People are way too obsessed with these numbers. Well here's my take:

1: Everyone could clear all the raids before buffs so this does nothing but make everything easier and help improve community perception. Unless you're competing to be the best in the world this is meaningless.

2: Machinist and Summoner are much easier to pull good numbers on compared to melee or Black Mage. Many of the pugs I've been in have had SMNs at or near the top compared to others because they're so easy, saying they're not worth bringing to a group because the best SMN in the world isn't pulling numbers as high as the best Monk is the world is beyond ridiculous - so long as they're not dying SMNs will be more consistently good.

3: MCH is fine. It was fine before and it's better now. All phys ranged are relatively low (probably due to all but guaranteed 100% uptime) plus Bard and Dancer's performance is dependent on others so it makes sense for their best case scenario to be better than MCH.

4: Monk got a buff to one ability that isn't used often, it's not that big of a deal and will have a bigger impact in groups that play better and focus buffs on the Monk. Compared to MCH and DNC who got buffs to abilities they use more often which will have more impact on the average player.

5: The goal here imo is to balance the average players which make up the majority, not the literal best in the world who btw scum parses, that's not what most players should be going by.