EW 6.08 Machinist: Improvements that would not require a full design overhaul

Why?

I enjoyed Machinist in Heavensward and Stormblood, and I was very excited for Machinist in Shadowbringers.

Then, at first, I enjoyed ShB Machinist a great deal. But over time, the design began to grate against me more and more in ways that previous iterations of MCH did not.

As of EW, I find myself having lost all motivation to even play MCH at all... I honestly don't even want to think about the Job any more, because it just doesn't sound to my brain like it will be something fun to do with my time.

This makes me sad, because there is a lot about Machinist that I think is cool and full of potential. So I would like to try to highlight the issues that are currently making MCH unappealing to me.

Hypercharge is too frequent, making it painful and annoying

At first, I truly enjoyed Shadowbringers Hypercharge. But over time, that enjoyment wore off, and I began to find it more and more of a chore.

I think that in small doses, Hypercharge feels cool and satisfying. But in excess, Hypercharge begins to grate on my nerves and become a nuisance, as well as causing me genuine physical discomfort.

I think that there's just too much Hypercharge. If Hypercharge frequency was reduced, then I think that it would remain an enjoyable cooldown window for me.

Personally, I think that I would prefer less-frequent Hypercharges, rather than simplified Hypercharges. I like the rapid-fire feeling of Hypercharge, but the current pacing makes me get sick of it, like overeating a tasty snack, because it's not interesting enough to be consumed in such large quantity and remain appealing.

For example, if Hypercharge was a flat 60s CD, it would be spaced-out enough to not be so uncomfortable for me physically, and to not feel like such a nuisance mentally.

Then, Heat Blast could be made usable outside Hypercharge at a normal GCD speed, consuming Heat like it did in Stormblood. This would allow excess Heat to be used productively, while motivating Machinists to make sure to hold enough Heat to Hypercharge every 60s.

The single-target rotation is visually and conceptually bland and unappealing

Machinist has been re-purposed from the "gun-shooting Job" into the "FF6 Edgar Job". Personally, I am fine with this — while I can honestly say that I preferred the older style of Machinist conceptually and visually, I think that the "nu-Machinist" is good, too.

So, my complaint here is to just please, do Edgar "properly".

In other words: if Machinist is going to be all about using a variety of tools and gadgets in battle, then... I think that needs to be its core visual appeal. It should feel fun and exciting to use a huge toolbox of devices throughout the course of battle.

Instead, Machinist currently gets its tools segregated along ST and AOE. This certainly does have some accuracy to how FF6 Tools were used, and so it probably seemed like a clever idea on a design document. But I have to be honest, in actual practice, it makes Machinist ST feel dreary and disappointing for me.

The visual problem

From my perspective as a player: I have all of these cool buttons, okay? A machine-gun-crossbow... thing! A poison-blaster! A flame thrower! A shotgun!

...and then, I barely ever get to see them, because I spend the vast majority of my actual combat time fighting single targets: in the MSQ, in Trials, in Raids...

So, the only tools that I see, during the vast majority of my playtime, are: a big Mega Man-style Drill, a... thing?... made of chains?... or something?, and an ugly orange buzzsaw-shuriken (I think?) that lasts for half a second and is barely recognizable.

These are much blander and much more boring than the AOE variants, and it makes ST Machinist a dreary smear of beige/brown/metal colors.

It's just not exciting after the 10th time, much less the 100th time. And I have to be honest, most other Jobs don't have this issue for me: I feel pretty much just as excited to be Fell Cleaving or Blade of Valor'ing or Summon Bahamut'ing every single time, no matter how many times I do it.

So I think that Machinist is suffering an issue of being very dreary and unappealing aesthetically during its single-target cycle.

And I think that if you want Machinist to feel like playing a crazy inventor-tinker type, it needs to feel that way even in single-target, and it's currently quite lacking there compared to how wild and exciting Machinist feels during AOE packs.

Suggestions for visual appeal

I think that a huge way that Machinist can be made to feel more fun and more appealing in single-target is to make Auto-Crossbow, Bioblaster, Flamethrower, and Scattergun part of the single-target rotation.

For example, some action (Hypercharge? Reassemble?) could give Machinist a buff that significantly increases the effective potency of AOE actions, for 1 usage each.

In fact, you could extend this further, and have this also work in reverse: the same buff also causes Heat Blast, Drill, Air Anchor, and Heated Combos to affect all nearby targets for 1 usage each.

So, on single-target, the Machinist would have incentive to mix in uses of (and see the cool animations of) Auto-Crossbow, Bioblaster, Flamethrower, and Scattergun.

And on multi-target, the Machinist would have incentive to mix in uses of Heat Blast, Drill, Air Anchor, and the Heated Combo.

