Why are summoners so neglected?

[Mhaeric]

I'll keep my steady damage without risking getting caught flat footed later with Tri-Disaster on CD at the most inopportune time.... and dodging heavy mechanics, leaving me with no DoTs on the mob. .

Which you still haven't actually explained how that works differently than for my set-up which ends up in exactly the same place with dot duration remaining after the same time spent but with less cd duration remaining and more dps outputted.
All I've got so far from you is a wishy-washy statement about fluidity later on that doesn't actually make sense in the context of comparing the two openers. My opener doesn't result in a longer time waiting for Tri-disaster and yours doesn't make it so that hard casting dots happens less frequently, so that's why I'm so confused about what you're trying to say, since your stated result doesn't actually follow from your set-up.

Both of you need to work more on those openers. :^)

Lol. I'm sure of that. And it certainly wasn't a pissing match about openers, at least from my standpoint. I in no way claim to be a hardcore top tier smn, hence why I legitimately had the question of why use contagion earlier rather than later. I received an answer which I felt was unsatisfactory in effectiveness, so I explained why. I based my opener mostly on this one which may or may not be out of date, but in practice works quite well regardless: https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...game_Rotations
Using potions is a bit too hardcore for me, so I just take them out, and using the extra Ruin 2's in there adds complication so I just stick with Ruin 3's except when near the end of a dreadwyrm trance if I can squeeze in a ruin 2 but not a ruin 3. Regardless, I do use a parser whenever I play dps solely to gauge how I'm doing since I hate being in the dark about whether I'm actually doing a good job at my role or not. Parser data has shown that I'm always doing well as a SMN so that's all that really matters to me. (Aside: I found out I really, really suck at MCH thanks to parser data, and that I'm not as good a BLM in 3.0 compared to 2.0 and vice versa for SMN. It's a wonderful tool that has the unfortunately ability to be used in a highly toxic way by a community at large. Ah well. Different thread.)

And why are you guys even talking about who has the better opener when the topic is about whether SMN should focus more on pet interaction, focus more on trance, or be like Dissidia Yuna.

Erm... keep it the way it is. Anything else is too much of an overhaul for something that isn't actually broken. Also, we've seen how much the addition of 5 abilities (or heck, even 1: hi WP Bards!) can change a class significantly from one expansion to the next, so it will be interesting to see what the next 5 abilities in SB will bring to SMN. I suspect something to make single target damage have a bit more oomph, like maybe a single target trance finisher option.