Advice...

[Seabhacgra]

considering you're asking i assume "fun" isn't a factor here, as in both are fun to you before someone quotes me to tell me i should let people play what makes them happy, so with that being said

dungeon ? whatever. things die too fast and are to easy in general, maybe giving it slightly to redmage here as that one could get up the healer if something goes awry, but realistically its dungeon content and way too easy with ilvl 460+ anyways.

raid ? mch as most groups will want to get the 1% buff (even though mathematically you would deal around the same group dps taking an equal smn/blm combo compared to 1 caster+mch) and mch at least can say its the strongest physical ranged, whereas redmage is dead last as far as casters are concerned, your group will simply have 1000+ dps more if you play mch and you take a blm/smn with you compared to a situation where you play redmage and the only ranged you can find is a bard (or to lesser extent dancer)

What 1% are you talking about? Machinist has -no- group buffs, Tactician only has a temp 10% damage reduction for 15 seconds like the Bard Troubador or Dancer Shield Samba. MCH only brings DPS, no buffs of any sort.

[Akiudo]

What 1% are you talking about? Machinist has -no- group buffs, Tactician only has a temp 10% damage reduction for 15 seconds like the Bard Troubador or Dancer Shield Samba. MCH only brings DPS, no buffs of any sort.

the 1% mainstat buff you get for taking any physical ranged at all, which literally is the only reason to take any of them right now

[Seabhacgra]

the 1% mainstat buff you get for taking any physical ranged at all, which literally is the only reason to take any of them right now

LOL I had no idea they did that,.. wow.. such good arguments for both.. RDM - safety net for rez, MCH - 1% and more consistent dps is what it sounds like it basically oils down to..

[Akiudo]

LOL I had no idea they did that,.. wow.. such good arguments for both.. RDM - safety net for rez, MCH - 1% and more consistent dps is what it sounds like it basically oils down to..

you get a 1 mainstat buff for every role that is filled, so 1% for tanks, 1% for healer, 1% for melee and 1% for both casters and physical ranged classes totaling 5% (though obviously its impossible in a full group to have less than 3% buffs as you will need to have some kind of dps aswell as a tank and a healer)

the problem right now is that the physical ranged as a whole are a very weak role, and no matter how often people may argue that "no ones gonna replace the physical ranged" or whatever, mathematically you would basically have the same group dps or even slightly more if you take a smn or blackmage as second ranged instead of a physical ranged, there is however the matter of 1% extra vitality, the best or at least most universal damage reduction skill aswell as the fact that even with the changed raid dps metric on the site that shall not be named not having a physical ranged at all would actually show up there as you doing less damage, so even though damage wise it makes nearly zero difference if you grab smn+blackmage or smn/blm+a physical ranged it would leave you with slightly less hp, a somewhat worse damage reduction (de)buff aswell as making you look 1%~ dps worse when looking at damage rankings which is why generally a group will want exactly 1 physical ranged. redmage in itself is a totally fine class, it just gets totally eclipsed by summoner dealing a lot more damage while still offering the rez.

sadly (balance wise) this means if you talk raids than playing mch fills up the designated physical ranged slot (cant call it anything else at this point) with the strongest possible out of 3 classes. playing redmage on the other hand gives you the weakest out of 3 different classes (the casters), if it where just redmage+blackmage competing one could make an argument for the rez the redmage offers, but as summoner offers a rezz aswell this greatly dimishes the value of redmages rezz will completly falling behind both smn and blm damage wise