How I would want SMN to work.

[Madoka]

People have been asking for 6 years for SMN to be completely reworked and into their own vision of what a SMN should be. Except they miss the part where what they think it should be is just a black mage with summoned monsters popping out to do the attack animation or simply things that won't work in an MMO in the style of XIV. It's baffling to me. We will never be Rydia or a Caller or Yuna. Rydia was 80% black mage, Callers just used golem and then whatever summon did the most damage in a particular fight, Yuna replaced her whole party for a single party member that did the same thing as any other character could but had bigger stats.

[Burningskull]

People have been asking for 6 years for SMN to be completely reworked and into their own vision of what a SMN should be. Except they miss the part where what they think it should be is just a black mage with summoned monsters popping out to do the attack animation or simply things that won't work in an MMO in the style of XIV. It's baffling to me. We will never be Rydia or a Caller or Yuna. Rydia was 80% black mage, Callers just used golem and then whatever summon did the most damage in a particular fight, Yuna replaced her whole party for a single party member that did the same thing as any other character could but had bigger stats.

SMN has always been mostly a flashier BLM that did somewhat more damage starting out but for more mp cost. I think SMN should be the BLM of FF14 with BLM being somewhat in the middle of SMN and RDM. But I'm not a game developer lol. So how I want SMN may not be best for the game. But it's still fun to share thoughts and hear others opinions on those thoughts.

[Nyoraii]

People have been asking for 6 years for SMN to be completely reworked and into their own vision of what a SMN should be. Except they miss the part where what they think it should be is just a black mage with summoned monsters popping out to do the attack animation or simply things that won't work in an MMO in the style of XIV. It's baffling to me. We will never be Rydia or a Caller or Yuna. Rydia was 80% black mage, Callers just used golem and then whatever summon did the most damage in a particular fight, Yuna replaced her whole party for a single party member that did the same thing as any other character could but had bigger stats.

So what? MCH and BRD are both ranged weapon users, doesn't mean they both play exactly the same.

SMN should be a bursty magic user just like BLM as it always was, even then there are unlimited ways to make it special. SMN being a dot class is just the devs trying to force it into a niche it was never meant to fill. It's like remaking BLM so that more than half of its dps comes from hitting mobs in the head with his rod and then casting BLM magics on the side, this is what I feel playing SMN at least. Summons are an afterthought, they comprise less than half the dps coming from SMN, it's ridiculous.

[Atamis]

We will never be Rydia or a Caller or Yuna.

We don't have to be, but there is little reason they couldn't come close. Yuna summoner would simply be a large summon that comes out and your entire action bar gets replaced for theirs. Rydia summoning would be just like any other summoner, do filler spells that tend to hit hard and have long cast times until summon comes of cooldown or you have the extra mana for one.
If anything we should be more of a Terra style summoner and become the Esper (trance) itself before summoning one, but we're not. We are biomancers and ruiners right now. summons take a back seat to nearly everything.