Summoner rework is a huge dissapointment

[Tulzscha]

I'm sorry but why should they be? Why should the best utility jobs be near the bottom? That's such an arbitrary reason, just as arbitrary as saying, the best mobility, or the easiest rotation, or the least amount of party synergy mechanics. And also is not one that's easily quantified. Reaper has great utility. Monk has solid utility. Hell I would say that both Black Mage and Samurai have more 'utility' then Machinist, yet if you were to suddenly put Machinist damage on par with theirs, I'm sure you get massive blow back from a good part of the community.

The community doesn't even agree on what makes up utility. Some say it's anything that contributes to buffing the damage, mitigation, or healing of others. Some say that damage shouldn't be included in that. Some say its bringing any ability that makes the job of others easier. Balancing around such a nebulous statistic only causes issues.

And also your question still doesn't address the problem of "What happens when the run doesnt need to be saved?" aka 90% of the time we play this game. After a few weeks, almost every piece of content in this game becomes trivial, save ultimate. When that utility means absolutely nothing, it should no longer be factored into balance.

I would say utility is any non-damage contribution that helps the group. Healing, rezzing, interrupts, mitigation, etc. Most damage buffs are included in rdps, saying they count as utility is just a different (and less clear) way of comparing rdps vs adps.

As for which jobs should be higher or lower, I'd look at it this way:

1. If two jobs have exactly the same potential output but one offers something the other doesn't, why would you play the job that offers nothing? Downplay it all you want an advantage is an advantage, even in a seasoned group people can screw up, having an extra rez is nice. Clearing a little faster is also nice, neither is that big of a deal for a good group, it's more a matter of preference.

How much having a rez should cost I can't say but it should cost something. Balance is most important for prog, afterwards when people have experience and better gear it doesn't matter as much who has a rez and who doesn't, nor does it matter as much who deals more damage, you're getting the clear regardless.

2. Same goes for ease of play. If two jobs have the same potential output but one can be executed with a single macro while running around as much as you like while the other requires the group working around you to make sure you're able to keep dpsing, fun factor aside there's no reason to play the difficult job and those who do because they enjoy it will likely end up discouraged.

Imo jobs should not be balanced around max potential for this reason, nor should they be balanced around the worst players as that will create too large of a disparity at the top. Finding that magic number where the most people are satisfied is the hard part.

3. Jobs that buff the group can only ever be as good as the whole group. Their max potential rdps is higher by nature but their lows are also lower, the more buff-centric the job the more their own rdps is out of their control.

SMNs offer a good amount of utility: Free healing for the group + a targeted heal every 2 minutes that doesn't come at the cost of dps, a decent self shield every 30s, and the ability to rez which only one other dps can do. They are extremely mobile and ranged with an incredibly straight-forward rotation that's almost impossible to mess up - it doesn't always do well with downtime but that's a design problem more than a numbers problem. And they have a raid buff. It makes sense to me that their adps would be among the lowest.

Their rdps is dependent on the group making good use of their buff which thanks to its long duration is not difficult to do resulting in less variance compared to Ninja for example which would result in SMN's max potential rdps being lower while their low end should be higher.