Congrats Rai and your classist anti-MCH static.
You do need to plan your cds in advance and know when to pop what, when to switch turrets (if needed) when to Hypercharge, and so on. It's a lot of work and you can parse on par with Bards which requires a lot less effort.
This is an "I'm weird" thing, but a lot of this is why Bard stopped working for me. 2.x bard didn't require a lot of planning, but you were essentially always doing something. Introducing cast bars without anything requiring planning makes 3.x bard a matter of looking at the CDs you're going to hit next and waiting to hit them, but not having anything to think about in the interim. This is my "It's boring" complaint; MCH I can figure out when my ammo is coming back and how that lines up with Hot Shot/Lead Shot, whether I should use XYZ now or hold for Wildfire, is it time to Rend Mind the Tankbuster, etc. I may not be pushing buttons, but I'm still doing something. Bard not having that keeps the DPS floor higher, but makes me feel like a spend a ton of time twiddling my thumbs.
Even if MCH did Melee numbers, the effort put into the class is still way more than any other class I've played. It's fun, yeah, but something about it is off. When I was thinking about running BRD/MCH when we started on Savage, I elected Bard since I figured I could play it better more consistently than MCH right now. It would be nice to see a few quality of life tweaks for Machinist, but I'll be damned if I know what any of them would be. Maybe make Wildfire a bit more lenient or a bit weaker but up more often? I'm not too sure.
I'm just straight selfish and went for what I wanted to play; consistency can only come with practice or something and since we're all dying to mechanics anyway I get a bunch of time in before DPS optimization is a huge issue. Up until I have the Eso gun I can always run back to Bard if I have to/it becomes an actual problem but I just have 0 interest in raiding on 3.x Bard and as far as I can tell I shouldn't have to. It doesn't help that MCH has a total shit reputation--it was suggested at one point before we went in that BRD might be necessary to meet the Faust DPS check, because people do not actually know a goddamned thing about MCH, apparently ("you should do 700-800 right?")
Mechanically, MCH works, which is huge. I'd still like shorter CDs on Reload and Quick Reload, and I'd like a scaling Detonate skill that lets me blow up Wildfire early in exchange for increased % damage, largely because if adds pop with 7 seconds left on WF that's a ton of wasted potential. My fault because it meant I WF'd late, but letting me detonate for a slight percent boost would make things more forgiving. WF does need a basic damage adjustment--it either needs to ignore enemy DEF (since right now it takes your initial damage, already reduced by enemy defense, calculates 25%, then lowers that by enemy defense) or, if we're treating it as a seperate attack, should be Piercing damage and not physical because it's kind of bullshit my biggest and trickiest burst of damage doesn't get a Disembowel buff. Honestly I think a bigger boost would be buffing our utility. Rend Mind and Dismantle should be 10% and a single skill that applies both effects. Hypercharge getting buffed to 10% vulnerability wouldn't be a terrible idea. Stuff like that--MCH DPS is chained to Bard so I don't realistically see them moving the needle there, but giving us better utility so people pay more attention to the job in general would be huge (we have solid utility now, it's just not attention getting. If we can't get rewarded for extra effort with bigger DPS, at least give us flashier support skills. Nobody actually know what Dismantle does because it's only 5%. )
