PROPOSE Machinist Buffs/Changes HERE

[PlumpyMcduff]

DISCLAIMER I: it goes without saying that changes would require appropriate re-balancing where necessary... please don't shout "OP," as you should assume SE to revisit MCH balance as a whole once implemented.

DISCLAIMER II: I know that some of these are pipe-dreams or unnecessary... but I think it's important I/we propose them while there's still a shot (Yoshi-P Proc Chance). For instance, I think Recall & Salve are extremely cool/unique. For another, it's very unlikely Promotion will be split into Jolt/Surge but I think it a very important/needed change. It's also doubtful that Foot Graze & Dismantle/Rend Mind will be removed, but I think those are boring abilities & I think their effects are better served folded into Blank/Gauss Round. Removing them also leaves room for my new abilities (as well as a yet detailed new AOE ability I'll propose which' tied to your turret).


My proposed changes:


Blank: remove potency & give it Foot Graze's effect.

Dismantle: give it Rend Mind's effect.

Reload: reduce cool down to 45s.

Rook Autoturret: add a tracer animation to its auto-attack.

Split Shot: reduce TP cost to 60.

Suppressive Fire: increase range to 10y.

*NEW* Recall: Ability - Instant - Self - 30s CD - 50 TP - increase movement speed by 50% for 3 seconds.

*NEW* Salve: Ability - 1.5 cast - 5y Range - 120s CD - 0 TP - restores target's HP every 0.5s. Cure potency 150. TRAIT: Triage - increases cure potency to 250.

*NEW* Jolt: Disables a turret's attack mode. Turret will instead create a 20-yalm radius TP regeneration field. Caster MP is slowly drained while active. Cannot be combined with Surge. Attack mode is reactivated upon reuse. Hypercharge Effect: Regeneration potency is doubled.

*NEW* Surge: Disables a turret's attack mode. Turret will instead create a 20-yalm radius MP regeneration field. Caster MP is slowly drained while active. Cannot be combined with Jolt. Attack mode is reactivated upon reuse. Hypercharge Effect: Regeneration potency is doubled.

*REMOVE* Foot Graze.

*REMOVE* Promotion*.

*REMOVE* Rend Mind.

To-Do List: AOE Rework (our aoe 'rotation' is very dull/uninspired... (Ammo Effects? More reason not to spam one skill profusely? New manual-activation Turret AOE, "Pulse"?).

*I realized that MCH is practically unable to AOE appropriately with Bishop deployed as it loses the benefit of Rook's TP regenerating Promotion effect. This feels very counter-intuitive & poor. Likewise, utilizing Rook means we're locked out from MP regenerating our casters. So I split Promotion into two abilities: Jolt & Surge. To consider, allowing both Jolt & Surge to be active simultaneously but each draining MP (2x MP depletion). Would be an interesting change-up from Bard, to be able to burn twice as hard but restore both resources at the same time. Balance considerations would be in order, of course (Hypercharge? Values?).


ANIMATIONS/MODELS

• Autoturret Glamours

...Summoners will be receiving Egi glamours, I think Autoturret Glamours could be a huge win. Could be as simple as palette swaps to completely new skins to new animations/particles. SE could go all out on this!

• Colored Munition's Pouch to match weapon

...similar to card-backs to match the globe... having your satchel match your weapon would be a huge model boost.

• Secondary Weapon Holding Stance

...can't lie, I was really bummed to see Machinist just holding their weapon out forward in one hand. Could have a different option where they hold it/run with it held like a shotgun (as simple as a slightly modified WAR axe hold). Ninja's have different jump animations, so I could see this being a thing (though, it'd have to be tied to /cpose or something of the sort).

• Gauss Round Animation Buff

...could use some extra flash to it... maybe make it like a plasma bolt or something? Similar to Big Shot or Desperado fire.

• Kneeling Gauss Barrel Animation

...same bummer with Gauss Barrel... thought it'd be some sort of "hunker down" or snipe stance but we just stand there. The attachment is neato but this simple change would really boost the animation IMHO.

• LB3 Satellite Beam Animation Buff

...the shot feels very pewny... could be beef up a bit (wide beam of light, less time spent on tilting the droid/more time on hyperbeam effect).

• Wildfire Animation Buff

...would be incredibly awesome for it to have some kind of kindling effect & an ensuing combustion of some sort... would help with MCH's underwhelming visuals overall.

Cube and Sphere ADS skins for the Rook and Bishop turrets and I love you forever, SE.

Mog Turret for Mog Gun please <3

[Sersei]

I was with you up until Gauss Round, to give both the debuff affects to a 20s cd instant skill is... Yeah no, combining Rend Mine and Dismantle though might be a better idea plus a potency buff to some things. Also the odds of rng removal would be slim considering what they have presented us with (and it's not -that bad- imo). Also let's not take a class that has great mobility and completely remove it, thanks.

Read a little more and wow... You also want to combine the turrets? I get it, ability overload but it's not like they are hard to switch between anyway... And in retrospect, QR doesn't need a 15s cd, that'd make reload a little moot and you would have access to a lot more burst on demand then the class already does which is kind of not needed... 30 is fine enough, again, imo

[PlumpyMcduff]

I was with you up until Gauss Round, to give both the debuff affects to a 20s cd instant skill is... Yeah no, combining Rend Mine and Dismantle though might be a better idea plus a potency buff to some things. Also the odds of rng removal would be slim considering what they have presented us with (and it's not -that bad- imo). Also let's not take a class that has great mobility and completely remove it, thanks.

Fair points. I goofed, forgetting about Gauss Round's CD as compared to Dismantle/Rend Mind's. Noted for revision.


See, now I knew Gauss Barrel's inability to move would be a very controversial suggestion... but I just find it highly fascinating.

