To FFXIV Team From a Concerned Machinist

I would be interested to see that but it deals with bringing it back into competition with bard but not the playstyle revisions that need to be done.

Honestly best thing they could do to stop mch competing for caster slot and let it be balanced solely to compete for sniper spot with bard would be to return lb rules to 2t/2h/2m/1r/1c.

If they could only remove the clunkiness... I'll ask these questions:

1. Why Wildfire exists when it serves as the very same purpose of the Overheat moment when both have to be used together?

2. Why Gauss Barrel exists as a mechanic when it's just a button press for the sake of button pressing? There's nothing to think about when you press it after the downtime counter ends. It would "dumb down" the gameplay if it was permanent?

3. Shouldn't MCH have one additional party utility to make it on par with BRD?

4. Why Flamethrower snares you like it does, in a game where you simply won't be able to stand still for so long every 1 min? This way defeats its purpose as a dps contributor and it becomes just an overheat inducer, which is clearly not the purpose of a "tool of incineration" ability, right?

One change I want on MCH as well is an easier way of tracking Hypercharge. This would be so much more useful then a Hot Shot gauge. It's easier to look at my buff bar for Hot Shot then looking at my turrets buff to guess how long Hypercharge would last or look at my hotbar for it.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

If they could only remove the clunkiness... I'll ask these questions:

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Just my opinions, but

1) Wildfire and Overheat are 2 separate mechanics serving 2 different purpose. One is a damage ability we gain early on, and the other is a damage buff we can't manage until level cap. You generally want to use damage buffs in combination with damage abilities.. So of course they will line up together. As for changes to Wildfire, the one thing I'd like to see is for it be a bit more impactful, you spend a minute building up for this 10-sec burst window and it's barely even visible when it goes off. I'm not sure it's even capable of crit/DH which is kinda lame, it certainly doesn't have a huge !! whenever it goes off. So I'd like it to be more visually exciting and also carry a bit more weight, like you shouldn't need every buff in the game + 100% crit rate to see numbers other DPS (and even tanks) see all the time during their burst windows.

2) I guess I'm ambivalent to GB since the logic of it kind of makes sense. High-level MCH being able to modify his arsenal, this modification allows for increased damage and further ability enhancements, however like most machinery it has an operational cycle and can't be used continuously. That all sounds fine IMO. I mean, there is something appealing to it compared to a simple damage cooldown like Raging Strikes.

3) I don't think more abilities = better abilities. If the math balances out such that 6% hypercharge makes brd/mch party utility mostly equal I'm fine with that (or whatever that # is).

4) I always found it strange that it's a dps gain to not attack for 5 seconds in the opener, certainly not as intuitive as it could be. But other than the occasional misfire (breaking FT too soon or too late) I think it's a fairly forgiving ability. You don't have to be in range, you don't even have to be facing the enemy, and after the opener it's basically used like any other off-GCD.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Just my opinions, but

1) Wildfire and Overheat are 2 separate mechanics serving 2 different purpose. One is a damage ability we gain early on, and the other is a damage buff we can't manage until level cap. You generally want to use damage buffs in combination with damage abilities.. So of course they will line up together. As for changes to Wildfire, the one thing I'd like to see is for it be a bit more impactful, you spend a minute building up for this 10-sec burst window and it's barely even visible when it goes off. I'm not sure it's even capable of crit/DH which is kinda lame, it certainly doesn't have a huge !! whenever it goes off. So I'd like it to be more visually exciting and also carry a bit more weight, like you shouldn't need every buff in the game + 100% crit rate to see numbers other DPS (and even tanks) see all the time during their burst windows.

2) I guess I'm ambivalent to GB since the logic of it kind of makes sense. High-level MCH being able to modify his arsenal, this modification allows for increased damage and further ability enhancements, however like most machinery it has an operational cycle and can't be used continuously. That all sounds fine IMO. I mean, there is something appealing to it compared to a simple damage cooldown like Raging Strikes.

