Machinist is almost perfect but damage sucks

[Carighan]

It's curious to me that you'd put it exactly like that.

Because I agree, using a gun, I'd expect to deal far more damage per hit. But also, naturally, this implies I'll hit less often, and that'd also fit. Meaning the issue is quite specifically the rotation and its flow. Something like the 1.5s GCD heated state is actively counterproductive, as with a shorter GCD the damage per hit will naturally end up lower. I'd rather have something where I need to aim one or more times before firing a single shot, and all that does is stack escalating damage bonuses on me so that that one shot hits really hard. That'd ultimately still be the same number of button presses per second, just that many do not deal any damage before one deals all the damage combined, resulting in very high hits from some attacks. That'd also give the Machinist a bit of a unique damage profile compared to the rather spammy Dancer and the extremely spammy Bard.

Independent of that damage output is a bit too low, but fixing that would not touch each individual hit number in a meaningful way, which is what I think you're on about.