Class

[Taranok]

The who's who of unpopular jobs right now are:

Summoner (Bad rotation, lowish damage, poor flow, overly complex, too much to keep track of)
Ninja (Bad flow, low perceived damage, poor design of trick attack ruining how other abilities interact, possibly too much to keep track of and fire in too short a window)
Machinist (Bad tolerance of ping, slightly janky rotation, damage a bit undertuned) though Machinist is slowly gaining in popularity as the only major problem it has is ping, which is unfortunately a love-it-or-leave-it situation.
Bard (Minor-ish flow issues, has a bit of an identity crisis now because it's no longer the support rDPS). This is mostly the identity crisis, not rotation or complexity problems.
Monk (Smoothed out and streamlined rotation, but a lot of abilities that overlap or compete with each other instead of complimenting each other, core rotation hasn't changed since ARR except to get slightly simpler from the removal of an at-will DoT, and stale design have pushed people away).

Most other jobs are at least not unpopular for any reason or don't have a major, glaring issue.

Summoner and Ninja have it the worst by far, with massive flow problems, oGCD issues, and very little payoff for good execution of its complexity. SMN has arguably more issues in that it has uncontrollable DPS loss from forced movement while demi pets are out, but if you ignore that issue then they both appear to be relatively equal in badness right now.

The flow issues are the biggest problem. Summoner flat out doesn't flow, so despite having fewer APM than Bard or Machinist, it feels infinitely worse and more complex because it doesn't flow and little else.

[Drayos]

Ichi, DRG is the most popular melee dps class. Not sure about RDM.

Yeah must say dragoon popularity has shot through the roof lol. Think it’s b cause they made the job a lot easier in SHB to make it more accessible haha

[Drayos]

That is literally nothing new with SMN...
Just because people are doing parse runs on a job doesn't necessarily equate to people maining it. Not to mention not everyone uploads to fflogs, myself included. Most of my runs have been on BLM but my fflogs do not reflect that. What's more important to think about is how much of the player base actually have active fflogs.

SMN has always been the job that so many people want to play at the beginning of an expansion but it slowly die off in favor or other jobs. If you played and remember 2.0 release, "the sea of emerald" should ring a bell. However, about a month into 2.0 SMNs were becoming pretty uncommon. I think the average of the player base that report that they main SMN is usually around 4% (wish I could find that poll.)

And if I remember correctly, SMN is one of the jobs that people are unhappy about in 5.0. So if doesn't get adjusted, people will leave it like always.

I think this expansion will no different especially if SMN doesn't receive a buff. BLM will dominate the raiding scene for casters.

You don’t need to parse someone else can put ur logs up.

Every time you group with anyone you can be uploaded by those players.

[Drayos]

It all honesty looking through logs from dungeons - extremes - raids forums and popular topics.

I’d say majority would be quite even in numbers, there are posts against most of the jobs currently. If I was to put any numbers on popularity my best opinon would prolly be

Dancer > Dragoon > bard > black mage > samarui > machinist > summoner > Red mage > Ninja > Monk

Dancer and dragoon are leaps ahead, with over 100k parses each with bard on 46k

Summoner, red mage, ninja, monk would be your four bottom.

Summoner has the second highest parse rates, so it’s defintly got people but it defintly lacks population in more casual content such as DFs. But I think we will maybe see it drop beneath red mage in 5.05 if the problems aren’t fixed.

Red mage, it didn’t get much new and people are stuck on its sterotype, due to the “belief” it’s a brain dead job most bully themselves out ever trying it, when in reality most who proclaim it prolly could not high purple parse with it in actual content not to mention dancer kinda replaced it, it’s considered easier then RDM and it does flow ALOt smoother RDM can almost feel clunky returning to.

Ninja, ridiculously complex in set up, extremely ping unfriendly, low damage, not worth having in groups, it basically ticks all the boxes to be abandoned.

Monk is only lower then ninja because it’s playstyle is abysmal. Well maybe a exaggeration there. But they’ve basically put it back onto a 2.0 rotation and put mechanics on it that demand knowledge of server ticks. Yeah this job won’t see anything but bottom unless SE make some serious changes.

I must say I fear for summoners and monks personally, with how many changes these jobs need I dunno if SE is capable of making enough of those changes to the job in such a small span of time.

[Selova]

Yeah must say dragoon popularity has shot through the roof lol. Think it’s b cause they made the job a lot easier in SHB to make it more accessible haha

I'd personally say that it's a combination of high damage and it being the only melee dps that not only feels fluid and complete but it also doesnt feel like you're fighting against yourself to play the job optimally. There is no doubt that dragoon has become easier via the cooldown change of BoTD to 30 seconds. It's a prime example of a job being simplified but not suffering from it.