ACN/SCH/SUM Pet control needs improvement.

[Snowaeth]

ACN is a great class and both the jobs work very well except the thing both of them are known for, which are the summons.

While the basics on the pets work decently well, being unable to control your pet while you are casting anything yourself is a huge let down and feels very clunky.

Also on the SCH side there are some more problems with the fairy as it is a healing summon and not attacking one.
You can not prevent her from not casting her skills on her own with the basic tools given to you. Once you send her in to heal she will be casting her skills.
Other issue with the fairies is, that she isn't able to heal people outside of the party in the open field.
Using the fairy is a big part of this class and I don't see why we shouldn't be able to heal others with our fairy.

Other points of improvement that would be nice.
The pet gets easily lost while mounted, even if you put it on passive mode.
Able to summon much faster while out of combat. The pet is a part of our class and I don't see why we shouldn't be able to continue whatever we'r doing like everyone else right away when combat is over.

If anyone got anything to add or disagree to any of this please do so.

[morph4037]

A way for pets to just be truly passive while mounted would be a massive improvement imo. I'm getting tired of accidentally getting mob aggro while riding along and just watching my pet de-summon itself because it wants to pick a fight...

[Shneibel]

I do agree about the fairy part where she auto use all her skill like Eos auto use her aoe heal w/e it avaiable, I for once can stop her and set her to obey but because there is no way to know if the pet is obey or sic. And afaik the fairy can heal ppl outside pt , but you need to target the player and use the skill

Edit: I tried that yesterday and it doesnt work

[Kerriodos]

Being able to control your pet during casts would be really nice--and makes sense, since it's your character recovering from an action during the GCD, not your pet.

As far as pet ability control, an option to toggle the autocast on individual abilities would be amazing. It's somewhat frustrating as a SMN, for example, that you have to use Obey for the sake of maximizing personal DPS with a caster pet (since their lvl 40 ability extends the duration of your DoTs). In order to have direct control over the one ability, you also have to micro-manage the other abilities such as the pets AoE ability, which would be perfectly fine to be autocast. It's frustrating, even more so in conjunction with the fact that you can't order the pet to use the ability while you're recasting a DoT or nuking.

[Phantasmid]

+1 for being able to issue orders while casting and individual ability toggles.

I also want to be able to move pet actions (and macros, as another matter) around on my hotbar with /commands so I can automatically swap the actions out when I summon a different pet, particularly as a gamepad user - I have a temporary fix that works for arcanist and might work for Scholar, but adding a third possible summon would require too many hotbars to keep it up.

I can't really discuss Scholar summon specifics yet because I've been crafting and haven't gotten around to it, but if I understand the problem correctly I'm pretty sure it's going to drive me insane.

Edit: I'd also like to be able to have faster dot movement for AoE placement skills like the "Place" command. Even with camera speed and joystick sensitivity maxed, I find it's too slow for my liking.

[Ryuko]

I agree that the pet controls are very clunky and definitely need to be reworked.

You should be able to control what your pet does while you are casting. It's a separate entity. Right now, you are encouraged to 'be lazy' and just let your pet choose to use what it wants to use when it wants to use it. This is okay for solo play, but it is not-so-great for party play, when, for example, Titan or Ifrit decide to use their 'special' AoEs and wake up sleeping mobs. So, to prevent this, you are forced to tell your pet to obey you... buuuuut, you can't command your pet while actually casting. It wastes precious time that you could be using doing other things. Please make it so I can command my pet while casting my DoT rotation. (Maybe I am spoiled by other MMOs where you CAN control your pet while casting.)

A good example of why it would be important to control your pet without needing to stop casting is in the Sunken Temple, on the first boss. Your pet will get doomed like the rest of the party, and die unless you move your pet to the correct runed square. This is a lot to worry about when you are also trying to down bees ASAP so they don't final sting someone to death. I'd like to be able to move my pet while still performing my own functions as a summoner.

