I love where Summoner is at right now

[Kabooa]

I would've dropped SMN a long time ago if it weren't for Demi summons. Seriously, who says "I play SMN for the Egi"? Arguably, Demi summons feel impactful and more hands-on than ever Egi's were, especially with Phoenix the concept is looking better and can potentially expand more. Demi's being temporary is what allows them to be high in damage and grand in size, too. I liked how you have to gain Bahamut back in SB, it made it feel like an important part of the job. Meanwhile they still struggle in making Egi's look flattering in SMN's toolkit.

Every expansion has seen Summoner moving away from the arcanist roots. I kind of wish they'd stop beating around the bush and just sever it completely, and build Summoner completely around the trance mechanic instead of this slow drip shift.

[Dyvid]

I would've dropped SMN a long time ago if it weren't for Demi summons. Seriously, who says "I play SMN for the Egi"? Arguably, Demi summons feel impactful and more hands-on than ever Egi's were, especially with Phoenix the concept is looking better and can potentially expand more. Demi's being temporary is what allows them to be high in damage and grand in size, too. I liked how you have to gain Bahamut back in SB, it made it feel like an important part of the job. Meanwhile they still struggle in making Egi's look flattering in SMN's toolkit.

I main SMN for pets and I enjoy playing it, odd concept I know.

[dinnertime]

I main SMN for pets and I enjoy playing it, odd concept I know.

And you'll still have pets even with the bad and dated Egi concept reworked. Unbelievable, I know.

[Karshan]

At this point I really wish they designed a pet master so pet lovers could just have a class to play and not flock on to smn.

This way there would be a stop in rooting for egis and would allow summoner to be, well, a smn (in a final fantasy sense of the word, you know, Rydia, Garnet, Eiko...things I expected to play when I was told "there is a smn in ff14"). Demis fit really much more with that : powerful, temporary summons, big flashy attacks, and yet they managed to adapt the "peak" damage to an mmo playstyle which I doubted could be done.

[Taranok]

The big thing is, outside of pets that are 100% autonomous, the devs have had a real problem making pets actually work without issues. In the past it was an unresponsive UI and weird action queueing. Now it's actions being dropped in addition to tons of errors being thrown if you don't pace the oGCD use. The best pet is on Machinist, where you literally just fire it and it does its own thing without any player involvement. That was true even in SB and HW where you largely could just ignore the turrets. Even self-destructing the turret in SB wasn't necessarily worth it unless you had a ton of stacked buffs or the boss was about to jump for an extended period of time.

So I find it difficult to believe that FFXIV even could have a real pet class. It could have a class that has pets that just kind of...exist, maybe occasionally are commanded to do something more interesting, but the devs are having so much trouble making it mechanically interesting that it's difficult to conceive of a way to make a proper pet class with a permanent pet.

That said, regardless of whether they do add it or not, SMN should lose the egis.

[Xeronia]

I would like to keep my egi's and just have my buggy old pet hotbar over Egi Assaults honestly. For everyone saying "just remove the egis" did you ever play content like Eureka with them? Titan saved my life by tanking stuff all the time in there, Ifrit's stun was great for people forgetting to do it themselves, and Garuda's knockback also had it's uses and let's not even start on Contagion in it's several forms over the years. I get egi's are not everyone's thing but some of us played this class before Bahamut showed up.

[dinnertime]

Egi's were okay back in Heavensward. In Stormblood and Shadowbringers they've become more problematic due to Demi's. Titan especially doesn't work anymore because Demi's temporarily erase Egi's which erases whatever enmity, or lack thereof, Titan accumulated. Ifrit was good but Garuda's 1st version of Contagion was just annoying when they could've just increased the DoT durations like what it is now. 2nd Contagion is good though. What I only miss about the old Egi's is I can put them on Sic but that's it.

I've played SMN since 2.x. I really didn't mind them aside from being buggy and unresponsive (and the appearance but it's whatever) but they just don't work anymore with how detached they from how the job evolved, and they still struggle to fix them for some reason.

[Xeronia]

I've played SMN since 2.x. I really didn't mind them aside from being buggy and unresponsive (and the appearance but it's whatever) but they just don't work anymore with how detached they from how the job evolved, and they still struggle to fix them for some reason.

I would argue both the egi and demi summons both need to be looked at and fixed as the demi's also have issues of missing auto-attacks and following you like a lost puppy despite their range. I also as an ex-WoW player do not want to see a repeat of Shadow priest where the job gets completely overhauled to a new playstyle for no good reason. I would just like to see everything fixed rather then destroying part of the job.

[dinnertime]

I would argue both the egi and demi summons both need to be looked at and fixed as the demi's also have issues of missing auto-attacks and following you like a lost puppy despite their range. I also as an ex-WoW player do not want to see a repeat of Shadow priest where the job gets completely overhauled to a new playstyle for no good reason. I would just like to see everything fixed rather then destroying part of the job.

Obviously, yes. Demi's have issues, and both issues you mentioned can be fixed if they have them stationary but I don't know what's keeping them from doing that.
And honestly most reworks they've done in FFXIV are pretty successful/well-received like 3.0 BRD, 4.1 SMN and 5.0 MCH etc but I can't deny being skeptical with yet another rework for SMN when it just got one in 5.0. But for Egi's again, it's really not working out. It doesn't even need to change that much and they have another foundation for pets which are Demi's, it just needs to match with how the job evolved into.

[Nemekh]

Demis being stationary won't resolve the problem with move checks since it'll just have them wiggle trying to get to us but failing in the process. It's their default steady nature since they are not coded to be in an aggressive stance and do everything automatically, unlike Automata Queen.

They would have to tweak Demis to not perform a movement check whenever we are far enough away from them. But that's only one part of the problem with Demi-Summons at the present.

There are 3 things that should they happen to the Demi-Summon AI they would function much better:

• Revert Demi-Summons to be able to react to GCDs immediately after manifesting as it was for all of 4.x
• Eliminate the move check routine from the Demi gambit pak
• Overhaul the Demi-Enkindle scripts both to resolve more seamlessly