As a SMN, is it worth using Thunder?

[fanservice]

Well if you consider 5 dots ticking for over 300ish dmg accumulative that's pretty close to a summoners total dmg with a pet. Its less for sure but not by much and yes o understand they have to have a way to solo but comparable, yes I'd say so having both classes and seeing it.

Scholars don't have fester.
Scholars don't have a pet that can attack. (can't use rouse+spur for damage)
Scholars can't get raging strikes.

[Rover1983]

Scholars don't have fester.
Scholars don't have a pet that can attack. (can't use rouse+spur for damage)
Scholars can't get raging strikes.

While I agree with everything you say, do look at the fact that scholars can put up more dots which accounts for the loss of the pet which is just an additional dot plus they can nuke with ruin plus the cleric stance. Now they don't get raging strikes but still switch to scholar and put up all 5 dots and nuke in cleric stance and you'll see there isn't as big of a gap as you think there would be. This might be intended because if you look at what they said in the last phase of beta notes, stats wide they didn't want a big difference between the two classes since the stats you choose as an arcanist are the same stats as scholar so all that int you put in carries over to scholar. Just noting what ive experienced as both classes. I think this is their intention. Not a big difference in classes.

[fanservice]

While I agree with everything you say, do look at the fact that scholars can put up more dots which accounts for the loss of the pet which is just an additional dot plus they can nuke with ruin plus the cleric stance.

Summoners can get thunder, and aero too. Again, there's still fester for summoners, which is a 300 potency nuke, on a 10 second recast, raging strikes, rouse, spur, contagion.

The only thing scholars have over summoners is cleric stance, and 30% more of their spell speed half of the time (which is about .1 second off of casts+recasts). It really shouldn't be close