I think that this would give Machinist a much better sense of being a combat-engineer using a vast and colorful array of machines and tools, compared to the current bland, rigid separation between the two halves of the toolset.

Make Chainsaw more appealing

I'm actually not sure if this would this count as "simple". Perhaps a change like this is not even doable mid-expansion.

But... I still have to ask... why is Chainsaw so weird-looking and unappealing? It doesn't look like a Chainsaw, it doesn't look like the FF6 tool, and it's also really boring and uninteresting mechanically.

I would have a lot more visual fun with this tool if Chainsaw looked like an actual... chainsaw!

And I would also have more fun with this tool if it did something new and interesting with the rotation, such as capitalizing on Machinist's freely-mobile nature to give Machinist a tool that requires being close-range to the target in order to use it... which is what I would expect from a chainsaw. :confused:

This would also help add more variety and flavor to the often-stale-feeling single-target cycle.

Automaton Queen activation time

I find the animation delay before this pet begins attacking to be very annoying.

I would prefer if this summon responded and attacked immediately upon activating the action, rather than having to go through its "Team Rocket introduction" every single time.

To be honest, if you think that it's visually-important to show the robot contemplating the meaning of life while it forms from the aether, then you can keep the animation but just cause it to begin immediately doing damage upon summon. Maybe make it shoot lasers from its head while it forms, I don't know. Then, subtract that time from the current end to compensate, so that the robot does the same total number of attacks overall.

I just want the Automaton Queen key to feel more responsive, rather than feeling like I need to possess clairvoyance in order to make sure that Mr/Ms Robot ends up putting all its attacks inside raid buffs, or finishes all of its actions before some Alliance Raid boss once again decides to jump into the sky and become untargetable.

In the current state, I feel like the big prominent Queen HUD timer is almost useless in practice, because it's very hard to interpret how much of that time is actually relevant to me, and how much is just fluff robot-posing time.

Wildfire pacing

I preferred Machinist's rotational structure when it had a crisply-paced 60-second cycle revolving around Wildfire. I think that this was a more fun and satisfying overall design.

In the current design since Shadowbringers, I feel like the "odd-minute" windows are very bland for Machinist, and I feel like the most interesting points are still trying to make sure that Wildfire executes correctly.

I would like it if Wildfire returned to being a 60-second cooldown. I think that this would help make the pacing of the rotation feel better, and remove the bland and forgettable "odd-minute" windows that currently occur.

Party support?

I have to be honest, I used to quite strongly prefer that Machinist was styled like Black Mage and Samurai in terms of relying strictly on its own personal damage output as its contribution to encounters.

However, I am beginning to feel like this is not a comfortable design place for Machinist to be in when it has to share design space with two of the most support-oriented DPS Jobs in the game, and also when FFXIV's design has shifted very heavily toward being focused on coordinating 2-minute party buffs in heavy bursts of damage.

I think that at this point, I would probably be okay with Machinist being re-tuned to function as a party support like Bard and Dancer — which, honestly, would be somewhat of a return to Machinist's design roots, anyway.

However, I say this primarily in the interest of hoping for the design team being able to get a better grasp on how they want to balance Machinist in the overall game. I don't personally feel very strongly either way, but if it helps Machinist to better find its place in the Endwalker endgame design scheme, then I think that I'd be okay with it.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm trying to think of ways that Machinist can be made more comfortable, interesting, or appealing while using the building-blocks that it already has available right now.

I suspect that more ambitious rotational redesigns or overhauls are entirely out of the scope of a mid-expansion modification, and furthermore, I suspect from the developer commentaries on the topic that their energy and motivation for making any further extensive changes to Machinist is not really there any more.

So, I'm operating on the assumption that the basic idea of Machinist as it is now is not going to change. In that case, I think that's okay: I think that Shadowbringers Machinist is a reasonably-fun basic template. However, I would at least prefer it to become more fun to look at and use during prolonged single combat, and also to be more physically-comfortable to play in sustained usage.

Realistically speaking I suppose expecting a rework to one of the most popular jobs is madness, but otherwise I like hearing the suggestions even if most are terrible.

MCH just simply won’t be fixed with a few QOL adjustments, potency can be made to at least surpass its cousins but otherwise a rework of mechanics (not a total rework) is simply overdo. Heat is stagnate, aoe kit is scattered, MCH lacks that punch of catharsis all jobs have (no drill 1-3 don’t count) and turret is not only off key with targeting but is incredibly bland

It’s very clear the devs have no clue how to improve MCH and most if not all think MCH is as perfect as it’ll ever be given their presentation of the job in the past with such tired repetitiveness with a hint of cluelessness. So the job may be doomed to remain the same for many years, but it’s only a matter of time before people get bored and move on

Everything except Chainsaw are feedback that exists since Shadowbringer. And all of them were ignored for unknown reasons.
As you said, Shadowbringer MCH is a good base, a template that could be expanded upon. But said expansion never happened.

