My first PFS char is a conjuration (nonsummoning) arcanist.
While the first few levels were pretty rough, standing in the back casting grease a few times a day, once you hit level 4 things are fine, and once I hit l6 you become really powerful.
And the reason is, I can attack every defense on my opponent and I have the knowledge skills to know what to attack.
In pathfinder you can attack AC, touch AC, 3 saves and CMD. And you may have spell resistance or displacement.
My entire career was things like
'create pit beneath the antipaladin on his undead horse'
'Fireball against the group of mummies'
'Glitterdust against the fighters
'Wall of force to compartmentalize the giant fight, leaving half the enemies idling'
'Haste to greatly increase the odds the paladin kills the demon before it attacks again'
'Grease on the special artefact dagger about to CdG a sacrificial victim'
'Black Tentacles on the group of assassin archers'
'Dimension Door the party while having invis sphere up next to the Admiral of the fleet, and have the paladins shank him before he even took an action.'
'Baleful polymorph on the enemy sorceror'
A wizard played well plays chess when everyone else is playing checkers.
Now it takes a lot of system knowledge, spell knowledge to do this well, but you can bypass encounters one a single defense you pick.
And you make mistakes, like the I cast confusion on a bunch of vampires.
It is a very fun game to play, though I won't be repeating the game fromntge start again.
