Current problems with machinist and being constructive.

[Ameela]

Wait... is that so?! How in Thal's balls they managed to turn that into SB Gauss Barrel? ._.

The cast times were something that were imposed on both MCH and BRD in HW.
While MCH was designed with it from the start since it was an HW job and it had the ammo mechanic to play around with it BRD wasn't as fortunate and the casts just felt kinda tacked on, so a lot of BRD players complained for them to change it which they did in SB, but if you remove BRD's casts you also have to remove MCH's to make it fair, but since MCH was already designed around its cast times it got a bit of an identity crisis as a result.
And that's the story of how Machinist was reworked 3 times in 3 consecutive expansions.

[Blueyes]

The cast times were something that were imposed on both MCH and BRD in HW.
While MCH was designed with it from the start since it was an HW job and it had the ammo mechanic to play around with it BRD wasn't as fortunate and the casts just felt kinda tacked on, so a lot of BRD players complained for them to change it which they did in SB, but if you remove BRD's casts you also have to remove MCH's to make it fair, but since MCH was already designed around its cast times it got a bit of an identity crisis as a result.
And that's the story of how Machinist was reworked 3 times in 3 consecutive expansions.

Having cast times on its attacks never bothered me with Machinist. It was a new job and, as you mentioned, it was designed with that mechanic in mind. Though I do think it should have been introduced at an earlier level instead of 52 just because they didn't want to add cast times to Bard before that level. Then they got rid of cast times from both. It honestly kind of annoys me that both BRD and MCH have cast times on their basic weaponskill in PVP. I'm not sure why SE has an obsession with those two jobs sharing a mechanic like that. Either they both have cast times or neither of them do. Just let each job be distinct.