Bards and Machinists

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Originally Posted by wolly

Bards and Machinists are a roaming class and not a mage/caster class. Watch the movies Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, the tv show Arrow to see that archers shoot on the move and stand when they want to make a precision shot.

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Ummmm, movies aren't reality?

Archers through history have stood their ground, shot arrows at the approaching army, then moved behind the front line soldiers to get far, far, away from swords, axes and poles with pointy ends.

Running around while firing arrows (or guns, for that matter) make great visual cinematics. In reality, it also means you miss your target. A lot.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Machinist and bard are totally different minus basic utility.. Machinist is a proc/cooldown oriented job over the more dot heavy mechanics of the bard

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Like I said, wildfire and having more procs is just about as far as you can get between the two jobs. The gimmick of ammunition is so shallow that it\\'s essentially an oGCD you\\'d use off cooldown. The procs demand a bit more situational awareness. The procs also makes the job a bit more coherent because part of the time, it\\'s removing a restriction that\\'s imposed by GB, (although that\\'s more on it being less burdensome on MCH because they don\\'t have a oGCD that resets midcast). I play both jobs extensively and its extremely bothersome that both jobs compete for the same role and share many similarities in their gameplay, especially when you have the melees, casters, healers and tanks that do it relatively fine ( with exceptions )

MCH and BRD share a whopping 3 skills; the 2 aoe attacks, and GB/WM. They have different balancing and play styles and many players are just forcing them to be alike because they are both ranged and have the GB/WM buff. Might as well start using WHM/SCH when talking about either of those classes since they have more skills in common than MCH/BRD.

I've played both classes and I completely suck at BRD. After I got it to 60, I shelved the job and never picked it up again. I almost gave up on MCH until I got GB, then the class became so natural to me that it is now my main class. If they are so alike, except for procs, then I should be able to play each equally, which is far from reality.

GB and WM being exactly the same is why the two shares so many parallels in game flow, only in mchs case is that they don't have a pre existing passive that works against oGCD usage. I play both classes and still prefer mch if only because it's a more coherent playstyle. If it's easier to understand my perspective, I'm saying the two jobs are so closely similiar that mch almost feels like 2.0 brd because of the procs giving instant casts and the amount of oGCD weaving you do... Which honestly shouldn't be the base when we're in 3.0 and there's already a brd.

And whm/sch actually have very few skills that are functionally the same in usage and excel in different roles. Any healer can tell you the two are not comparable, esp to the degree to how brd/mch is.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Ummmm, movies aren't reality?

Archers through history have stood their ground, shot arrows at the approaching army, then moved behind the front line soldiers to get far, far, away from swords, axes and poles with pointy ends.

Running around while firing arrows (or guns, for that matter) make great visual cinematics. In reality, it also means you miss your target. A lot.

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Well, to be fair, FFXIV is not reality either.

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Originally Posted by CGMidlander

Well, to be fair, FFXIV is not reality either.

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So true :) Empyrean Arrow has me jumping all around and doing what looks like the splits ...

Still, using movie tropes as a reason to pretend BRD/MCH are busted (and should be fixed) was a bit much.

@Wolly

oh lord.... Guys you only have like what... a 1.5 sec cast timer vs an instant shot? You still have plenty of time to move between shots and GCD's more so then melees that have to be in range to attack. Also it's not like you have a kit that makes you have to stand in a 5 yalm bubble... Idk I hear about people complaining that they can't just run around and instant cast everything, but having more competitive DPS for a little loss in non-essential running that also makes you have to better manage and commit to DPS or popping off/on gauss/Wanderers to run and shoot is pretty awesome. People complain about "Bow Mage" but I'll take more DPS for something I wasn't really using anyway.


@Players that think MCH is to BRD as WAR is to WHM....
Also have no illusions, these classes are very carbon copied, sure the play is slightly different because it literally can't be Bard 2.0 Gun Edition. But to say they are not is just fooling yourself. The problem MCH suffers from is that they tried to make an alternative for Bard that didn't need to exist and in the end causes issues of people competing for a single slot. you go in an 8 man and most people will frown at 2 BRD/MCH in a party and any more and people will literally drop party out of sheer doubt in the players. If anything MCH should of been more like the DRG of Range or a Ranger style of class rather then a "Buffer" to nerf that it has capabilities at range or suffers from % procs rather then the melee instant 100% Procs.

The design of MCH is mostly what has caused it so much issues because SE made it a 2nd Bard Choice for the lack of players playing bard (because it really isn't that much fun to only be a resource regenerator, and no fun buffs like mitigators or DPS hikes or any neat enfeebles that don't build resistance in 2 uses.... Please ask any RDM from 11) and if you're in raiding groups, you're always being held to question why you are 2nd, 3rd, 4th but never first because SE artificially made your DPS worse to compensate for Resource Regeneration that really nobody NEEDS but is nice to HAVE in a pinch.... That's frankly why nobody likes playing the class because to compete you have to be on the ball unlike other DPS, and if you're not then you look like you're DPS is dragging down the party even if you're using your song/promotions to help the party as a whole. You're usually always the first class to be blamed.

While I agree that mobility isn't the problem, it still feel so a shell out that the mechanic that advances our job from 50 is... Cast times. It's even as you say it, it doesn't feel good at times and doesn't make it much different for 2.0 bards like me whom made it a habit to stand still anyway. Instead it feels like it's taking something away without much to compensate (the loss of auto attack, and you get two skill, one of which they essentially does what you've already done and doesn't make much of a presence, not even in the tp saving aspect). It's not like pulling off enochian or botd successfully.

Esp for mch because gauss round or ricochet doesn't even feel good to use because of the animation cancels or damage dilution, while at the same time its carrying at least three buttons that add no depth to the job and feels really empty at times

There isn't anything inherently wrong to have two jobs competing for the same raid spot... But as someone that played brd in 2.0... I would have liked for my second choice to play diversely different from brd rather than share so many parallels. You look at smn and Blm that deals their damage in different manners and approaches it differently in regards to skill usage and buffs... Mch ammo and turret adds almost no identity to the job or how they play, so all you really have is wildfire every 90 seconds, while hoping the fight allows for the perfect situation to maximize it ( which also includes having no adds or another target next to your current target, or else you're losing 100 potency toward wildfire )

Maybe it's because I started playing Bard after Heavensward came out, but I honestly don't have a problem with Wanderer's. I get that Bard is a support class, and I'm happy doing that, but...I dunno, I wasn't happy with the amount of damage I was doing from 1 to 50.

Come Heavensward, and I find I'm not moving and attacking all that much anyway, so really nothing changed for me outside of being able to deal larger amounts of damage per second. Worse comes to worst, I can learn how to Stance Dance occasionally, it'd be good practice for when I figure out how to do that as a White Mage or a Scholar.

Furthermore, I always figured, during my time as a pre-HW Bard, that a main advantage of being a bard was having the ability to adapt to the situation. I get that a lot of people probably wouldn't agree with me on this, but to me, at least, the introduction of Wanderer's Minuet was no different.

Besides, it's still a shorter cast time than any Black Mage skill, so we aren't that immobile. :P