Machinist Breakdown and Thoughts

So I'm finally getting down to doing this thread, of which I did say I would do in another post.

First thing is to explain my position on this class, keep in mind in no way am I trying to defend some of the problem this class has, this class is a Debuffer not a Supporter. In no way does Debuffer mean DoT DPSer, as some individuals who shall not be named believe it does, infact the difference between a Debuffer and a Supporter is all about how they go about it. While a Supporter will directly buff the party in some way, like a BRD's songs, a Debuffer will instead lowers the enemy stats. It is important to note the difference as it will some what effect how the class interacts with the rest of the party.

Now one of the biggest things I hear as an argument to that MCH doesn't bring any kind of unique debuff to the table that other classes don't already have. This is both right and wrong. Let's do a solid breakdown of the skills MCH and compare it to the skills other classes have that it would match up with.

Lead Shot: It's a Dot, see well any other dot.

Leg Graze: Heavy +40% Duration: 12sec
Similar effect from Acn, Ast, Whm, and blm: The biggest difference between them is that MCH is oGCD like Acn but has a much shorter recast time.

Blank: 15-yalm Knockback.
Ok yea the only two I can think of that have this are Whm, and Carbuncle, and yea it shouldn't really be used to often unless something goes horribly bad or the enemy can't be knocked back anyway. (Not even really sure I'd count it as a debuff, but hey it does interrupt when used so meh)

Foot Graze: Binds Target Duration: 12s
Ok so yes this effect is shared with Brd, Smn, and Blm. However it lasts longer than Brd and Blm, and is another oGCD ability.

Head Graze: Silences Target Duration: 2s
Yea shared with Brd, Pld, Mnk, and Nin (so long as nin isn't using wasp venom) not much else to say other than another option to interrupt a spell here.

Suppresive Fire: Stun Duration: 2s
Yea I'm not gonna bother naming everything that has a stun here, let's be honest this is pretty much a staple move for all classes at this point.

Now for the big juicy bits that really make this class. And by big and juicy, I mean tiny bits that really should have been better but are what kinda set the class apart, or attempt to at least.

Dismantle: Lowers the targets physical damage dealt by 5% Duration: 10sec
This ability(along with Rend Mind) are often compared to Virus, and yea I see it. However, I'll make the counter that while Virus effects the stats, this directly effects the damage being dealt, which takes into account other variables.

Rend Mind: Lowers the targets magical damage dealt by 5% Duration: 10sec
See above

Hypercharge Rook Turret: Potency: 160 Increases targets physical damage taken by 5% Duration 10s
Yea I'll agree this is a weaker version of Nin's trick attack, except that it also allows your turret, which attacks separately from you to hit harder.

Hypercharge Bishop Turret: Potency: 120 aoe Increases targets magic damage taken by 5% Duration 10s
....See above

Ok now onto "those" support moves someone is bound to throw up as some sort of argument for this class.

Promotion: Turret stops attacking (grouse), Rook regens TP, Bishop regens MP, both in a weak amount with a 20-yalm radius around the turret, Hypercharge doubles the regen.
Yea Brd in fact does this better. With the stationary-ness of the turrets this is really just an as needed ability for when your group is really hurting, probably late fight if even that. Though, maybe early in the fight so for the initial pull your nin doesn't have to waste his goad right off the bat.

Ok so having gone through all that lets talk about what MCH brings to the table here shall we. Yes, all of this is, in one form or another, covered by other classes, but it's not covered by all of the classes individually. Think of it as a kind of Merged class between Brd, Acn, and Nin for these debuffs. Also all of the important ones stack with the debuffs of all the other classes.

So now for the important, what's actually wrong with this class section..... MCH is one massive pain to get any sort of payoff at all. That being said, there are ways to fix it that would be fairly simple, to fix it's payoff and make it more wanted in a party, I'd recommend increasing the effects of those debuffs, and maybe the durations too though not by much. To fix the dps issue, well increase the Proc chance on the 1-2-3 doesn't have to be by alot, and decrease the recast time on Reload and Quick Reload, that should do it there.

