MCH (a mostly positive viewpoint )

Hello. I rarely start a thread on these forums but lurk most of the time so I will get right to the point. I read a ton of reddit and look at these forums sections and I see so much negative about mch.

Yes It needs some adjustments. I am really new to mch as someone that was turned off/ by the super hard/punishing 1 billion gcd/ogcd opener n rotation + cast bars.

I tried pretty hard to get it down but just wasn't able to do it but I was always in awe at the mch that COULD pull off everything in 3.0 onwards. With the rotation and opener being a bit easier/ no cast bar I tried mch again in 4.0 and it is FUN.(feels strange with no buffs in opener) (lvl 69) atm. I went against everyone in 4.0 that just tells me to go brd or go home.

I am not gonna speak for all the experienced mch or pretend I am one because I am not. I am willing to continue being interested and practice more with it.
I am positive SE will do some adjusting for it come 4.05.

TLDR: as someone new to mch while a lot of things may be bad there are some positives to mch that shouldn't just be ignored/general pop shouldn't act like mch isnt viable but adjust voice your opinion both POSITIVES and NEGATIVES

thank you.

if u enjoy MCH then keep playing MCH, i am pretty sure MCH will get good buff in the future.

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Originally Posted by Jilliebeans

if u enjoy MCH then keep playing MCH, i am pretty sure MCH will get good buff in the future.

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People can be very short sighted with their "main" choices when it's purely influenced by their place in the meta. Buffs and nerfs happen as a natural MMO ebb and flow- people just seem to have it in their head that certain classes will always be god tier and others will always be low tier which seldom is the case.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

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I'd be more inclined to agree with this if it weren't for the fact that SB decided to (again) change job identity a bit. Monk, for instance, was a sustained single target dps machine, but that now goes to SAM.
If you speak purely from a performance perspective, MNK is probably better off now that in HW, being very competitive in terms of efficiency.
But I can understand that someone who poured their passion into mastering a job with a certain identity might feel turned off that it suddenly changes. Especially if they loved both aesthetics and identity (or, worse, grew fond of the aesthetics due to the identity).
MCH lost utility, SMN lost aoe power, BLM lost single target power- in fact, most of the "happy people" seem to be from jobs that retained this gameplay core identity.

When you invest this heavily into something (and MMOs are all about that), you get attached. And when the thing you loved changes this much so suddenly... yea...

I have a 70 mch that I wish I could main. its weaponskills look badass and its dps is on par with bard. its the low utility that makes it bad. its like they just forgot to balance the classes for 4.0. Yoshi did ssome obvious favoritism towards bard lol

The weird thing is, I really like the SB changes to MCH. Before, it was a relatively methodical (read: dull) proc-based 1-2-3 class rooted in place because gunmage. Now, with Stormblood, it feels very active, with lots of emphasis on resource management, and honestly, it's very engaging to me. The problem is that, right now, we deal less damage than bards do, with less utility. We're bottom of the barrel with few forms of raid utility to warrant bringing us over anything else. That's not me crying because we're not "meta", and the meta can go f*ck itself, but it's easy to understand why some of us are being turned away from party finder pick ups when we don't really bring anything to the table. And it sucks. It sucks so hard.

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Originally Posted by KalinOrthos

The weird thing is, I really like the SB changes to MCH. Before, it was a relatively methodical (read: dull)

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I was and am a MCH main from 3.0 and as much as I was attached to 3.0 MCH I'm inclined to agree.

I do question if a lot of the concern and "clunkyness" (I don't feel clunky at all, personally) is the low maximum potential damage output of MCH at the moment. It feels good to play, overheating accidentally becomes a thing of the past with practice and development of a general sense of what your heat is at so you can look away from it and even the big bad skill of Flamethrower is used in your opener and every minute after that potentially despite people saying it's an unused skill that they take off their bar.

So yeah, if MCH was a high end DPS at the moment I wonder if a lot of the clunk and identity issues people seem to have with the class wouldn't be as much of a forethought.

It has it's issues, but aside from potency and stronger overheating mechanics I don't see or feel the clunk, except maybe having to weave back on your GB after a Overheated Wildfire but I only started hating that after the thread brought it to my attention, heh.

