Is there an unneeded hostility towards regular classes in this game?

[Ryuko]

OP, you lose Fester, Enkindle, Spur, and pet damage potency. Keep in mind that all of your pet's attacks automatically do less damage when you are an arcanist instead of a Summoner (they are lesser potency). Go ahead and equip Arcanist, summon Carbuncle, and look at the tooltip... then equip Summoner, summon another pet, and look at the tooltip. The functionality of the abilities are the same, but the potency is different.

i90 weapons are better than i80 weapons, period. Even healer classes benefit from the 'damage' on a weapon because it buffs their heals exponentially. (There is a formula for this, but I am too lazy to look it up right now). What confuses me is you swear you have parsed the difference between arcanist and summoner to compare the two, yet you don't see the obvious reliance on iLevel for weapons... Please ask a Summoner in full i90 gear that knows what they are doing to parse against a dummy, then ask that same person to parse as Arcanist. They will do much better as Summoner, even with all the added cross-class abilities from arcanist.

I'm sorry that arcanist is not a viable option when it comes to optimal damage. I'd be supporting you if it was -- because diversity is nice. But, SE has pigeonholed people into using using soul crystals... and the most effective way to do damage is with Summoner. A summoner that maintains 100% DoT uptime but does not use Fester at all will not likely outdo a tank on the meters. I know because I actually met a summoner in Titan (hard) one time who refused to use Fester. According to someone in the party (I don't parse), he was at around 90 dps. Granted, if he wasn't using fester, he probably wasn't keeping his dots up 100% of the time either. If your arcanist is outdpsing your summoner, either you need to reevaluate how you play summoner or your parser is very, very flawed.

Also... because it's been brought up: I played Summoner in FFXI for many, many years... even before the level 20 battles came out. I played it when people treated it like a gimped healer, and when people finally began to respect the job. I played SMN for many, many, MANY years. Now I play FFXIV, and have since 1.0 was in its beta stages. This is a different game. Yes, Final Fantasies are heavily influenced by the overall 'universe' (if I can use that term), but this is not a direct sequel. The game is very different, and follows a lot of different patterns the original FFXI did not. For example, there are some VERY tight dps checks in this game. Basically, if you don't burst something down fast... you will not succeed. This is part of the reason arcanist isn't viable... because of that lack of burst damage that summoner has. This is not an argument of FFXI vs. FFXIV, and you are doing some damage to your credibility by bringing it to that level. I will never judge you as less because you are a new player... I am just telling you how it is; sadly, arcanist just isn't viable, and you will realize that as you step into the harder aspects of the game. As you learn more about summoner, I hope you will come to embrace the job for what it is. Right now you are being stubborn. I'm sorry, but the type of diversity you were allowed in XI just isn't really viable here. Now everything is about 'best in slot' and maximizing your important stats.