No one ever liked Hypercharge in single target content. Spamming the 5 same button is not skillful or fulfilling.
Why they did not reduced it to 3 GCDs is beyond me. It would've have made MCH easier, it would have made the job more flexible.
With the addition of chainsaw, a bit of flexibility was lost.

I fully agree with AoE and ST sharing uses being useless and a button bloat.
I'm sure if I kept statistics about my experience in ShB, I would have pressed Bio Blaster once for every thousand of Drill.
No one asks for a single target version of any skill, Guren, Double Down, Chainsaw... These skills works in single target and already have a fall off.
It's alright to have some of them, but MCH has too much tools exclusive to AoE rotation.

The Automaton Queen suffers so many problems from its first iterations, SQEX somehow added more problems onto it.
You could make a whole documentation about its problems and how expanding it would only make it worse.
It deserves a rework, they can't do anything with the Automaton without meeting limitation.

I don't think anyone is happy with Chainsaw either. It's good as a "Drill III" but the animation is completely unappealing.

Wildfire is too weak, too rigid for the rotation and is just an empowered Heatblast.
It needs a rework, it's a relic from HW/SB MCH. You could just make it a sticky bomb that detonates 3 seconds later, it would work the same but far more flexible.

Party support, I would be fine with MCH being pure damage if it would actually bring pure damage.
The problem is that MCH will always compete with DNC and BRD that have more survival tools.
If MCH isn't above DNC and BRD, there is no interest in bringing a MCH at all. A boost in party support or pure damage is needed so that MCH can compete.

The ping problem are really annoying and the feedback pretty much goes ignore, but since we're getting SOMETHING soon, I guess it's a good time to bump the years old issues. Doesn't really deserve anything more than a copy pasta because everyone who was in the camp of getting the issues solved has just completely stopped giving feedback. Me included. Anyways here goes the nth-time:

Hypercharge

There's an additional random delay that can make animation locks even worse: moving. The server is unable to process the movement update packets at the same time with attacks and sometimes this results in an extra +50 ms spike on top of all the problems mentioned in the OP. I recently had a discussion with a third party plugin developer that told me about this. There have been rumors about this before in the MCH community but it has been very difficult to test properly.

There are at least two third party plugins that help mitigate ping issues but I'm afraid that posting information about them is likely against the forum guidelines and I'd like to keep my account intact. This highlights another problem with providing feedback about the issues: providing feedback without breaking the Terms of Service is extremely difficult because of the technical nature of the problem. This isn't a problem with locations and ISPs, this is a problem with game code.

It's extremely disheartening to hear that Yoshida feels that there is not enough information about these issues. Personally I've been talking about them for at least 3+ years at this point. Here's a few threads and posts from my own history:


2021:
Problems in MCH design I hope are addressed for Endwalker

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

Ping dependency

It came to light that SE had been only testing jobs on their internal servers with 0ms latency and only realized the effects of ping once covid forced them to work remote. Stormblood MCH had really bad problems with this up to a point where we had 0.50s error of margin our main burst window. Shadowbringers improved this margin to about 1.25s on Hypercharge and 1.00s on Wildfire. Now that's an improvement for sure, but they also made the oGCD weaving problems much worse.

Hypercharge now requires mandatory oGCD weaving between 1.5s GCDs. That is a very, very tight margin of error for anyone playing overseas. Internally the game uses 0.60s regular animation lock timer to space out actions, that would leave 0.90s left for the oGCD animation before the next GCD. However, the game doesn't have a working ping correction system for oGCD weaving (apart from forbidden 3rd party programs), so the ping comes on top of the animation lock, screwing up players with slower connections. The limit of ping effects lies at 150ms, that makes the animation lock 0.75s long, which leaves 0 room for error between abilities during Hypercharge weaving. The effect of ping isn't quire linear either, from listening to people's troubles on the Balance MCH chatrooms, the problems usually start when people have ~100ms ping to the servers. MCH isn't the only one who suffers from tight oGCD weaving, although the effects on MCH are much more pronounced. The game desperately needs ping correction for oGCD weaving if it intends to keep its current design.

Other ways to solve the weaving and tight buff timer problem would be to use the Charge system we have for Gauss Round and Ricochet or a stacked buff system such as Bunshin on NIN that pre-determines the number of GCDs it lasts for. Alas, this was not addressed for the whole expansion even though the charge systems were introduced for all classes right at the beginning.

Another Wildfire related ping issue that emerged with Shadowbringers was animation length affecting GCD calculations. Wildfire only accepts GCDs into the buff potency after the GCD has fully carried out as opposed to how buffs and debuffs usually snapshot their effect before the animation even begins. I understand that this is to prevent ghosted or interrupted GCDs from counting in on the damage, but this has the unfortunate sideffect of making Drill and Anchor a very poor 6th GCD choice in Wildfire, because it makes the whole error margin over 0.30s tighter than any other GCD action, just because the animations are longer.

