Machinist needs some reworking

Quoting what I said in the other thread as what I feel would be a nice compromise without going back to the clusterflux that was Stormblood MCH.

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Originally Posted by Remarus

It's not like we couldn't do both. We can look back at HW MCH, i.e. it's Gun Mage iteration and find that we could bring back it's iteration of gauss barrel to turn our instant casts into Blast Charge. Maybe utilize PvP WF with it, so our WF Window is lining up Blast Charges that auto-detonate after 3 hits. To encourage both playstyles, after X number of Blast Charges, we auto-overheat, do our Heat Blast combo and go back to instant cast 1-2-3s until our next WF window.

It'd bring together a nice, hectic, but ping friendly WF window while adding a little complexity to the job.

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Originally Posted by Remarus

Quoting what I said in the other thread as what I feel would be a nice compromise without going back to the clusterflux that was Stormblood MCH.

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Ugh can we stop crapping on a dead play style? It’s clear they won’t go back to it. While I’m on the subject I disliked a lot of elements from SB era but still found it better than SHB/EW era which is basically button mashing with a side of 1-2-3 but I’m aware of my positioning being in the minority, I’m also aware of the community sticking to their guns and let others think for them “it’s wrong because I was told it’s wrong” but I digress

What SB did right was the heat element being Unique rather than a shallow 50 and spend skill, with 2 gauges effecting only 1 skill each both not being very interesting.

Ammo by itself was decent BUT desperately needed a side factor, a guarantee if you will if your RNG is bad. DNC STILL lacks this and Ammo to my mind is still a better balance of RNG than it

Turrets being more hands on aswell, rook isn’t nearly as flashy as Queen but least you can detonate it and debuff enemies and the AI didn’t bug out with multiple enemies.

Actual speed with rapid fire instead of that fake speed with charges

Wildfire rounding out the kit rather than the most afterthought skill in the game second to Mug.

I prefer to see these elements revised, as SHB and EW all have to offer is just a bunch of same GCDs

I will absolutely talk about how poor SB MCH was. It was the worst designed class we have ever had and, as a player from the East Coast, was far more punishing for ping than any other. I also won't forget how the devs completely and totally ignored our ping issues and then decided to make them almost worse in ShB with the rework. You *still* can't line a Drill up into a WF window if you have high ping and have to settle for a normal GCD and mis-aligning your buffs. Getting 6 GCDs into WF along with all your oGCDs and turret damage during SB was a physical impossibility over 100 ping.

SB MCH had a super interesting heat mechanic at launch where we had to keep our heat between 50 but below 100 but they literally changed that for the first patch and turned it into "line up WF, Overheat, all your ammo, all your oGCDs, turret overdrive, and 6 GCDs and screw you if you live in 75% of the united states." Not to mention trying to manipulate heat ticks with FT before all that. Looking back at it in any other way is wearing your ruby colored goggles visored down.

Maybe we stop fighting over which mch was better, the SB or ShB. Both versions did some things really well and some things really badly. The old mch was flavorful and had some meat to it but was super clunky and the new mch is streamlined and easier but has almost no flavor or identity to it. Mechanically there are issues that have been going on with mch since the start basically, those issues need to be addressed first, such as ping. Then the flavor and rotation issues can be handled together. Personally, the easiest way to fix mch is for the devs to actually acknowledge the ping issue and not blame our equipment/connection and then take what worked and gave mch its identity from SB, tweak it and bring it into current Mch. It would not be that hard. We've all seen or offered opinions on the numerous threads and ideas on how they could fix it or implement changes. We aren't all gonna agree on the specifics of what needs to be done with each ability and the direction mch should go in, but I think we all agree on some core issues that need to be addressed.

- Ping/ latency issues
- Heatblast
- Wildfire
- Queen A.

Bumping to make sure this thread keeps getting seen (:

I document how I would like Machinist to go here; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The ideal is to make Machinist into a less mobile(but still more mobile than say, Black Mage or Samurai where it can be more difficult given cast times or melee range lockout) but much more powerful job where you get more buttons and damage to compensate for Blast Charge charging in instead of the comboes. There would be some risk to being forced to walking around that is mitigated with Heat, being more of a tool akin to Triplecast than the burst windows it is known for currently. It would also get some support back with Dismantle, thus keeping the identity as a Physical Ranged(less buffs than the likes of Bard and Dancer still), but having an excuse to be more powerful since most of the time I hear about naysayers on the idea of buffing the damage, it's because of the mobility. This should ensure it's full identity as a selfish DPS inside of the Physical Ranged space.

More details in the document.

Alright so...

2 weeks since Dragonsong Reprise is out and there isn't a single MCH clear registered as of now.
Of course, there will be MCH clearing the content later on.

