#NerfBRD

[Dualgunner]

We spoke about this before. The solution there is Refresh vs. Mana Shift. You can nerf BRD all you want, it won't make MCH competitive with it unless we've switched them. In fact, here's a hypothetical I could actually see happening.

We also spoke about an idea where it ends up all five ranged jobs are fighting for both slots, as opposed to Bard having one slot, and the other four fighting for the leftovers. We can, and should nerf Bard, not just because of Machinist, but because something should be a red flag when Bard is in every conceivable meta assortment. Grimoire-M's suggestion of getting rid of Mana Shift and Refresh and replacing it with a magic variant of Goad, I think, would work best in that circumstance.

In this scenario, Bard is the least compensated for piercing's removal. Does this suddenly make Machinist more popular? I sincerely doubt it.

If Bard weren't the bread and butter of every static, Machinist would definitely be more popular. As is, Machinists who aren't being asked to switch to Bard, because Bard is better than Machinist in every way that matters, are already switching to Bard because their favorite job is sandwiched between the Casters, whom it can't be too much better than or it would enforce MCH/BRD again and BRD, whom is one of the best jobs in the game.

EDIT:

It's also worth noting that BRD isn't just more popular than MCH--it's the most popular job of the tier by a large factor (in the last two weeks):
BRD is 21%
DRG is 19%
NIN is 14.7%
SMN is 11.4%
RDM is 9.4%
SAM is 9.2%
BLM is 5.8%
MNK is 5.5%
MCH is 3.5%