A few questions for the BLM mains/enjoyers

[Taranok]

Actually I heard that relative to before the addition + recent buffs, Machinist is now actually picked a fair bit more. While not surpassing Dancer, the re-addition of Dismantle to offer a 2nd defensive raid utility and the most recent damage buffs have made Machinist see more play. Or at least I got told so, feel free to verify it.

Bard and Dancer used to be played more than machinist. When MCH got buffed in...6.4 I think? the numbers jumbled around and people abandoned bard. There's probably a good argument that if Bard, Machinist, and Dancer were buffed to rDPS numbers similar to summoner/black mage, they'd all be played more than RDM/BLM. People do have a tendency to chase numbers, and only start to avoid classes with good numbers if they play particularly terribly, such as with Black mage.

Bard definitely plays badly, but it's not bad enough for people to avoid playing it in my eyes, especially since its gameplay is closest to WoW's general DPS design, so there's a lot of overlap for people who love priority-based rotations. It needs refinement, but I don't think it needs much. Black Mage, on the other hand, is designed for a game the devs stopped making in late shadowbringers, but also has deep-seeded problems in class design that are depressing the numbers more than, simply, the high-movement meta by itself would account for.

For a class everyone says has more movement than red mage, it's played a lot less.