I've been a mch main since HW with dragoon being my alt, and there's a lot about the old kit that I miss. I didn't mind being a gun mage, I miss the utility and turrets of past iterations.
I've level almost every melee, except monk, and melee downtime is overly exaggerated. Almost every melee has a ranged attack and while its a drop in dps its negligible in the overall. I find ppl who complain the most about downtime are the players who run out of melee and never once use their ranged ability. And this became even more apparent with Endwalker and the massive hit boxes.