Why are summoners so neglected?

[Nalien]

Lets be serious for a minute here... If the people here were only talking about a cosmetic "make this more cool looking" type adjustment. Yeah I could see it.

All I'm asking for. I'm perfectly fine with the current rotation, I just wish it felt like I was a Summoner, because tossing out a single pet and then pretty much doing the same rotation as my Scholar irks me... I'm not summoning, I'm barely commanding the pet ("Contagion Garuda-Egi... CONTAGION! DAMMIT GARUDA, USE CONTAGION!"), it just doesn't feel right to me... Scholar effectively using and spreading diseases to deal damage? Perfect. Summoner doing the exact same thing? Ugh...

Is it a minor issue? Perhaps, but look at it this way; Ninja used Katon/Raiton/Suiton/etc., not Fire/Lightning/Water/etc.. They gave it Ninjutsu and its own mechanics surrounding that, and that gives the Job some of its identity. Katon pretty much just is Fire II, the same way Bio, Aero and Combust are pretty much the same skill. Again though, while they all do pretty much the exact same thing, they're given their own feel, because having two Jobs with the exact same skills would be bland... Yet when we come to Scholar and Summoner that's exactly what we have... Two Jobs sharing 90% of their skills...

Honestly, the whole cross-class system annoys me for similar reasons... I loath every physical DPS sharing Invigorate, I'd much rather have seen them all get their own form of TP recovery, which ties into the Jobs identity and mechanics... Really, the only Job I'm perhaps OK with any of this on, are ones which historically just copied others... To my mind, Paladin should just make Cure effective, rather than having Clemency, and Red Mage having Aero? Sure, taking that more as an indication that cross-class skills are staying and it'll rightly be Thaumaturge/Conjurer at the moment, but it's fine, that's what Red Mage has and (IMO) should always be doing... Just like Summoner should be, you know, summoning...

Heck, "fixing" Summoner is arguably easier than other Jobs I take similar umbrage with... Bard not barding can't really be fixed as easily... That does require changing up how the Job is actually balanced, giving it actual Song utility rather than more pew-pew (hopefully new skills at least help with MP recovery...). With Summoner it's literally just an issue with the animations/names of skills...

You know... I probably wouldn't even care anymore if it weren't for Egi-Glamours... Once that got announced I started to think "Wait... This doesn't really fix the problem...", they clearly want to try and fix the issue, I just think there are better ways to go about it... Letting us pick what we summon is an improvement, don't get me wrong, but I cast Summon so infrequently that letting us customize it has very little impact IMO... Letting me shout at Ifrit-Egi instead of Garuda-Egi for failing to Contagion doesn't really change anything... Bad enough they're straight up doing it wrong, too... Text commands to swap pets? Seriously? Should have had an offhand item to determine the pet; Ruby, all your Summon skills bring out Carbuncle, Inferno Focus, all three summon Ifrit-Egi, etc., that's the kind of polish I used to expect from SE, at least... I really do expect to see Leviathan-Egi doing Aerial Blast at this rate... Not any time soon, of course...