Hey, I just thought after running through MCH stuff and seeing what I perceive to be some of it's problems, I'd try to offer some little fixes here and there to make the class flow a little better. I'm no game designer or anything, but I have done a mockup Red Mage class on the forums before, so I figure I can't be too bad at this. Mostly it's for fun, since I doubt anything I would write would get implemented anyway, but it can't hurt to see what you guys think, right? Well, not much.
1: Get rid of the damage on Blank.
Oh god everyone hates that one MCH that uses Blank for DPS for anything but immune bosses and enemies that are about to be finished off with it. And MCH themselves hate feeling like they need to use it for their DPS, considering how much they're doing to stay damage competitive, and running into melee to use it for damage sucks. You're using a gun, you should never have to melee. Which brings up point two.
2: Increase the range of Suppressive Fire.
Why is the range on this 5 yards oh god that is just awful. It makes stunning anything in a party a nightmare due to the whole "gotta go melee to do this" problem, and if it's for damage since it both shares CDs with and does the same damage as Head Graze, you'll just use that instead. I mean, if it has to be melee, couldn't we get a kickin' rad pistol whip as a stun instead? At least I'd feel good doing that. But it'd be best to at least make it a ranged skill like everything else; if we have a mob on us we don't want on us, we'll use blank and leg or foot graze.
3: Dismantle, Rend Mind, and Hypercharge need some fixes.
I personally have a problem with all of MCH's shared cooldown skills, because it feels like you're getting one skill for the price of two. But most, I see the point behind- not Dismantle and Rend Mind. Let's do a comparison here.
Dismantle: Lowers target's physical damage dealt by 5%. 10s duration. 90s cooldown.
Rend Mind: Lowers target's magical damage dealt by 5%. 10s duration. 90s cooldown.
Eye for an Eye: Lowers target's damage dealt by 10%. 20s duration. 120s cooldown.
Hypercharge(Rook Turret): Increases target's physical damage taken by 5%. 10-25s duration. 12s cooldown.
Hypercharge(Bishop Turret): Increases target's magical damage taken by 5%. 10-25s duration. 120s cooldown.
Trick Attack: Increases target's damage taken by 10%. 10s duration. 60s cooldown.
I could go into Rage of Halone and Dragon Kick and (Super)virus and Battle Litany jazz if I want too but the point is clear: Why do Dismantle, Rend Mind, and Hypercharge suck so much?
Dismantle and Rend Mind should clearly be one skill to even hold a slight candle to the utility skills brought by other classes. And furthermore, as a class with more emphasis on utility and support, why in the name of Thal's balls are all of MCH's supportive debuffs worse than classes with a higher emphasis on damage? Hypercharge, funny enough, I feel should be two skills instead of one, since it rolls two kinds of crappy knockoff Trick Attacks and Battle Voice together. So clearly, we need to do both, since that'd use the same number of skill slots.
In other words, get rid of Rend Mind and Dismantle, and make them into one skill gained at level 50 with much more oomph to it. Make the target do 5% less damage overall, and give the attack a nice fat 300 potency smack on top of it. For a level 50 skill, and rightfully so, that'd be really satisfying. Why 300 potency? That's three times the potency of Blank, which has a 30 second cooldown, so the lost damage from blank doing no damage would go to this skill instead. Just... make the machinist shoot the enemy in the nuts or something. That'd work. Blame Rostnsthal. Graze Vitals.
To compensate, I feel it'd be good to split Hypercharge into two skills. First, shift Hypercharge to level 56, and make it cause your turrets to regenerate TP or MP respectively for 15 seconds, on it's 120 second cooldown. Instead of just doubling the regen values, make it simply regen the base value, and stack with Promotion- so you can either do 15 seconds of party regenning without losing any damage, or just do Battle Voice levels of regen like normal.
Second, make the level 58 skill one to cause your turret attacks to apply a 10 second long, 10% damage vulnerability debuff to targets. All damage, not just physical or magical based on whatever turret you have up. Keep it's cooldown at 120 seconds; that makes it's utility as strong as a ninja's, but you keep the cooldown twice as long because a savvy MCH can apply the debuff to multiple enemies before the time runs out. What do we call a skill like that though? I was fond of "Perforate" when I had it kicking around in my mind.
Whew, I went into a real tangent there. My bad.
4: Buff Heartbreak
I'm not even going to rant on this one forever- why the crap is Heartbreak worse than Misery's End in every way? Either make it's potency higher, cooldown lower(I'd kill(hah) for this one), or let it be used at higher than 20% target HP or something. It just bugs me so much that it's literally inferior to the bard equivalent in every way.
I'm not going to go into any more tweaks on their actual damage skills or why no one likes the 1-2-3's RNG and Reload is a really impotent buff, because while MCH damage is kind of janky and we all know it, the hotfix that boosted Gauss damage made them at least able to bypass DPS checks and that's what's important. I figure though, with a class so focused on debuffs and field control, having their debuffs be so janky and take a backseat to classes who already do more damage than them is just messed up.
Anyway! Hope to see thoughts on those. Thoughts, praise, hate mail, etc. Enjoy!
A few MCH tweak ideas
Printable View
-
07-17-2015, 04:44 PMAtlaworksA few MCH tweak ideas
-
07-17-2015, 04:48 PMAskaRay
I was wondering so much why you have to be close for Supressive Fire... I mean, okay, it's supposed to stop an enemy from getting at you but I may as well just use Foot Graze, it doesn't do damage but at least I can shoot you from 20 yalms away :T
-
07-17-2015, 04:52 PMAtlaworksYeah, I know right? If an enemy gets close they're going to get Blanked, and then Foot or Leg Grazed, depending on if I'm in a party or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by AskaRay
If it's 5y I wanna pistol whip a dude. There's pretty much no excuse to be that close unless you get to do something really cool for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by FreeLancer4
-
07-17-2015, 04:54 PMFreeLancer4
Aye, I've made mention of Suppressive Fire's range in a few posts. The name itself is asinine considering you need to run up to the target. I'd like the name swapped with Head Graze, which in all honesty sounds much more akin to a stun ability and their ranges equalized, whether they kick it up to the current head graze range or find some middle ground, just not 5y's...
-
07-17-2015, 05:02 PMRyaz
I agree that Suppressive Fire needs a buff (why it's range is so short is beyond me) and personally, I hate charging in just to get a small damage boost from Blank, so I would have no problems with it losing its 100 potency and using it only emergencies.
As for Heartbreak, I'm not sure. If it wasn't an OGCD ability, I could understand because you have to add the turret in, but as it is, it's worse than Misery's End in every way. -
07-17-2015, 05:09 PMTyphoria
Hypercharge Cd reduced to 60s would be amazing, the turret damage is pretty good with it up. Ricochet cd should be changed to 90s to match up with wildfire, with a slight potency increase. Heartbreak applying a slight dot at the end would be appropriate, in lieu of a straight potency increase/cd reduction.
-
07-17-2015, 09:51 PMRiceisNice
I'd like for them to just change Ricochet's damage formula to be similiar to Flare/Holy. It's literally frustrating to use on anything that's not a boss without adds.