The selfish dps thing either needs to go or you need to buff it. It feels like you're unsure about the jobs perpose in this game and it's painfully obvious to the players.

I want to propose some things I would love to see to add more to machinists kit to warrant a higher dps playstyle.

First off, let's talk about Queen, I would love to see queen replace our heatblast phase, what I mean by this is that I would love to see a system similar to Reapers enshroud. Where our 123 combo turns into a 1.5 second 123 that commands the queen to execute a rotation. I would love to see this system end with a cast, not a caster cast, but a variant of the 6.1 MCH pvp cast where its a castbar that casts whilst moving, I love this identity and would love to see it come to PVE. The animation could be us charging up a spectral drill and firing it at the boss, followed by meaty cleaving sound effects, very fun and satisfying to pull off.

Next up the heat system, give machinists a personal buff for keeping the heat between 50-100, it doesn't need to be punishing like in the past, but it could be rewarding giving us heatblast to expend for 20 heat, allowing us to remain in that window but be rewarded for not capping it.

I would love to see the old turrets return as basic summons, they sit their do damage, and then by expending 50-60 heat you throw the turret and have it explode, decent damage for a gauge expender to knock us out of overheated status.

This system connects the battery gauge and heat gauge together making the jobs core feel more consistent. I understand SE will never read this but in the off chance they do, I would love for them to consider this style of gameplay.

Follow this up with expanding on the PVP walking a casting gimmick, turn this into a core gameplay loop for machinist, give us the damage to reward us for knowing when to cast but punish us the same way as casters for casts being interrupted by phase transition. Give us some kind of core gameplay loop that is more engaging, there are too many moments throughout a fight where we are pressing our 123 combo to build heat. Allow flamethrower to build heat again. Be creative.

I hope people enjoy my opinion. Please leave your own ideas in the comments, I'd love to read them to be honest. Fuel my Copium.