So about Summoner...

[xxPheNoMeNa]

You are wrong. Accepting something perceived as a flaw is not conducive to good design and customer retention, otherwise SE wouldn't bother with player feedback and they certainly wouldn't bother with balance patches. Clearly there is a portion of the playerbase who wants Red Mage to always be useful, rather than only being there to play res-bot and make newbie tank players want to kill themselves, and this portion of the playerbase has every right to desire that. Whether SE wants to act on their criticisms is their prerogative, but the players are in the right to want more out of the job.

A few classes aren't "always useful". BLM isn't "useful" and I don't hear them complaining much since their buffs, WHM isn't always "useful" and many people considered the balance between healers to be pretty good until these last AST buffs that happened (despite the fact that WHM was only taken for prog).

You are wrong. Accepting something perceived as a flaw is not conducive to good design and customer retention, otherwise SE wouldn't bother with player feedback and they certainly wouldn't bother with balance patches. Clearly there is a portion of the playerbase who wants Red Mage to always be useful, rather than only being there to play res-bot and make newbie tank players want to kill themselves, and this portion of the playerbase has every right to desire that. Whether SE wants to act on their criticisms is their prerogative, but the players are in the right to want more out of the job.

The class has a very niche design. Most casual players (the ones who don't even raid) seem to enjoy RDM from what I've personally witnessed and iirc was one of the more popular classes being played. Seems fine for player retention, it's only the small group in between that and those of us at the highest end that believe the sky is falling for the class. Even the best RDM players think the class is fine (and some argue it's still overpowered).

And again... just flat out wrong. Black Mage has a much better argument for viability because it offers strong personal DPS at the expense of being harder to play, but a good Black Mage is only "sub optimal" compared to a summoner, rather than just having no reason to be there like Red Mage.

No that's not wrong at all lol. Black Mage isn't any where close to the viability of RDM in progression, even if you completely ignore the raise utility RDM brings. Outside of prog there's more viability sure, but it's also looked down upon by most because it's damage output isn't "enough". Good black mages actually can match the overall output that SMN brings, the issue is it's very difficult to do so and very few players are capable of playing the class at that level, and if you don't play it well then it will punish you far greater than SMN would (hence the glaring disparity that people always bring up).

Nobody is saying Red Mage needs to be meta, what they (and I) want is for it to be "competitive", in effect a job that while sub optimal still offers a strong slot to the group that isn't infinitely better served by literally everything else.

And in what way is it not "competitive"? Because those of us who optimize at a bleeding edge say "SMN is better"? If I played the class right now and tried to speedrun with my static, I bet I could still compete to be the highest dps in my group. Do you or these other people understand the damage RDM "can" do when you have an optimal group comp with proper party buff usage? Sure there's definitely a disparity between RDM and SMN, I've always agreed to that, but people act like RDM is the lowest dps in the game and that's actually not the case.