3) I don't think more abilities = better abilities. If the math balances out such that 6% hypercharge makes brd/mch party utility mostly equal I'm fine with that (or whatever that # is).

4) I always found it strange that it's a dps gain to not attack for 5 seconds in the opener, certainly not as intuitive as it could be. But other than the occasional misfire (breaking FT too soon or too late) I think it's a fairly forgiving ability. You don't have to be in range, you don't even have to be facing the enemy, and after the opener it's basically used like any other off-GCD.

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Well, endgame, both WF and OH are different abilities but serving the same purpose, which is a small timeframe that you need to shove in the most GCDs/OGCDs as possible. It's pretty clear that you'll want to shove WF into the overheat, but honestly if we look into the very design of both, they are way too similar. And I'm not even getting into the latency issues that many players have because of the way both work.

The GB logic makes sense on the creative point of view, but right now, mechanically it's just a button for the sake of it. At best, the overheated moment in which you can't actually equip the GB, already fulfill that fantasy of "machinery downtime".

No, but one more would put in par with BRD's diversity, which is something that MCH doesn't have right now.

regarding FT, it's forgiving, and when you get used to it, it works just fine, but I'm questioning the design of the ability again. Why a weapon that visually is clearly a dps/aoe cue with spraying fire is used just to achieve overheat? It's intended to have its dps component overlooked?

I think the problem with FT is that OH interrupts it's duration. The most sensible idea I've seen on this would lock you at 100% heat until a GCD action is used. That would allow FT to be used in AoE situations (I suppose) and alleviate many of the secondary issues associated with OH'ing consistently.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I think the problem with FT is that OH interrupts it's duration. The most sensible idea I've seen on this would lock you at 100% heat until a GCD action is used. That would allow FT to be used in AoE situations (I suppose) and alleviate many of the secondary issues associated with OH'ing consistently.

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That would be an awesome fix, the OH only happened after FT finishes or you cancel yourself. Now if they could just let us use on the move too...

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

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Wildfire is already one of the most powerful buff windows in the game, especially when paired up with Overheat. If anything it should be made weaker to balance the rotation around. Of course it doesn't crit/dh because that'd be double dipping: it already collects damage from crits/dhs made during the effect.

There's nothing appealing about Gauss Barrel. It's visually ugly and mechanically redundant. It should be a passive or removed altogether. Raging Strikes is a much more interesting and impactful ability. More abilities is not better, and this is especially true for Gauss Barrel.

Flamethrower is an attack, you DO need to be in range and you DO need to be facing the enemy. You normally don't say throwing 300 potency away is a good idea. There's nothing normal about the ability, the timing and positioning are very cut-throat: Not in range? Lose 60-120 potency, or 300 in the opener. Interrupted too soon? Lose 800+ potency. Interrupted too late? lose 170+ potency. Not in range or facing the enemy in the opener and interrupted too soon? You get the idea. The window to pull it off is 0.5s, less if you lag even a tiny bit. Forgiving, right.

Wouldn't know, I've never actually seen Flamethrower deal damage :3

(I'll concede the point since logs show it accounts for around 1% of your overall damage, but as far as activating the heat gauge goes you don't need to face or be in range of the target.)

Oh well, back to WAR I go

bumping to keep it up top but keep the convo going :D make your own calls for the creative team to answer us.

Just another bump to keep this at the top.

Still want an answer from SE about MCHs state.

I was actually shocked when I realized the Trait that gave you all the cool visual effects for Heated Slug, Split, and Clean shot didn't come with any upgrade to how Wild Fire works. You would think with all the specialized tech we could get Wildfire to trigger automatically when OverHeat Starts if it's available. And why doesn't Clean Shot Upgrade Split Shot when Ammunition is used. Would that really be so tertible?

You know what?
Just buff hypercharge to 10% instead of 6%
Buff wildfire to 11 seconds instead of 10 seconds
Enable movements eventho your using flamethrower.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

You know what?
Just buff hypercharge to 10% instead of 6%

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lol nice joke

I really want to like MCH, but it's way too feast or famine, and even then the feast is a can of beans.

