Please don't defile BST

[Kalise]

Demi-B is a pet that last 20secs, not a one and done spell. It will literally just sit there unless you command it directly or indirectly

Which is fine. You're playing an MMO not a turn based RPG. You can't expect everyone on the server to have to wait 5 minutes while you activate your summon.

The fact that Demi-B is mostly passive, you don't get a pet action bar, you get a single active skill and the rest of him is merely just reacting to your natural spell slinging, makes it essentially feel like a one and done spell. Just one that has continuous barrage of damage over a short period of time as opposed to 1) Being an exact copy of single player RPG FF incarnations which wouldn't work in an MMO or 2) Being a crappy Egi that is active at all times and is a glorified DoT when they bother to actually do something useful for a change.

Demi-B original size was problematic; That one guy in a movie theater..., Why is Demi Bahamut so big?. Make Bahamut transparent.

Is something that can be worked on.

A combination of design choices and visual effects settings can mitigate the negative impact for having such large entities being summoned in during Raid content.

Like for example, does Bahamut have to be near the ground? Could he not be flying overhead some distance?

Demi-Bahamut suffers from the same A.I. problem as all Egis. He will prioritize movement over commanded action which makes him miss Demi-Enkindle.

Though, he has much less movement to handle.

This also has more lenience because Demi-Bahamut only has a single activated skill.

But in the end, Demi-Bahamut shows an example of an MMO capable Summon with a scale comparable to that of the iconic job.

Is it perfect? No, it has some kinks to work out.

Is it better than Egi's? Oh yeah, by a factor of magnitudes. Egi's are complete trash. Demi only has a couple of issues to sort out (Size vs visibility of others and some more AI work)

Of course, you'd never be able to have Bahamut to scale though... Given his hand was an entire battle arena for Twintania with room to spare...

[Flana]

Demi-Bahamut is nothing but flaws. He's worse than egi's in every possible way.

His AI prioritizes moving even though he has the longest range of any player spell in the entire game. 100 yards. And yet he still still act like a braindead glitchpuppet and run towards you whenever possible.

This never happens with the other pets. Garuda will never move once she plants herself unless the target moves out of her range, which is considerably less than Bahamut. Ifrit and Titan likewise have no problems with chasing the Summoner randomly unless their current target happens to die. They do have problems with attacking and moving, but its significantly less of a problem than Bahamut. No one cares if Ifrit's Flaming Crush is 2 seconds late. Everyone cares about Ahk Morn being 2 seconds late.

He also has the hilarious problem of being inconsistently bad. Sometimes you push Enkindle Bahamut and it works. Sometimes it doesn't. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I've been standing next to the guy and the longest I've seen him ignore orders while spamming Wyrmwaves is five seconds. That is absurd when you have 6 1/2 seconds at most for the second Ahk Morn before he flies off and leaves you in the dirt.

Bahamut has to be forced to do anything. I do not understand how you can call this effectively a "one and done" when Bahamut literally warps your entire playstyle around his existence. You have to use ogcds and spam Ruin II to efficiently make the idiot attack. If you have to spend 20 seconds doing something that is completely different from your normal gameplay, that is not a "one-and-done." That is an entire phase of babysitting his awful AI.

I'm also amused you called egi's a glorified dot right after saying Bahamut is a one-and-done spell that deals continous damage over a period of time. So Bahamut is also a glorified dot? Because that's the same thing egis do: damage over time.

Plus no one with a brain is actually arguing for a literal 5 minute summon animation in an MMO. You know what they could have done? Had a short animation of summoning demi-bahamut and then your involvement is done. He can take w/e 5s to charge up a Megaflare and blast the boss before leaving. That would have been a one-and-done that's actually in line with what people claim to call the "real" summoner experience, and it splits the animation time between you and him so no one is left standing around waiting for too long.

Personally I also find his visual attacks to be a complete joke. Even the egi's are better. You can at least see the different animations between all of them. The only new thing Bahamut brings to Summoner is an air-hump that you can barely see half the time (and his eyes glow red, in case you want to be not looking at the boss for some reason). That's it. Ahk Morn is just a slightly bigger Deathflare, something I've had for years now. I can not think of a more boring execution than this. Where is all of the other unique effects he had in the fight? Where are Flare Breaths, Flatten, Megaflare, Teraflare, Flare Stars, Earthshakers, Tempest Wings, the list goes on and on. They settled on the minimum amount needed and it's boring imo.

