Is ranged support dps needed as a job type anymore?

[Cabalabob]

Literally did an entire Savage tier on the most un-mobile job in the game (WHM). Did all 3 casters for 3 other tiers. Cleared all those tiers in less then a month each time and that wasn't with hard progging every week either. And played all of them at a pretty decent level too.

So saying this as a Bard main who has played on jobs that "have to stand still and do mechanics when the fights are HARD" and do them when I did not have them "memorized" or was "over geared" let me be very explicit here. Free movement means absolutely NOTHING in this game.

People say range and mobility means nothing, but it does and this is a fact because we’ve seen it before during 2.0 when literally everyone was a BRD because it brought the highest damage while also being ranged and mobile with extra party support.

Should the gap between jobs be as big as it is? Probably not. With how toned down the support aspect of the ranged role has been it is purely range and mobility that gives them their tax. MCH in particular should be doing MUCH more than it is right now. But should it be equal to SAM or BLM? Absolutely not.

You can say “fights are scripted, once you learn a job it’s hindrances don’t matter”. But it doesn’t change that if an AoE is fired at a BLM they give up a hard cast to move out of it while a MCH can move freely, if a mob does a point blank AoE a SAM has to time moving out so that they get their GCD rolling and get out of range just before it goes off and have to get back in again before their GCD rolls around while a MCH can just walk off as soon as the AoE appears and never come back.