SMN endgame how is it

[Raikai]

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.

1. You're right, my point was that this movement managing mechanics can't be translated well into XIV's combat. And not just about them taking damage, but swapping targets is part of that micromanagement too, and it is a nuisance when the SMN has (had?) to do in XIV.

2. Egi-Assault - seems - to do, but in my point of view is more of a faux thing, because it's a spell that affects your flow (GCD), even though it is launched by the pet. Visually it feels like is a pet action, but in practice it works more like a SMN action that has a pet component to it. To be fair, it felt much less like that when it was an oGCD, but it had other issues though.

3. I agree that the tanking egi didn't work. Seems they didn't care a lot about Titan when they were designing the Demis, given the fact that the tank usability was so niche. It would be okay if the Demis didn't despawn the egis, but I'm not sure if that is because of the combat engine/code.

To note, I don't mind Egis, but they are in a some sort of weird middle point between a pet and the so called "glorified dot". I wish they either went to one or the other side of the spectrum... The pet side is unlikely due to it requiring technical overhauls.. the other side (that is even beyond the glorified dot thing) means a complete overhaul that makes the creatures tied to the SMN's spell animations/SFX. That seemed more plausible, but I had the impression that during the benchmark trailer, the Ifrit-egi still happened to be its own entity, so I'm not quite sure how it will turn out to be.

Also, to add to my previous post, the idea of a "pet job" to me entails into other 2 things, from all the other MMOs I've played with pets:

a) At low skill levels, is a beginner friendly class, because the team play, even if flawed and sub optimal, increases your survivability
b) At the skill ceilings, it's a class that (in theory if well balanced) rewards players that can multi task between them and the pet

XIV's iteration of pets right now doesn't fill either of those.