SMN is now the least popular caster again barely one expansion after its rework

[ZXN]

Sure Dawntrail might be punching some jobs down hard...but cheer up! I just got some exclusive insider info about Summoner from Yoshi-P himself about what is to come with the planned Patch 8.0 job changes.

When you hit level 110 you will obtain...A Blue Flamed Phoenix! But wait, there is more! Now your carbuncle's shield gives you...a 100 potency regen!!!

There is no need for you to respond with any words fellow Warrior Of Light, as I already know what you're going to say. I will make sure to tell Yoshi-P you absolutely LOVE the coming changes, so you have nothing to worry about! It'll all be taken care of in time.

[Rithy255]

I'm sure black mage wouldn't be that popular if it wasn't doing that much damage, its funny how heavily competing with pictomancer despite being so far ahead lol. Almost like the rework only alienated the existing playerbase, the "meta pickers" went to BLM or RDM, while some people are loyal to Picto. Black mage might have been off worser then it already was if it stayed the same damage wise, because they ruined the existing loyal playerbase.

Though I'm pretty sure people who jumped on summoner were only following the meta or picking up the new trendy reworked job.

It's almost like theirs a big amount of savage players who will always pick meta, Theirs people who will pick whatever is easy and then theirs people who are actually loyal to fun designs (like picto despite it being very badly nerfed)

I wish people would stop defending boring easy designs as "well it's highly picked" because NO people pick whats META.

[Jeeqbit]

Shouldn’t jobs be changed and added to based on what they need and what their players want, not this constant roulette of which job is least popular

It would be easy to think they do reworks based on job popularity, but I don't think they do. None of their MNK changes ever seem to truly make people want to attack with fists, so they often just left it alone beside the sort of changes they did to every other job, like removing upkeep timers. And they left BLM this long despite it often being too hard for the "majority of players" to bother with.

I think that it's not to make them more popular, necessarily, but to "reduce pain points" that cause people difficulty or make them quit. An obvious example is all the upkeep timers, which some players simply would fail to keep up because they aren't really gamer types and just doing the MSQ or playing for social reasons. Or tank stances, where half of players would use tank stance 100% of the time because they believed it made sense, since they're a tank, whereas DPS-oriented tanks would use their DPS stance almost 100% of the time and put a probably-unintended burden on the healer with auto attacks. Or the reputation Monk had for positionals, which didn't help its lack of use in duties, since if we're honest, a lot of players don't actually like positionals, and some of them aren't aware positionals exist.

A lot of it comes down to SE "solving perceived problems and pain points" and to be fair, I could see all these "problems and pain points" myself prior to them being addressed, since it's obvious when average players in dungeons are struggling with these sort of things. That is true of BLM as well. As much as it was fun the way it was, there were mechanics that could make it difficult to really attack at all for ages, even after all the Triplecasts and instant casts were used, and the timer running out due to mechanics did happen more in modern content (the threat of which is what people liked about it of course), but the fact is it was a lot more likely to happen as they tried to speed up the DDR mechanics and not leave anywhere safe for an extended period of time.

The SMN rework seemed to start with the complaints of its previous iteration being "overwhelming" for SMN mains where they tried to reduce how busy it was, addressing weave issues and removing the penalty for attacking without DoTs up. So they contended with a problem that had been building for a long time, where it was fighting between its identity as a DoT/flow mage and its identity as a Summoner, and didn't have wiggle room for growing in expansions without becoming "overwhelming" again.

So in short, I don't think it's really to do with popularity. They just want to remove pain points and make it easy to understand how to actually play it.

[mallleable]

Their biggest fumble was just not adding Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva. Another fumble was not making each summon mechanically diverse.

[Rithy255]

Their biggest fumble was just not adding Leviathan, Ramuh, and Shiva. Another fumble was not making each summon mechanically diverse.

Biggest fumble was people expecting SE to build on top of it honestly. We should have known it wasn't gonna get anything new.

[Valkyrie_]

This is the issue with butchering jobs to appeal to the lowest common denominator. You're alienating the people who genuinely loved the job to cater to a crowd that is transient by nature. They move to whatever job is flavor of the month while the former diehard mains of that job are driven away from the game..

It's wild to me that the developers seem to just not care whatsoever about their long time loyal playerbase, like I understand Square is a buisness and they need to make money by catering to the new player/casual crowd, but not to the extent you just completely disregard the feelings of the players who have been playing these classes since launch and enjoy the old unique playstyles.

The ironic thing is many of these players the devs are appealing to will either stop playing the game after a while, or if they stick around and play for long enough many will eventually start to look for something more challenging, engaging or unique, but there will be no class left for them to turn to since they've all been butchered and homogenized.

I remember when RDM first released and I was so excited to play a sword mage class with that cool asthetic, but then I quickly realised that while the class was flashy and unique, it was ultimately very simple and not very engaging, I and some others initially complained a bit, but eventually relented and accepted RDM for the simple class that it was.
Why...? because I still had SMN and BLM to turn to, they might not have been the sword mages I wanted but at least every type of player had different classes they could play depending on what level of engagement/complexity they desired.
Why can't we have that anymore? We've been giving the devs money helping the game thrive for years and years, don't we deserve to have the things we enjoy too???

[Kisshu]

A major problem I have with SMN is how bound it is to the two minute rotation. It's much worse than other jobs imo, at least other jobs can delay and realign with burst, but SMN is just stuck once it starts unless you want to spam Ruin 3 a lot.

Take Byakko Unreal, initial burst is no problem, 2 minute into the fight it's also ok, but after that you're screwed. around 2:30 into the fight you enter the fall phase and it takes around 90 seconds, so that would put you at the 4 minute mark and ready for burst. The problem is that you used Solar Bahamut at the 2 minute mark, didn't use Phoenix on cooldown, so now your 2 minute burst for the rest of the fight will be Bahamut/Phoenix instead of the stronger Solar Bahamut. Unless you want to spam Ruin 3 to align, you're stuck. Most/all other jobs don't have this problem as their cooldowns will be ready after the fall phase.

Or take Jeuno, unless you want to spam Ruin 3 (or AoE) on the first pack, you have to use Solar since most of the SMN kit is locked behind the Demis, and then you again drift on the boss.

The job is so railroaded on the 2 minute burst rotation that it breaks when the content doesn't align with it, especially if you're stuck on Bahamut/Phoenix and can't activate it on cooldown.

[Azurarok]

Will red mage eventually fall off once people are more used to these new fights and don't need the dualcast revive? That's what I wonder, and if it leads to that jobs popularity during times like this

I personally love RDM and that reason makes it a lot of fun to help others

Back in EW a friend described their caster usage as "RDM for prog, BLM for clears, SMN for reclears" due to rez needs and the dps differences. If this still holds true it'd probably be "RDM for prog, BLM/PCT for clears, RDM for reclears"

[Shyxx]

It's the same thing as with ranged phys, ALL the "damage taxes" need to go no other game has them regardless of ease of play (which is subjective) and utility. BM hunter in WoW is probably easier to play than any job in FFXIV yet it is one of the top damage and no one is complaining and plenty of people are playing other classes.

[Xactly]

A shame they had to take away the DoT and pet control aspect of the job.. for this false pet job
But surely they wouldn't simplify other jobs right?
Right??