I fear for Summoner

[Akiza]

What your talking about is effect of not being able to use Fester when you wish, in order to maintain a high dps output. Fester is a relatively finite nuke due to Aetherflows inconsistant availability to the user after 1.30m (if you pre-stocked Aetherflow before the fight). Compared to BLM's each Fire 3 proc/ Thunder 3 thundercloud proc hits for the equivalent of a Fester,so it's no suprise that they can claw their dps back up with procs. Now, compare the SMN nuke resource system to the top dps this tier -- MNK/NIN. MNKs need only keep up their GL (greased Lightning stacks) and they're fine, which is possible on all of the current turns, and so they can maintain their high output for any given FCoB encounter. NINs, like SMNs, have the 'problem' too of having to wait for a nuke with their resource system (ninjutsu), however, they, like the MNK, have a 'cheat' ability to allow them to use their nuke if perfect balance/ kassatsu is up, allowing them to continue thier dps climb, only hindered by fight mechancics and non-crits on their rotation.

SMNs have 2 abilities that centre around their nuke resource system; 1 is good (i.e Fester), but is needed more than it is readily available, in order to maintain competitive dps, and the other (Energy Drain) is not an alternate nuke and gives too little mp with 1 use to be worthwhile. That's the problem.

Energy Drain is not a nuke it does little dps compared to Fester and gives too little mp. The only nukes that Summoner has are Fester and Enkindle which is on a 300s and hits as hard as Fester. A simple slolution to make the Summoner competitive is to reduce the cd on Enkindke to 120s.