I think this game could use a warlock class.

[Duelle]

The only "healing" I did on SMN was in EXP PT. in end game it was always damage, damage, damage. I played with JP/NA mix and we did a lot of world firsts and fought all the hard stuff. Bringing a SMN to heal in end game was a very mediocre thing to do..

That's kind of the thing, though. You have a job that was used as a poor-man's healer for most of its life. The worst part was that no one expected SMN to do anything other than healbot until the lv70 Blood Pacts came in. Of course, that still leaves levels 1-69...

The main focus is the upkeep of dots, trance and what not.

If we're talking about SMN mechanics, I think the focus should really be on Dreadwyrm Trance. I remember people were celebrating when that was revealed and saying "omg i get to become bahamut" instead of asking "wait, where are the pet abilities I thought I was getting with the expansion?".

Unfortunately, lore must always take a back seat to mechanics, otherwise there would be some horribly over powered classes. Such as summoner, could you imagine how weak an egi would be to allow all three or more summoned at once. Unless you want people to be able to one shot a boss without a party.

Not necessarily. Temp summons would be one way to do it. Say, you summon Ravana-egi to auto attack the mob for 15 seconds, and upon hitting the 15 second mark it does an egi version of Chandrahas (that deals reasonable damage) and then vanishes. And there's nothing that prevents temp summons from being more fragile than egis.