Predict some Magician changes.

1. Remove Magic Guard entirely, give us the HP growth of archers. I've no idea if that'd be enough, but other than teleport mastery archmages are usually far away enough from the action. Maybe give us more defense to compensate.

I'd rather not get my crappy class even crappier, kthx.

2. Revamp the summons completely. No more silly disembodied golems with three frames of animation, give me something cool to look at, then make them invaluable assets to have around, instead of being things you sometimes bother to keep summoned – they need to do good damage, to be quick on the uptake, and not be so stupid. Another cool thing to do would be if they had one or two secondary, maybe passive effects that really made you want to max them right away – I don't know, something like leeching HP back to you from the damage they do, a matk bonus, something. Archmages need to have more skills that are actually worth maxing.

I'd love to see summons with actual AI, and fast attack speed. Also making them cast other skills would be sweet. How about making Bahamut autocast Magic Guard when dispelled? Yes plx. Ifrit could have a skill with 1 minute cooldown that triggers when there are more than 12 enemies on screen, which casts hell all over the screen, inducing DoT burn damage over everything. Just random ideas, they can get very creative with summons, instead of: *5 seconds* *herp, attack* *5 seconds* *derp, attack*, *5 seconds*...

3. Make an elemental strafe skill out of the composition arrows and make that the bossing skill, with some form of upgrade to be had from maxing a fourth job skill to reach its max potential. That obviously comes with an overhaul of the skill graphics.

I can see this working. But for it to bee good enough they'd have to make it a 4th job skill. What mages lack are multi-hit single target skills. Sure you can own Zakum arms with Paralyze and Explosion, but then you're crap against the body.

A starfe that fires 3 poison "bolts" and 3 fire "bolts" would be kickass.
Oh and please make it something more original than having the mage create an ethereal bow. We're not archers.