Originally Posted by
Tex_Mex
I don't think that I agree with this sentiment. Since 2.0, SE has consistently balanced classes so that the strongest melee DPS jobs do about 5-10% more damage in parsing than their ranged/magic counterparts. This has always been done because melee DPS typically do not have as much uptime on bosses due to many boss mechanics causing melee to have to leave attack range.
Obviously individual encounter DPS balance can vary wildly depending on boss mechanics, but for high uptime fights, SAM and BLM should not be within 1-2% of each other.
Maybe SE is changing their view on this type of balance? Or maybe BLM is just a special case? I don't really know, but I do feel that SAM should easily be the highest DPS class in the game when considering they are melee and offer 0 party support.