Quote Originally Posted by Valence View Post

The problem when compared to newer tools like Tempera Grassa, is that Minne and Dismantle are tools that date back from Stormblood and Heavensward respectively, and back then, they were good comparatively, much like TBN was the best tank short defensive ever in SB, but now pales a little in comparison to the new kids in the block like Bloodwhetting. It's the same for a lot of rphys unique support tools unfortunately. Even Warden had more uses back then and people were already considering it a meme.
Yeah I think this is the main issues for a lot of jobs now. They’ve been left with certain skills from previous expansions that simply don’t make sense anymore given current encounter design. Like how Warden’s Paean came out when PvP wasn’t separated from PvE. A GCD pre-Esuna with no MP cost is barely useful in PvE, but in PvP it was a genuinely valuable tool (until they gave it a cool-down lol).

I wonder though; I always felt like Dancer held up better than Bard/Machinist compared to other jobs because outside of raid buffs it still has some fairly useful utility like Waltz and Improvisation. I thought it was just SE playing favourites as they always do, but I wonder if it felt like that because Dancer is more recent and thus has skills actually appropriate to current encounter design lol. Not to say that things Dismantle etc aren’t good , but as you say they have issues like being stacked with the 40 million other mitigations we have now and potentially devalued by diminishing returns.

If SE ever does give phys ranged the ‘look-over’ it so desperately needs I really hope they look at Bard / Machinist’s utility and actually update it to more closely match modern combat design. I mean, I’m not a game developer, but since utility skills don’t affect rDPS (cDPS?) directly couldnt they go all in on giving it defensive/debuff utility without having to nerf Machinist’s damage (to an extent ofc lol)?

Idk it’s strange to me because I still see Machinist as a the job that uses Dismantle/Rend Mind for debuffs, throws auto-turrets for extra damage and party support, autoturret Hypercharge giving vuln up. How did they get from that…to here lol?