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

[Valence]

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.

The problem is that there is now many different sources literally contradicting each other, or where the devs are contradicting themselves or changing their mind all the time about it. The oldest occurence of it I personally remember is from PLL 37 or 38 (one just around SB's release or a little before) in a Q&A where they expressly tell that they would stop balancing jobs around complexity. And then in later expansions you get literally the opposite words.
In fine, we still don't know what jobs are penalized for except for the "support tax" and "raise tax", which has been the only explicitly stated tax in the game, but doesn't even start explaining anything anyway.

The balance in XIV has always been a dumpster fire no matter the expansion.

[TheInsomniac13]

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.

Carefull if the dev hear you enjoy the Identity of a job it my draw there fokus on it so it will be the one reciving a rework next to scrub it of any complexety.
Jokes aside when I started out 14 and finally reached the level were I could start Redmage I imidielty loved the class and saw it as the more accesible caster... now years later Summoner is a joke and Black Mage even easyer to play the summoner... what is this clown world were Red Mage is suddenly the hardest caster to play... a Sad Clown world if you ask me.

[Exinias]

Hikari has been right on every point in this thread.

[Carighan]

If I remember correctly, you want every damage number imaginable being hidden so players cannot see any of them under any circomstances. Isn't for people who are terrible at the game and don't want to look like losers ?

That actually sounds like a fascinating experiment to see whether the community would even be able to tell whether and if yes which imbalances exist. Hide all numbers. Balance exclusively based on input you now get "Fight X is too difficult with job Y" would be way more meaningful now as a feedback, for example. It'd highlight how ultimately everything we complain about here except design (and not the part affecting output/balance) is ultimately minor complaints since plenty people clear all fights with every job in the group or not in the group.

It'd be fun!

Not good long-term design I think, but for a single expansion I'd love that. But make it proper, not just damage popup numbers. No more potency in tooltips, instead Clair Obscur style "...high damage in an area" etc. Even on items "High amount of Intelligence", that kind of stuff. No number on someone's HP bar, no nothing.

[gumas]

For me personally, smn felt boring to play because all our summon feel samey, they all function the same, play the same and act the same, each summon should be different and has strength and weakness depend on who we summon

So say we summon ifrit, it hit like a truck, but slow casting time is the downside. Ramuh is aoe specialist, his damage maybe on lower side but all his ability is aoe and come with dot. Garuda is all about speed, all her ability is instant cast and we also got speed boost while garuda is up, and when we have enough "charge" from summoning this minor summon, we can use it to summon the big boss like bahamut, odin or phoenix and each has different purpose, phoenix come with auto regen, bahamut is one shooter but super big damage aoe, odin is middle but he stay as our companion the longest (and while he is up we can go back casting the "minor" summon again)

At least thats how i want smn to be, in my mind summoner suppose to be a walking arsenal, we are a versatile class that can do damage in many form (dot, direct, instant, cast, etc), we dont use our book to charge to the enemy and hit them, we are summoner for the love of god, we summon and let our summon do our bidding

[Aysin]

If hiding damage numbers and remaining HP percentages is a thing, the difference will be how a class affects kill times, you will not change community sentiment, you will only add hurdles to the path in which people take to find out this information, the end result won't change.

I think frankly the flavor of the month argument is rather flawed because the job simplification always has coincided with hyper buffing the damage output as well so we will never know if people are playing the new changes or the best statistic.

As someone who played BLM since 1.0 and have stuck with it through it's worse in HW and early SB I know the feeling of wanting to stick with what you like. But that in turns including people who only play for the best statistic as well as people who pick the class for the fantasy enjoyment.

As for SMN, it was reworked into a dead end, while initially the changes were received well because the entire change was new, the repetitive nature grained on most people to the point if it weren't for the statistically responsible thing to play in EW it would not have had as many players. The dev team barely changed the class in the first update it got since it's rework and it cemented how people feel about the insane railroad style play this class has.

[Aysin]

If SMN wants to thrive it needs more varied levels of play and a foundation to iterate on. Your rotation should not be 90% instant casts, you should have to find a way to earn more instant casts like with the old ruin 4 system. Whether they have abilities to facilitate this like other casters or if its combo based similarly to dual cast, or hammer.

The same argument I make for every class is to step away from spamming 1 global damage button for your burst rotation and have a combo, or some other type of interaction to keep it more engaging, they sort of did this with WHM glare 4, Viper re awaken, some tanks adding extra combos to other buttons and PCT hitting a nice array of buttons in 2 min windows. They have some classes (some of the more positively reviewed playstyle designs like PCT pre 7.2) heading this direction it seems SMN and RDM were the only exception. (Contenders to the least favored jobs as of now, I am guessing because all their changes amounted to reskins).

In the future I see DNC and RDM suffering the same dead-end issue as SMN and MCH currently does, and the greatest flaw they seem to have is transforming the visuals of a class rather than transforming the gameplay as well.

[remiff]

The one and only solution that could truly improve Summoner’s gameplay is a complete rework of its core system—while keeping the current summon visuals.

But they’ll probably never do that.
Without such a rework, any attempt at improvement is doomed to fail, because the current gameplay is completely soulless. It doesn’t matter if they add Ramuh, Leviathan, Shiva, or any other primal
—the system itself is fundamentally flawed.

Summoner is entirely scripted, the gameplay is slow and lacks adaptability and strategy.
Even if they add more gameplay elements, it will still feel dull and lifeless under the current summoning mechanics.
There’s no real future for the job without another rework.
They had a concept, but it just doesn’t work—and the devs are well aware of that.

[aCrowe]

I remember being dunked on at the beginning of EW for saying that new SMN wasn't fun even before the first savage tier came out, but yeah, SMN needs another lengthy rework because this is the worst iteration of a summoner archetype I've played in any game, even games with 1/5th the buttons SMN has now and whoever thought that solar bahamut was the best course of action... I just want to know why?

[NobleWinter]

Energy Drain/ Syphon should grant 3 charges of Aetherflow at Level 60 via Aether Mastery Trait. Then have it's cool down reduced to 45 seconds via the same trait at 70. Reduced again to 30 seconds at 80 and then further to 15 seconds at 90. If SMN is gonna have infinite weave windows there should be something to actually weave. I would love to see a meter that builds like Scholar's Fey Gauge for each charge of Aetherflow used allowing for another powerful oGCD to be unlocked. Make the job a bit busier without being terribly complicated.