Should Summoner...

[Saggo]

It's not anecdotal. It was well known information that Shiva and Garuda would be there for 95% of your content, I was simply making a point that I was falling in line to what every other summoner who spent a moment researching the class at that point in time. You were plain and simply not doing a simple thing to do as well as you could. The other 5% would be leaving Abyssea areas and not having permanence due to your Atma. If you read above, I specifically stated that the class was enjoyable but... heavily flawed and should not be used as an example of a proper full summoner pet system, because replacing a flawed system with a flawed system with the knowledge that you're implementing a flawed idea is silly and circular in logic.

This is what anecdotal means. It's made up figures based on your experience. My experience is also anecdotal but it's enough as it's the opposite. I routinely rotated 4-5 summons (a differing subset as the game evolved) and utilized persistent pets in and out of Abyssea and 71-99. Flawed maybe, but heavily is an exaggeration.

Re-implementing 11 is obviously not going to happen, the game was flawed as a whole. But there are still good lessons learned to take from it and power projection through summons is one of them.

[Greedalox]

This is what anecdotal means. It's made up figures based on your experience. My experience is also anecdotal but it's enough as it's the opposite. I routinely rotated 4-5 summons (a differing subset as the game evolved) and utilized persistent pets in and out of Abyssea and 71-99. Flawed maybe, but heavily is an exaggeration.

Re-implementing 11 is obviously not going to happen, the game was flawed as a whole. But there are still good lessons learned to take from it and power projection through summons is one of them.

Anecdotal is a personal experience shared. Mine was well researched at the time so it was hardly a lonesome experience. That's like saying the proper MCH standard burst opener is anecdotal if I shared it with you because I learned it from other sources. There WAS a proper way to play SMN, that's not anecdotal, no matter how many summons you chose to use at the expense of doing better. People had/have numbers. Numbers ain't anecdotal.

On topic though! I feel like simply making the pet system more responsive with upwards of 50% the duo's total damage being the pet along with possibly some skills being adopted/rethought onto the pet would create a better Summoner fantasy for many players. A class that uses pets should feel like their pet is their equal, if not more powerful and currently that isn't being met, but how do you appease the people who play summoner and enjoy the powerful DoT element it gives them currently?