MCH rework homebrew suggestions

https://i.imgur.com/uJqTTDd.png
https://i.imgur.com/G4HMG0u.png

Note: Rework was mostly designed around avoiding aspects of MCH old and new rotation which made it disgusting for high ping players, like 1.5s recast times, meanwhile trying to maintain a relatively high CPM since people seem to have embraced that in ShB. (for context I was a MCH main through HW and SB but have sadly been forced off the job due to its crippling latency issues)

Skills are almost 100% stuff that MCH already has or did have in the past, so no new artwork or many animations although their effects and interactions may have changed drastically from how they previously functioned.

Feedback welcome although ultimately pointless just like making this thing in the first place, but at least it temporarily filled the void in me for MCH. Admittedly the Autoturret is kinda slapped on and much like SB plays little part in the jobs rotation, but personally I've always felt it to be a core feature of the job and hopefully something quirky like gravity gimbal would give it some interesting potential uses with prepositioning and uptime gains for party members.

+ Dismantle is only back for being a fan favourite.

So... Only Hypercharge would generate battery?
Also, everything cost battery/heat meaning you will be limited in Cooldowns. Air Anchor is also absent.
I don't see the point of the Bishop turret comeback but only to make it an AoE version. The Automaton Queen has the animation already, you could simply slap AoE damage on it.
The turrets also have little interactions, you'd most likely summon and forget, overdrive would be used in case of a 6+ seconds downtime incoming. A gravity field on the turret would be really annoying to use. Replace the turret at desired location, target team member and use the Ability. Just give the MCH rescue since it's a mobile job.

If the goal is to fix ping issues, there's easier ways:
-Reduce animation lock between each Heat Blast making it easier to weave between.
-Increases GR/Ricochet maximum charges to 3/4, no need to go further since the TA window was the problem, but it's now 15s.

The idea of using Reload to give back GR uses is neat.
Reassemble is a "push button to do more damage" which could have been reworked... And need a rework.
I'd also put Dismantle on 10%, 60s cooldown, 5 seconds duration like before. 60s was simply great, during SB most raidwide would happen at 60s interval.
Wildfire would remain weak, it's currently 500 DPS at most.
The "Quick draw" mechanics feels a bit stupid (sorry for the word), in aoe scenario you would always go Bio Blaster -> Stun Gun and single target Drill -> Heartbreak. You could simply slap additionnal potency on Bio Blaster and Drill.
Rapidfire also has no interaction at all, it's only damage.
Having both Autoturret and Automaton Queen is redondant, they're both Automaton you just put on and forget about. A glorified dot, if you will.

The problem with that rework is that the MCH would feel really slow.
The heat gauge would be a glorified Bloodgauge and a Flamethrower "Inner Release" window. The Automaton Queen is the DRK shadow clone.

It's a ranged DRK without Blood weapon.
The battery gauge act as the bloodgauge.
The heat gauge act as Flood of shadow and Edge of Darkness.

The skills might actually turn this into a very watered down version of SB MCH, which will also be high ping unfriendly because of double weaving.
It would essentially gives MCH a strict 60 cd wildfire rotation again.

Disclaimer: This is just a napkin opener that I thought of, I might have a made mistake somwhere in the timeline.

Prepull (Rook Autoturret)
Split Shot(Gauss Round + Hypercharge) + Slug shot(Reassemble + Gauss Round) + Drill(Ricochet + Wildfire) + Clean Shot(Gauss Round + Flamethrower)

[TRICK ATTACK BEGINS]
Cooldown(Rapid fire + Heartbreak) + Cooldown(Reload + Gauss Round) + Drill(Gauss Round + Heartbreak) + Cooldown(Overdrive) + Cooldown + Cooldown
[TRICK ATTACK ENDS]

and then the filler is pretty much:

Split Shot + Slug shot + Clean Shot (Drill whenever, Cooldown when it's 50 gauge or more, Gauss Round twice during filler and Queen if capping Battery)

and then it's pretty much just a repeat of the opener every 60 seconds.

