SE, don't overthink Summoner 7.0. Just give people what they want. Just do it.

[Renathras]

Have you seen the PLD rework ?
You are not going to like what they’ll do to your SMN. Can’t imagine how they’ll gut dragoon too.

To be fair, PLD was a mess before and the rework is ARGUABLY net positive. Not all of the reworks are bad. Everything wrong with New PLD was wrong with Old PLD (button bloat, some convolusion, etc), and the new one is no more braindead than the other one, it just doesn't require ANTI-intuitive thinking to make it work, like some of Old PLD's cursed openers were really cursed. It's not a perfect rework/Job, but it's not the doom and gloom people that hate it have made it out to be. It lost DoTs that were rotationally impossible to miss (that is, there was no DoT juggling, it was just "alternate between melee combo 1 and melee combo 2), and likewise, the one on Swords was also part of your rotation. If you were just doing your standard rotation, it was impossible to miss them, unlike, say, BRD or the Healers where it's a separate action that has to actually be thought about, even if only just.

It's far more flexible than it was before, and plays a lot smoother once one makes the transition.

The only bits of clunk/silliness now are why FoF is a separate action from Requiescat, why Req is still a melee skill for who even knows what reason (they at least figured out GNB's Continuations should have more range...), and why Goring, Expaciation, and Circle of Scorn exist instead of combining them/folding their potency into other things since PLD is a Job that actually DOES have a good argument for having "button bloat" (it and AST) that would justify removing them or merging them. Circle should just have its potency folded into Expaciation and the Devs are already trying to get rid of DoTs, so it's odd to keep any that are on CDs (and by that, I mean ones that you "use on CD" or are part of your standard rotation and can't be missed) when those things can just do direct damage instead and not have to worry about hitting the buff/debuff cap on bosses anyway.

Folding Goring's damage into Swords, giving Req a 6-15y range (something in there), making FoF upgrade into Req instead of being a separate button, and making Spirits Within upgrade to Circle of Scorn (as just an AOE, not a DoT) then upgrade into Expaciation; those three things would more or less put PLD in a sweet spot.

No, SE's mucked up a lot of reworks, but the PLD one isn't one of them.

What will happen to SMN in 7.0 will likely be what happened to MCH and DRK in EW. They got one more button and that's it.

Honestly, they don't even need to add more buttons.

Just give us the other three "mainline" summons after using Phoenix and most people would be pretty happy and content with that. At least, people that like New SMN would be. People that don't won't be happy unless it's reverted to Old SMN, and that isn't happening anyway.

They seem to have missed that most played and most enjoyed aren't necessarily the same.

While true in a technical sense - that which is most played/popular may not be the most enjoyed - the converse is also true; if a lot of people ARE playing something, they probably enjoy it on at least some level, and Jobs that are the least played are GENERALLY going to be ones less people enjoy. The only exception is if a Job is just unplayable or considered griefing your team (e.g. pre-6.3 MCH)

A lot of you guys that hate New SMN don't seem to realize a lot of people genuinely enjoy it. That you don't enjoy it doesn't mean that a lot of people do not. It's often hard to hear, but one's opinion isn't automatically the opinion of the majority. I'd wager that most people that don't like New SMN aren't the ones playing it. While you can find some exceptions - someone wants to be the Caster, their Static wants a combat raise on it, and SMN's damage output right now is more than RDM's - that's not going to be the most common reason for people playing it, given the vast majority of players don't have Statics anyway, and would probably resist playing a Job they truly hated, and that most Statics don't try to force their members to play Jobs they truly hate.