Should Summoner...

[Saggo]

Odd because I have similar opinions on the matter and I played to 99 as SMN after I came back to see what was up. Before I came back my choices were Carbuncle and Garuda, after it was Garuda and Shiva and lesser still when I finished my Shiva staff.

If we're using anecdotal experience, at 99 I found consistent use for Ramah, Garuda, Shiva, and Leviathan for different purposes and inconsistent buy non-trivial uses for the remaining primes. Not every avatar was superior DPR, for sure, but the only one's truly trivialized post-75 were arguably just Carby and Fenrir.

Truly optimizing SMN 71-99, also meant keeping avatars out to maximize the inherent TP boost. As for party relevance, FFXI had a sordid history as a whole, this wasn't unique to SMN.

Regardless of someone's opinion on avatars or their place in a party, FFXI did power projection through summons better than 14 and matured the system enough to easily distinguish from being flashy BLMs.

[Greedalox]

If we're using anecdotal experience, at 99 I found consistent use for Ramah, Garuda, Shiva, and Leviathan for different purposes and inconsistent buy non-trivial uses for the remaining primes. Not every avatar was superior DPR, for sure, but the only one's truly trivialized post-75 were arguably just Carby and Fenrir.

Truly optimizing SMN 71-99, also meant keeping avatars out to maximize the inherent TP boost. As for party relevance, FFXI had a sordid history as a whole, this wasn't unique to SMN.

Regardless of someone's opinion on avatars or their place in a party, FFXI did power projection through summons better than 14 and matured the system enough to easily distinguish from being flashy BLMs.

It's not anecdotal. It was well known information that Shiva and Garuda would be there for 95% of your content, I was simply making a point that I was falling in line to what every other summoner who spent a moment researching the class at that point in time. You were plain and simply not doing a simple thing to do as well as you could. The other 5% would be leaving Abyssea areas and not having permanence due to your Atma. If you read above, I specifically stated that the class was enjoyable but... heavily flawed and should not be used as an example of a proper full summoner pet system, because replacing a flawed system with a flawed system with the knowledge that you're implementing a flawed idea is silly and circular in logic.

So we agree for the most part, I'm simply trying to be against pushing to have copy/pasting 11 onto 14 and assuming that we'll have this timeless modern game, because it won't. The idea that "it worked in XI so why don't they do in in XIV?" is asinine at best, because the games are hardly comparable.