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While machinist is in a questionable design spot for balance when compared to melee and casters, in its own role, ranged this is the best they can make it without screwing over the other two classes or homogenizing the game further by giving machinist raid wide buffs.
My reasoning is that in the majority of groups machinist will contribute more to a raid than a bard or dancer would until you reach the 70-80th percentile where they begin to shine. Bard and dancer rely on a good party to contribute more than machinist, on top of optimizing buffs and damage on their own. It's fair that they would out damage the machinist given if it was the other way around there wouldn't be any reason to bring a bard or dancer since it wouldn't be worth the effort. You can see this in content where raid contributing dps doesn't scale as well like dungeons machinist is by far the best in it's role.
Machinists lack of utility is a fair point that is made I believe they could benefit from another skill similar to bards nature's minne unlocked at the same level and make it a small hot you can give to a party member. it wouldn't fix the class outright but it would give it a little something to bring that would help the party beside pure damage
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That's a middle ground fallacy.
In the end, even if it's 1 instead of 2, there is a job getting screwed.
And we all know a job getting screw is not acceptable. If this is they best, they need to do much, much better.
MCH still only bring damage to the party and it's very bad at it.
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Shouldn't be a pure DPS. Mechanics don't require phys-ranged mobility. We can't have too much damage due to movement freedom. Casters are becoming more mobile yet retain their utility and rdps. MCH gets none of it. We shouldn't be a pure DPS at all, so a rework in that direction would be the best course of action imo, or a change in fight design that starts to require our strengths again. Just today I was doing some below-min-ilvl Nidhogg Ex in preparation for DSR, and in that fight there's a baited mechanic on furthest target during add phase. Same for o11s as I mentioned in a previous thread, and other examples exist as well. All of it in old fight design.
SE are designing themselves into a corner and doing nothing to compensate on the job design side of things.