Pictomancer is insanely overtuned and needs to be fixed before savage drops.

[Galvuu]

What also grinds my mind is how Smudge is 20s with a built-in sprint but WHM and SGE are stuck on 60s/45s. Even DNC's "En Avant" isn't that strong.
Pictomancer has too many strength, we're basically in a RPR 6.0 situation but even worse.

Smudge should become the standard for caster dashes. It actually really helps with quickly repositioning on the archetype with the most limited mobility due to, well, cast bars.
DNC's gap-closer doesn't matter nearly as much because DNC never really has this problem- they can just walk while doing damage. Smudge lets you "greed" a cast if you know what you're doing. If I could, I'd make Aetherial Manipulation a copy of Smudge. Feels great to use.
PCT, compared to its role, is stronger than RPR was. RPR wasn't even top melee dps, it was tied for first iirc when savage hit.
But I agree with the people saying that PCT is fine- it really is. The job is one of the hardest to push to 99%, you really need to know what you're doing. The problem is that the caster role is chronically underpowered. This was already a problem in EW, where melee uptime was free- RDM was extremely undertuned through the entire expansion. Now it's both RDM and BLM. I'd keep PCT where it is, bump BLM to outdo PCT in adps consistently, and bump RDM up to low melee levels. I know SE is never gonna let RDM overtake melees because of the raise, but at least keep it 2% under the last melee.
(You can construe a similar argument for physical ranged, but this thread is about casters. But you get the idea there too)

I'm deliberately ignoring SMN because SMN is an abomination in the role- it's more physical role than it's a caster, and it makes casters nearly impossible to balance. I actually think it needs another rework... but staying as it is, give it whatever damage BRD has.

With that in mind, the discrepancy becomes far more apparent. Picto is top DPS even amongst the melee. Where they to buff Black Mage to a comparable level, you'd legitimately have zero reason to bring any of the phys range since a double melee/caster comp would deal higher damage in spite of the party buff.

I haven't run the numbers yet, but I doubt this is true. If BLM became melee levels and what you're saying were true, then triple melee would already be optimal (since we're comparing BLM to a melee). People underestimate the multiplicative nature of raid buffs. But, again, until I go crunch logs, I cannot definitely say so- although never, in the history of the game, was running 0 physical range optimal (it literally never happened), and while physical ranged balance is pretty bad now, we've had other periods where it was basically comparably bad before.

[CKNovel]

Smudge should become the standard for caster dashes. It actually really helps with quickly repositioning on the archetype with the most limited mobility due to, well, cast bars.

But I agree with the people saying that PCT is fine- it really is. The job is one of the hardest to push to 99%, you really need to know what you're doing. The problem is that the caster role is chronically underpowered. This was already a problem in EW, where melee uptime was free- RDM was extremely undertuned through the entire expansion. Now it's both RDM and BLM. I'd keep PCT where it is, bump BLM to outdo PCT in adps consistently, and bump RDM up to low melee levels. I know SE is never gonna let RDM overtake melees because of the raise, but at least keep it 2% under the last melee.

I definitely agree with both your points, mobility tools for caster makes sense being short.

Same goes for DPS, Picto would be fine if other casters were on this level. The problem lies within the role of the job.
I think SMN would be okay at low melee level, as long as PCT and BLM are slightly higher. If we balance too much around difficulty, we would have too much gaps.
SMN could be the castless caster that doesn't have tools to move around, RDM would need one in exchange.

That said, PCT would still deserves an adjust on AoE situations, increase the splash reduction.