I've only been playing the game for 3.5 weeks now, but have done nothing but play an SMN. I still don't have my +1 (1-2 more days!), but I do have full DL and Relic. I pretty much do nothing but WPSR right now to make money, and in my time, I've run with a lot of BLMs.

My most successful groups are usually WAR+SCH+SMN+BLM, and I routinely parse and share parsing results with those BLMs. We routinely do 3 set pulls (and 4 on the final run) and I am having to AoE 8-10 mobs at once. This means I always have to Bane 2-3 times per pull, in order to hit everything. Even with that limitation, I find that I can keep pace with a slightly better equipped BLM (my Relic + DL vs his +1 + DL/Allagan/AF2), all things considered.

Sometimes I can edge them out, barely in the whole run. It isn't until I run with some dudes who have 4+ pieces of AF2/Allagan that they start to pull ahead of me. (still their +1 vs my Relic)

On bosses, I can out-DPS the BLMs who are notably better geared than me. I've only run into a single BLM who can out-DPS me on Bosses, and he is almost perfectly geared now.

What I do find wrong about a lot of posts in this thread, are the following:

1. Tri-Disaster is way underrated, especially in WPSR.
2. You don't need Ballad to keep DPS going, it is more a factor of having good companion AoE DPS and a tank who won't put you into situations where you need to waste mana.
3. You don't need Energy Drain to keep DPSing in long boss fights.

I'm only on BC Turn 2, atm, just started it a couple days ago, and don't yet have an established group. My results in BC may be vastly differently than what I've seen in WPSRs, but I know this: We are not vastly outgunned by BLMs either in AoE DPS or DPS as a whole. If you are, I'd wager that your rotation needs some work.

Yeah, it sucks that we need multiple sets of DoT+Bane to get everything covered. But, I think if Bane hit more than 3 targets, we would quickly become the absolute kings of AoE damage, and there would be very little that BLMs could do that we could not.