But I believe it's great to point out the MCH problems in DSR:
-Lack of utility or mitigation to compete with Improvisation, Cure Waltz and Nature's Minne and Warden's Pean that all proved to be valuable in Ultimate.
-Gauge based gameplay that suffers from long downtime, 13-15% comes from the AQ, a good 10-12% comes from heatblast.
-Crap damage that doesn't make it for its "pure DPS" status, especially against multiple targets where BRD and DNC will naturally cleave.

I believe it's important that SQEX aknowledge the state of MCH not being appealing.
If they still refuse to buff MCH, they should at least look into shifting the power from the AQ/Heatblast into non-gauge based.

The job feels worthless and unrewarding, playing it feels like griefing the party. Please do something.

So what do you think of this thought: remove heat blast and make Hypercharge reduce all GCD to 1.5 sec, make it so that out of Hypercharge your 1-2-3 generates heat (and a large amount at that, the idea should be you bounce in and out of hypercharge often) but no battery and in Hypercharge it transforms the 1-2-3 into new versions that generates battery instead of heat. Change Automaton Queen so that it spawns above the target and drops on them for damage so that it does not waste time needing to stand up and charge to the target.

Probably would be a decent idea since we will be generating extra battery to throw in some new battery spenders so that the gauge is more then the Queen gauge. Perhaps rework Railgun Shot to be a casted linear AoE with damage fall off after the main target that scales up in potency with battery spent.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Alright so...

2 weeks since Dragonsong Reprise is out and there isn't a single MCH clear registered as of now.
Of course, there will be MCH clearing the content later on.

But I believe it's great to point out the MCH problems in DSR:
-Lack of utility or mitigation to compete with Improvisation, Cure Waltz and Nature's Minne and Warden's Pean that all proved to be valuable in Ultimate.
-Gauge based gameplay that suffers from long downtime, 13-15% comes from the AQ, a good 10-12% comes from heatblast.
-Crap damage that doesn't make it for its "pure DPS" status, especially against multiple targets where BRD and DNC will naturally cleave.

I believe it's important that SQEX aknowledge the state of MCH not being appealing.
If they still refuse to buff MCH, they should at least look into shifting the power from the AQ/Heatblast into non-gauge based.

The job feels worthless and unrewarding, playing it feels like griefing the party. Please do something.

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I was progging DSU on MCH at first. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the frequent boss jumps and my Tact barely doing anything when there is tons of raidwide damage.

I swapped to DNC for funsies, and suddenly my entire team's DPS skyrocketed. We met the Knights/Thordan DPS checks easier, I had more mobility to correct positioning mistakes in towers, and I brought more mitigation that actually made a difference to the healers so much they don't want me to go back to MCH.

This felt terrible. I've always cleared savage/ultimate on MCH as it's my favourite job. I've so much experience on MCH - I parse in high purples/oranges. I picked up DNC for a single day and two hours of hitting a dummy and I was already steamrolling over my MCH DPS and easing the stress put on my team to make up for my lack of damage and mitigation.

Please buff MCH. Please give it the selfish DPS that it needs.

I had an idea to help with MCH's ping issues in regard to Wildfire. Make it an infinite duration debuff that builds up stacks when you hit the target and at 6 stacks it auto-detonates and clears itself. This way regardless of ping it will achieve its maximum damage every time consistently.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

I had an idea to help with MCH's ping issues in regard to Wildfire. Make it an infinite duration debuff that builds up stacks when you hit the target and at 6 stacks it auto-detonates and clears itself. This way regardless of ping it will achieve its maximum damage every time consistently.

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Wouldn’t this make the mechanic essentially brain dead to execute? Almost a non-mechanic

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Wouldn’t this make the mechanic essentially brain dead to execute? Almost a non-mechanic

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The alternative is to extend the timer but that does not fix the ping issue, it just means people with better ping will produce even higher numbers while those with worse pings just scrape by achieving what the skill was originally balanced around.

Also technically the suggested mechanic would mean that Wildfire would not get wasted if the boss retreats and becomes otherwise invulnerable.

Though they could always just get rid of wildfire which gets rid of the main ping issue.

I wouldn't say it needs a rework so much as specific skills need retooling.

