While I guess it's not impossible that they're using potato guns and bean bag launchers, from a purely lore standpoint, the machinists of Ishgard are fighting dragons. The idea that they'd be fighting giant creatures with armored scales with blunt rounds instead of piercing makes, literally, no sense, by any metric, and if they did do it, it would be for literally no other reason than making mnks feel better about themselves.
It may seem that way, but honestly, the extra 30% raw damage (20% from maim and 10% from eye) actually fairly well balances out the loss of a butcher block round. And if you can hold hate fine while keeping eye or path up, there is no actual loss. If you can't keep hate and maintain your chosen storm move, you are seriously undergeared. That is not a debate. that is a fact.
