So you're telling me..

[ssunny2008]

This,
Generally speaking, I can understand range doing a bit less dmg than melee, All in the name of uptime.
On top of that having team buff should do less damage than “selfish” dps. Difficult should never be a parameter, not only it is subjective, lack of proper way to gauge difficulty, also given content are design around every job could clear it, having a job doing more dmg because of “difficulty” is going to lead to exclusion of job. Those job exclusion back in old time FFXIV need not back

BLM has been top DPS in Shb, but it was still as unpopular as MNK has been, just because it´s somehow special to play to perform well.

The argument "job-exclusion" lacks hard in this game, the most play whatever they want and the most don´t care about meta-stuff. Obviously the most prefer to stay on simple jobs like RPR, SMN or DNC.
It doesn´t make sense that more difficult jobs shouldn´t have a bit of a comfort-zone. It´s actually an accomodating factor towards casuals / not so good players. Otherwise they would´ve hard times to clear harder content with their favorite class (e.g. SAM).
On the other hand it´s a reward for those who beat the class challenge and that´s important.

(Imo it would go more the way that ppl rely on easy to go classes, if they´ve similar or more damage than mroe difficult ones.)