It is time to get rid of them SE...

[Valmarus]

I'd also make bahamut something that doesn't feature so heavily that it's considered normal rotation damage. Make the guage fill a lot more slowly and its maintenance less built into the rotations. Have it charge through the use of the avatars themselves rather than managing aetherflow. Make it more like a mini limit break guage, with 2 levels. Take away phoenix. I'd actually like to see a system that forces us to choose, when this guage is full to level 1 we can either use this precious resource to summon Bahamut for pure unfettered raw damage or allow us to sit on it. If it reaches level 2 we get him for an extended time or maybe a stronger version for the same amount of time. If a smn dies whilst this guage is full at level 2 it automatically summons phoenix for aoe fire damage and aoe raise (with enough health so people don't instantly die again). I'm sure they could balance it, maybe make the charge required to get from 1 to 2 be 2-3x more expensive than 0-1. That's down to them, but I feel like such a system would make these fragments of supposedly extremely powerful entities feel a little more special as opposed to part of your normal damage rotation.

I don't mind that smn does good dot spells and I don't think that should change but I think what you're doing in the huge space between should be a lot more pet focused and should be a lot more focused on the ordinary pets that weaving in bahamut to your normal damage.

I feel like smn should be hybrid DD and support. I've always felt a bit confused as to why this game doesn't have support jobs. And the support abilities that some jobs did have have been slowly eradicated form the game. People DO like to play those types of jobs. Bard was one of the most popular jobs in FFXI (partly down to how easy it was to get a party on bard but people did genuinely enjoy it). They enjoy balancing the buffing of others rather than mindlessly hitting the mob and they don't care when that is the only thing the job can do. Not everybody has to be hitting the damn mob to be effectively contributing.