Summoners of FFXI - WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?!

[Darksword]

How-diddley hodely, neighbors!

FFXIV's online community is certainly all over the place, isn't it? I've been lurking Lodestone since late Beta but had yet to bother posting anything. And then, a thought.

As we all know, FFXIV has a great number of FFXI veterans playing it. This owes in part to both its Final Fantasy pedigree and the fact that the number of console MMORPGs is statistically insignificant. Well for my part I'd like to pose a question to my favorite veteran job class:

I played XI from the PS2 launch day until mid 2012 when life got in the way. My main class, right from the start, was SMN. And boy was it a pain in the rear. We were a half-level WHM with a gimped spellset and nobody wanted us for anything except as a last resort healer. As time went by the class found something of a specialist niche - crowd control, Carby-kiting, train clearing in the days before the depop patch (more than once I was the hero of Lakshmi for dealing with the Haunts in Kuftal Tunnel or the 600 Crawler rape-train at the Nest entrance) and we eventually found our place as an okay healer and DD alike.

For those with the experience in XI's SMN class, does anyone else find XIVs SMN almost brokenly overpowered? True Strike that it handles differently, but the overall play mechanics of distance pet positioning, skill management and augmentation with personal abilities (DOTs in XIV's case). Once I got over the initial shock of Carby not autoattacking and the lack of the BP timer I fell into SMN and just about broke the game. I was soloing mobs 8, 10, 12 levels above me with only a modest effort. Breezed through every class quest thusfar to 45. Carby-tanked every dungeon up through Halatali and Brayflox at least once. It was like being in XI if your pet was nearly immortal and cost no MP.

Granted I miss our more esoteric abilities like hate-free AOE curing, the only AOE Slow in the game, and 3000+ damage high level Blood Pacts, but XIVs SMN is a freaking beast in its own right. A couple nights ago I ran into a fellow SMN at the Burning Wall and we duoed a FATE boss four levels higher than us and took him down easily. I can't imagine what an 8-man SMN party could accomplish in this game. And I can't WAIT to see what avatars we get in the future.

How are my horned bothers liking XIV and SMN so far?

[Sinth]

I want my RDM back. Also, "True Strike" I see what you did there.

[pandabearcat]

I didn't understand 90% of your post, but I can tell you that I'm feeling...

...horny.

[Kazai]

My main in FFXI was smn. I was interested when they announced the release of smn in a realm reborn, but I was so grieved to discover smn was going to be DoT and that most of their damage came from their own spells and the egi were not the main sorce of power. I was actually hoping for a class that would lead to DoT and HoT, maybe Time Mage and Mystic, but not smn. Well what's done is done and smn is no longer for me.

[Karnage720]

I didn't understand 90% of your post, but I can tell you that I'm feeling...

...horny.

Lmao what! ?


As for me, I play SMN here too.

[Xal]

ffxiv - a bard reborn