Black Mage Blizzard II (and other minor suggestions)

[Iscah]

This would be right if it was in a raid setting. But in dungeons during trash mob pulls (which is the most relevant to this discussion), most aoes will not reach you if you are farther away. The ones that do reach are rare and are an exception. Your odds of needing to dodge an aoe are MUCH higher if you stand in the max melee distance as you suggested.

That's very dependent on the individual dungeon though. Killing fireflies in Sastasha is barely a risk, but good luck doing that with Fire II before your party kills the individual one you chose to target. Blizzard II is weaker but goes off reliably; Fire II is stronger but does zero damage if you lose your target.