As much as I'd LOVE direct damage buffs on BLM to bring it up to par, I don't think it'll ever happen. Why? It would make BLM (and SAM) completely broken in single player and 4 man content. SAM & BLM duo as DPS in regular dungeon would mean boss-phase-skipping amounts of DPS compared to "normal" comps. Or that's what my gut tells me, I haven't done the number crunching.

The way I see it is that we need some group-buffing offensive utility or we'll remain as the worst(?) option for serious content.