Pictomancer is not the issue.

[Dzian]

You two have absolutely no idea why ranged tax is a thing lol
It has nothing to do with survivability

It has everything to do with the fact that in Stormblood there was an rphys meta because rphys did similar damage to melees (on top of having insane synergy with piercing debuff) and had none of the drawbacks when it came to freedom of movement for mechanics.

SE is terrified of that happening again and thus rphys just do garbage damage forever now.

It's been a thing since way before Stormblood. Hell it existed even in 1.0s class system. From quite early on.

Initially it was just Archers, as back then THM and CNJ could both cast while moving, they changed that quite early on though.

They caused a lot of commotion as well when they first implemented jobs and ARC got pushed or shafted into BRD (support) instead of RNG (damage) and then they quite openly said BRD dps was reduced on account of mobility. Hence the term "taxed"

They tried to change this in Heavensward and make them more powerful. They had 2 options.

A: Lower there survival in trade for more oomph!
b: Lower there mobility in trade for more oomph!

They choose B: and turned bard into a caster class. which was met with a ton of backlash and they made a 180 on that design decision in 4.0

They couldn't have chosen survival because of the way encounters are designed. unavoidable raid wides, stack mechanics etc etc.
If I recall correctly they discussed this in one of the live letters back then as well.

The issue goes back a lot further than Stormblood.

And yet Phys ranged still feels like a useless role.

And it will forever be that way unless encounter designs are radically changed.