Is ranged support dps needed as a job type anymore?

[Seraphor]

With ranged attack not being a straight loss, the tax just becomes more and more ridiculous.
SMN is a physical ranged in gameplay but has a much stronger support than a support DPS.

MCH has even less support than RPR, BRD has niche support and DNC somehow gets the best treatment.

Nothing justify ranged tax since ShB:
-You would still have 1 caster, 1 melee, 1 ranged and a flex spot. Always has been
-Due to mechanics being quite easy to melees and casters having more mobility, double ranged never brought any advantages. It's the opposite, a second ranged is always shotting your group in the foot.
-Yes, the skill floor is lower. But there is no job with high skill ceiling other than BLM who remains far from complex.
-The whole situation just forces a reward ceiling on ranged. The jobs are not as efficient as melees by design.

For the sake of simplicity, we'll say the ranged are 90% efficient compared to a melee job.
That becomes quite frustrating when you decide to gear up said job but you know you'll only get 90% of the value.
This is also frustrating when a melee can afk or forget an important mechanic of its job but still outdps a ranged.

It's old design, it should have died 3 years ago when mana song and tp song were removed.

When it comes to the majority of players, you're correct, but that's likely not what they're looking at.

It's true that casters and melee can get pretty much as much uptime as phys ranged, but that generally comes with practice and theorycrafting. Correct timing of mobility skills like triplecast or egi phases, or gap closers, etc.
That's a learning curve, however small it may be.

If you remove the discrepancy caused by that 'ranged tax', and make all phys ranged as strong as their caster counterparts for example, then world first prog no longer has any need for casters. Why spend the first few runs practicing the timing of your gap closer if you can play a job just as strong that doesn't need those few extra practice runs?

I don't think the gap should be anywhere near as big as it is, but removing it entirely does create a problem. A niche one no doubt, but one they're probably conscious of and want to avoid.