How I'd like to see DRK's Living Shadow (Fray) change

[Shurrikhan]

I'd prefer to treat it as a (highly reactive) pet, but one whose duration is excessive to its attack limit, giving a few seconds' of flexibility for movement over its time out, and uses Plunge only for mobility until the end of its duration. Actual attacks. Starts at 80+ Blood. Decent AI. (So, not typical XIV AI; better.)

The first button press would summon the Shadow. It would start off automatically attacking whomever you attack.
The next press with an enemy targeted would force it to attack (or stick to) the target enemy.
Pressing the button on a new target (on whom no attack order has yet been set) will then force your Shadow to attack that target instead.
A further button press on the same target (on whom an attack order has already been set) would return to automatically attacking whomever you attack.

There is no animation (and therefore no animation lock or potential uptime cost) to these further commands. They can be used even in the middle of another skill's animation.

That's just too much pet control for a tank tbh. Even as simple as that sounds. If anything, he needs to get moving faster, or they could copy MCH and depending on how much blackblood you have is how long the duration lasts. Im sure at some point they'll speed up the animation for getting out there but overall it just needs to be consistent in behavior and longer.

Why? You have a pet (well, DoT). You have a button that you already expend on summoning it (applying it). So why not allow for that level of control when it costs literally nothing to do so?

Sure, increase its movement speed a bit with some nice shadow effects, but it's unlikely you're going to move it more than once per fight without falling under the same uptime loss yourself, and Plunge is perfectly sufficient for that.

Just give it a maximum of X strikes, despite having a duration a bit longer than what is necessary for that even at the lowest possible Attack Speed.

Or, heck, just use the damn thing like you would a floating sword duplicating each of your attacks. But there should be some increased import for optimization during its summon period, rather than it just being a DoT. We should be seeing varied damage numbers there, something to give the indication that it is anything like what it appears to be.