Quote Originally Posted by Sylve View Post
FFTA disagrees with this sentiment.

BLM spells were powerful in a small area, Summons smashed the entire field and IIRC were the only things that actually could just push a button and affect the entire field.

If you want to boil away all the flavor of Summoner to "hurdur particle effect go smash", then literally every job is a Black Mage resin, now and in previous iterations.

The visual flair of a job is just as important as the mechanical aspects that define the kit.

At the end of day, A Black Mage is hurling giant fireballs and snowballs around while a Summoner is calling down Primals to blast their targets and draw on their elements to empower other spells.
Summons in FFT did not smash the entire field, they just had a slightly bigger radius then black mage spells at a higher relative MP cost and charge time. And even then, one outlier doesn't change the fact that from FF4 to 7 Summoning was effectively reskinned black magic. (FF3 had 2 effects per summon and starting with FF8 the concept stated to get more interactive.
Not saying you're wrong that Visuals and flavour carry a job as much as mechanics, but it's also true to say that there are more exciting ways to present the concept of summoning then simple spell effects.

As for FFXIVs elemental attunement, I find it hard to relate that to summoning since that's usually a completely different job concept altogether (Spellbalde says hi)
In a way you could argue that if ShB SMN was just WoW Warlock then EW SMN is just Spellblade using Summons to enchant instead of elemental Magic. You're free to like that concept of course, but it's technically not summoning.