I played on NA servers until recently and MCH at max level was pretty much unplayable at 150-190ms latency, couldn't even pull off a budget rotation.

I strongly feel that when you reach 100 heat, you will get 5-6 Overheated Shots without affecting oGCDs instead of getting a 10s timer to pump out as many skills as your connection allows, which would put low and high latency players closer to the same level.

Also voting on Rapid Fire removal, it's a cool skill on paper, but not so much in practice even if you did live in the server room.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

Just buff hypercharge to 10% instead of 6%

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This doesn't make MCH competitive against BRD, it makes it better than all the Casters. Now we're back to the HW/Deltascape meta.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

Buff wildfire to 11 seconds instead of 10 seconds

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I don’t see an issue with this. I think something will still need to be done about those with higher latency though.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

Enable movements eventho your using flamethrower.

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I don’t see an issue with this either. But I think there are other concerns regarding Overheating that this won’t fix, and will have to be looked at separately.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

Just buff hypercharge to 10% instead of 5%*

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Fixed that for you, and congratulations: you just killed the casters.
Let the double physical ranged meta reign once more.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This doesn't make MCH competitive against BRD, it makes it better than all the Casters. Now we're back to the HW/Deltascape meta.

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Return limit break rules to 2m/1c/1r, or MCH is never going to compete with BRD and always going to compete with the casters.

That's the problem with BRD vs MCH: their inherent support and mobility gives them huge advantages over casters no matter what, so they're rarely going to fight each other and more often than not going to just boot casters out.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Return limit break rules to 2m/1c/1r, or MCH is never going to compete with BRD and always going to compete with the casters.

That's the problem with BRD vs MCH: their inherent support and mobility gives them huge advantages over casters no matter what, so they're rarely going to fight each other and more often than not going to just boot casters out.

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Not necessarily. MCH doesn't compete with BRD now because it offers nothing BRD either doesn't do better or easier. Even if MCH were buffed into the moon or BRD nerfed hard, a significant factor in MCH's lack of play comes from how unfriendly the job feels overall. It's similar to the complaints WARs had at the beginning of Stormblood. They had to work twice as hard to achieve the same results as DRK and PLD.

Regardless, forcing a Caster into the comp is simply lazy design and does nothing for MCH.

HW-MCH was fine (except that phys./magical Hypercharge). I dont understand why SE removed the cast-times but adding the Heat-Mechanic instead... .

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Not necessarily. 1: MCH doesn't compete with BRD now because it offers nothing BRD either doesn't do better or easier. 2: Even if MCH were buffed into the moon or BRD nerfed hard, a significant factor in MCH's lack of play comes from how unfriendly the job feels overall. It's similar to the complaints WARs had at the beginning of Stormblood. They had to work twice as hard to achieve the same results as DRK and PLD.

3: Regardless, forcing a Caster into the comp is simply lazy design and does nothing for MCH.

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Let me crystallize my argument:

Machinist cannot be buffed to Bard's level because that affects caster balance; it does this because of how inherently good Bard is. Bard is probably the most important job in the composition, it's why most meta comps are built with a Bard in mind. If you buffed Machinist to the same level as Bard, perfectly balanced against it, they're not going to fight for the same slot in the group, and instead slot somebody else out so they can party together; we saw this in Deltascape, and we saw this in Creator. This is why Machinist cannot compete with Bard right now.

My suggestion, lazy in design or not, is to enforce limit break rules again.

1:Yes necessarily. Bard and Machinist cannot fight each other alone, because there's always the option of dropping someone else to take a second ranged DPS. Imagine if you ripped Machinist's kit away completely, put in Bard's, and just called it "Bard Two" for instant absolute balance: like you and Hyo both said, casters are immediately gone. Without an artificial restriction, or an extreme rollback of the DPS potential of the ranged DPS subcategory, it really won't ever be "Bard vs Machinist", and yours and Hyo's immediate reaction to an (outrageous) buff suggestion is a perfect example of my point. MCH having 10% damage up every 2 minutes, for instance, doesn't affect Bard. It affects Summoner, Red Mage, and Black Mage.

