Well, I suppose people are split on whether or not NIN and SAM needed potency buffs. Then I suppose my point would be why buff them and not SMN? NIN's and SAM's melee counterparts were doing more damage, yes, but so is SMN's caster counterpart. And NIN has a raid buff, so the greedy dps job vs. buffing dps job perspective doesn't apply with NIN.

So maybe I'll focus on NIN for now:

Similarities:
- Both SMN and NIN have been stated as needing a measurable rework for 5.1, and neither of them received this full rework in 5.08.
- Pre 5.08, both SMN's and NIN's counterparts were doing substantially more rdps than them.
- Both jobs have been acknowledged by the devs as busy or complex.

Differences:
- NIN received blanket potency buffs in 5.08 and SMN did not.

So, then why? People have speculated that favoring the melee's dps so much is to encourage people to continue using 2 melee jobs in comps, even though the 1% party bonus is satisfied by just one. So do us ranged/casters have the party bonus to blame for this? But if so, why is BLM exempt? Is it the dreaded Raise Tax? Because I, for one, would be very disappointed if this continues to plague SMN (and RDM to some degree). No one values a dps rez that much. Having a dps rez is great, but it does not save the party from a wipe as often as the devs assume, and having a dps rez someone instead of a healer does not save the party 1-1.5k dps, especially when no one dies in a fight.

Some of you have stated that you expect a dps increase to accompany the job changes in 5.1, and (although I would still be of the opinion that the increase should have happened by now) I do hope you are right, because if the 5.08 patch containing no dps increases for SMN indicates that this is where the devs want SMN to be dps-wise, I would question what sense of balance they are aiming for between the casters (and all of ranged for that matter).