Summoner needs a fix or a new reason to play it.

[Sunako]

Well yeah but that applies to ~every job. Readily of top of my head I constantly play Astro, Paladin and Gunbreaker who all have essentially 0 drift-resistance (Astro has marginal amounts but only every second minute).

It is not the same, because even your filler rotation is locked behind demi window, which is not the case for any other job

[Yeonhee]

It's for people who care more about fantasy than pretending they are accomplishing something with their parses. I've cleared UWU several times so I am at least okay at this game. I know it's not a really great accomplishment at this point, but it's alright.

Parse culture is simply bad for the game's fantasy elements though, it's not really about skill at all and that's just a weird and toxic thing to suggest.

You have people who main MCH not playing it because they want to parse higher. Maybe their groups are pressuring them to not play the job because it would be detrimental to their parses.

There are some people who don't want their poor performance being exposed, but even in those cases it is less about looking like a loser and more about avoiding the experience of being put down by a hyper nerd like you.

What an absolute garbage take. A class being bad is gonna remain bad even if you hide damage numbers. People like to see big numbers and like to know that their class can put out big numbers. Throwing out a Flare Star feels a lot more impactful when you see a 100k damage popping instead of just about nothing. Not to mention how much more difficult PFs would be with no way of knowing who doesn't do its job.

You're so obssessed with the "fantasy elements" to the point that if it was up to you and only you, I'm pretty sure every classes would have the exact same rotation with the exact same damage with just a different skin.

[HikariKurosawa]

What an absolute garbage take. A class being bad is gonna remain bad even if you hide damage numbers. People like to see big numbers and like to know that their class can put out big numbers. Throwing out a Flare Star feels a lot more impactful when you see a 100k damage popping instead of just about nothing. Not to mention how much more difficult PFs would be with no way of knowing who doesn't do its job.

You're so obssessed with the "fantasy elements" to the point that if it was up to you and only you, I'm pretty sure every classes would have the exact same rotation with the exact same damage with just a different skin.

That's the thing though, there are no bad jobs in this game. They are all adequate for all levels of content. There are thousands of clears for every single job in every single encounter. This is the skill issue and obsession with weird numbers that are based on gear and rng rather than anything you've done.

I'm obsessed with the fantasy elements because that's what matters. That the jobs are fun and unique to play visually and with their rotations. I couldn't care less if SMN or MCH are weaker, because they should be weaker than other jobs.

You talk about garbage takes a lot for someone who has only ever posted garbage takes though. Very interesting.

[Supersnow845]

But if you only care about the fantasy elements then why should you care about people arguing that a particular class doesn’t do enough damage. Like I’m struggling to see how you can argue both sides here. Either you care about job fantasy and rotation/numbers are irrelevant in which case why would you care that damage numbers are tweaked or rotations changed. Or you do care about numbers in which case the whole “I only care about fantasy” doesn’t make any sense either

[HikariKurosawa]

But if you only care about the fantasy elements then why should you care about people arguing that a particular class doesn’t do enough damage. Like I’m struggling to see how you can argue both sides here. Either you care about job fantasy and rotation/numbers are irrelevant in which case why would you care that damage numbers are tweaked or rotations changed. Or you do care about numbers in which case the whole “I only care about fantasy” doesn’t make any sense either

I care about your unhappiness with the game and wish I could make you see things the way I do so that you would be happy again. That's why I say the things I do, it makes me a little bit unhappy to see how unhappy people like you are when all you have to do is shift your perspective a little bit in specific areas.

You think all this stuff matters, but it really doesn't. I make the posts I do to challenge your perspective and I want you to be happy with the game you care so much about. It is a really nice fantasy to experience and you might think that your negativity doesn't really matter but it has an impact on your entire experience of the game to look at it the way you do.

People discredit my perspective lots due to my current status in game, and I wish that I was more passionate about this game so I had more influence. But at the end of the day I am really happily engaged with so many activities and other games right now and haven't given myself the time to give the msq the attention it deserves this time around.

The game actually does feel better with damage numbers turned off entirely too. The animations are beautiful and the rotations feel amazing to look at when they flow fluently. The numbers get in the way of appreciating the game for what it is.

[Myon88]

There is really no reason anymore to bring a Summoner in your Group and thats something which is insane sad to see, because ShB Summoner was such a huge Powerhouse.

Yeah, summoner right now is unquestionably the worst job in the game. It's the only job that does not even compete properly within its own bracket. As a raise caster, it's significantly inferior to red mage due to the latter's access to dualcast allowing it to pull off raises in scenarios that summoner can only dream of.

