Well our point of wiew is very biased tbh, we always say the gap is big but never quantify it really, which tends to blow things out of proportions.
I mean if parses are something to go by the difference on using a BLM or meta is about some secs shaved off from the kill.

It's worrying that ppl say that utility jobs will always be chosen in comps but never actually talks about the hardle that comes with it.
If you fuck up your ley lines timing the dps loss is inferior to fucking up trick attack or foe or any other raid buff.
It's possible that SE consider this when they speak about jobs beign fairly close, we don't know exactly what is their metric on job balance which in leads us on having hard times on giving feedbacks.
That said there also the fact that the community is not mature enough imho when it comes to balance because when they find something that doesn't work well with the goal set by the devs and they have a gain from they'd rather keep it for themselves, which honestly leads us to lose credibility in their eyes.