We can buff just fine, I just think our buffs should scale a lot better. For instance.

Carbuncles "Shining Ruby" Should scale to, by level ~90, up to the potency of Shell V, and Protect V. There is no reason it shouldn't. But at the same time, remember Shining ruby stacks with Pro/shell, So even if it doesnt get a power boost (It should) you have to remember if your WHM is handing out Pro/shell V, and you use Shinning Ruby, they stack, and it enhances it further.

Diabolos' Phalanx: This needs to go up to at least 30 damage. Back when only RDM could Phalanx this BP was a good idea, AoE Phalanx, slightly weaker but group friendly. Now with SCH and /SCH, Its lacking. It needs a buff. badly.

Hastega is Fine, Long duration, Same potency.

Diabolos' Magic Attack Bonus needs to be a bit more potent no matter what the time, Maybe just +5 across the board. I.E 15 Full moon, 14/lower, 13/etc /12etc as opposed to its 10/9/8 now. Its still a wonderful BP, Regardless if its not perfect.

Earthern Ward: Needs to be boosted to absorb 300 Damage. a full dmg Stoneskin isn't asking much, Right now players can buff it as high as +100 additional Damage, and again with SCH and /SCH, this loses its uniqueness a lot.

Aerial Armor: Make it more like Utsu Shadows. Blinkga and to a lesser extent, Occultation-ga (JA), make this BP used very very seldom. If it gave 3-4 Utsu-like Shadows, It wouldn't be ENTIRELY useless. Just more situational.

Problem is you have to remember SMN is a group job, All of Summoner's Buffs stack with WHM, COR, BRD, etc buffs. They weren't meant to be solo healers, They were meant to increase and further buffs. Thats my thoughts. But it wouldn't hurt to give them stronger buffs.

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on the Issue of Spirits. why waste time buffing the most worthless aspect of our job when we could buff the best aspects further and actually make headway in becoming more useful?

In order to make spirits useful, they would have to do Massive amounts of damage in 45 seconds, To match or better the damage from an Avatar in that time. Also Spirits don't get SMN Set bonus proc either, because its for Blood Bood. Soooooooo On Average (yes, Average) the SMN i do things with can do about 4-5k Heavenly Strikes. (Not counting Stupid-resistant mobs, why would i) (This is INSIDE Abyssea, Outside its probably half that).

So in order for us to Buff spirits to somehow make SMN more appealing, I'd imagine we'd have to give spirits a Casting timer of about... 5 seconds, and their nukes would need to do at least 2x their current damage.

This is unrealistic at best. Spirits are so terribly broken any fix to them would take massive man-hours and time. This is also unrealistic. We shouldn't want to focus on boosting the most useless and terrible aspect of our job, We should focus on boosting Avatars to the point they can hold their own against mainstream DD. I don't ask that they out-damage the best of the best, simply that they're at least on par.

If i wanted to gear my SMN to the absolute best of its Abilities, i Should be able to at least be withing a 10% Damage gap of a very well geared WAR. We both put in effort to our jobs, and SMN is designed to DD as well as buff, We should be good at both. I'm not asking to out-DD an Ukon War, or a Vereth MNK, But at least to be useful enough that when asked to come as something, SMN is considered.

we need a few buffs, but i still think the biggest impact to our usefulness would be in buffing our BP:Rages to do a bit more damage, and lowering BP:Timer to 30 seconds instead of 45 (with gear).

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On SMN Melee. Stop about it. It can be useful inside Abyssea in some situations, But outside Abyssea we lose entirely too much to make it useful. I would hate a buff to SMN melee because knowing SE, it would not be worthwhile. It would be on level with what "Composure" did for buffing RDM melee.

Yah +10 Accuracy at the lost of all of your native Fast cast! (im exaggerating, It does other things). While trust me, I would be the first to praise a boost to SMN melee, It just isn't fitting withing the "job" description so to say. No past SMNs were heavy Melee, in any FF game title, In FFXI it won't be any different. We have staff skill, yes, We're on Relic Staff, yes, But we're not meant to be hard-core DD. I don't see SE Giving us anything in that category.

It would be nice, but absolutely unrealistic. They wouldn't turn around and make DRK The best nuker, because it doesn't make sense, They wouldn't boost PLDs curing ability because it also wouldn't make sense. both of these examples are basically "These jobs are 'okay' at that, but they're not great at it, they were suppose to be". In the same light, SMN is 'okay' at meleeing, but they aren't great, they were never meant to be.

I'm not trying to say don't keep asking for it, I'm only trying to explain its incredibly unrealistic and knowing SE's past, It will never happen.

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On your list of Ideas, the best you can hope for is a buff to Spirits and our Buffing. I wouldn't mind a massive buff to our Buffing ability. Infact i think we're way past due for one. Buffing our Spirits would be like polishing a turd, It will never be useful, why bother.