Can someone give me an in-depth explanation why Summoner is arguably the worst DPS?

[Romsca]

What exactly is SMN suppose to be then? Someone in another SMN thread said SMN is just Arcanist with Fester, and that's more or less what SMN is. Looking at SCH, all 5 abilities are unique and the pets changing completely with different abilities seperates it from Arcanist.

If that's how someone wants to see the current smn class that's how they see it. Are we discussing lore of the class or the gameplay mechanics? Could scholar do with out the pet if we boost the heals? If we didn't have the pets with acn/smn/sch would the class still be viable? I think so. The class called summoner, without the pets, is a multi target sustain damage dealer. It shines when there are multiple monsters that, for whatever reason, can not be grouped together, prohibiting the use of abilities like flare, fire 2, holy, rain of death, etc. Currently we do not have a lot of content catering to summoners strength, which I add is the weakness of the other classes, a black mage can't be in two places. This is what we have and I have strong doubts we will see any redesign of the class mechanics.

Let's do this. Remove the pets, change Arcanist to Poisoner, Summoner to Arcanist and come up with 3 new job skills to replace summon 3/spur/enkindle. Radical enough for everyone?

Or even better, next producer Q&A event everyone go pester SE with questions on what their plans are for summoner.