while i'm not completly opposed to the idea the whm/ast situation back when whm simply lacked the damage while astro was a weaker (but still strong enough) healer allready showed that no amount of extra defense (with things like palisade and dismantle) will overcome damage, you cant make it so whatever defensive support (or mana managment help) they could offer was absolutely mandatory or people would complain about fights being impossible without say dismantle, on the other hand if you make it so they fall in the range of usefull but technically not necessary people will just find ways to manage without it, they did when astro was the "barely strong enoug heal" , and they factually do right now to a lesser extent because for all the "melee uptime strats are hard on the group" no one, literally no one takes 4 ranges and go's "oh yea, now that we don't have to care which dps stands in front our raid runs sooooo much better" , dps is king, and allways will be. also more dps means a shorter fight, a shorter fight means less chances to mess up, even mechanics you don't need to handle if the dps is good enough.

theres also the point about ranged being "easier" and i really wonder how people define that, like yes free movement and all, but what i mean by that is this, ranged dps are easier to do WHAT exactly ? deal damage ? because you will have a harder time dealing any certain dps treshold on a physical ranged compared to the other classes, you will have an easier time doing 10k-11k-15k on literally any class than a physical ranged. yes, doing your rotation correctly without getting oneshot for staying to close to the boss is easier, but what is the payoff ? if even on the most movement heavy fight the physical ranged still completly fall short of everyone else than WHAT is the use of free movement ? heck, what even do people think "free" movement means ? because as it stands smn is nearly as mobile as the physical ranged, back in stormblood i mained redmage and let me tell you even back than it did not feel restricted, i played mch for a time in heavensward, so with gauß barrel, you know my reaction to removing gauß barrel ? "oh yea, great... whatever..." blackmage i cant say, but in general people VASTLY overestimate restrictions they got on their class, yes it is nice not having to think about my position relative to the boss or whatever, but its functionally useless if even after this the dps just falls short.