There's no reason the melee DPS shouldn't be near equal in terms of DPS. Each one brings a buff/debuff. Each one is useful.
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The problem with that is why would you take a DRG then. We would be back to 2.0 where no groups take DRG again. DRG only buffs himself and ranged physical. Battle litany is great, but it's not worth taking DRG for it when monks have mantra and DK and Ninjas have Goad and TA.
You take a drg because they are at least 100-200 dps over monks or nins. Utility doesn't mean jack for a class that can push out that much more dps than its' competitor.
How is a 10% permanent buff to ranged DPS not helping? 15% Crit for 20s? Little TP issues and better AoE than the other two melee? I don't see why anyone wouldn't want one.
Goad is NOT an ability that makes or breaks a static. All a NIN brings is Trick Attack which is only 10% damage once a minute. While nice, that isn't game breaking by any means.
Viable =/= optimal.
If NIN, MNK, and DRG all did near equal DPS, no one would suffer and nothing bad would come about. In the past DRG did horrible DPS and offered no uility. That's why they weren't given raid spots. Now they offer great DPS and some utility. DRG is the only class in the game that is basically required in every static. That's a design flaw. If NIN and MNK were doing equal DPS, raid groups would simply take whoever they wanted. Right now every good static gets a DRG because of their sheer DPS. It'd be much better if they could take a NIN or a MNK as well if they wanted, but that's not the case.
I don't see how being 10-20% behind DRG in DPS is "balanced".
It is helping, but it isn't that big compared to TA and Goad. TA boosts the party's dps by 3%ish last time I checked. Piercing isn't adding that much. It only benefits 2 people in your static if you're running a progression based party comp (2 melee, 1 support, 1 caster). Goad does help a lot especially in A2 Savage and onwards. Monk has better AOE than DRG unless DRG doesn't run out of TP.