We should have a "Lance mage", "Ninja Sword mage", "Fist mage"

[RiceisNice]

1.5 second wind up timer is not that long seeing how some of your abilities will be on the gcd. Not saying all just some. GCD is 2.5 seconds so you can still easily weave in an ogcd ability within 3 seconds which actually occurs when not having WM up due to animation lock and latency.

A 1.5 cast timer in a 2.5 GCD only allows for less than a second to use oGCDs. For a class that has an oGCD that can reset it's cooldown, alongside four other oGCDs and four buffs which is a dps loss for every second it's not used (especially so in bloodletter's case). It'd change with skill speed, but all that'll do is lower the amount of time you have to use an oGCD skill and make the window for straighter shot proc tighter than it already is, because it doesn't speed up the attack animation, only lowering the cast time and GCD

The idea "you can move more/have better uptime" is getting more irrelevant as content comes out, because people who play melee (and even blackmages to some extent) get more familiar with fights where they can reduce their downtime to negligible amounts, if at all, such as earthshakers in T13 or nerve gas AoEs. On top of that, monks have gotten tools to maintain uptime and their dps even in cases of downtime through meditation, whereas bards/machinists do not (formerly machinists could by casting GB during the downtime).