Playstyle wise, I wouldn't mind playing it, but potency wise it's gonna be a lot lower than current MCH in my opinion.
And it's not going to solve the high ping problems, it's probably going to make it worse considering how much double weaving you need to do in order to be dps optimal.
And -any- amount of skill speed will invalidate MCH, leading to the old SB problem of gearing it (remember overmelding crafted gloves for low skill speed)

God are this crazy bad suggestions, youd literally completely destroy the whole job with this and smash it into 1000 puzzzle pieces...

SE did a very good job with their rework, not perfect, but they made a very solid base to finetune it from there and not mechanically change evefything again like you, the TC wants it. no offense, but thats just my honest first impression by overflying these suggestions, which make even partwise no sense - example, you want a skill, that reduces Gauss Shot's CD for 30s, but you give it a CD of 15s???
You want us to use Flamethrower for 5 free skill uses with 60s CD, thats just right a massive nerf you suggest there, compared to the current way and why the hell the slowdown of Auto Crossbow from 1,5 to 2,5s?, this wont solve anythung, it will make dps pressure only slower, with your terrible suggestion is a player able to use 5 Crossbows every 60 seconds, needing 12,5 seconds to use that.
With the current for we can use 4 Crossbows every 30s, needing only 6 seconds to pull that off and heat is over and then theres reload to reactivate Hypercharge to perform if wanted instantly another 4 Auto Turrets to literally mow down within 8 auto turret usages mostly every trash mob in front of you within 12s.

This really lets me ask myself, if you played MSC at all after 5.0, or if you stopped it and basically have no clues anymore, how the class plays now, or you fund your suggestions solely on your memories of MSC pre Shadowbringers' Redesign work of SE.

All what MsC needs actually to be close to perfect are only a few minor finetuning tweaks:

1: Change Automaton Queen to not replace the turrets, add back the AoE turret, thats regaining back for endgame content two/tree skills including the overcharges, so that MSC will make even more fun again.
2: Change Tactician to a 10% Current/Max Health Boost for 10s to diversify it from Shield Samba n Troubador, making MSC more unique.
3: Change Auto Turret AT from 1,5 to 1,2s so that within 6s are exactly 5 usages possible, the increase of usages by 1 will make the turret a bit more ping friendly if you eventually miss 1 usage due to lag/ping, without that your dps output suffers from this change. This, or increase simple the Heat Duration from 6 to 7,5s, SE's choice. Howevery, trying to be always in perfect sync witg your ping is impossible, because humans also require reaction times to mak command inputs, that the game's skills dont gift you, if you react or use skills to slo, or have to dodge aoes, it will always happen, even to the best players, that you won't always be yble to pull off the maximum dps out of heat durations and circumventing this by practically removing heat durations, will make MSC just overpowered. The time limit is there so that the class has only a limited moment for dealing burst damage. By removing that , it will make no role anymore WHEN you activate it and just dumbs down the MSC to more brainless save gameplay, where you just button mash a rotation, until you can safely use 5 free skills whevever you want, theoretically even with minute long gaps in between >_>

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Originally Posted by Kaiserdrache

This really lets me ask myself, if you played MSC at all after 5.0, or if you stopped it and basically have no clues anymore, how the class plays now, or you fund your suggestions solely on your memories of MSC pre Shadowbringers' Redesign work of SE.

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Now now, let's be constructive. It's just a suggestion, and I do sometimes long for SB MCH, so I understand OP's idea.

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All what MsC needs actually to be close to perfect are only a few minor finetuning tweaks:

1: Change Automaton Queen to not replace the turrets, add back the AoE turret, thats regaining back for endgame content two/tree skills including the overcharges, so that MSC will make even more fun again.