- Reassemble is admittedly lame, but also gives a lot of dopamine when used so it's tricky to get rid of.
- Queen sucks. Yeah she's our largest source of damage when used correctly but her AI is dumb as a bag of bricks.
- Flamethrower sucks. I think I've only ever used it in UWU on Garuda phase because it was an AOE that didn't interrupt my GCD combo so I could get my 10 battery instead of breaking combo to use spread shot and losing the battery.
- Wildfire snapshotting like a DoT makes it feel really weird when taken into consideration with Queen who deals damage like a player would. (thankfully Mug is 20s vs Trick's prior 15s so fitting queen under window is MUCH easier now)

I feel like the gameplay loop of 6.0 MCH feels good (though I'm also following a homebrew rotation/opener as opposed to the Balance's generic one) but I do feel like the most we could ever get as it stands is potency increases or traits to augment skills which will eventually make the job get stale (kinda already is, but I mostly play it cause it's cozy anyways)

I feel like maybe if we retooled MCH to:
- remove reassemble
- remove queen because the summon animation and AI are awful in the same way DRK's evil clone's are
- give us a different battery gauge dump skill that's more instantaneous or triggers a different type of burst similar to overheating
- maybe make every 2nd chainsaw apply a small vuln to the boss (psuedo 2m raidbuff)

Then maybe MCH would see more relevance in raid than it does atm and would be more interesting to play to boot.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

I had an idea to help with MCH's ping issues in regard to Wildfire. Make it an infinite duration debuff that builds up stacks when you hit the target and at 6 stacks it auto-detonates and clears itself. This way regardless of ping it will achieve its maximum damage every time consistently.

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Honestly even if they just extend Wildfire and Hypercharge's durations both by 2-3 seconds it would be ample enough time to allow bad ping players to get their weaves in even while clipping and still hit the 6 GCDs. There's a lot of ways to solve it tbh but lately it just feels like SE either doesn't notice our issues or they've already got a rework planned and are being silent and will drop the rework last second like they did last expac with MNK's mini rework.

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Originally Posted by iiTzSeb

I wouldn't say it needs a rework.

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Yes it does, it has hit the creative corner hard and any additional from here on unless it’s super remedial (which is somthing MCH doesn’t need or needs bigger changes) will hinder the play style one way or another due to it. Scattershot, a harmless change made flamethrower even worse. It’s kit is a tight unimpressive janga tower. If not a rework it needs its mechanics redesigned …which would require a rework to do.

And I’ll say this a 87th time, increasing the potency will not solve jacksh*t it will play the same and will go no where. I’ll main BLM regardless of numbers if it’s fun not because it does more damage or has the respect of the community. These people need to be weed out immediately living a utopian fantasy that somthing as lukewarm as MCH will ever be as DPS Savy as SAM or RPR with significantly less work

TLDR, yes it dows, numbers don’t mean shit

Not everything needs to be scrapped.
A lot of actions can be adjusted but a lot are fine:
-Heatblast, reducing the heatblast spam from 5 to 3 would reduce the monotony, it worked for tanks.
-Gauss round and Ricochet works as they are.
-Drill I, II and III, while being the same actions, works fine and are the main dopamine buttons.
-Reassemble works fine, as far as I can imagine, the second charge will only be truly useful in content where MCH attack speed increases dramatically (see Bozja). It's still a questionable change.
-Tactician is a fine cooldown but not enough on its own.

Some abilities clearly needs a rework:
-Wildfire, simply being an empowered Hypercharge phase isn't great. Can't it simply be a new and original cooldown that consume 50 heat? Putting it on charge and 3 GCDs is fine as well.
-Flamethrower is lame, unengaging and potency confusing. Best use case is as an emote. There's dozens of reasons why it should be reworked.
-Barrel Stabilizer should be changed, either "makes your next Hypercharge free" or something else. Heat is now very rigid.

Some things completely needs to be scrapped:
-Unengaging, frustrating and passive. Automaton Queen being uncontrolable and press&forget is something that should get you straight to "Game design prison".
Who else saw that random dude staying in AoEs and saying to yourself "Who is that idiot?? Oh wait it's an Automaton Queen... And it's mine". That's how forgettable the AQ is.
AQ cannot be saved as more abilities will only make it exponentially "clunkier", difficult to place and fully take advantage of it.

A few extra potency shift that is clearly needed:
-Bio Blaster at least needs a potency upgrade to bump up the MCH AoE game.
-Reduce the Chain saw fall off, MCH barely has any AoEs.
-Potency upgrade in general to make it up for the "Pure DPS aspect".
-Shift power from the Queen/Heatblast to Cooldown abilities. Ironically, MCH is a job that can have full uptime but suffers greatly from downtime.

As for the future of MCH general gameplay:
-More buttons, except 1 2 3, ACB and scattergun I mentionned everything MCH has in its rotation. 1-2 Utility buttons, reworked Flamethrower being useful in Single Target rotation + 1 New cooldown would make the trick.
-A better, improved Automaton and not so "Automaton" anymore. Make it a controllable summon that upgrades your buttons. If the damn thing can't autopilot itself, let me take the wheel!
-Expanded gauges. A new heat spender or at least a "hypercharge finisher" or something like Primal Rend. We're lv90 and heat is used by only 1 button.
Same thing for the battery gauge, if Automaton Summoning was put on 60s, MCH would suffer less from repeated downtime

It's quite a bit of work, but that's a workload that has been cumulating since 5.0. That's the result from postponing any work on the MCH and shoving all problems under the carpet.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Not everything needs to be scrapped.

