Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[ForteNightshade]

The issue with Machinist is they can't simply increase its damage without making both Bard and Dancer irrelevant.

To illustrate this problem, let's look at the other two DPS roles: Melee and Caster. When comparing all of their rDPS and aDPS numbers against themselves, the difference is relatively small. Ninja, for example has 10.8k rDPS in P7S and 10.6k aDPS. The highest differential is Samurai at 10.8k and 11.4k, respectively. While that may seem high, it's balanced due to Samurai providing zero buffs and funneling its damage into other job's raid buffs. This is one reason Dancer and Samurai have been practically married.

Now let's look at the Range. Machinist follows the same trend as everyone else with a respectable difference between its rDPS and aDPS of roughly 300. Bard and Dancer have a difference of 1,300 and 1,400, respectively. This is more than double what Samurai's differences were; a job specific designed to be selfish.

Put into layman's terms, Bard and Dancer simply contribute far too much rDPS to ever be balanced around a selfish DPS like Machinist. If they were to buff Machinist, it'll surpass Bard and Dancer which makes their contributions irrelevant. Both jobs are entirely party reliant, making them significantly harder in PF. Even in an optimized setting, both are still subject to the whims of RNG more than any other job due to wrestling with both their own RNG and the party's. Dancer is hit with this especially hard with having a partner. In other words, a 300 rDPS/aDPS buff to Machinist makes it the overwhelming better pick. Less RNG shenanigans, less volatility and less dependency. It would be the equivalent of making Summoner on par or even better than Black Mage.

A selfish DPS simply does not work with two buff heavy DPS within the same role. We actually saw this exact same issue happen with the Melee back in the dog days of Heavensward and Stormblood. Ninja and Dragoon's overwhelming rDPS contributions were too substantial for more selfish jobs like Samurai to compete with. Granted, the differences there were noticeably larger but the point still stands. Either Machinist needs to be overhauled (again) into a utility job with a comparable rDPS/aDPS ratio to Bard and Dancer. Or the latter two need to have their rDPS combed back to a more manageable level. Until the dev team gives up on this failed experiment, Machinist will remain a dead job above the casual level.