Mmm, I hope I'll be able to clarify the whole "Sounds like SMN is popular and feels good to play" Popularity doesn't mean the job is good. White Mage is the prime example why it suffers from popularity.



The only healing job that has more logs on savage than WHM is SAG. We'll come back to SAG.

When we look at Caster logs;



RDM has more logs than SMN. You can see that SAM has more logs than MNK but that RPR is absolutely destroying every single DPS in term of popularity.

What does SMN have in common with RPR, SAG? SMN is basically a new job. All SAG, RPR and SMN are easy to pick up. They all have this trait in common that it's really easy to play casually. SE never hid that it was their plan. I'm not counting normal raids no one should expect a casual to upload normal raid logs.

Still, SAG and RPR are the most played in their roles, that's because they are easy to pick, fun and perform well. SMN has some exposure and everybody says how SMN is very popular. You can say SMN feels good because you're the Ultima Weapon but SMN is weak and doesn't optimize well. Yeah, it can be fun to play with but you know what's fun, when I don't get restricted on my playstyle. Not only I can't Searing Light whenever I want or Radiant Aegis, but fights aren't fun to perform on SMN. Yeah, SMN is flashy and looks cool. It suddenly feel like a success for the casuals. But WHM is pretty popular among casuals and WHM currently needs a lot of help. It always needed help because, and even in the current data, people still play WHM more than AST even if AST is insanely better.

I'll even go as far as to pick P3S specifically. The only fight when AST is played more than WHM by about 1k logs. However, Macrocosmos on AST trivializes Death's Toll. A mechanic that asks you to die and you must be fully heal and you have a healing debuff on you. Macrocosmos makes it a 1 button brain dead mechanic. If you don't have an AST, people usually just healer LB3. That's how popular WHM is despite underperforming.



As for the whole, "Was SMN unpopular in 5.x" Not sure if that can help but those are the last 2 weeks before the end of 5.4, RDM/SMN pretty much had same popularity.



If there's one last thing I would add is that, yes, flashiness and fun are a reason to play a job. Performances and how it plays in raid also plays a role in that.