As far as being able to cast your pets faster. As a summoner, you can borrow a THM ability (I forget the name because I can't log in now...) which makes your next spell instant-cast. By the time my pet dies, I'm ready to instant-cast again. (It's great for when you are kiting a mob and running at the same time. You can just use the ability and cast WITHOUT stopping.) Throwing a few sustains and Physicks while soloing will keep your pet alive long enough for another instant-cast. In groups, however, you may want to save this ability JUST IN CASE someone dies (instant res!). I find that as soon as I decide "Oh, my group knows what they're doing... no one is going to die," someone always dies almost immediately after I use the instant-cast to resummon my pet. XD So, it's probably best to save it.

To stop your pet from aggroing mobs or getting lost while mounted, simply switch its stance before you mount up. However, even after ONE encounter, it will automatically switch back to 'Guard', so you will have to keep an eye on it. It's really annoying to have to switch the stance after EVERY battle in dungeons... but it is what it is for now.

[Lactis]

I dunno... I feel like i'm missing something really important... if someone can explain please do.

But, I just dont understand why an arcanist should be able to command his Egi while in the middle of casting.

According to all FF's and the fact silence stops you from using magic, it's safe to assume harnessing the aethiric energies and condensing them into arcane magics requires them to occupy their voice with the casting of spells and gives them little room to comand their egi to do something. As far as you not experiencing a cooldown when it uses its auto abilities is simply because it is its own being and is not taking a verbal command from its master. Thus your voice is free to cast.

How ever the control system for Egi is a bit iffy... if i might suggest. How about adding a system similar to gambits For acn/Egi/fairy pets only and allow people to customize them with simple ai toggles. Such as;
Cure hp<70%
Attack Master target(switches to attacking what ever you target)
Defend master (attacks what ever is attacking you atm)
Buff = ally status

and well other similar things.

[Meebo]

Pet AI all around needs to be adjusted as it is sorely lacking right now.

1. Pets need to continually adjust themselves behind their current targat; only if it's being tanked so no weird position dancing occurs, so they avoid cleaves.

2. If you are doing a Leve and have to /soothe and mob, your pet needs to stop attacking it once it becomes neutral. Many a time I have gotten annoyed that my pet is attacking a neutral target when they should of stopped.

3. If a mob becomes temporarily invulnerable, your pet should retreat and stop attacking it. This works when you root a mob in place but from all I've seen that is the only time it will cause my pet to come back to me.

4. Pet should switch to Follow mode when mounted so every time you pass a mob and it aggros your pet won't feel its right to run over and start smacking that mob.

[Nouran]

I agree on being able to control your pet during casts

[Zfz]

Suggest the dev team adapt some of the WoW model for pet control

All pets have a fixed number of actions, just as FFXIV does.

• Movement: Attack, Follow, Stay
• Modes: Aggressive, Defensive, Passive
• 4 combat skills particular to each pet

With exception of the "Go to" action, what makes the WoW system vastly superior:

1. Persistent Modes: WoW never, ever touch your modes. Passive pet is forever passive, never auto switch no matter what command you give it.
2. Toggle Skills: every single skill a pet has, can be toggled to auto-cast or manual-cast
3. Commands can be given regardless of what master is doing
4. Attack from rear: FFXIV pets has no sense of enemy facing, everything has to be done manually or pray the tank cares

And when we drag a pet skill onto our hotbar in WoW, that skill will change according to what pet we have. FFXIV instead demands that each and every unique action has its own hotbar space, or that we find extra keybinds for the pet bar. This design is primitive and shows absolutely no consideration to user friendliness.

Point #1 means a WoW pet is able to be set in passive, and at the spur of the moment, told to do a knockback. The Pet will do the knockback and the knockback only. Nothing else.

Point #2 makes the FFXIV's "Free-Fight/Semi-order"(?) differentiation meaningless. In FFXIV we're forced to accept either one or the other set of pet skills developers want us to use. In WoW, we customize exactly what pet skills we let our pet use. In fact, in FFXIV we don't really know what skills the pet is using because it keeps auto switching modes and the tooltip doesn't tell us what the pet will use.

Please give us control of our pet. Unless there's a lore reason that we're not really masters of our pets.