Naturally we all have our own experiences with the class- but I fail to see a lot of the complaints about MCH short of potency issues.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

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For me it is more that the development of the 4.0 MCh kind of missed up on some areas of the new mechanic for MCH.


Starting with the general gameplay MCH is aiming for is that MCh is being developed to focus more on being a Range Damage Focus DPS Job as the opposite to Bard's gameplay being a Support DoT Focus DPS Job. MCh takes in less utility and more on damage but they kind of missed up on that part for obvious reasons.

Second is the utilization of the Heat mechanic as it is made to add on to MCH current management gameplay it had with Ammo back in 3.0/3.X while also serving to increase MCH damage. It does increase the damage by 5% and upgrades the basic 123 skill to Overheat skills but the Heat System could have provided so much more than just a extra 5% damage and upgraded 123 Skills. It also has added on some more restrictions for MCH to not go crazy with their ammo due to Quick reload reducing heat by 10 heat thus it become prefered to only use quick reload between 60 to 99 or if players can regain back to that 50 heat mark with Hot Shot.

Third is Hot Shot, what can I say it is a simple answer as Hot shot is just there to add on to what MCH has to manage being a 30 second 5% damage buff that adds 10 heat thus players will have to consider when to use it so they don't accidently overheat. There is no really much reason why Hot Shot is still with MCH other than to be extra management stuff for a extra 5% damage boost.

If anything breaks the "flow" of MCH, it's literally the heat gauge itself.


Ideally, you overheat for 10% extra damage on demand, preferrably lining it up with Wildfire and utilizing certain skills to manage ideal heat ranges besides.

What actually happens is a frequent start-stop micro-management of the gauge. Don't use your reloads under 50 heat. Don't overheat without the utilities to ramp back up as needed or it's a DPS loss. Manage ideal heat ranges (now impossible anywhere between 52 and 62. Reloads alone simply won't prevent it). The slightest mistake is costly, and mechanical interferrence (a la stuns, extreme caution mechanics, damage debuffs, etc.) can completely ruin Wildfire, and while that's always been a concern, combining that with overheating makes missed Wildfires even more punishing.

In BRD's case, there's almost no time you'd ever hesitate to use a skill. No worry of possible penalties for using what you've got. If you got it, use it, and keep that damage rolling. Songs are practically autopilot support on fairly short cooldowns, which you'll be rotating through anyways, thus keeping up the passive crit bonus, and most song mechanics working off your DoT ticks. Let me repeat that: Working off your DoT ticks. MCH currently has little that works together, and many elements that can work against each other (i.e. reloading under 50 heat stopping/slowing down heat generation, lengthy cooldowns on essential skills). As a 60 BRD, I've hit a Pitch Perfect crit nearly on par with Wildfire at 70. This hardly makes MCH unplayable, and I very much still love the job, but it really does highlight the disparity between the two:

BRD: passive party support through songs, ability procs/augments between songs, simplified DoT management allowing for constant damage uptime
MCH: conflicting skills, constant micro management to manage Heat gauge (less for optimal range, but more for prevention of poorly timed Overheat so as to minimize the damage penalties after) leads to awkward stops in execution, a full 10 levels of missing essential Heat gauge management for anyone between 52 and 62, and poorly implemented changes to things that worked fine as they were previously.

MCH currently works harder to achieve less and that's just not okay.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

MCH currently works harder to achieve less and that's just not okay.

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I don't see it really as hard work and I don't see an issue with classes having different difficulty curves because promoting identical workload inevitably thins the options for a class to have unique mechanics- I also don't believe that a class being more difficult is grounds for necessarily higher payout than its competition. I agree with you that MCH is a naked class before 70 that needs all of its tools and that needs editing, though I don't know how they'd do it personally.

I just don't think we have to castrate any semblance of difficulty with maintaining our heat to bring our "difficulty" curve in line with the other mana battery.

Edit: I use the word difficulty a few times which I feel is too stern a word for what I mean. Perhaps "alternate thought processes" for playing a class would be better heh.