, over ten years later, ShB releases with pets that eat their queued skills, and simply removes pets as actual pets instead of dealing with their issues of responsiveness, which they leave despite their removal as actual units. Hmm.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Except their pets have been far, far more responsive than ours since at least, what, Wrath? For shi*s and giggles I tanked heroics as a Beast Master back in Wrath, with no issues consequent to poor pet responsiveness. Boar's Speed or any of the similar Mists effects or WoD-Legion talents blew our pet mobility and re-activeness out of the water. Heck, their pet bar is just an extra bar; pet skills start there by default, but you can move them to any other hotbar at will. Meanwhile, over ten years later, ShB releases with pets that eat their queued skills, and simply removes pets as actual pets instead of dealing with their issues of responsiveness, which they leave despite their removal as actual units. Hmm.

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Hmm?
You haven't used Demonology Warlock, have you?
If your pet can't trace the enemy when you press the skill, the cooldown is consumed and it's done for.
Dreadstalkers bug and never trigger their starting attack if the enemy moves from the point it was standing at.
Imps are uncontrollable.
Pet sometimes decides to stop attacking and stares at the enemy.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

Not that I don't like it being a pet job, but I do like the direction SMN is going with Trances and Demi.

That and there's really no point in a healing pet. Play SCH for that, and a tank pet is counteracts Demi summon and was largely ineffective or outright useless ever since 2.x. To me the new Titan is more than welcome.

And I have to disagree, it's more of a Summoner than it is back then, with a more promising approach like Trances and Demi that I hope they continue in the next expansion.

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I will have to agree to disagree. It's a fecking PET job - so it has to mean something to BE a pet job because the whole point of the job ARE ABOUT PETS helping you do damage. That's the very definition of what a summoner IS. You may as well have Yoshi P/SE just get rid of the normal pets and turn the job into a straight up caster 90% of the time and just summon Bahamut/Phoenix for the "big guns" instead ala Machinist. Like I said before: how it plays now is beyond what it's supposed to be in the game's lore, so basically they broke their own dang lore by turning summoners into something isn't anymore. It's why I much prefer Red Mage and Scholar these days - both have solo survivability (scholar more so) than the current so-called summoner when it comes to soloing content AND leveling. In fact; I would argue that the Scholar job class is EXACTLY what a summoner SHOULD BE - despite the fact it has only ONE actual summon other than Seraph - and no, I can't count Selene since she's pretty much Eos with a different color now in Shadowbringers when they gutted her into an Eos clone.

I mean yeah, we'll see things differently and that's fine. I like the direction it's going, and I do believe most of our damage still comes from the pets (both Egi and Demi), especially with this new Egi Assault changes. I just like that the summoner themselves also channel the powers of Phoenix and their attacks change, which is what I'd like to see more of in the future. That and the Egi are more involved than ever with the changes.
And I disagree with the lore part, but again...To each their own.

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Originally Posted by Siete

Hmm?
You haven't used Demonology Warlock, have you?
If your pet can't trace the enemy when you press the skill, the cooldown is consumed and it's done for.
Dreadstalkers bug and never trigger their starting attack if the enemy moves from the point it was standing at.
Imps are uncontrollable.
Pet sometimes decides to stop attacking and stares at the enemy.

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I put in my two gil... I personally haven't played WOW since Cata when I quit, but pets back then (Vanilla/BC/Cata) for Hunter and Warlock in WoW were actually worth their salt - that is until the crybabies started QQ-ing and Blizzard started yoyo-ing both classes every other patch/expansion. The pets were just TOO good - I was among the few that actually popularized Rhino bowling in PVP, and the use of the Gorilladin in some dungeons/raids before the QQ-ing happened. The bloody VoidWalker sometimes served as an off-tank/pinch tank on some raids back then when there's a mechanic that an actual tank can't handle - I should know, I used one - and that was because the talent trees aren't the pigeon-holes they are now apparently in BFA when I looked it up.

So whenever I reference WoW in terms of pet mechanics, it's THOSE instances during WoW's earlier storied history that I refer to because that was how they got pets RIGHT. They even had actual GOOD skill trees. From what I've been hearing these days, WoW pets in terms of hunters is that it's more or less for vanity now rather than for strategy as other than a few gimmicks, just about every pet is the same damage-wise. I don't even want to mention Warlocks because it's just sad.

The only strategy in FFXIV relied more on timing and team coordination, etc. Crowd control is a hit/miss in this game due to some wonky AI, never mind the pets you can't even use other than auto-turrets with the occasional "push button here for special ability". If the OCD-DPS crowd in here are just complaining about the micromanaging, then why the eff are they playing summoner? As it is their voice that SE listens to more because "end game", then they may as well get rid of the normal SMN pets and just have Bahamut/Phoenix as limited boss summons when a "gauge" is full like a Red Mage/Machinist. And when you die, you still get a DPS punishment due to not having a pet out because half of your kit RELIED on pets being on the field - most especially dreadwyrm trance. Red Mages and Machinists don't have that downtime; SMN'rs have to rez, then summon pet, and then start their rotation from opener/trance - and you can't even use UNLESS your pet is out.

I still believe they have ZERO idea of how to make a pet class work right in this game. I've switched to Red Mage/Machinist - they don't have that many negative drawbacks, especially Red Mage - currently one of the most "balanced" jobs I've had the pleasure of switching to so far.

I definitely disagree with this lore comment but will avoid fisticuffs cause I know you pet users love those egis while I hate them lol. Overall these changes seem promising, except pain flare once again being nerfed which I don’t get since we went from kings of aoe to not as good as BLM at aoe.

I do wish we remained above BLM in at least aoe but whatever won’t know till I get to play this new SMN will less weaving thank god!! Thought I would have arthritis from playing this class.

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Originally Posted by Siete

Hmm?
You haven't used Demonology Warlock, have you?
If your pet can't trace the enemy when you press the skill, the cooldown is consumed and it's done for.
Dreadstalkers bug and never trigger their starting attack if the enemy moves from the point it was standing at.
Imps are uncontrollable.
Pet sometimes decides to stop attacking and stares at the enemy.

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Played one through Nighthold and Odin/Gaum/Helya. Never once had any of those things been an issue, apart from the Dreadstalker bug occurring once when I popped it with both a pathing break and boss movement. Meanwhile, Beast Master's and its pet controls remained almost perfectly responsive, just dull. (I raided EN primarily as Hunter, MM/BM, and ToS primarily as Arms.)
Admittedly, I've not leveled not touched my Lock since BfA dropped, so if they've broke it since then I guess I have all the more reason to stick with Hunter/Rogue/Warrior.