Plus they keep trying to parade Bahamut around and it's lessening the effect of everything else in the kit. Why didn't they make the egi's better and give them more gameplay? They just wanted to dazzle people with a low effort summon. That's so much easier than actually making them cool. Why can't I use primal mechanics through the egis like they do in the Summoner trials? Ifrit has eruptions and infernal nails. Garuda has chirada and suparna. Titan could have had gaols as a defensive shield or something. There is so much space for Summoner to be a cool job and they're flushing all of it out to cram in more dargonmage.

Edit: To also stay on topic, I'll add: Don't defile puppetmaster either. I like my puppetry jobs in games. Make it a real job or don't waste your time.

[purgatori]

Yeah, no, I don't think many people really found the way they executed the "limited side job" with BLU entertaining for any length of time, let-alone whole weeks. I'm fine with BLU and BST being main-able, so to speak, and opening them up to the DF. That would be preferable, in fact, to the current implementation which just doesn't work in any way, shape, or form for virtually anybody. But I would rather they made these jobs true solo jobs that allowed you to clear old content in over the top/ridiculous ways, and which tied in with soloable content like Squadrons, Trusts, and/or Deep Dungeons. They could be designed in such a way that they were the perfect complement to crafters: that is, the best gear they could obtain could be crafted gear, and, a the same time, BLU & BST, etc. could allow crafters to go in to old content and grind for mats in an entertaining and expedient way without being required to group up with other players. Again, I'd be fine with them going the other route as well, but SE should at least pick some solution that makes these side jobs serve some useful purpose.

[Madisonlee]

Demi-Bahamut is nothing but flaws. He's worse than egi's in every possible way, etc. etc.

But if I interpret you correctly you're talking about him being lazily and crappily implemented just to appease people right? And so his mechanics are wonky? That's a different issue to what I'm talking about (I'm aware you weren't responding to me in that argument). If his AI is wonky, fix it IMO. I don't know why SE can't accomplish trivial things when they rebuilt the whole friggin game from the ground up.

My biggest problem is that Egis don't look like summons and they are weak. As a summoner I wanted the summons to be doing the damage, it feels wrong to be casting DoTs and the like; leave that to the other mages. I realize it's too late to turn back for that, so hence I said Demi-bahamut was a step in the right direction. Flawed? Sure, but at least he's more of a true summon than the little stupid egis.

If they made Egis look like the actual primals, but just mini versions, and let them do attacks that actually mattered, it would be better too; but I prefer the way Bahamut works as more of a one off thing (like they are in most other FFs)

[Ramesses]

BTW, I was the first North American on my server to hit 75 Dragoon in FFXI, and I did it almost a year before anyone else.

That's a solid achievement.

However, I reckon there are quite a few FFXI players that will dispute that claim, friend... myself included. Which server were you on?

[Deceptus]

It's my last hope for this game, if they ever decide to add it. I don't have an identity in XIV, and it's depressing.

In XI I was a SMN, BST, DRG, BLU main, and I had such an incredible pride and sense of ownership of those classes that it kept me in XI for years and years.

SMN is not SMN. I don't know what it is. I don't see how XIV SMN in any way resembles any iteration of SMN from any prior FF game.

Sounds like you need to either move on from FFXI or keep playing it if you love it so much.

[Dyvid]

Sounds like you need to either move on from FFXI or keep playing it if you love it so much.

Sorry but I'm starting to agree with this. FFXIV's SMN has always been a DoT mage with pets and too do a complete tear down of a job because a few don't like it is bad business. Why don't you trying playing all the jobs FFXIV has to offer and find something you like rather than trying to change one into something you want. it's fine to want something else but maybe what you want is already in game?

P.S. I suggested making Beast Tamer into a pokemon style gameplay Limited Job that is old school turn base. Hate me now.

[Madisonlee]

Sounds like you need to either move on from FFXI or keep playing it if you love it so much.

