Quote Originally Posted by Roda View Post
It's just a vestigial lump of a job mechanic now atrophied into a glorified minion.

I say either add back in actual pet mechanics back into it, or delete it entirely and replace it with it being a particle effect that pops up for the shield ability, kind of like how reaper's "pet" (not pet) pops up for some abilities.
It was absent in the benchmark when the SMN was just using what looked like a Fester upgrade, so it might be getting removed.