Hey! I had a quick search and couldn't find a topic on this subject so let's get to it.
I plan to play a destruction/conjuration mage which will be all well and good against smaller, weaker NPCs' but I have absolutely no faith in fighting dragons by summoning a Zombie or a... *ahem* Scamp. Watching my summons get set on fire by dragons and smacked into Oblivion (haha, funny pun) isn't exactly what I intend to happen.
This also leads me to ask will we be seeing Daedric summons again? Scamps, Clannfears, etc.

There better be some decent summons considering they will be my only line of defense I′m going for full blown heavy armor and shield but I also need alteration magic for shielding spells and healing magic, and I′m allowed to take Conjuration as well since I can use summons as meat shields so technically it doesn′t need to be an "offensive" art (like I tried to use my mace in Oblivion mainly for paralyzing, disarming and knocking my enemy back) but while I consider conjuration to be just another one of my "defensive" arts it′s still likely going to be the most damaging skill I have...

Perhaps I can cast alteration and restoration spells in a fluid motion with a shield + mace, but I′m not really counting on it, don′t think Bethesda will let me do that

The daedra summonings will be back.

As for fighting dragons, I'd go with a range summons like Lich. I hope they give us more ranged summons like a skelly archer or daedra range fighter. Though I'm sure a daedroth can last a few moments with a dragon. If your destruction/conjure just use your summons like fodder and set up your charged spells.

This is a good point. The summons in Oblivion were notable for being weaker than they should be (on higher difficulties). Of course, i dont expect any 1 of my summons to go toe-to-toe with a dragon and win, but I do hope a small army will be able to kill one. (if they allow multiple summons with an engine that can handle the extra strain)

I don't think OB summons were weak at all, I thought they were pretty powerful. They were even more powerful on high difficulty since it didn't lessen their damage. Anyway, maybe if you put a summon spell on both hands to make a superpowerful summon spell it might be more effective against a dragon.

I think they should bring back the Oblivion Gate animations, only they should make them smaller, change the colors to all new awesome colors, and then let YOU be the one to open them when summoning your monsters.

All of your monsters should come out of some kind of gate with all the cool bells and whistles. The shimmering portal, the water front door effect, only this time in witchfire blue or daedric-sapphire purple, no red.

Then every time you cast a cool Conjuration spell, you'd open your own gate, watch the creature come through it, and go to kicking some bootay ... all while the gate you summoned them through remains open, looking all awesome and making you look more powerful than a guy who just snaps his fingers and makes a rabbit come out of his hat.

I don't like the way Conjuration was visualized in the last two games, and since they already did all of that work creating the Oblivion gates, why not just modify that code toward making the gate look fresh and visually stunning, and make Conjurers entirely more interesting than before as they stand beside their gates summoning fell ilk and Hellspawn to do their bidding?

Who wouldn't like to be able to say that they can create their own trans-dimensional rip in the fabric of spacetime and drag unremittant hordes and legions of followers through it to serve them?

I know I would like to be able to do/say that!

If they go with other aspects of "there was a mod that did this well, let's see if we can use that as a basis and tweak it to our liking" that certain aspects have been given.

I'd say they'd already have this sorted.
LAME for me added a great balance, summons would level to the player, but would be capped and level slower for the lesser summons.
Thus a Skeleton is still a good cheap summon for much longer, but the top tier ones are beasts capable of taking on challenges at any level.
Also it removed the one summon cap, so allowed the freedom to play as a conjurer / summoner more.

Spells we'll see I have no clue tbh.
However I'd like freedom of choice some high level beast summons for a druid, good undead spells for necromancers.
Daedra ones for daedra worshipers and base mages, some less capricous ones for noble mages / paladin builds... so lots of choice.
As well as more range to conjuration shool spells, have some wards, more creation type spells, banishments.. etc, not just plain summons.

Undead crawling out of the ground, ethereal beings forming from a mist of ether.

My summoning and conjuring in Oblivion were powerful enough. I'd learn a new spell and keep improving the creature I summoned. My favorite was the Dremora Lord though. I didn't use a summoned creature to fight the most powerful baddies in Oblivion though...saved those for myself. I can it being that way for Skyrim too but we'll see. I may need them to weaken a dragon first.

Would the dragon shout that summons a dragon count as summoning?

I Don't Think that summons should be limited to a time limit or a summon cap so you can only have a few out, they should just make them block out some of you Magicka bar as long as they are out, so if you have 200 magicka and you summon a zombie using 50 magicka, you would have 150 magicka left but the zombie blocks out your magicka equal to half its cost, so as long as the zombie is out your max magicka would be 175.(this is just an example, and if they did do it like this, there would probably be perks reducing the penalty.)

That way we can get rid of those annoying durations, summon as many creatures as we like, but it's still capped in a reasonable way.

Well sooner or later they will get it right they cant bleep it up forever after all.

I don't want summon limits or the measley 1 creature at a time

Probably yes. And as allways, they'll be effective cannon fodder :flamethrower: while you deal the actual damage with destruction or weapons.