I'm going to preface this post with something important: the actual numbers jobs do at any given point aren't really the aim of the topic here. The purpose of this thread is to try to come to some sort of understanding on--and maybe request more of from the devs--the communication or lack thereof between the developers and the playerbase when decisions relating to job balancing and design are made.

There's a severe lack of "whys" given by the developers to the playerbase when decisions about the game are made, and the playerbase is left with the burden of only being able to assume why something is the way it is. Searing Light not coming from SMN is a burden the playerbase has been left to deal with and play around similarly to DRK's Living Dead, and most people would probably say "well, those skills are like that for flavor."

Are they, though? Have the developers ever actually said concretely that these awkward skills exist for flavor purposes?

Take physical ranged's general balance the last couple expansions, for instance. Based on how those jobs are balanced, most people would assume "well, they can move around freely, and that's why they're weaker."

Same question as above: is that actually the reason? Has that ever been communicated?

The support-oriented casters RDM and SMN. They provide a lot of strong utility, so they're weaker, right? They're balanced by a mix of utility and range.

What's going on with MCH, then? It isn't providing the same utility as BRD, DNC, RDM or SMN, so is it being neutered for reason of uptime alone? Why isn't SMN lower then, since it's got near physical ranged movement *and* utilities?

RPR shipped as--and still is--one of the highest DPS with both a raid buff and a heal over time. Shouldn't RPR's utility put it lower if that's the logic? Or is its uptime so difficult that it justifies its performance? Is uptime the only consideration in the case of both RPR and MCH? Is it the only consideration period? Why was RDM one of the worst DPS in the game for a majority of Stormblood, then? Its uptime justified it to be higher by this logic, but surely it was balanced by its raise utility, then? Is everything a case-by-case basis?

There isn't really any logic, just assumptions. The developers don't really explain to us the reason behind balance or design changes, they just push them out. The playerbase is left with the responsibility of working around these changes without any real hope of communicating how to fix the problems to the developers.