The concept of a ranged tax is something that in raid actually makes sense. When you consider up time on the boss, melee will have to disengage to do mechanics, and if those mechanics require movement, then casters might also lose up time. Ranged physical, however, never should have to lose up time on a boss. So in theory, if a fight did have 100% up time available, then your ranged DPS should be doing less damage to make up for the fights where casters and melee DPS have to stop attacking, with the goal being that in the end, the two would even out.
That said, I do think that your other point is accurate that Square taxes having a raise too heavily to the point that red mages do pretty pitiful DPS for the benefit of having a cure and a raise. I think that there does need to be some way of balancing out that utility since this is a raid support skill that sometimes will go unused, yet the job will do less damage regardless of if it's used or not, completely unlike how a ninja might do less damage because it has trick attack. The ninja still will get used every fight and raise everyone's damage while raise won't be used once people know a fight.
I like the idea I've seen tossed around that summoner and red mage get a kind of buff from their rotation that is stripped off when they cast a raise, or that casting raise puts a debuff on them for a set period of time. Something that balances out their raise ability, but also doesn't punish them for having it in situations where it's not used.



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