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Agree with a lot of the points raised in the above post. Never considered letting Queen improve the other abilities and could honestly be a really be a good option. Maybe adding Debilitator from FF6 as a personal dps buff similar to new trick attack for ninja?

Never understood why Flamethrower is still around despite all the feedback about how terrible it is for years. Replacing flamethrower with something like Bishop returning as an AoE battery use could be a good option. This would give the opportunity for an upgraded form next expansion and provide a fix for the AoE issues MCH has.

While some people might think otherwise, I personally think that Machinist needs a rework. While some skills are fine as they are but the overall design of Machinist is lacking. It doesn't have the same feeling of building up to its finisher as other jobs does. The only release of dopamine is Reassemble + Drill and seeing that HUGE CRIT number pop up, aside from that Heat blast spam and AQ just doesn't cut it. The only other job that I could think of that has a "similar" spam would be Reaper, during its Enshrouded phase but even that has a Finisher to give that rush of dopamine because soul gauge builds into shroud gauge then you could do your finisher unlike Machinist, battery and heat gauge are independent.

Machinist is clearly having an identity crisis, It's not the heavy hitter, nor is it a utility ranged dps. is the finisher heat blast spam or is it AQ? The way it's currently designed feels like it's split between guns and mechs, where the devs just thought "why not both?" and splits it in the middle here have heatblast and AQ. Speaking of identity, guns are kind of machines? although it's not what people typically think of when about machines but it seems like thats the route SE might be going for with how they changed Machinist in PVP, and everyone loved it especially that big ass sniper rifle LB.

all in all, Machinist's design needs a change, hypercharge, wildfire, heat blast spam, and AQ needs to be removed or reworked, it's detrimental to Machinist gameplay at this point.

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Originally Posted by Sorzai

Yeah i totally agree Machinist needs a rework and it can be added upon. I feel that it needs to add more something to it's Auto Turrets/Automaton Queen. I think that it would be great if they added charges to Rook Auto Turret and allow min 2 turrets on the field, and can copy some weaponskills (i.e. Drill, flamethrower, etc ?) and make Automaton Queen as a finisher. I find that having the multiple auto turrets on the field will be beneficial because depending on how SE wants to rework MCH (i.e. into more support role, or more damage), the Auto Turrets can be used for support or dmg.

I just pictured it would be cool to have 2 Auto Turrets out, and having them overload and shoot a huge ass laser as a finisher.

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Simple more guns, here some examples

LOST ARK BLASTER CLASS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkGS...nmCbC&index=19

LOST ARK SCOUTER CLASS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmsX...unmCbC&index=9

FF dissidia LAGUNA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf5DTFUHPg0

We just need more modern warfare instead of machines, don't get me wrong automaton queen is awesome but we just need that setting, i for one wish Gatling gun and missile launcher for machinist or a new 4th range class based on that.

Personally I'd rather them rework the entirety of Phys. Ranged. This restrictive mobility tax is holding them back.

BRD and DNC is the only one that works and even then they compete pretty badly with each other.

I like how in SB, BRD was better than MCH in every way and it's still true even with DNC in the mix. The problem is that the taxes for other dps roles make sense, expect for BLM. Either they get taxed from raid buffs or positionals/cast time. BLM, a caster is consistently on the top, because they have to cast and no raid buffs.

Then why isn't machinist closer to the top 4 dps? Simple they overvalue mobility, especially since they keep making cast times easier with more instacast procs/Triple Cast and reducing the amount of positionals a melee job needs to do.

MCH who has no raid buffs and utility past Tactician, barely does more damage than BRD who provides raid buffs along with the same utlity and a cleanse as well as a ST healing buff.

DNC who has a a strong ST buff and a raid buff and had the weakest personal damage, is still a better pick than MCH because they also have the same one utility and two healing buttons. Not to mention that BRD and DNC have better AoE options.

Why would anyone really pick MCH before these two? They have lower personal damage but make up for group buffing and extra utilities. Doing slightly more damage isn't really enough when Phys. Ranged is often looked at for "support" where MCH only has one.

They pigeonhole MCH into this archetype that they need to be doing less damage than the weakest melee/caster because they can move freely.

Not to mention the ping issues it suffers from.

Get rid of Wildfire, it's bad design. I'd rather they focus on making an engineer-like design with Queen Mech coming down, and piloting it ala RPR Enshroud-style, replacing their combo with gatling guns, laser beams, missiles, etc.