It makes the skill more of a "Hunker Down" type of capability which requires more careful thought before execution.

Not only that, it highly differentiates it from Bard's Wandering Minuet (which, having them so identical is pretty lame IMHO).

You must also recognize that it's a big part of the reason Recall exists too (quickly disengage out of Gauss Barrel instead of having to manually negate it first).

The other reason being that I find it exciting to have a slight burst of move-speed mid-combat (Recall can be used apart from Gauss Barrel).

So, Recall actually gives MCH more mobility options (in exchange for greater mobility care/restriction on Gauss Barrel).


The other big controversial item is the stacking +25% chance effect to Split Shot... I hear you on that.

And while yes, it isn't that bad. One can get giant streaks where they won't proc 7+ times in a row.

Sure, 50% is a solid chance, but it's diminished by the fact that you can have severe unlucky streaks.

I personally had 3 streaks yesterday where I went about 9 shots without a proc.

I think the scaling RNG is a better design & an important regulator for those unlucky people.

It's mostly a suggestion to improve both the joy & reliability of the Job.

I don't think anyone could enjoy 9 missed proc's in a row.

[Sersei]

I honestly don't care about the Split Shot changes, tweak values sure, but the mobility thing? No. When literally no other class -removes- their ability to move, this is just wrong. Tbh, reading that it felt like it was written by someone who never did any end game content, and if you think a disengage on a 30s cd will help that, then you're wrong, that will only lead to MCH taking DRGs spot on the floor

On the rng thing, yes, it sucks, sure, but then there are times when you proc the entire combo multiple times in a row. It's like BLM, they can go a phase or two without a Firestarter proc, but they do large damage anyway so no one bats an eye. Now imagine if they had increasing chance, it'd be very destabilizing, they'd do so much damage, and this is just pre 3.0! I don't even know how they are new with their new toys!

[Taimara]

I am always running into streaks where I get no procs and just spam 1 till QR or Reload come up. End-game people will not want that heavy of RNG DPS.

One change I propose is making Quick Reload like Bloodletter. Yeah, you might get procs where it constantly comes up and you constantly have ammo (which people parsing have found out that our DPS is STILL lower than everyone when we have ammo), but you might get times where it doesn't proc at all.

Wildfire, Split Shot changes there would be nice. Making the 2 turrets into one turret would good too. Simply a button to change to AoE mode (instead of having to summon a new one).

Salve? No thanks. Don't need a heal.

Right now, even if we were the luckiest people alive and every single skill proc'd 100%, our dps is still below everyone else, even bard. With the RNG it just makes us even lower. We might have to wait until groups are excluding the job entirely @ end-game before S-E fixes it. I am hoping they do it sooner.

[PlumpyMcduff]

Snip

While your example is untrue of me (just to be clear, I took no offense either way)... I'm totally fine removing the immobile aspect of the Gauss Barrel changes.

It's an unnecessary touch, I just think it an appropriate nerf & interesting concept in view of the other changes. To each their own!

I'm going to go with you on this one though as it is likely too drastic of a suggestion to truly be considered.

Perhaps Recall force-cancelling Gauss Barrel (and inversely, Recall's use being negated if one wishes to keep Gauss Barrel active) is sufficient enough.

[Sersei]

Reading the new replies on the rng thing, I think something that would put BRD ahead, despite their own rng, is that more things proc their BL vs MCH going in a chain. Increasing potency, to me, would probably be better than messing with the rng that's already hit or miss on more classes than just MCH

To continue on my rng comments, MCH could use more controllable rng, BRD can, as example, control their rate of proc thanks to chr, making it more reliable than ours. Also I don't mean to be mean, just blunt, but for things like this you have to consider other classes, our mirror, and the players as a whole. It's probably why MCH is in this state in the first place

[PlumpyMcduff]

...Increasing potency, to me, would probably be better than messing with the rng that's already hit or miss on more classes than just MCH.

See, my thing however is that Split-Slug-Clean is so fundamental to the core play-mechanism of MCH. Bloodletter procs are a neat little bonus for BRD which do factor into DPS consideration, but they're just that--bonuses.

Split Slug Clean is the bread-and-butter for MCH; Bloodletter Proccing is the surprise extra chocolate chip your cookie has over the others.

I don't think potency increases would do the MCH 'rotation' justice, as you'll still have those situations come up where you miss 9 procs in a row.

It's just not fun & too fickle... I think it's poor design, frankly.


Perhaps a better solution is some kind of Quick Reload CD reset proc-chance.

Or I suppose my 15s CD Quick Reload qualifies but you'd still be able to miss 6 proc's back-to-back before recasting.

[Sersei]

I think the BRD community would disagree with you, those procs are all they have outside of SS spam (though with new abilities like Sidewinder, this could have changed). The class is more based on rng procs than what you said. It's also why minuet is under such scrutiny, because apparently getting those procs off became harder/impossible to the point that wm isn't used

[PlumpyMcduff]

I think the BRD community would disagree with you, those procs are all they have outside of SS spam (though with new abilities like Sidewinder, this could have changed). The class is more based on rng procs than what you said. It's also why minuet is under such scrutiny, because apparently getting those procs off became harder/impossible to the point that wm isn't used

Fair again. I didn't mean that BRD isn't based on rng procs or to insinuate that they have much else to cast damage-wise.

I just mean like... the very nature of the two mechanisms & the way the Jobs are built around them are very different, inherently.

Maybe it's only me, but when I play my 52 BRD... BL procs are exciting but I don't feel bummed or punished when they don't pop up (except for WM's special-case... I think they need to erase that ability for BRD).

Split>Slug>Clean procs don't feel nearly as exciting but they sure do feel punishing when they don't pop up.

It's more a matter of the different stimuli which result from the different design-paradigms. To me, at least.