As summoners have recently taken an abrupt change of direction from being a WoW affliction warlock style DoT+pet class, to a FF style big summons class, I've been thinking of ways to better marry the two play-styles. I believe I've come up with an idea which should allow the two systems to interact in a meaningful way while also making the class somewhat less punishing and awkward.

The idea is centered around the idea that, instead of the current Dreadwyrm Aether system, summoner DoTs will drain aether from their target to fuel a Bahamut summon.
To prevent rapid resource generation from multi-doting, in reality this would work similar to how black mages foul works with Enochian in that simply having both DoTs on a target at the same time will cause the new Dreadwyrm Aether will build up slowly. As with Black Mage and foul, a skill could be added to help manage aether buildup during downtime when DoTs may fall off the boss.

Dreadwyrm Trance could accelerate the rate at which dreadwyrm aether is drained, both preserving the old play-styles emphasis on quickly building to the ability while encouraging you to actually use it fully.

While this doesn't address all of the classes problems (slow pets...), it should make it far more consistent in it's resource generation and use of Dreadwyrm Trance while making DoTs actually matter again. However, I'll leave those issues for others to discuss.