I agree with you, I I like how the casters have different niches makes the game more interesting, if anything I'd want more utility.
My main point the solution to "job balance" isn't to make one job such as BLM completely useless as it's niche is to do "more damage" but making the casters too close will result in RDM/SMN being took so much to the point where BLM will be a redundant job, if it's niche is going to be "more damage less utility" it needs to actually have a significant difference (Now might be too much, but casters are too low in general). Even then I'm sure if you let BLM have some room to be good enough at damage it wouldn't be 100% restricted from prog, heck if you made double caster viable BLM/RDM comps might actually be really good, right now the problem is that "free slot" is really just a melee slot, I'd even want more utility on Red mage as it would fit the job (aslong as it's got a decent enough damage output, but thats my personal thoughts).
I think in the future at least now where we are heading we're going to have no "niche" or any illusion of choice jobs will practically be "reskins" with slightly different rotations the way things are heading which isn't fun.
