Question, why does Bard and Machinist share the same core mechanic?

[Lemuria]

It's kind of nice not having people running around when they don't need to be.

Melee hit twice as hard and can move around all they want. Granted, some of their skills rely on positional attacks, but it's still kind of a double standard especially when the bard/mch spends most of their levels with full mobility and only gets cast bars in their twilight days.

But their playstyles are very different, Mch has RNG and combos, Brd has less rng, an extra dot, etc.

I wouldn't say they're completely different. Both rely on RNG to a certain degree to get the most DPS, though Machinist is more heavily reliant on it (to its detriment).

Basically, machinist gets random procs and bard gets random Bloodletter resets. Of course. the big downside to Machinist is that their skills are weaker than Bard skills by default, and this forces you to rely on procs/ammo to get the same damage. Personally, I wouldn't mind the ammunition count if it worked more like Aetherflow and didn't have a duration. As it stands, it's pretty easy to lose bullets during certain combat phases.

I basically see Machinist as Bards younger brother. Weaker still than the bard, and with less utility to boot. Bard was never known for being a powerhouse DPS, but they could at least compete for the title. Only the luck of the Irish would allow a machinist the same chance.