A lot of job changes feel like they were trying to respond to player requests, but took it too far. Summoner, for example, had a very long and involved rotation, which felt pretty punishing if something happened and you got interrupted. It also didn't really feel like summoning much until Demi-Bahamut and Phoenix. So they streamlined it, and now it's one of the simplest jobs in the game (and also obnoxiously flashy, but that's more a visual design complaint rather than a mechanical one). The carbuncles now doing nothing but standing there being cute also makes them feel like a leftover with no purpose. They could've at least kept an auto attack so they'd look like they were doing something. Right now it feels like the framework for a job rather than an entire job. Like, this is what it should've been twenty levels ago, not at current level cap.

I liked HW machinist, aside from Gauss Barrel. When mobility is a job's biggest strength, giving it a cast time feels counterproductive. Otherwise, though, I liked the utility aspects, and the ammo system gave it a little bit of resource management. Then Stormblood turned into a ping-dependent mess, which to me was just too annoying to play. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of risk-reward system with the heat management, but when the entire risk factor is out of my control, it felt like I was being punished for my ISP screwing around rather than anything I actually did. Shadowbringers dialed that back, but also stripped out a bunch of utility (RIP mana turret). So machinist was apparently supposed to become the "selfish" ranged damage job, but it's never measured up to the other selfish jobs. It can't even claim uptime benefits over the melee jobs anymore, since boss hit boxes keep getting bigger and bigger.