2: How Machinist plays isn't relevant to the point at hand. You could switch Machinist's and Bard's roles completely right now, and the problem remains that if they were balanced towards each others' level, you're most likely going to render the entire caster subcategory worthless.

3: It allows Machinist to be able to be balanced against Bard, instead of against casters. It also allows casters to be balanced better against each other as well, since a huge issue in ye olde Caster Wars was the fact that all three casters had to compete with Machinist to have their spot in the first place.

I can't believe I'm here. I'm sorry for responding to you specifically, Cass - it certainly grew more general as I went but I think I got all my thoughts out. Thanks for being my jumping off point! ~

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Regardless, forcing a Caster into the comp is simply lazy design and does nothing for MCH.

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As a caster I have a vested interest in at least retaining a level of viability within my role so I guess I need to understand all of this stuff. Bear with me.

You (I suppose a collective you, for sure anyone feel free to respond to this despite my initial post being aimed at Cass) are opposed to the mandate via LB generation that both a Caster and a Ranged make it into most party comps. This means by default all casters and ranged are being weighed against each other.

If it's a matter of weight BRD is a freaking hippo - no brainer choice against all of its competition. Clear rates attest to this, it is simply the most played job in Alphascape by a wide margin.

These two things are why MCH is competing with the Casters. While melee are fighting amongst the four of them for two spots the dominance of BRD has left the rest of the Ranged category (the same number of jobs as melee) squabbling over just one spot.

If we are going to assume two spots will always be melee (which I think is fair, at the very least I see no reason right now why that wouldn't be the case) then the elephant in the room is BRD taking up far more than it's fair share of the pie. For any one of the five to be such an obvious choice seems like a natural disadvantage to the rest of them, forcing them to fight amongst themselves because of a perceived scarcity.

It's easy for MCHs to point at caster buffs or even LB generation enforced mandation of a caster in the party as the source of their woes or as balancing without them in mind. In the same vein Casters can talk about the Piercing meta and MCH's favorable alignment with common raid buffs on a 60 second basis as the reason we may find ourselves entirely out of the meta.

As a former WHM main I made the mistake of pointing the finger at AST for a long time before I knew better. I saw myself as competing directly with AST and saw that AST brought so much more than I could to a party on WHM and assumed it was ridiculously OP. Many other WHM's did the same. Take a glance at healer clear rates in Alphascape and you'll see the real difference maker - SCH is completely owning it's competition. Is part of this due to WHM's lack of rDPS potential? Sure, just like some of MCHs issues are based in it's highly ping-dependant gameplay.

The point is you can't only fix jobs when they're lagging far behind or you'll find yourself with some jobs always lagging far behind. This is why simply buffing BRD or nerfing MCH or LB mandating a Caster won't do muh for MCH alone. Balance comes from bringing the bottom up and the top down to narrow the gap in desirability of all jobs. Right now that means doing something to make BRD less desirable while making MCH more desirable so thay instead of the incredibly skewed clear rates we now see we all move towards something at least resembling parity.

tl;dr - BRD being so desired has left us in the situation of "Four Jobs, One Spot" and that is a situation none of us is going to leave looking our best. Rather than flinging poo and getting everyone dirty I think we need to look at alternatives to open up the second Ranged slot to something other than BRD. Flexibility is key.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Machinist cannot be buffed to Bard's level because that affects caster balance; it does this because of how inherently good Bard is. Bard is probably the most important job in the composition, it's why most meta comps are built with a Bard in mind. If you buffed Machinist to the same level as Bard, perfectly balanced against it, they're not going to fight for the same slot in the group, and instead slot somebody else out so they can party together; we saw this in Deltascape, and we saw this in Creator. This is why Machinist cannot compete with Bard right now.

