Please consider changing Gauss Barrel/Wanderer's Minuet

[Zyrusticae]

But seriously though, the idea of a job that can freely move and always get almost all of its damage 95% of the time sounds kinda broken to me.

Funny you say that, because that's reality for all of the melee DPS jobs.

Melee downtime barely even exists in this game as of now.

[Edewen]

Funny you say that, because that's reality for all of the melee DPS jobs.

Melee downtime barely even exists in this game as of now.

Oh how your party must hate you as a melee eating aoe

The key here is freely move, Bard was able to move w/e they wanted and always be in range and dpsing full speed with a very easy rotation. Melee make no such claim. To be fair, thats why one of my main jobs was bard. As it stands, Bards and machinists need its mobility back as a staple of their job, but they need incentives on group support so they actually sing/machinisting.

Like weaken the songs but take away the damage penalty. Then tune their damage to be in line with a support type role. Then give a cooldown to give them the burst needed by some mechanics.
Like a new ability: Silent but Deadly, stops songs, adds cast times and increases damage dealt by x amount for 30 seconds. 4 minute cooldown.

[Ryans]

Funny you say that, because that's reality for all of the melee DPS jobs.

Melee downtime barely even exists in this game as of now.

You don't know what downtime means in a practical sense. Every .5 to 1 second it takes a melee to dodge an AOE is .5 to 1 second they are not damaging the monster. Over a 5 minute fight with an average of 5 AOE a minute you have 12-25 seconds of downtime. That is 6 to 12 global cooldown actions not being used because you couldn't hit the thing. Add in the fact that auto attacks are a huge portion of their damage and it starts to add up in lost damage. You might think melee are always hitting because they don't have casting bars to interrupt, but the reality is they do not.

[Snugglebutt]

If WM was instant cast it would be more useful, most other classes that use stance changes don't have to put up with cast timers on the stance change itself and I find it grating and annoying that they force us to have such. But not sure if that alone would increase the DPS to be more inline with other DPS classes (excluding MCH which also needs improving). After then start tweaking/lowering the time it takes to cast skills while under WM in order to tweak the DPS output maybe yet retain the core principle of the WM skill which is cost to mobility to increase DPS.

[TessaJalloh]

It completely destroyed everything I loved about playing bard/machinist. The freedom to be mobile was what made ranged jobs for me in FFXIV.

It feels so clunky the way it works now.

I know there's a lot of negative feedback going around these forums about Machinist and Bard. I'm not asking for a buff for it, but please just consider bringing back the flavour to what made Bard (and now machinist) so unique. Losing the mobility has completely ruined the job for me.

i'd also note, that after testing, my FC has determined that the damage is worse overall with gauss barrel on with mch. It's better to fight normally and only put the barrel on for gauss round and then take it back off again. It seems a massive waste, and hasn't been properly tested for usability really.

[Obysuca]

only put the barrel on for gauss round and then take it back off again.

Tbh, ricochet can do some nice damage, even single target since it'll hit it twice. Fully buffed, I've been hitting around 4.3k ricochets on bosses.

I'm not saying mch is the best damage ever, I just feel from my own experience using it, that a lot of people just want to pew pew and not use half their abilities and expect to hit harder than all the other jobs. Tbh, the last few expert runs I've done, paired up with either nins, blms or mnks, if I buff myself and use other abilities, I've been killing much quicker than either of those 3. Certain adds that take the other jobs a good ~10 seconds to kill, I've 1 shotted with ricochet. Last boss of fractal? I killed 3/4 of the adds before the nin did. It's all about using what you're given and not expecting to do amazing damage by hitting 123

[TessaJalloh]

Tbh, ricochet can do some nice damage, even single target since it'll hit it twice. Fully buffed, I've been hitting around 4.3k ricochets on bosses

Forgot about Ricochet, don't really know how it works either since i'm not MCH myself and was just going with what was presented to me after FC members tested their damage both with and without gauss barrel over a set period.
thank you for the clarification though.

[Obysuca]

Forgot about Ricochet, don't really know how it works either since i'm not MCH myself and was just going with what was presented to me after FC members tested their damage both with and without gauss barrel over a set period.
thank you for the clarification though.

Yeah, from what I noticed, it seems to hit everything around it twice, which is pretty nice. Unbuffed with 4+ enemies, it hits for 500-800 a hit (twice) on everything, but it's got a minute cooldown :/

[IfritReborn]

Can we just get it removed? If I wanted to roll a caster with cast times I would have. Remove WM/GB and roll the 20% into a trait and unlock those skills that rely on it. Please!!

[UltimateAoe2]

It's already being considered guys, lmao. Go look at the dev tracker.