SMN - Why it is not a very interesting job and not a good upgrade from ACN

[Crevox]

Ifrit has the stun which is situationally useful.

No, it's not. Ever. Anything that needs to be stunned in party content to interrupt requires more proper timing than Ifrit can ever give, unless you keep him next to the boss on passive. Even then, most execute too fast for him, and it's just too wonky to rely on, especially for a measly 2 second stun. Solo, nothing needs to be stunned. Ever.

Titan isn't useless because it easily allows you to kill 2-3, and even 4 mobs at once.

You can do the same with Garuda.

Also, if no solo content requires him then how did you do the level 50 Summoner story quest? Because it wasn't anything else with how hard Belial hit.

A quest designed to require him does not make him useful.

My point is that Summoner plays like a Final Fantasy XIV ARR Summoner

Except it doesn't, even still. Summoner has no playstyle in FFXIV. When you play Summoner, you are playing an Arcanist. None of the abilities of Summoner change up your rotation or your ability usage AT ALL. You get 2 cooldowns and an upgraded version of an existing ability (Energy Drain -> Fester) and that's it. There is no "summoner" gameplay in this game. For others, like Pugilist -> Monk, it makes sense because how Pugilist plays similarly to how a Monk would play, and the Monk compliments the Pugilist with Monk skills. This is not the case with Summoner at all, because you keep learning Arcanist skills (Fester, Tri-disaster). The only "summoner" skills are cooldowns and a useless pet.

You could think of it this way. It makes sense that Monk is the advanced job of Pugilist because Monk punches things. It makes sense that Dragoon is the advanced job of Lancer because Dragoon uses a lance to fight. It makes sense that Summoner is the advanced class of Arcanist because Summoners go around using Bio and various diseases... wait, what?