1) ok, how does that make it good/well designed?
2) shb summoner wasn’t hard, it just had a high ceiling. Keeping your dots up and pressing egi assaults would let you perform well enough. Reading tooltips is not an insurmountable barrier to entry.
3) you can still ghost the demi ogcds, there is no reason for carbuncle to exist beyond delaying the “summons”, the flexibility it claims to offer is a joke, it is a caster with 3-4 casts/minute (significantly less than red and black mages, and noticeably less than samurai), it no longer fits with its own lore. There is no clear direction for meaningful development, negligible opportunities to optimise and generally reeks of being a rush job.

Play like a level cap job then. In arr the analogue would be a level 30 class. I don’t understand why it’s necessary to translate into such terms given the context - is it not an open secret that the butter of complexity is spread across the ever-lengthening bread of levels more and more thinly with each passing expansion?

I would also argue that a dps job - ie one whose primary and near sole responsibility is damage - should have depth to its rotation no matter how accessible it is intended to be. I can understand why that might not be as obvious for healers, but current warrior should not be a beacon for smn to aspire to.

I don’t care if there’s a dissenting view as long as it has logically understandable and coherent arguments. Popularity is not one of them, as the playerbase gravitates towards the easiest path - which is why blue mage is used to do wt extremes, ct is the only alliance raid, dungeons are in fact corridors, warriors keep showing up in expert without inner release, and you can make a fortune reselling vendor mats on the mb.

If people want to play things badly they will. I don’t see why this is any reason to ignore those who want some room to improve.