Quote Originally Posted by Raikai View Post
An "actual" pet, as in concept (seen in other titles) is a separate entity that you need to micromanage movement, health and skill administration, maybe with a level of customization on what they do.
Okay, lets break down FFXIV Egis based on your design requirements and how they relate to FFXIV battle structure.
  1. Lets tackle movement and health first since they go hand in hand. FFXIV battle design is built around dodging and it's very hard as well as time consuming to command your pet to move out of the AoE all the time, we first had that in 2013 and didn't work out well. Slowly pets started taking less and less damage because of this until the devs decided it wasn't really necessary to take damage considering how Demi mechanics worked; fresh egi is summoned after Demi phase.
  2. Skill Management: Egi Assault check the box there, doesn't it? You are commanding the pet to perform an ability. Now I can't say if it's faster now than clicking skills pre 5.0 but you can't just leave them on auto pilot anymore. Egi Assault make you command your pet which is what people wanted.
  3. Let's talk about our tank pet though if we could and why it didn't work from the start. It was only good during solo situation because it's enmity was so low, it couldn't even manage to pickup adds if the tank died. Couple that with losing Egi when a Demi is summoned, you can see the writing on the wall that Egi Tanks days are numbered. I think getting a good shield is a nice trade off considering I can enter Demi Phases without any worries now.