It's taken me until today to figure out where I stood with summoner. On one hand, despite the sheer amount of buttons SMN has to push to a optimal rotation, it honestly doesn't feel that bad to me. On the other hand, the demi-primals are... odd, to say the least. And the Trance system is odd as well. It took me until today to realize that I think that Bahamut should be merged into DWT. That being said, these are my proposed changes to SMN.

1. Remove Energy Drain/Siphon entirely and shift their potency to Fester and Painflare respectively.

2. Make it so Fester and Painflare each grant one Aetherflow stack, capping at 2. They should share a 10s CD as well, and be affected by Ruination.

3. Make Ruination a self buff as opposed to a debuff on enemies. Also, make Ruination its own skill.

4. Put Bahamut on DWT.

5. Activating a trance changes your Egi-Assault (1 + 2) into Demi-Assault (1 + 2).
5a. Demi-Assault 1 (Bahamut) triggers Wyrmwave. Sits on a 2.5s CD and has the same potency as the current iteration of Wyrmwave.
5b. Demi-Assault 2 (Bahamut) triggers Teraflare. This replaces Deathflare on the part of the SMN being activated, and should share similar potency with the current iteration. 10s Cooldown.
5c. Demi-Assault 1 (Phoenix) triggers Scarlet Flame. See above for Wyrmwave.
5d. Demi-Assault 2 (Phoenix) would trigger Everlasting Flight. This should be a Phoenix equivalent to Death/Teraflare as seen above.
5e. Activation of a Demi-Assault ability would grant 2 stacks of Further Ruin, capping at 4.

6. Enkindle Bahamut/Phoenix should end a trance upon execution, and receive a boost in potency as well to compensate for it being a "combo-finisher".

7. Each trance would require you to consume 2 stacks of Aetherflow to activate.

8. The other aspects of trances should remain the same. IE Bahamut phase should still be looking to spam Ruin. But you'd be weaving Wyrmwaves/Teraflares/Ahk Morns with your ruins yourself instead of being forced to stand still or risk losing potency. Activating FBT would still change Ruin 3 and Outburst into their respective skills, and those should remain unchanged as well. During FBT, you'd weave Scarlet Flames/Everlasting Flights with Fountain of Fire/Brand of Purgatory.


Those are just my thoughts though. Any (constructive) feedback is welcome!