Suggestion: Upgrade Machinist to full DPS instead of support DPS

[Elnidfse]

*snip

Let me go through this a bit while mixing in my own thoughts.

Mustadio [...] Cid

Cid was more of a warrior really and Mustadio was the old MCh archetype. He had the ability to seal actions like we used to have baseline before it was packaged up and given to BRD as well. Kind of putting a hamper on our class identity.

But let's talk about class identity. Edgar was where we should have went
A MCH uses gunplay and devices. In HW this showed. Gadgets (Grenades, our lb3 stat cannon, gauss round, bishop and rook turrets, and our ability to interact with them via Promote and Hypercharge) and gunplay (split, slug, clean, hot, lead Gauss Round, and Ricochet). In Storbmlood we get...? I would love to include the flamethrower but even that just comes from our gun and is mentioned as gunplay. What a disappointment!

My ideas?

• We could have had a mechanic that uses our aetherotransformer to make even MORE lightning aspected aether to power different devices. Maybe put that in place of the heat gauge with the accumulation of energy just allowing an ability to be used without affecting the gauge or something.
• The heat gauge could be rewarded with the payoff of a strong ability when managed properly or giving cooldown a special interaction when used while overheating.
• We could have used MP as actual magic points necessary to power devices like bio blaster and/or flamethrower.
• We could have gotten to keep rend mind and dismantle, with them changing them so that they could be used consistently with each other. Maybe gave us debilitator as well for that supportive flare that we're currently lacking
• If we're bringing explorers into the mix, we could have gotten the ability to place more turrets or place a turret concurrently that interacts with our abilities or duplicates them and reward playing well. Hell our turrets could have had some benefit when staying above 50 heat.
• Or Turret overload? What about that? We could have blown that up and used the aether to empower ourselves or use a unique attack that differs depending on which turret was blown up.

There's also other tools in the kit. I mean we have to be close as hell for flamethrower right? Where's chainsaw and drill? Where in the world are they.

Reading your post gave me a different idea. Make mch the enemy debuffer. Give them a vulnerability debuff equivalent to nin's trick attack. Bard can stay uber at party buffs, while mch can be more about debuff utility. Enhance dismantle in some way, duration and reduced recast time maybe. But yeah, on top of it all, raise personal dps some more to make people excited about playing mch again.

A dedicated debuffer can't work. It's either outright useless (as was the case of our stun, slow, silence, and bind in the majority of all boss battles) or it would be overpowered (if you overbuffed dismantle, all comps would include a MCH for progression). And anything more basic like debuffing resistances would just turn us into a support anyways. Which is what we are, but our debuffs are limited to two abilities and are crap.