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I think just giving Queen a cleaving attack every punch would solve the problem of Queen being only for single target.
Bishop would be nice, but placing Bishop back in SB has always been really clunky when weaving it.

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2: Change Tactician to a 10% Current/Max Health Boost for 10s to diversify it from Shield Samba n Troubador, making MSC more unique.

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If anything, Dismantle would be a lot more unique than a max hp boost.
Tactician's fine as a cooldown, just bring back Dismantle imo. Max hp boost at a wrong time can also wipe the raid, i.e: every e1s raidwide.

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3: Change Auto Turret AT from 1,5 to 1,2s so that within 6s are exactly 5 usages possible, the increase of usages by 1 will make the turret a bit more ping friendly if you eventually miss 1 usage due to lag/ping, without that your dps output suffers from this change.

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I don't really understand what Auto Turret has to do with high ping.
It's a set and forget skill, even back then. Think of it like a DoT.

The reason why high ping is terrible for current MCH is because of how tight the weaving between HC -> Cooldown is, specifically the Gauss Round and Rico spam.
Now I like this playstyle, but if people really want to have it be playable with a high ping, they can change HC into a "Can do 5 Cooldowns" and Wildfire into a "Explodes after 5 GCDs" instead of a timer and then change the Cooldown recast time to like 2.5

Also one more thing.

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Howevery, trying to be always in perfect sync witg your ping is impossible, because humans also require reaction times to mak command inputs, that the game's skills dont gift you, if you react or use skills to slo, or have to dodge aoes, it will always happen, even to the best players, that you won't always be yble to pull off the maximum dps out of heat durations

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Regarding MCH, I really disagree. MCH's rotation is really static, and doesn't have any rng to it.
What you're going to press at 1 minute and 20 seconds in this pull is the same thing you're gonna press in 1 minute and 20 seconds in this pull.
You can pretty much just play the class via Muscle Memory, unlike proc based classes like DNC and BRD where they do react.

And the very nature of us being ranged physical with no cast times and being well, ranged, is that we can basically do our complete dps rotation while doing mechanics.
That's why we typically do mechanics for the casters and melees.

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By removing that , it will make no role anymore WHEN you activate it and just dumbs down the MSC to more brainless save gameplay, where you just button mash a rotation

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I mean that's really what MCH is. The only thing that you can optimize is when you summon Queen, and even then you can just literally summon it at the same timestamp and it wouldn't hurt you.

I agree that the turrets have little interaction, same as in SB, I think thats something SE struggled with too and the main reason they basically got removed from the job. If you have any suggestions for how the turrets could have remained in the kit but had actual interactions to them I would be interested to read it.

IMO the fix to current MCH being reduce the animation lock is a obvious fix and one I feel they would have made already if it was so simple.
The increases to GR/Ricochet charges would help but you could still never play it optimally since you still couldnt weave in the hypercharge windows which normally aligns with raid buffs too.

The idea behind Reload giving back GR was meant to mostly play into the reworked Ricochet, I hate the current GR/Ricochet system because if you have two GCDs that you gain back at equal rates that also deal the same potency as each other on a single target then why even bother having them be two sepertate oGCDs.
Reassemble I agree is pretty boring but I dont think every skill has to be complex, dragoon for example still has life surge, scholar has Recitation.

Dismantle was fiddly, 60s 10% was good back when we had it but also a little inconvenient since if you had to use it during a burst window it could be annoying.

Quickdraw I could see as being pointless although its no more pointless than lets say "assassinate ready".
The aoe scenario scenario you mentioned isnt necessarily as simple as you first said but also not very complex either.
1 target: Drill + Heartbreak
2 target: Drill + Stungun
3 target: Bioblaster + Stungun
Meanwhile I didnt bother to calculate the potencies on stuff in terms of making them DPS balanced I did bother to give them rough potencies to show when 1 skill would be more worth using that another of its same type.