Personally, I would like MCH to be on par with RPR in terms of raw damage. If they have zero raid buffs, then they should be doing tons of damage to justify it's place.

I’ve been leveling Machinist again so I wanted to give some thoughts on it.
The rotation itself, is not that bad. There’s clear things you need to focus on, making sure Air anchor, Drill and Chainsaw stay on cooldown without clipping. Plus it doesn’t suffer from the Ninja/Dark knight Feast and famine flow which keeps the job from being to boring. Aoe is alright, Auto-crossbow is neat, and Automaton Queen looks pretty cool. It’s a simple job and it works alright for what it is.

But I do have a couple of issues.

The entire Battery system does not exist for Aoe scenarios due to everything involving battery being single target only skills.
They should either give Air anchor/Hot shot(?) damage fall of so they can be used in Aoe, or, more boringly, make Aoe versions of those skills. I’d rather the former honestly, similarly they should either bring Bishop auto turret back and upgrade into a Knight or King Automaton, or give Queen automaton Aoe fall off.

And speaking of the Automaton, there does not need to be such a long wait between the queens summoning and attacking with a timer going down. Either speed up the animation, remove it and have the queen just warp in and do the charge or not have the timer go down while it’s doing it’s summoning animation, it would just start counting down when it’s gotten up. Personally the last one should be the go to option. And fix the snapshotting on it, it’s a needless punishment honestly.

Flamethrower, kind of sucks honestly. It looks cool but there’s no power behind the attack, and let it generate heat when it’s being used. There was an idea I read a long while back where you could apply Bioblaster, use flamethrower and effectively detonate the dot to deal a small burst of damage. It would be neat to see that happen.

Finally the one everyone talks about, Heatblast and wildfire. The skill that is so rigid, not that well built, easy to lose track of, has no power being it and punishes you for not living in Squares basement. The fact that they haven’t made the heat gauge last longer and give 5 charges back in Shb is just plain dumb and should be implemented already.

And Wildfire, the huge 2 minute cooldown skill, has pretty weak damage behind it, poor sound and animation design and punishes less then perfect ping. Honestly, this should honestly be fixed or just flat out reworked, it’s the most blatant example of a fire and forget ability.

But it’s definitely hitting a corner on where it could expand to in the future, unless they really crazy enough to just gonna go and just buff potencies. Maybe alternative heat gauge spenders or possibly another resource to build up? I’m not sure honestly.

Also buff it’s damage for gods sake. It’s worse then Bard and Dancer on a good party, and that should not be the case. Give it low caster level damage after making it more complex at the very leastThis jobs needs and deserves it
Edit: Maybe bring back the old Ammo system and make upgrades for that. By default it could buff potencies, then change the 1-2-3 combo completely into pvps Blast Charge.

Fall off damage is the same as creating AoE versions. Except you don't have 2 buttons for it, therefore no button bloat.

Automaton Queen should have a fall off on Pile Bunker and Crown Collider. I believe it was intended to have aoe on arm punch as you can see the Bishop attack animaton on each arm punch.
Wildfire should get reworked for 7.0 (Honestly it was due a rework for 6.0...) but as for now, explosion after 3 GCDs, timer longer for extra room and AoE fall off would do great. The joke is that it's exactly the version used in pvp.

Now the problem with these fall off, is that they're all targeted.
BRD has line AoE fall Off, DNC has line aoe and very wide aoe around it.

Flamethrower could be reworked to be the cone AoE MCH definitely needs.

As for the performance of the job, yes... MCH slightly shine in single target situation. And even then, the DNC/BRD utility outshines MCH. The job being consistent and all is cool, but consistency is something many other jobs can pull off with many other advantages.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Fall off damage is the same as creating AoE versions. Except you don't have 2 buttons for it, therefore no button bloat.

Automaton Queen should have a fall off on Pile Bunker and Crown Collider. I believe it was intended to have aoe on arm punch as you can see the Bishop attack animaton on each arm punch.
Wildfire should get reworked for 7.0 (Honestly it was due a rework for 6.0...) but as for now, explosion after 3 GCDs, timer longer for extra room and AoE fall off would do great. The joke is that it's exactly the version used in pvp.

Now the problem with these fall off, is that they're all targeted.
BRD has line AoE fall Off, DNC has line aoe and very wide aoe around it.

Flamethrower could be reworked to be the cone AoE MCH definitely needs.

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Oh I would absolutely prefer to just have Aoe fall off for the sake of future proofing, but current MCH could likely get away with it currently given how it has a fair amount of extra hotbar space.

Honestly, they could so easily get away with doing a straight 1:1 port of PvP wildfire and it would be the best change mch would get in recent years. Heck there’s a lot of things that pve should take from pvp like Analysis, Blast charge and Marksman's Spite, with some slight touch up to be more then just another gcd with a cooldown, could work great as a future capstone skill.