Sorry but I'm starting to agree with this. FFXIV's SMN has always been a DoT mage with pets and too do a complete tear down of a job because a few don't like it is bad business. Why don't you trying playing all the jobs FFXIV has to offer and find something you like rather than trying to change one into something you want. it's fine to want something else but maybe what you want is already in game?

P.S. I suggested making Beast Tamer into a pokemon style gameplay Limited Job that is old school turn base. Hate me now.

You two are free to enjoy XIV's SMN as it is, that's fine. But you obviously haven't ever played any other FF aside from XIV if you think a true SMN is a "DoT mage." I know this game gets a lot of WoW refugees and the like, and that's fine, but understand where FF fans are coming from when we complain about job identity. I'd venture to say that regardless of how many people are fine with XIV SMN, the majority of people recognize that it in no way, shape, or form aside from Demi-Bahamut resembles what SMN has been in EVERY other FF, NOT just XI. As I said before, I thought XI's SMN was rather weak and weirdly implemented, but at the very least it was still SMN. Asking me to "move on" from XI is laughable, I haven't played the game in over a decade.

[Flana]

But if I interpret you correctly you're talking about him being lazily and crappily implemented just to appease people right? And so his mechanics are wonky? That's a different issue to what I'm talking about (I'm aware you weren't responding to me in that argument). If his AI is wonky, fix it IMO. I don't know why SE can't accomplish trivial things when they rebuilt the whole friggin game from the ground up.

This is only part of the problem, and it makes the rest of it worse. But you are also right, it boggles my mind how we're so many years in and pets are still more stupid than a sack of hammers.

My biggest problem is that Egis don't look like summons and they are weak. As a summoner I wanted the summons to be doing the damage, it feels wrong to be casting DoTs and the like; leave that to the other mages. I realize it's too late to turn back for that, so hence I said Demi-bahamut was a step in the right direction. Flawed? Sure, but at least he's more of a true summon than the little stupid egis.

This is going to be a personal thing because I actually like the concept of egis. Having something that you magically built off a framework of a figurative god is cool. The problem (for me) is that the egi designs are too abstract to really link back to the primal. I actually don't like the idea of small ifrits and garudas hovering around town (they really look garish next to players), but the egi's should be at least closer in silhoutte or with more details. Give Garuda an extra set of wings so she doesn't just look like a green bird. Give Titan a better rocky texture and fatten him up a little more.

If they made Egis look like the actual primals, but just mini versions, and let them do attacks that actually mattered, it would be better too; but I prefer the way Bahamut works as more of a one off thing (like they are in most other FFs)

This is the crux of my problem with Bahamut. They already had the base to work more primal spells into the job and chose not to just to staple another shallow mechanic onto it. The only thing new Bahamut adds to your kit is Wyrmwave. That's it. The only spell he viably does is Deathflare, something we've had for years. He just does that twice and leaves, and I find it shallow and uninteresting as a result.

Personally I wanted to see more primal abilities cast by the summoner through the egi (to bypass said egi's 3 IQ). What if you could have Ifrit-Egi put down Infernal Nails as a dps buff to everyone nearby them? What if Garuda could summon Chirada and Suparna like in her Austeries trial, or had other abilities that interacted with your dots like old-contagion? What if Titan-Egi had a defensive shield (make it look like Granite Gaols) he could put on himself and you to mitigate damage? We could have gotten Eruptions, Tornados, and Landslides. Even outside those we could have gotten new abilities like Protostar or Laughing Rose. They could have added so much depth to the pets we already had and we got none of it. We got a shiney dragon once every ~180 seconds that does the same move I've been casting for years and vaguely suggestive hip movements.

[Eloah]

You two are free to enjoy XIV's SMN as it is, that's fine. But you obviously haven't ever played any other FF aside from XIV if you think a true SMN is a "DoT mage."

This is the issue that is causing. Lot of problems.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TRUE SUMMONER, period.

SE can make SMN however they want. In XIV it's a DoT mage pure and simple. Could and should the implementation be a bit better yes. But there is no such thing as a true/real Summoner.

I am not singling you out, but this is the issue that irks me the most. Complain about the mechanics not the thematics.