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We saw this in Creator and Deltascape because nothing was done to accommodate the Casters or address why Physical Range jobs have dominated. While I cannot disagree your suggestion could work, it remains a lazy approach when the linchpin here is what Moro brought up: Bard is omitted from the range war because it's virtually guaranteed a spot. There is no reason why all five range jobs can't be balanced against one another. Should Blue Mage release, we'll have potentially five melee DPS vying for a spot. If it works for the melee, it can work for range. Which circles us back to why the Casters always lose in a war with Bard and Machinist.

Simply put, they have no answer to Refresh. That is perhaps the biggest factor. We've previously discussed Mana Shift is basically trash. Another factor is the limited support they do offer isn't great. Embolden gets meme'd on for a reason and Devotion isn't exactly stellar either. The supposed trade off is Casters bring higher damage, but outside maybe Black Mage, this is quite debatable. At least when it comes to rDPS.

In the end, enforcing a Caster/Range dichotomy can work. I just see it as a lazy approach when all five jobs could be looked at and balanced against each other. Frankly, I suspect we see this constant issue because the devs haven't done this and merely assume we'll want one of each. So I suppose if that's the philosophy they plan to stick with, then yes, enforce it. Even if I don't particularly like it.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Simply put, they have no answer to Refresh. That is perhaps the biggest factor. We've previously discussed Mana Shift is basically trash. Another factor is the limited support they do offer isn't great. Embolden gets meme'd on for a reason and Devotion isn't exactly stellar either. The supposed trade off is Casters bring higher damage, but outside maybe Black Mage, this is quite debatable. At least when it comes to rDPS.

In the end, enforcing a Caster/Range dichotomy can work. I just see it as a lazy approach when all five jobs could be looked at and balanced against each other. Frankly, I suspect we see this constant issue because the devs haven't done this and merely assume we'll want one of each. So I suppose if that's the philosophy they plan to stick with, then yes, enforce it. Even if I don't particularly like it.

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This is part of why I've advocated for combining Refresh and Mana Shift into one button, effectively acting as Mana Goad. It's also why I would like to see more self-sustain in the healer/caster classes that need it. AST could survive without Refresh, but RDM needs their own MP cooldown badly in order to make up for the loss. Ideally Refresh shouldn't be required at all. It should be a 'recover from death' button like Goad/Tactician are, not a 'let's skip piety' button, but the latter is inevitable if SE doesn't want to make Piety better (such as tweaking it to instead boost healing potency at a high enough rate to consider it over DET & DHIT in prog). That's the ultimate reason why 'a' ranged DPS is required at all. Making it so the healer MP economy is now split across two ranged/caster dps in a more fair manner means you'll want at least two of those classes for your healers.

As for what that would look like: Use the same tick potency & duration as Refresh, but only apply it to a single target ally. Not including self. Give it to the casters and ranged DPS, then give Goad and Diversion to the ranged DPS to replace Tactician.

Embolden is better than it looks, but really needs to apply to all classes to show that. Same goes for Brotherhood. Devotion has extra value in specific windows but isn't a game breaker by any means. I have more problems with Contagion/Radiant Shield than it even after the nerf to the latter, but they don't have to deal with their raid utility, just pet QoL. TA and Piercing both need to be looked at on the melee side to break those required slots up too. If Slashing/Blunt/Piercing were removed I'd hope they would add a NIN-only version of the slashing debuff to TA to keep NIN's personal dps where it is while still nerfing their overall raid dps. Beyond that, BRD needs to not scale on crit rate raid buffs.

Saving MCH at this point looks nearly impossible without a full on rework regardless, but all of those things need to happen alongside it in order to keep them balanced against other classes in the process.

you all are coming up with great ideas and great points. Yes, Machinist needs a full rework. We know this. I love the points coming out :D. I still think it may help if you all make calls for the game's creative and community teams to answer our question. Perhaps if enough of us ask in the same thread they will finally stop ignoring us and acknowledge the problem. Perhaps not fix it but atleast acknowledge it.

bumping it back up

Well it looks like we have finally gotten our acknowledgement. The dev team has atleast seen the feedbacks according to the Q&A thread they just did. So we will see if anything comes of it.