I'd personally want a whole Phys Ranged rework and have MCH be reverted back to its Heavensward or Stormblood state and go from there. The state of MCH and Physical Ranged as a whole is just so bad, that if you make all 3 of the jobs limited like BLU, it wouldn't even make that much of an impact. In fact, nobody would get a ranged physical if it wasn't for the 1% buff. We saw this on Shadowbringers launch, when all 3 physical ranged wasn't even worth the 1% buff that people just took two BLMs instead.

Introduce actual decision making in the rotation for MCH. Give 123 procs back. Give ammo back. Give back lead shot and make me reconsider if I should be using a bullet on lead shot or should i just keep this for procs.
Give utility back. Give refresh back. Give palisade back. Add stuff like combat peloton to ranged physicals, not fucking Scholar.

Why the FUCK they're so hell bent in giving utility to other roles when phys ranged needs it the most is beyond me. I have no fucking idea why they're so hell bent into making Physical Ranged the most braindead and the least satisfying role in the game.
Actually make Phys Ranged FEEL like they're contributing their own shit into the party. Make it SATISFYING. I don't give a flying FUCK about balance if the job design is so dogshit that the few nuance it has is getting ripped from the role (bard dots and song interactions). FUCKING FIX IT

Making the game "balanced" by neutering an entire role, by alienating core players who's loved the role and mastered it, the people who loved the fantasy of not that much dps output, but a SHITTON of utility, is NOT HOW YOU DO THINGS.

Revert MCH and Phys Ranged back to Stormblood or Heavensward, and actually give us something that's not "Oh discord kitten. You wanna get carried through the tier? Go DNC uwu!"

I'm sick of playing caster. I wanna play my old main again. I want to play a support DPS that's satisfying and doesn't feel like I'm answering what's 2+2 in a group when everyone's doing college algebra.
I don't want to feel like I'm being carried despite me playing out of my goddamn mind.

I get why people want to increase its dps but unless this is accompanied with a design change to make the rotation more difficult I don't see why a large reward should come so easily. I'm in the camp of making it more complicated because by god leveling it back in 5.x was the most boring thing I did next to 5.4 mnk, and I'd accompany that with boosted raw dps. Other than that, unless it gets more complicated, a job like brd that takes more thought should reasonably have more optimization and be able to outperform the brainless 123 job with enough work and a good enough party. If mch, as easy as it is, could output as much rdps as top tier brds with as little optimization as it has access to then we'd circle back around to the 5.0 dilemma of why even play a harder job like that if you can press 123 to win on a different job? I wasn't in that camp myself because I stuck with brd but lord knows others were whining.

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Originally Posted by anhaato

I get why people want to increase its dps but unless this is accompanied with a design change to make the rotation more difficult I don't see why a large reward should come so easily.

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This argument falls flat as soon as SMN is brought in the equation.
Why play RDM if SMN can bring more DPS, more mobility and a very strong utility?

I agree, I'd like a rotation that is more than watching Drills I, II, III and the heat gauge. In my opinion, MCH should've been a job switching between phases emphasizing the use of tools. A Chainsaw melee phase for example, regardless of the "Melee" problem.
Yet, remind yourself that most jobs don't have much more in term of difficulty. SAM is just watching your stickers
Job difficulty and DPS/Utility aren't tied in any ways, Yoshida mentionned it.

Regardless of job complexity, MCH brings nothing to a party and that's the most important issue right now.

I don't see what the problem is really, if you use the entire kit, you have enough to juggle and how well you juggle it and knowing when to use certain things seems like half the fun. It's not brain dead and simplicity is relative to what you're doing.

Single Target: Split Shot, Gauss Round, Slug Shot, GR, Clean Shot, GR, Split S, Ricochet, Slug S, Ricochet, Clean S, Ricohet, Air Anchor, Reassemble, Drill, Hypercharge, Wildfire, Heat Blast x5, Chainsaw. Repeat.

Multi-Target: Reassenble, Bio-Blaster, Flamethrower (channel for duration), Scattergun, Ricochet, Scattergun, Ricochet, Scattergun, Ricochet, Scattergun, Gauss Round, cattergun, Gauss Round, cattergun, Gauss Round, Chainsaw. Hypercharge, Auto Crossbow x5, repeat.

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Originally Posted by Selvokaz

I don't see what the problem is really, if you use the entire kit, you have enough to juggle and how well you juggle it and knowing when to use certain things seems like half the fun. It's not brain dead and simplicity is relative to what you're doing.

