Summoner Needs to be buffed

[Killerwing]

As someone that played Summoner since HW, I agree with rewd and I would also like to mention a few other things.

Mainly that mobility has never been the main factor that affects the measurement of a job's personal DPS, but rather party utility.

Best example can be seen with Machinist, Bard and Dancer. Machinist has (generally, though I'm uncertain if it's true at the moment) the highest personal DPS of the three but not much party utility while Dancer has the lowest personal DPS, but a large amount of party utility.

It's the same deal with all types of DPS. Furthermore the simplicity of a job's rotation doesn't necessarily mean a job will do tons of damage. Look again at Dancer for that(which has a really basic DPS rotation). And conversely you have DPS like Ninja that are kinda complex, yet aren't among the highest in personal DPS.

If you want to compare personal DPS among the casters, it would mainly be between Red Mage and Summoner because Black Mage has no party utility(and it has huge personal DPS in return).
In case you were wondering, here's what the two casters have for utilities.

Red Mage's utility kit
- Vercure: Reliable healing spell that can be used in a pinch.
- Verraise: Battle rez which can be used very quickly thanks to Dualcast(though at major cost to RDM's MP and DPS)
- Embolden: Party-wide damage buff
- Magick Barrier: Party-wide damage resist+heal buff

Summoner's utility kit
- Resurrection: Battle rez
- Searing Light: Party-wide damage buff
- Everlasting Flight: Small party-wide HoT which can only be used every 2 minutes
- Rekindle: Single target heal which can only be used every 2 minutes

As you can see, Red Mages have 4 reliable utility spells that can be used whenever it's possible, or necessary to use them.
Summoner on the other hand only has 2 reliable utility spells. Yes, Demi-Phoenix does give them access to a HoT and a single-target healing spell...but you can only use Demi-Phoenix every 2 minutes in your rotation. It makes those spells highly unreliable for constant utility. Not to mention that if you die as SMN in a fight, you lose any progress you had on Demi-Phoenix, meaning the time to use those heals is delayed by 2 minutes, unlike RDM's Embolden and Magick Barrier.

I'm not counting the shield because it's a self-sustain/survivability tool rather than party utility.

There's one upside to this whole issue about SMN having perhaps not enough DPS right now. And it's the fact that their kit is good and stable right now, meaning that all Square-Enix will probably do is a simple increase in potencies on certain spells.

A really simple fix...unlike the whole issues SMN had back during the release of both Stormblood and Shadowbringers...
(You know there's a problem when a world first raider changed from SMN to BLM because it was painful on their hands.)