Genius Move from SE

[Voidmage]

I'm not. SMN Job Identity is summoning, which it barely does. Most of its attacks come from the caster as different buttons that it presses with very few actually coming from the summons itself outside of Bahamut phase. BRDs Job Identity was dots and support, and seeing the dots have been the ONE thing it has kept all this time, it is very difficult to say that isn't part of its identity, and it is losing that come 8.0 almost entirely. (No, 3 second dots that only tick a single time is not enough to warrant "identity"). It's losing access to Minne on demand and Warden's Paeon, one might be niche but was still a night and day difference when it was useful. Perfect examples are M12S Doom Towers, and TEA. Minne is an incredibly useful tool especially in something like M12S Phase 1 where you want to use both mitigation and healing boosts separately because of the damage output of the fight to increase help for healers. This is removal of Identity. If DNC Shield Samba also gets the increased heal attached to it come 8.0, why are you running a BRD? There should be scenarios where some jobs play into a fights gimmick more than others, and what they currently showed does not align with that. Animations don't determine identity, playstyle does, and if every job is just boiled down to "collect the 3 gummies, do a big burst, repeat" then there is no job identity anymore.

SMN has a good job identity. It summons primals that do a big attack, maybe not enough of them but it absolutely does what a SMN in this franchise does and no, it does not summon too little just too monotonous.

I don't talk about BRD or DNC here, why you would take one over the other or what is useful in TEA though I would agree that the jobs should have different tools for different situations that are close to their identity like the DRG high jump.
I am also not advocating for all jobs to turn into SMN, never did but job identity is not just playstyle but also animations, otherwise we can close the game because at the end of the day SMN and BLM do the same thing, namely damage numbers.

I would completely agree if you said the identity of SMN is not enough because it has not enough summons or that those summons should have different effects but that's all.
Edit:
I absolutely agree that SMN needs more and that the jobs definitely do need more complexity again but job identity should not be how jobs perform in some Ultimate or Savage fight. That should be a bonus for outside the box thinking.
Job identity begins far lower.