Single Target: Split Shot, Gauss Round, Slug Shot, GR, Clean Shot, GR, Split S, Ricochet, Slug S, Ricochet, Clean S, Ricohet, Air Anchor, Reassemble, Drill, Hypercharge, Wildfire, Heat Blast x5, Chainsaw. Repeat.

Multi-Target: Reassenble, Bio-Blaster, Flamethrower (channel for duration), Scattergun, Ricochet, Scattergun, Ricochet, Scattergun, Ricochet, Scattergun, Gauss Round, cattergun, Gauss Round, cattergun, Gauss Round, Chainsaw. Hypercharge, Auto Crossbow x5, repeat.

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1. Why would you sit on Ricochet charges for three GCDs like that? Alternate Gauss Round and Ricochet. Keep your recharge rolling, that's the point of multiple charges. And while you're at it, Reassembled Drill/Anchor/Chainsaw immediately get those big cooldowns cooling down. (unless you're in a static coordinating burst windows)

2. Reassemble into Bio Blaster? When Chainsaw and even Scattergun are higher potency? The guaranteed Direct Crit doesn't apply to DoTs, only the first hit, which is 50 potency for Bio Blaster, compared to 150 for Scattergun and 580/377 for Chainsaw.

3. Flamethrower is the lowest potency AoE skill outside of just spamming Scattergun. So you want to exhaust all other resources first, this includes Reassembled Chainsaw, Ricochet and Gauss Round charges between Scatterguns, Anchor, and Hypercharge > Autocrossbow x5. THEN Flamethrower, unless any of those are coming off cooldown in under 10s, then you stop Flamethrower.

I just tried MCH in PvP for the first time since EW launch and uh... Why don't I see any complaints about MCH being forced to be a caster in PvP? It's impossible for me to get into range to shoot anyone, and if I can get into range, they move out of range before I get a shot off.

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Originally Posted by Karious

I just tried MCH in PvP for the first time since EW launch and uh... Why don't I see any complaints about MCH being forced to be a caster in PvP? It's impossible for me to get into range to shoot anyone, and if I can get into range, they move out of range before I get a shot off.

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The major complaint of MCH in PvP is Bio being in the same attack chain as the rest of its abilities, forcing it into melee range for one part of it when the rest are all ranged.

I used to enjoy FT in ShB for the extremely silly coffee break skill that it was, but now MCH gains heat so fast in AoE that there's hardly ever a good time to use it. I'd love to drop it for something else as a capstone skill, or reduce the total duration and make it strong enough that you actively want to use it on cooldown, maybe even during single-target.

Or rework FT to a non-channeled AoE that applies a debuff that increases the damage you (and your automaton) deal to targets hit (like NIN's new Trick Attack). Every other minute MCH has their big wildfire burst and then a mini non-WF burst.

Also, make Wildfire an AoE detonation with falloff so it can be used on trash packs, too. It's always more fun when there's less of one's kit sitting idle during trash packs.

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

I used to enjoy FT in ShB for the extremely silly coffee break skill that it was, but now MCH gains heat so fast in AoE that there's hardly ever a good time to use it. I'd love to drop it for something else as a capstone skill, or reduce the total duration and make it strong enough that you actively want to use it on cooldown, maybe even during single-target.

Or rework FT to a non-channeled AoE that applies a debuff that increases the damage you (and your automaton) deal to targets hit (like NIN's new Trick Attack). Every other minute MCH has their big wildfire burst and then a mini non-WF burst.

Also, make Wildfire an AoE detonation with falloff so it can be used on trash packs, too. It's always more fun when there's less of one's kit sitting idle during trash packs.

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Honestly, a vast majority of Machinist actions could and should be given Aoe fall off. Hot shot/Air anchor, everything Rook auto turret/Automaton queen does, Wildfire. They all should have been given Aoe fall off already.


I’ve also been thinking a lot about what Machnist lost from Sb to ShB, and Reload and the ammo system stood out the most. So a part of me thinks something like that would be worth bringing back in a way. Could give Reload as a early, but give something like a 10% potency buff to Gcds/1-2-3, and later on could buff the 1-2-3 into different skills with the pvp cast times for some depth. From there you could either make them into a high potency 1-2-3 combo or have strong secondary affects like a Dot, a trick attack like debuff for the user and their automaton to use and a pure damage move.
And from there move flamethrower down to lvl 68, and make the reloaded 1-2-3 combo into at lvl 70 capstone skill. I don’t know, I think it’s neat.

Using this thread to avoid creating another:

6.2 TL;DR:

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Queen fixed to a 12s timer.
Damage adjusted in consequence.
Targeting is now the first target you attack after summoning.

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It's a welcome change, a bit too late and only one among many needed changes, but a welcome change.
This issue is 8 patch old. It's been since 6.1 Automaton Queen and Living Shadow targeting problems has been a feedback.
It also doesn't fix AQ behavior when switching targets after its current target dies/disappear. For reminder, AQ can forget Pïle Bunker or Crown collider.

