Quote Originally Posted by dinnertime View Post
I'm assuming most people just want SMN to be like FFXI's because of the large summons.
I want XIV smn to be more like XI's because in XI your summons were your primary means of dps and boons to your party. I like sitting back and controlling my summon as well as being able to melee whenever I was able. I like my summons being able to cast buffs on my party and even when there was downtime, I was able to participate in some manner. Having Diabolos out, for instance, generating mp for the mages or using shiva to give blm a dmg spike during heavy cast phases.

I liked XI smn because it felt like summoner. Your pets were not only pretty, but they actually did something and were a crucial part of the job, correction, the main part. In xiv egi are just afterthoughts. Smn is primarily a dot mage, the only thing that makes if feel like smn are the bahamut and phoenix phases and then it only feels that way when you are actually able to call them forth instead of just using their trances. Egi are ugly, yes that part is true, that is bad design that can be easily change. But if they changed the looks but didn't change the function we would still be in the same boat. However if they functioned more like actual summons, like they did in xi, it wouldn't be such an issue.