Rapid fire having no interaction was also partially intentional as I considering making it interact with the reworked ricochet but then again started to second guess myself if everything needed to interact, whats the interaction of fleche and contre sixte for example.
I agree about the glorigied DoT nature of the pets, although personally I couldnt see a way to change that significantly with the nature of our job vs SMN. But feel free to discuss.

Lastly wrapping it up, it is essentially DRK without blood weapon.
However heat gauge is already bloodgauge, its just a inconvenient version of bloodgauge where you have to commit yourself for the next 3 GCD spaces to dumping.
Battery gauge is essentially just a DoT that you build passively and dump under raidbuffs.
So meanwhile I could see why you would say that about the rework suggested its also things MCH, and other jobs, already suffer from.

In terms of feeling really slow, perhaps thats true and it would feel slow, but when compared against current full uptime fights like E2s the apm should be pretty close, although slightly lower by maybe 3-4 if I worked it out right before.

Reminder that if you recall how the charge system works.... gauss round has 3 charges, but a suggested 15s CD, meaning if you reduced its CD by 30s it gives 2 charges. Thats how the charge system works.
Flamethrower giving you 5 free uses of a heatblast skill being a nerf is only true if you balanced it to be with potencies, longer recast time doesnt mean weaker if you buffed the potencies to compensate...
Unfortunatly you cant change Tactician, as the entire point of it is to make it the same as Shield Samba n Troubador, they dont want it to be unique.
I dont understand how changing the autoturrets AT would be effected by latency at all as its a pet action. This may have been a language barrier issue as your post in general seemed kinda hard to read? So I wont pry into it too much.

To respond to what you said previously, No i dont play MCH anymore, I played it during HW and SB through both ultimates but hate its current playstyle (not to mention its unfriendly to my ping now as 1.5s recast times have always been an issue for high ping players). I openly admit to basing the rework on SB MCH as this was my favourite iteration of MCH. People might not want that back, but as previously stated this post was strictly what I wish for. How MCH currently plays was of no interest to me when designing this, if it was then Id just be playing MCH already.

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Originally Posted by Payotz

The skills might actually turn this into a very watered down version of SB MCH, which will also be high ping unfriendly because of double weaving.

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Since no one seems to ask this during MCH discussions, I'll do it: Should double weaving be a thing in a world where we have animation locks and things like Bene/tank invulnerabilities having a short delay before actually taking effect?

Personally speaking, I'd say "no". Sure, someone might bring up DRG and how animation lock on Jump was reduced to prevent them from getting killed by mechanics, but Jump was a completely different beast from the issues seen with Heat Blast and how it interacts with Gauss Round/Ricochet. I get that some people like it and SE seemed to have that in mind when building MCH (if the japanese MCH guide pasted in another thread was any indication), but when a main element of the job (spending Heat on Heat Blast + Gauss Round/Ricochet) clashes with latency/ping, you're gonna have a problem.

To reiterate a suggestion seen here, capping Wildfire at 5 weaponskills (target affected by Wildfire taking 5 weaponskills explodes) would solve a part of the problem. I'd do that and increase the duration of Hypercharge to 9 seconds to further help with ping issues.

I don't think we need a full rework. Just a few minor things.

1. Flamethrower

Turn it into a one-off GCD AoE DoT in a similar vein to Bioblaster. Have it share a recast with Air Anchor, give 20 battery, and break even on two targets.

2. Richochet

Remove the damage fall off on targets afflicted by one of the the two DoTs (Flame Thrower / Bio Blaster)

3. Gauss Round / Ricochet
Change to 6 charges, shared charges, 15s recast. Give Gauss Round about 33% more potency than Ricochet. Single / AoE target gains.

Then a couple major things.

1. Automaton Queen contributes to Wildfire.
Significant single target buff.

2. Reassemble.
I'm not going to offer much here. Just that, aesthetically it seems like it's a shame to have this morphing side-arm gadget gun and not using it more often, when Reassemble as a skill name can do something fun with it.