If anything, the AQ should'nt be on timer but on stacks.
Spend 2 stack for Roller Dash, 1 stack for Arm punch and at 0 Pile bunker then Crown collider. And doesn't disappear until 30 seconds or Crown collider is used.
AQ would still remain janky but at least it would do something rather than standing still like a starfish when it has to move or change targets.

AQ is still not engaging at all, forgotten and mistaken as a 9th player standing in AoEs. I would be really pleased if that feedback could be understood by the designers for 7.0.

That change aside, a non-exhaustive list of feedback that has been missed for 6.2:

• Multi target damage very low and on low range compared to DNC/BRD that can go much higher.
• Very poor utility.
• Heavily suffers during extensive downtime.
• Hypercharge still not on stacks & still 5 Heatblast spam.
• Wildfire remains weak and a change similar to the PvP version would be welcomed.

MCH still doesn't properly works as a pure DPS, it offers very low values compared to the other ranged. Its damage is too low for a pure DPS and it has no extra utility for a ranged DPS. In short, it combines the donwsides of Pure DPS and ranged DPS, but doesn't have any upsides of Pure DPS or Ranged DPS.

It also feels less engaging than a tank and I hope this will be adressed for 7.0 without another "Nothing much has changed about MCH but let's talk about it anyway".

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

It also feels less engaging than a tank and I hope this will be adressed for 7.0 without another "Nothing much has changed about MCH but let's talk about it anyway".

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I honestly think this is the biggest issue. The changes made in 6.2, aside from AQ targeting, dont make a lot of logical sense. They weren't based on issues that Ive seen anyone request. The past couple years MCH changes have just been changes for the sake of change. They dont make the job function better or flow or address the problems the player base has pointed out. It's a continual feeling like the devs dont know/care on what to do with the job. And the brush off that they have given the job when directly asked about it is disheartening. I think this boils down why the mch playerbase gives such negative criticism or have negative reaction to changes. It's not that we aren't getting massive potency boosts or specific mechanics/abilities. Its that the adjustments aren't fixing the issues that have been known since HW.

The communication around job changes are great, yet we lack the reason why they're stubborn to increase the damage or add utility.

Maybe MCH is very deep in their backlog and this is why we see this change today? Maybe they accept this "just enough" iteration? Or maybe they simply don't care?
We know they listen to feedback, we've seen Living Dead, Continuation, Crit/DH and Dragoon changes.

So the question remains, why do they ignore the feedback? Even with their internal number they must see that MCH is not an appealing job, on an unappealing role.
I would say "wait for 7.0." for we already said "wait for 6.0.". The MCH chunk of the playerbase has lost faith in the Designers.

While we understand their reasoning behind the 6.2 changes, we're still lacking why the "meta" looks like this as of today.
There are more BLM than MCH on DSR, there are 9 DNC for 1 MCH last time I checked.

Double posting as there is a problem with the Automaton Queen:
https://i.imgur.com/EeQlscc.gif

Flamethrower doesn't "tag" any target for the Automaton Queen.

I see two problems with this behavior:
-In dungeon where you summon Automaton Queen then use Flamethrower, the AQ will remain idle until you GCD.
-In raid, if there are "don't move or attack" mechanics and you summon the AQ, it will remain idle if you are unlucky with the timing.

While you can play around this, it's important information to be aware of.

Animation pretty much guarantees that AQ only is active for half the duration. It's essentially a build to 100 gauge now.

Doesn't matter where you place it now since it does overall 2660 potency across 6 seconds.

I'd rather have a skill that just frontloads 2660 potency instead of waiting 12 seconds for it to happen. AQ requires planning. If mobs die too quickly or a boss jumps it's a bust.

Flamethrower has very niche use when using it with Bioblaster for damage sustain on large packs and can be moderately useful in large mob fights otherwise it's a glorified emote. So just Fell Court?

Shotgun in many cases is very good for heat generation. To the point that using Flamethrower over it is never worth it.

After all this time of them ignoring the one complaint we have all had.. that the job is far too ping dependent and they have done nothing to address it. (Literally since it’s inception this has been a complaint)… i give up. They will never listen to the mch community.

So with that. I hope for those of you who continue to scream into the void it helps, but my advice, go pick up blm or brd or dnc, jobs SE actually loves

as a machinist main, all I want is for them to replace the queen with a sniper rifle to be used with the battery charge.
if adding all the potency into a single skill is too much, they can distribute the potency out into other abilities.

Just do this and I'll never complain about MCH.

Don't worry, 20 more potency on Drill 1, Drill 2 and Drill 3 will fix all your problems