Final thoughts: Well clearly I was wrong about the rapid fire thing, which now makes me sad.

Clearly this class is not meant to work alone, and, to me, seems to have a heavy focus playing off what the rest of the group is trying to do as you can get some pretty big % based minuses onto the enemy when everyone is doing it all at once. However, while this might have been the idea the devs were going for, it's ultimately a one off big numbers chance and when it's done the MCH is kinda left sitting around for 90sec doing, honestly, pitiful damage.

Edit: As discussions go on I will update this and add info and possible ideas of ways to better use this class.

So I said I would add to this as I had ideas on the classes and as I gathered new information so here is some more.

So I'm rather disappointed on the "fix" (*cough* nerf *cough*) so you can no longer insta-cast Gauss Barrel. This makes it a much harder dynamic to work with, but not impossible. I would recommend not holding it the entire fight, but rather use it at the beginning of a boss fight. Then maybe if you feel you have enough time pull it out later on when the a big burst is going to happen, however this may not happen as that would be a 3sec cast time, a point at which your standing there doing nothing so it would be best to do it only if you feel comfortable with such a state, and boss mechanics allow for it.

Now I've heard rumors that if somebody focuses on Skill Speed with MCH and BRD it might actually fix damage loss of GB and WM, but until this is actually proven I remain skeptical.

Next subject is the turrets, how they work, and the little dance your stuck playing with them. So when your tank does a big pull your obviously going to summon your Bishop turret dead center of the pull and let it damage from there, well this could just be me, but I've found I actually have some problems with TP in these fights, to work around this when I see that either my TP is running low, or the fight ending soon, I've taken to summoning out my Rook Turret and Using Promote. In cases where I'm running out of TP this allows me to sustain the TP I have and continue the fight, however if you pull it out at the end of a fight it will allow your group to continue onward with little to no loss in DPS, and allow for another large pull with no worries that your melees are gonna run out of TP any time soon.

Speaking of Promotion, let's talk about that shall we. So my stance on it has changed a bit since the first post. I still stand by the idea that a BRD is better suited to TP/MP Regen than a MCH, primarly because if a MCH has to TP/MP Regen they will most likely have to Hypercharge to bring everyone up, this would mean losing the 5% damage increase on the boss and the increased damage dealt by the turret (namely the rook turret). That being said, should a MCH have to act as some kind of Regen, they are best suited to be a TP Regen rather than an MP Regen. The reason for this is because of how the majority of boss fights work, in a standard boss fight a MCH is already going to have out and in place a Rook Turret making it a simple activation to begin the Regen, however in a case where a MCH has to act do MP regen they will first have to activate the Bishop Turret, this is at best a quick camera turn at worst a couple of seconds of getting it into the right place. Then of course followed by the activation of the Promotion, and then finally having to re-activate Rook Turret when it's all done.

Now I can already here someone make the argument of "Why not have Bishop Turret in place to begin with in a Magic Heavy party where you'll need to do something like that" and there are a few reasons for this. First being the dps loss, fact is Rook does more damage than Bishop, though if that's not enough to justify to you then the second problem will. The second problem being the way Bishop does it's AOE (this is based off my person experience so it could be wrong), the damage is dealt with Bishop being in the center of the AOE, so in order for bishop to be doing any damage to begin with it would have to be placed right next to the Boss, a location where no caster should be to begin with. In short you'd lose the dps, and still have to go through the whole process to move it around.

So why would people want a MCH to regen over a BRD then? Well that's also a simple answer, Hypercharge can be used more frequently than Battle Voice. Both abilities double the effect of the regen with Hypercharge being able to be used ever 2mins, and Battle Voice being able to be used ever 5mins. That being said Hypercharge only lasts 15sec, as opposed to Battle Voice lasting 30secs. This leads me to believe that MCH might take a bit more of a hit, I mean the I know that the straight math evens out to them taking the same direct hit to their dps, but I feel that the loss of the 5% damage increase just makes it a bigger loss the party as a whole.

