We have finally come full circle, SMN's need help!

[Minorinz]

manaward/wall dont actually outright bypass mechanics this coil, you still have to deal with them, it prevents some damage but not all of it. I.E:
bennu pinions in t12 you still have to make sure you aren't clocking someone with a bennu and thus have to move
double dives in t12 still knock you back (although riding twintania can be fun.)
manawalling earth shaker still produces the lava pools - cover removes them from melees
manaward in itself usually isnt strong enough to provide complete damage prevention but it does help but it's not a 100% up kind of thing
manaward is good for t10 if you healer screws the pooch on red marks
I can't think of anything off hand for t11 other than standard self damage reduction blm has always had - it's dumb to take hydra breath damage don't bring that up

SMN should be using eye for an eye as often as possible, as a blm I do that, summoners really have no excuse not to use it, its REALLY good. flat damage reduction is amazing
STR Virus is dumb in final coil and blm virus is delegated to adds usually - not entirely a bad thing but smn virus is way better.
SMN up time is a big big thing, and if equalized in potency to blm smn will bankrupt blm AGAIN
your raise is a thing, sorry to say this but it was thrown at me in arguments too many times in 2.2 to ignore this argument now. SMN was taken over blm over this in several raid leaders minds

Should smn get more utility? sure why not I agree - it gives smn more purpose in the caster slot
Should smn run out of mp? nope I think that should be a caster thing since having a large resource to pull from is an nice advantage over physical dps. Keep in mind blm mp isnt infinite - blm is still constrained by mp just in a different sense, ice mode dps is balls, and it can come at really bad times occasionally, particularly in progression. thats to balance how high fire mode dps is though.
SMN should not be doing on par damage to BLM, it creates a situation where blm is simply not used. If you want buffs they should not be in the form of potency changes to override blm, that isn't balanced, it's just trading one caster for another.
I'd like to see smn have more utility, less mp problems and no damage drop off compared to blm. BLM should do more damage, have larger bursts but due to ice mode cannot provide super on demand burst without losing a decent amount of dps to do so.

last minute edit - summoners do more damage during limit breaking than a blm (this is a big thing) simply due to 1 dot vs 3-5 dots
Not directed at Sleigh but more general to others - stop comparing casters to melee - different slots and balance wise it seems SE wants melee to do more damage. NINs and SMN isn't comparable two different roles except damage.

Manawall/ward don't bypass mechanics but they are good enough for you to stay assured, eat damage for less movement. First of all, manaward is a godsend on most of FCoB, same with manawall. If you know how to truly play BLM to the fullest you would know BLM is quite over the top compared to SMN on single target and AOE especially on fights with predictable movement patterns which helps sustain a BLMs damage. Also, you need to understand that in those fights there is no downtime hence mana issues and dots don't tick on bahamut during adds/divebombs phase, imdugud during adds, Kaliya during adds (can't even bane), phoenix on adds phase and during ifrit plumes. Not to mention that the other dps in the party is killing the adds too fast I don't even bother dot'ing the adds up to save my mana. It's a waste if they don't tick for their full potency anyway, it's better to spam ruin. E4E is great except it actually needs to proc first, virus is awesome except you only need 1 person to put it up with a 30 seconds window after antibody wears off. SMN has a crazy burst, even one that can exceed a BLM's on a single target with no RNG involved ofc with all CDs up for SMN, however BLM will always beat SMN on stacked targets and will be the specialized AOE class due to the limitations they have on SMN, but then again what about SMN? no useful utility, no AOE burst damage it's just slower/longer damage over time, and no infinite pool of resources which forces a lot of people to even use garuda. I'll be honest as well and say a great player will deal with all of these issues if they have an awesome raid party to compensate with, for example, spread the damage between adds and split it up for the BRD and SMN dots to tick and proc. Even with all those downgrades, SMN is not that far behind and I don't think it needs potency buffs, simply better mana refreshing rate and better usage of utility. BTW I never switched to BLM because of dps lack, I don't ever have to but as you can see so many people did and SMN is not much balanced even on average for different players.