So...About Blue Mage

[Deveryn]

BLU's gimmick is about collecting spells and other limited jobs can have a similar niche as well. Take Beastmaster for example: it's entire thing can be about charming and raising pets. Fight alongside a Mandragora and after a while it learns Photosynthesis or Leaf Dagger or w/e. Puppetmaster can be all about collecting parts for your mammet that unlocks different abilities and traits for a slew of different scenarios and synergies. It's pretty vague on what the Master actually does and would probably borrow a lot from the XI iterations, but you get the idea.

Pet AI has a long history of being buggy in MMOs. Summoner had its share from problems with the egis. Bahamut would even just sit there and not hit anything. EW finally saw summoner pets essentially take on a more decorative role performing a bare minimum of attacks in a general area. Beast master seems like something that will remain in the realm of NPC capabilities.

Puppet master could potentially work. I think they could do some kind of marionette / mount situation where we have control over a puppet, but we would likely have more turrets. I think rather than being limited, it should actually be something like Arcanist, where it can branch off into at least 2 different roles.

[Auryan]

Pet AI has a long history of being buggy in MMOs. Summoner had its share from problems with the egis. Bahamut would even just sit there and not hit anything. EW finally saw summoner pets essentially take on a more decorative role performing a bare minimum of attacks in a general area. Beast master seems like something that will remain in the realm of NPC capabilities.

Puppet master could potentially work. I think they could do some kind of marionette / mount situation where we have control over a puppet, but we would likely have more turrets. I think rather than being limited, it should actually be something like Arcanist, where it can branch off into at least 2 different roles.

Pet AI's being buggy will definitely be a thing, but I say they embrace the jank. So what if your pet Malboro's Bad Breath is a second late? It will all be worth it when your enemies are covered in 8 status effects and reduced to knee high length. Seeing as BLU isn't balanced around being an optimal DPS against other DPS, why should the thought of BST or PUP having perfect uptime be such an important thing?

We know that the devs hate the ACN/SCH/SMN situation and if they could go back in time they would have never gone that road, so that option is not happening. I like some of your other PUP ideas though.