Just to bump this up and make sure that any members of the FFXIV team are aware that MCH needs adjustments, if not an outright rework. I don't know or even play MCH but I think the previous comments speak for themselves.

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Originally Posted by Ryallen

Just to bump this up and make sure that any members of the FFXIV team are aware that MCH needs adjustments, if not an outright rework. I don't know or even play MCH but I think the previous comments speak for themselves.

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Thank you for the bump. During the Q&A session before the live letter Yoshi P himself has acknowledged our feedback and it seems likely that we will get reworked in 5.0 and it was said we were in the discussions that haven’t been finalized for 4.5 for adjustments and possible fixes.

I really hope they rework the Bishop autoturret to just fire rounds that deal splash damage instead of it being a proximity AoE, because it can be extremely inconvenient to use against enemies that have knockbacks.

I hope they will remove the entire Overheat system from MCH including flamethrower.

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

Thank you for the bump. During the Q&A session before the live letter Yoshi P himself has acknowledged our feedback and it seems likely that we will get reworked in 5.0 and it was said we were in the discussions that haven’t been finalized for 4.5 for adjustments and possible fixes.

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That's good. I was really bothered by RDM's capabilities for the longest time and I didn't really get how badly MCH had it until I saw the forums, so I figured that, after RDM got its potency buffs, a class that really needs help could use it. Hopefully it'll be something useful!

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Originally Posted by Ryallen

That's good. I was really bothered by RDM's capabilities for the longest time and I didn't really get how badly MCH had it until I saw the forums, so I figured that, after RDM got its potency buffs, a class that really needs help could use it. Hopefully it'll be something useful!

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Thank you so much! I greatly appreciate your support in the thread and it's so nice to see such selflessness ^.^ it's people like you that help make this such an awesome community.

I leveled MCH through SB and was astounded at how poorly designed it is. It needs a complete rework from the ground up or at least go back to the HW playstyle which, imo, was a lot better.

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Originally Posted by AlassiaStargotten

I leveled MCH through SB and was astounded at how poorly designed it is. It needs a complete rework from the ground up or at least go back to the HW playstyle which, imo, was a lot better.

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I say NAY to cast bars as a MCH/BRD, it was awful. MCH has some really nice skills, but it's too risky a class for no reward with its Overheat and Wild Fire timers that require you to blow your entire payload in a 10 second window without much anything to do in between, and has hard time adjusting and recovering from a failed burst rotation.

Those are the problems that need to be dealt with.

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Originally Posted by Jollyy5

I say NAY to cast bars as a MCH/BRD, it was awful. MCH has some really nice skills, but it's too risky a class for no reward with its Overheat and Wild Fire timers that require you to blow your entire payload in a 10 second window without much anything to do in between, and has hard time adjusting and recovering from a failed burst rotation.

Those are the problems that need to be dealt with.

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I don’t disagree. Going back to the safety of the heavensward machinist is not the right call here. They just need to take their time to re-evaluate the systems in place with machinist and pick and choose the ones that work and the ones that don’t and further develop the systems that work while making it not nearly as clunky or punishing for failure.

I'd be happy if they got rid of Wildfire all together. Packing all our focus into a 10 second window out of every minute is fundamentally bad design.

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Originally Posted by Gr1mwolf

I'd be happy if they got rid of Wildfire all together. Packing all our focus into a 10 second window out of every minute is fundamentally bad design.

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Don't tell warriors that.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Don't tell warriors that.

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>4.2 Warrior

Ah, the good ol' days of making the stars align...every god damn time.

I'd personally want MCH to just be smoother in general...and let's face it: They asked on the panel about those out in the Oceanic who have lots of latency, and hopefully they'll extend a DC over there so people can play in a better setting. Meanwhile in Pingville, Population: MCH, they could also just turn Wildfire into a bomb that takes time to set up and then blows up, similar to Earthly Star's Heal Bomb.