Considering we're at a point where even at week 1 or 2 where melee and caster uptime is the least optimised ranged are still being handliy destroyed in terms of damage, I think the ranged damage compensation is a bit overdone.
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That, and the way some people behave on these forums, you'd think that melee/casters are operating under the assumption that their uptime is like 5% behind the DPS, when that's really not the case. You'd think the developers are also balancing under this assumption too. Checking the speed kill logs, I noticed an interesting fact: Melee/Casters have the same uptime as the ranged. The active % are all within 1% of each other, which means to skilled players, the ranged uptime advantage does not even exist. This has held true in every single raid tier to date, there has never been a fight where the 'uptime gap' between ranged and the other two roles is any larger than 2%. Not even in Ultimates.
Even checking my own logs with parties that aren't nearly as optimized, the same holds true. Even in E6S/E8S which are supposed to be the most melee/caster unfriendly fight this raid tier. In some logs, the ranged even have slightly less active % than the other roles, though that could be explained by oGCD double weave clipping.
I think the problem is that a mediocre melee DPS or caster would still perform just as "well" as a ranged DPS, and an exceptional melee and caster would skyrocket ahead.
Meanwhile a mediocre ranged dps is near useless, and an exceptional one is still in the same realm of a Brink of Death dragoon. When what you do is no better than having a DPS with a weakness debuff, there's trouble.
The fact the gap in optimal ranged dps damage and optimal healer dps damage sometimes is 3k overall DPS says a lot. It's not even that much of a surprise to see a Warrior higher than DNC and BRD for a good 2 minutes of a fight when it comes to damage.
Yes, ranged DPS have the mobility and the "utility" (which is arguable since all melee but sam also have huge utility tools), but when it comes to BRD and DNC a huge part of your damage potential is also tied to how lucky you get with procs, there's no other way around it. So not only your "utility" isn't that much of a deal to justify things, but you also have to deal with everything beind a proc that makes your overall damage variable.
As it stands right now, DNC is just a technical step bot and BRD is a meme.