Before i say my vision for a smn that feels like smn and works in an mmo ill say that i dont actually expect any kind of revamp at all in any way so please put down the pitch forks. i know if they were going to revamp smn they would have done that in beta when i was asking for it then lol
So what if the current smn as a dot job was something else so everyone who likes a dot job can still have that basically but as something else.
what if smn was this:
A mage job thats a mix of blm and rdm with the way it plays. You alternate between the six elements to raise 6 elemental gauges. the spells that you cast are like using the elemental attack of the primal that it represents. When you cast the fire spell it raises the fire bar, that could then combo to have an stronger next spell, maybe 2 elemental spells could proc off of fire but you dont need to start with fire.
When the elemental bar of your choosing is full to a certain % then you can summon that primal to do alot of damage. The primal stays with you and you command it (maybe your hotbar gets replaced with a pet hotbar until the primals timer runs out)
The primal will be fairly big but alot smaller then the real primal, similar to how bahamut is now. The % of the bar needed to summon the primal would be at 50 and 100%. if you summon at 50% the attacks wont be as strong and it wont last as long. If you summon at 100% then when the primal is dismissed it does a powerful finishing closer before vanishing. The finishers will have special effects based on the primal, more on that further down. But alternatively these effects could be used at the start of the summon as opposed to the end so you could better time its use, so instead of a finisher its a powerful opener.
There would be 1 summon button for each primal for a total of 6 with 1 exception, if you raise all the bars to 50% evenly or 100% you can summon bahamut that is stronger then the others and will drain all the bars. It seems like alot of buttons just to summon but currently ast has like 8 buttons just for cards i think? So its not too crazy considering its ment to be the focus of the job to both summon often and alternate between them.
Every summon and its attacks (along with your standard elemental spells) can have varying power and effects based on how they currently are in the game for example:
Fire is raw damage
Aero would be a dot
Lightning would be a weaker dot but add paralyze
Water will add a slight heal to people nearby the attack
Stone would add a shielding affect to team mates (i dont think the spell itself but definitely as titan's finisher/opener)
Ice would be weaker then the rest and have a low refresh effect and add heavy to its targets
This gives utility to the job and adds a reason to both alternate between spells and summons and adds focus depending on the fight. Meaning you may want to use one element/summon over the others depending on what the fight requires.
Know that all these spells or summon attacks do damage so aero wouldnt simply be a dot it would do a hard hit and also add a dot, lightning would be a weaker hit then aero but also adds a dot and paralyze.
Potencys and durations and rates of raising the bars isnt what this idea is about. im not here to give exact numbers that show how balanced it is but everything from cast times to summon durations to how quickly you build the bars would be tweaked for balance. but thats the general idea of what i would have liked in a smn job in this game. Spells hit slightly weaker then blm but summons hit harder, the elemental juggling of both blm and rdm, the building of elemental bars and the focus on summoning. It makes sense gameplay wise compared to the other mages, it adds utility and a reason to use summons of your choosing depending on your fight but also not a downside to choosing one summon over another. (it actually encourages alternating between summons since with procs it would fill bars faster)
But most importantly in my personal opinion it feels like a summoner
This would have been my dream vision for summoner but id like to know what you think.