Picking a Job

I picked Machinist because I liked the aesthetic, gun welding, turret deploying tech guru. and when i got my heated abilities the visuals went to 11. but seeing as i am getting close to 70 right now (and kind of stopped seeing the job being played in open world while leveling in stormblood) i started looking though the job forums to see about where the Machinist stacks up. All i am seeing is how it's sub par to everything else. I know still can make up a bit of a gap but it seems like its an uphill battle for the job. i don't mind being in the middle of the DPS pack but i don't want to be picking up the end the entire time. I could level my bard the rest of the way (what i played to unlock machinist), but not looking forward to being a string plucking flute tooter. Just wondering what's people opinion on the class is as it would help me weight the idea of switching jobs even though i just hit level cap on my first job.

First of all, play the job YOU enjoy the most. Don't worry about what others think or if your DPS is high/low. That said, EVERY class and I mean EVERY SINGLE CLASS in the game is viable for end game content. Also, with some upcoming patch there will be balances made to certain jobs, and maybe machinist might get a buff. :D

Although players complain about the jobs, the jobs are still functional, MCH especially isn't that far removed from BRD compared to other "problematic" jobs.

Most parties can do all the content reasonably well. However, to get world firsts, there is a certain amount of optimization and BRD sadly brings a lot more utility for their parties than MCH does. The crit buff is small, but the "esuna", foes requiem, and troubadour are simply very powerful tools that synergize extremely well with tanks and jobs with huge amounts of burst dps (sam and rdm). Even minne's is marginally better for healers, especially for conserving their MP or to squeeze out of a heal check.

Unless you're trying to get into a cutting-edge raid group at end-game, you should not have any problems playing as a MCH.

If you do run with a raid group, the extra utility you get from brd is much more useful and you should be prepared to provide solid numbers (likely dps numbers from a parser or some other check) to support your argument to use a MCH over a BRD. Keep in mind this is only for specific raid groups that run themselves like businesses rather than as a group of friends playing for fun. Most groups are not as mercenary as the above example, but you should at least be aware of the MCH's shortcoming in a competitive end-game environment where parties have to choose between a BRD or a MCH and don't want to bring both.