Quote Originally Posted by Supersnow845 View Post
What here precludes the idea that a SMN could have their secondary aspectation be virus mage?
Nothing, other than all this would change is this (as per your "secondary aspectation" implication):

* Ruin now deals damage over 15 seconds, stacking with itself in potency.
* Aspected Ruin now deals damage over 9 seconds, stacking with itself in duration.

Done, now it's a "DoT class". Did this improve the job in any ways? Of course not. And that's kinda the basic issue here. "DoT-based" is not a differentiation except in that you get shown 10 small damage numbers instead of one bigger one. You still use a quasi-30s-CD ability to deal X damage, it's just now split into 10 instances. On single-boss fights it can mostly be replaced with a single CD-based GCD nuke at no loss of complexity. As Summoner as it is already has a fair few quasi-CD-based nukes (Ruin IV, the aspected Ruins), this concept already exist, it just shows its numbers in a different way.

And that brings to a point Anvaire also brings up: Why not have a DoT caster and a summoner? Both are distinct concepts in the context of FFXIV, so why not simply have both? FFXIV struggles hard to find ideas for the ever-expanding already-overburdened roster of jobs we have (I mean just look at the design joke that is Viper...), so hey, here's two actual concepts to use.