So Final Thoughts: MCH is better suited for TP Regen, and Brd is just better for both TP and MP Regen.

So do to my controller being stupid, my progression is slowed down. However this will not stop me from a bit of theory crafting I've been doing in the areas of party configuration and interactions. So I highly recommend that any 8-man party with a MCH in it have some form of communication, which should really go without saying but you never know.

Now I was reading through the forms and noticed someone saying how if a dps is not being aggressive then there doing it wrong, this got me thinking about some of the times where I was doing pretty good playing MCH and I realized..... This is wrong, when I was doing exceptionally well as MCH I wasn't being aggressive at all, I was being calculative. At these points I never threw up a buff or debuff because it was off it's CD, infact I held onto them until the moment I could get the most out of the skill. So with that in mind I came up with a few theorycrafted parties where a MCH would beable to get the most out of the skills and could actually be viable. So here I'll be going into the party make up, and how each member of the team interacts with each other.

The Melee Team:
Tanks: War and Drk, or War and War, or Pld and War (needless to say off-tank War)
Healers: Ast and Sch, or Ast and Whm
DPS: Mch, Nin, Drg, Brd
Now first off I'd recommend your tanks be War and Dark, though a strong argument could be made for Pld do to survive ability, that way you can minimize the argument over gear. At least over weapons. So your War will be your off Tank for that high damage it's capable of, just have it dps until a time that the tanks need to switch, pretty straight forward, for now. Also please have the War maintain the slashing debuff as the nin is going to be worrying about other things.
For healers I'd say grab an Ast for those card buffs, mostly hoping for that balance card, then you'll want Whm or Sch, either one will do, just based off what the fight calls for.
Now for the dps, this is where the complicated mobo jumbo comes in.
Let's start with Brd, now sticking to what I said above about the regen, Brds are on Regen duty. Most Bards are already familiar with this role, so no real change here.
The Drg in the team is your heavy hitter, I know a few nins will argue this but based off current layout Drgs are more often higher up. So Drg is the heavy hitter for the party, but beyond that it will also be buffing the damage of the Mch and Brd. So all around win.
Now onto the important duo of the party MCH and Nin, so unlike the others MCH and Nin are going to have to do some coordination along with Ast, in the hopes for that balance card to proc at the right time, as the Mch and Nin are going to be having to time Trick Attack and Hypercharge Rook Turret to over lap. This combo right here will allow an amazing 15% damage boost for 10seconds, 25% if the Ast can get the balance card at the same time, with an extra 5%-15% boost for 5 seconds after that. It is important in this kind of party make up that each time this happens, once every 2mins, that everyone dpsing gets the best burst they can.

Now to maximize on this, a Mch is going to already have to be focusing on his burst 5-6 sec before the burst actually starts. The reason for this is Wildfire, Wildfire has duration of 15sec and at the end of the 15sec deals the 25% compiled damage. If I am understanding how this damage works out, your going to want that to end during the 10sec window. This means that if the Mch and Nin can coordinate it correctly, the Mch could being his 15sec 5% debuff before the nin, and have the 2 overlap that way as well.

Now of course for the other interactions, like the interactions with the dps was all the Mch has to worry about it and coordinate with. So for the next round, let's talk about keeping a tank alive from a particularly hard hit. So in the case where a tank has to take a hard hit, there are plenty of raids where this happens, the response to this is simple your tank will activate there damage reduction ability and so will the Mch. So let's say your MT is a War, big attack about to happen, your tank activates Vengeance and your mch activates either Disassemble or Rend Mind, and bam 35% damage reduction, then your healer pops Virus, and even more. At this point your about cutting the damage from that attack in half.

Extra Thoughts for the Melee Team:
This is an extra bit of an idea for the melee team, but it is possible to drop the Brd and pick up a Mnk. This will allow for more damage, but it should be noted that this means that should any Regen emergency happens the Mch will have to cover it, and that generally means using Hypercharge. If the party is ok with that, then it is total possible for some extra high damage burst that way.

