Learning more about my preferences in casters.

Hiya, so as I've continued to level Smn, I still can't help but not enjoy it as much as Rdm and as I continue to force myself to play Smn, I think I'm starting to understand why I'm not enjoying it.

1. Dots: When I first started playing MMOs with WoW, the Warlock class had interested me the most since it featured DoT gameplay which was something I never did before. Now that it's been quite a few years since then, the appeal has worn off and now I'm back to preferring my damage being upfront and direct rather than a slow leeching.

2. Theme: When I was a kid, I use to love the summoner job. I'd always pick it or primarily use summons in every FF game that allowed. These days the idea of summoner appeals to be less as I've come to favor the personal spell casting rather than calling on others to do the work for me.

3. Dual Interests: While magic will always be my number one favorite style of combat, melee is a close second, with swords being my favorite melee weapon. Rdm does give me a sword and that brief bit of melee to satiate that side of me but still being dominantly a spell caster, fitting with my ranking of combat styles.

4. Elemental Variety: Smn spells tend to all be non-elemental spells, which is great, but I like characters like Terra Branford, FuSoYa, and others that could wield a variety of elemental spells so that it was always visually appealing.

I guess this long winded and pointless post was just me trying to say that, as much as i tried to make myself fall back in love with Smn, Rdm just seems to hit the right buttons for me that I can't help but enjoy it far more than any other job in the game. I guess I really should just "play what I love" rather than constantly force myself to play other jobs just because of the opinions of others towards jobs. I really should stop trying to please everyone else and instead learn to please myself so I don't end up hating the game because I'm not playing what I want and instead playing what others want me to play.

It's always important to identify the things you gravitate toward in a playstyle and notice how that changes over time. I find it not only helps you identify which jobs/classes/roles you are going to enjoy, but also it allows you to really get the best performance out of them when you match your personal playstyle to the intended playstyle of the design.
For instance, I cant stand pets. It's not a dig on the jobs that use them you understand, it's just not my thing. So it's very rare that I play a pet class. That being said, I do dabble in pet classes from time to time specifically to check if my preference has evolved.

I started this game with hopes of being an awesome Summoner only to be sorely disappointed that the pet is a glorified auto-turret and the majority of the job's damage came from DoTs, which (to add insult to injury) the summon BUFFED for you (via the old Contagion extending all dots by 15 seconds). This to me is not what a Summoner is, I envision a Summoner much like Aeons from FFX where the summon does the majority of the damage and the caster buffs it and debuffs the boss and has some kind of filler like ruin, but not strong dots. Obviously Demi-Bahamut is a step in the right direction towards this, but Ruin III and DoTs are still a significant portion of the class's damage, not to mention skills are gated behind the dots (Fester and by extension DWT).

All this being said, the mechanics of the job aside, it is insanely powerful. RDM is much more straightforward, streamlined, and intuitive, but far less powerful. You should absolutely play the job that you want, as both have their merits for different gameplay styles/situations.