Quote Originally Posted by Samuraiking View Post
Even though I am not a fan of WoW, it's certainly polished and was a good choice to draw inspiration from. However, mimicking WoW classes instead of keeping with the wonderful iconic theme of the FF universe is sad. They have pretty much ruined SMN. Don't get me wrong, the class functions as a class, what they have ruined is what SMN is at its' core, a summoning class that relies on the raw power of its' summons.
You're letting your nostalgia blind you. With the exception of FFX, summons have always been one-shot abilities. Problem is, you can't do that in an MMORPG without massively devaluing the summons themselves (not to mention soloing would be pretty damn hard if your combat time was spent doing one-shot summons with long cast times).

That aside, the lore doesn't support it. Arcanist was obviously designed with the pet complimenting the class' focus on DoTs. Your alternative you have been half of your abilities being blank and entirely determined by what summon you had, and the eggi's (as well as carbuncle) being more like minions on /follow. Lastly, XI's summoner was far from what I consider good on any level; a job that ended up becoming only useful once every 57 minutes (Astral Flow => Summon Alxeander => Use Perfect Defense) is not worthy of prase by any stretch of the imagination.