Dear SE Dev Team

[Nalien]

I think its extremely unlikely you will see a full overhaul of the class from the ground up, partially because it would be a massive amount of work that they would probably spend on developing Jobs for the next expac and also because there would be people who liked SMN as it was and be unhappy with a drastic change. The Job itself isn't broken. It just doesn't thematically match what some people want.

That's kinda why I mentioned the potential for Red Mage to take up the DoT-Mage mantle. It would still be a lot of work, but I imagine it would be less work than starting completely from scratch. Red Mage could effectively be what Summoner is, minus the pets and with its own little flare (swordplay I imagine). Summoner could effectively be a "new" Job built around the pets (or not, I'm not really a fan of the Egis).

I think that's perhaps why Summoner has never sat right with me... It's always felt half-baked, it's like it is trying to be two different things... I'd rather have a solid pet Job and a solid DoT-Mage, than a half assed mix of the two...

I feel like Summoner's ties with Arcanist is fine.

Lore-wise? Sure, but mechanically I don't think Arcanist is particularly Summoner-y... It has pets and that's it... Pets weren't even a Summoner staple until Final Fantasy X and XI made Summoner that way, but both did so with far more depth than XIV offers...

Arcanist seems like it was rushed for launch and... Well, it is trying to be two things at once; Scholar and Summoner. For Summoner, I think that is detrimental, Scholar I think transitioned from it nicely though... The whole Virus/DoTs thing is thematically sound with Scholar; A large portion of the Scholars quests deal with combating a disease, Scholar is a healer of such ailments, and to me it then makes sense that their offensive capabilities would utilize that. Scholar even made better use of the pets IMO, the fairy actions aren't phenomenal, but they offer more depth than the Egi ones...

To me, it seems like 2 Jobs 1 Cu... Class was the developers attempt at trying something different, and given past comments on the system, I don't think it was considered a success... To me, Arcanist to Scholar works, though Arcanist would need to be changed to a healer (presumably with Carbuncle getting Eos/Selenes skill list, rather than Garuda/Titans, which again works for me, since I remember Carbuncle being more of a support/healer (Healing Ruby) than DPS...). Meanwhile, just off the fact that Extra Jobs require 2.x completion, Summoner works for them, since you'd have beaten all the Primals (the main six, anyway) to unlock it. Taking the Dreadwyrm Stance concept, and applying it to the main six Primals would make for a solid Job IMO, meanwhile the left over "DoT > Burst" mechanic presented with Fester could easily be adapted to Red Mage; Ruin and Aetherflow could be changed to a melee TP combo to build up stacks. Bio/etc. could be swapped for Dia. Fester could be functionally the same (just using the stacks from the melee combo), but be a melee attack instead. A single target attack with Banish. Perhaps some enhancement spells like En-Fire/etc. and Spikes... Heck, it even makes sense for Red Mage, a Job that traditionally had a sword, black magic, and white magic, to have a heal like Physick... The core of Red Mage could be the core of what 2.0 Summoner was; Keeping DoTs up with the occasional burst. Meanwhile, the "new" Summoner could fully embrace the summoning aspect.