Ranged Role is not gone, but SE still see them as "Casters without Cast".

It's actually funny that they share their views about the RDM underperforming. Its buff should raise it around the NIN/DRG.

As Yoshi-P mentionned that "It's not fun to play efficiently", it actually gives the idea that they think Ranged Uptime is much higher than Melees, that melees waits 5 seconds between mechanics. On top of that, the job balance is actually a huge mess, the SMN situation proves it, SE ignored the fact that the job was doing so much damages 2 weeks before TEA release and did not nerfed it at TEA release, making it a valuable asset. During my TEA prog, we were able to skip the last tank buster & hand of pain consistantly (most groups with a SMN do it today I think?) and I'm sure if we replaced our SMN with a BLM, we could not skip it. That was saving a lot of mana, cooldowns and time over the progress.

As I said months ago, ranged role is still balanced as a support DPS with... No support. If all ranged had a Dismantle-like ability and a tiny refresh they would have been an incredible asset. Support is not always rDPS, it can be survival for the team and it often feels good to reduce incoming damages when I play tank. Survivability could be a good way to buff the Ranged Role.

Right now it really feels depressing to play ranged on EX/Savage with Pugs. All the ranged role brings is 1% stats and nothing else compared to the other DPS. No matter how hard you push, you could just play Melee and bring much more while doing less and this is my biggest concern.

With my static, ranged still feels like bringing nothing but uptime to the Melees or bait mechanics but at least the DPS is not an issue.

More DPS, more utility beyond the rDPS. Ranged DPS definitely needs something that makes them a valuable asset, because 10% every 120s ain't one.