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

[Crevox]

First off, SMN or summons, outside of XI, have not been pet classes/pets. Yes in X, XII, and XIII they stuck around a little longer, but be honest, you were not usually using them for that part, but for the massive burst damage or unique effects they provided or to exploit elemental advantages. And it was not very often either due to MP restraints or some thing else that limited their use.

Even summoning a powerful creature simply to use an attack would be a more interesting gameplay style than this, and more along the lines of what SMN should be.

Says who?

How is it "not, in any way?"

Do you know WHY Square Enix added jobs to the game in the first place? A long time ago, there were no jobs; we just had the base classes. Eventually, they added jobs in order to make it feel more like a FINAL FANTASY and so players can enjoy and play the jobs they wanted to be in an MMORPG. People didn't want to be a "Conjurer"... they wanted to be a "White Mage." In addition to that, with the changes, they remade all the class skills, and made them similar to the job so it would transition into the job and make sense. Conjurers use to know Fire, Blizzard, Aero, Stone, Thunder, Water, Burn/Rasp/etc, and Flare/Quake/Flood/etc. However, with the changes, they are now much more similar to a White Mage, and you can even become a White Mage, and gain the classic skills like Holy and Regen and really get that classic FINAL FANTASY feel and be the job you always wanted to be. They even added some new cool skills like Medica and made it fresh, going forward with the class and making it new and exciting.

They changed the base classes and implemented jobs for fan service. They did it to make it so people could play the job they wanted to play, and enjoy the game much more. However, with SMN they just completely dropped the ball; it's nothing like classic FINAL FANTASY in ANY way. They could've done it so many different ways, as people have already mentioned (summon and done, powerful pets, etc) but we don't have a summoner in this game; instead, we have an Arcanist. Summoner is a direct upgrade of Arcanist and might as well just not exist, as I've already proven in the main post. As long as it learns skills like Fester and Tri-disaster, it shouldn't have the name of Summoner. If they wanted a DoT class that transitions into a job, that's perfectly fine; but don't name it something that it's not. They could've named Summoner ANYTHING, but instead they decided to name it something that it's not. Summoners do not go around DoTing things and enfeebling them with Miasmas and lung toxins. It's just lazy, because they wanted to rush the game out the door and they saw the potential to kill two birds with one stone: add a DoT caster gameplay style and add Summoner for all the people that wanted it. However, the people that wanted Summoner did not get what they wanted. The only reason I'm still playing Summoner is because even though it's not what I wanted, it's tolerable, and I hope for future changes/updates that will make it more like a Summoner that we actually wanted.

As a raid summoner I love the class...

Sadly that's not the point, at all; you should read the main post at the very least.