With the EW rework now 2+ years old and DT failing to build on that framework, all the tourists that hopped on the bandwagon have long left. They ripped up a job with a passionate fanbase to chase short term engagement metrics, and now we're left with a hollow shell that satisfies no one.

[herber]

We're almost at a point where you would wish the people responsible for leaving Summoner the way it is in patch 7.2 deserves punishment of some sort, for all the injustice SMN mains are getting, especially when a party of 6 out of 8 gray parsers can clear DPS checks because they have a viper and a black mage, while we're stressing our asses off optimizing cast timings so that Searing Light will serve everyone and that pots would reach that quickcasted Garuda dot and making quick decisions whether to use or not the stupid Ifrit gap closer during mechanics just to optimize DPS, but in the end still end up lacking. Summoners having a locked in rotation meant that the moment you mess one up, eveything else shifts so you always have to be or near perfect all the time. It just feels so unfair.

[Valence]

You'll notice that the only jobs that get balance attention are the job at the top. Bottom/taxed jobs like RDM, SMN and Rphys, barely get changes and never get really mentioned in the "reasons for adjustment" part of the job guides.
All of the balance attention is always and invariably about melees and BLM/PCT. It's not a new thing, and it's pretty telling, because in the devs minds, the only jobs that matter and are worthy of balancing are the same top dogs. Other jobs are not there to compete, they're there for "lesser players".

[remiff]

You'll notice that the only jobs that get balance attention are the job at the top. Bottom/taxed jobs like RDM, SMN and Rphys, barely get changes and never get really mentioned in the "reasons for adjustment" part of the job guides.
All of the balance attention is always and invariably about melees and BLM/PCT. It's not a new thing, and it's pretty telling, because in the devs minds, the only jobs that matter and are worthy of balancing are the same top dogs. Other jobs are not there to compete, they're there for "lesser players".

You're right—unfortunately, that argument doesn’t hold up, especially since it was previously refuted by Yoshi-P himself, who said that a job wouldn’t be penalized for being easy to play.
That statement is completely false considering the current state of support roles in the game, which is disastrous, as well as the casters with resurrection, who are in an equally bad spot.

The Summoner is an empty shell—charmless and uninteresting.
Its entire kit is underperforming. The only positive thing is its personal shield, and even then, it would be better if that shield were targetable and shareable with an ally, because Summoner has a laughable support output while also delivering excessively low DPS.

There’s absolutely no reason to play it over a Red Mage, even if the latter is harder to optimize, and even less reason to choose it over a Black Mage or Pictomancer.
No matter what, I’d be in favor of making jobs a bit more difficult and increasing their DPS, because even if a job is poorly played, high DPS means it’ll still produce better results than a well-played but underperforming job.

The balance in Final Fantasy XIV has been very poor since Endwalker.
In any case, Summoner still needs a rework because it's empty and lacks strategy—despite Yoshi-P presenting the rework as a more strategic take on the job, which turned out to be a complete failure in that regard. It has no resource management, its healing abilities are superfluous, unwanted, and very limited, often misaligned with raid damage. At this point, it’s a losing game on every front. Summoners don’t want to be healers—and they aren’t. They’re supposed to be versatile, sure, but giving Solar Bahamut a heal was a mistake, especially with a 30-second timer on it.

Summoner needs to regain firepower and identity, because all of its summons feel like bland reskins.

The demi-summons are dull and offer no distinctive gameplay features, and the elemental summons are downright uninteresting.
Ifrit’s forced gap closer—the only mandatory gap closer in the game—is useless 90% of the time. There’s no strategy there. And Garuda and Titan? Not even worth discussing.

There’s no real choice, no reflection, no resource system, since Aetherflow has become a mere shadow of its former self.
They should have completely reworked the resource system to match the new gameplay, because right now, almost nothing fits together—not even in terms of future improvements.

Even if they add new summons, they’ll still be soulless reskins unless they go back and rebuild the foundations from scratch.

[Lorika]

There’s absolutely no reason to play it over a Red Mage, even if the latter is harder to optimize, and even less reason to choose it over a Black Mage or Pictomancer.

But there is.
RDM is one of the most fun job to play, one of the very few job with still a strong identity, awesome skill effect, best Job Armor in the game,

Everythong you do is verCool and you do it with verStyle ^^

And, in the end, it's all that matter.... I mean why playing the top dog if you don't have fun with it.