The Magic Based Team:
Ok so the interaction between the healers and and tanks and all that are going pretty much unchanged. Except for the fact that you don't necessarily need to drag a warrior along this time. So I won't go into that, I will however go into the DPS layout for this.
So the DPS layout will be: Blm, Blm/Smn, Brd/Nin, and Mch
So this is pretty simple, Brd uses Foes, Mch uses Hypercharge Bishop Turret, and the Casters burst to there hearts content. I feel this is the most viable of the magic based team, with a nin being able to substitute in for a Brd if you can't find one, which means mch double duty again. The basic run through numbers wise is a bonus of 5% or 15%, of the Ast got the card at the right time + the extra damage from the enemy having his elemental resistance lowered by 10%.

So as I said while that one is the most viable, I think I have one that might be more entertaining to watch happen..... Not sure about actually being apart of though.
DPS layout: Mch, Nin, Brd, Blm
Ok so this ridiculous lay out I call the Ultimate Black Mage Burn, the entire idea is to make a single Blm hit for as much as possible. So for those pesky numbers first it's the 5% from Mch + 10% from Nin +10% from Ast, so once again 25% damage increase + 20% elemental reduction on the enemy. And from that point, sit back and watch as your Blm goes full on supervillian on the enemy.

So I can honestly say I was super surprised to wake up to Mch and Brd getting a buff this morning. So I'll do a quick break down of the buff, along with numbers to show what we gained and lost over all.
First off Gauss Barrel is now an Insta-cast like it should have been all along, woot woot, and it's now a 30% potency increase as instead of just a 20%, but now it has a CD time on it.

Ok so that 10% increase might actually make this a viable stance. Since we still loss are auto-attacks and gain casting onto times on other skills it's hard to say weather this is going to be full on viable to keep up at all times or not yet, it does make it a much more viable burst stance change and that's all around good.

Now let's look at that Gauss Round "Nerf" shall we. This is actually a lot less than it appears to be, originally Gauss Round did 200 potency with a 20% boost from Gauss Barrel making it actually do 240 potency. Now it does 180 potency with a 30% boost from Gauss Barrel making it do 234 potency..... Yeap that's right this nerf made us loss a total of 6 Potency, not even some outrageous amount, infact we're almost back to square one with it.

Now for Ricochet, Originally this skill did 100 potency to the target and 300 potency total to surrounding enemies, combined with the 20% boost from Gauss Barrel it did 120 potency to the target and 360 total to surrounding enemies, for a total of 480 potency divided up. Now it does 100 potency to the target and 200 potency total to the surround enemies, combined with the new 30% boost from Gauss Barrel it does 130 potency to the target and 260 total to surround enemies, for a total of 390 potency.
Ok yes this is a 90 potency loss, but this becomes less and less noticeable the more enemies that are involved in the fight, and still a 10 potency gain on the initial target. Look at it this way 3 enemies, only a 50 potency loss, 4 it's 33 potency loss, 5 it's 25 potency loss.... Yea I know there aren't too many cases where your gonna have those kind of encounter, but maybe it's more along the lines of not to many cases where your going to those kinds of encounters yet.

Final Thoughts: the Gauss Barrel buff is amazing, now I know some people are gonna talk about how making it a 30% buff instead of a 20% buff isn't going to make that big of a difference. To them I say look at the rest of your skills and do the math. Gauss Barrel isn't a 30% buff just to Gauss Round and Ricochet, it's a 30% buff to every weapon skill you have. Yes Gauss Round and Ricochet are brought to light as they are the restricted behind the need to have to have Gauss Barrel up in order to use, but they aren't the only skills you can use while Gauss Barrel is up.

I've found Blank to be useful in pushing a ranged enemy into the rest of the pack of enemies the tank is holding and aoeing them.

I found your analysis and breakdown really interesting and I'm still in the middle of reading it.