The devs really need to be more careful with how the networking issues affect overseas players and players in general who play with slightly worse connections than 0ms ping internal servers.

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2019:
Machinist latency issues need recognition akin to Ninja

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

I've been the main theorycrafter and mentor for the class on the Balance Discord for almost two years now, since early Stormblood. In my role, I answer a lot of questions and talk to a lot of people who have problems understanding the class, their rotation or general knowledge of the game.

During Stormblood, the most common topics regarding the difficulties with the class were:

"How much ping do I need to play this class?"
"My ping is too high, what can I do? Do I need to find another class?"
"Can you make a rotation for high ping people?"
"How much damage am I losing because of my latency?"

Endless questions of all variations about ping problems and they still get asked daily. The answer is often disappointing. The only solutions we have are using VPNs, accepting the sub-optimal performance or simply choosing another class to play.

...

Ninja's mudra problems were finally acknowledged but I'd like to firmly emphasize, with kind words, that Ninja is not the only class suffering from latency problems. Please give some recognition for Machinist as well for the latency issues the class has been suffering from for two years. The technology for solutions obviously exists with the new gcd actions, dance steps, animation changes and the charge system. Please, just do something to make the Hypercharge, Heat Blast, Gauss Round and Ricochet interactions smoother!

Thank you for your time and many thanks to the developers for the efforts in providing an ever better player experience!

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MCH 5.05 adjustments are totally out of touch with the game

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

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And ping problems got no fixes. How long has it been since we've been complaining about those? Where are the fixes for those issues? How long are you going to ignore actual problems with the class?

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Problems that remain unfixed:
- Heat Blast 1.5s recast doesn't allow enough room for latency for reliable oGCD weaving with current animation locks.
- Recast reduction of Gauss Round and Ricochet causes overcapping issues if weaving is avoided in Hypercharge because of previous problem.

...

- Drill and Air Anchor have increased delay in damage application which makes them hard to use in Wildfire.

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To make MCH more ping friendly wouldn't it be easier to...

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

Just cap how many times you can max WF and just increase the length by 3 seconds? Keep everything the same, then people can weave 2x in between heat blast and not have to worry about anything? The damage would be the same, they would just be able to get in 1 more attack thus solving the whole problem.

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Capping Wildfire with stacks and giving Heat Blast 5 charges would be the best change. Changing Wildfire alone won't fix the issue because the issues is with clipping during Hypercharge. Clipping is a dps loss regardless if you manage to hit your 5 Heat Blasts and 6 gcd Wildfires and it adds up as you have to repeat it often. The core issue is the 1.5s gcd and animation locks. It has to be possible to avoid weaving completely during gcds that fast if we want to fix the problem, so either the gcd needs to be longer or there needs to be another work around for avoiding the weaving. Giving Heat Blast charges would mean that you can do a couple, then do other gcds while weaving and spend more Heat Blast charges without weaving. More about the topic here.

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Media Tour MCH issues: MCH is now 4 times more punishing

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

Here's a compilation of all the possible fixes that we've come up with:
- Make Heat Blast available outside of Hypercharge at lower potency and without cooldown reduction effect.
- Reduce the effect of cooldown reduction to 10s or less (down from 15s).
- Increase the maximum charges of Gauss Round and Ricochet to 4 (up from 3).
- Increase the recast time of Gauss Round and Ricochet to 40s (up from 30s).
- Increase Heat Blast gcd to 2.0s or to an even slower speed (up from 1.5s).
- Increase Hypercharge duration to 9 seconds (up from 8s).
- Lower the animation locks on Heat Blast, Gauss Round and Ricochet to well below standard levels.

Lost potency should obviously be made up somewhere else. I would recommend adding it to Gauss Round and Ricochet.

Edit 3:
This post was written pre-release and some things changed for launch. We didn't get 6 Heat Blast Hypercharges, but pretty much everything else in the post remains relevant: 1.5s gcd and ogcd weaving is a problem. All the fix suggestions are still relevant and even more could be added if we wanted to do some changes to the core mechanics of the job. Hoping for improvements with the release of Savage, but very discouraged to be ignored once gain even with the amount of support these issues have got from the player base.

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The above post had over 100+ likes on the OP and the Reddit thread over 700 upvotes. These issues are wide spread.


5.0 Machinist Launch Feedback

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

We avoided the worst ping nightmare when we couldn't fit 6 Heat Blasts into Hypercharge, but the job is still about as ping dependent as in Stormblood. The issue can somewhat be alleviated by spending all charges before entering Hypercharge, but that's not possible in all scenarios. It just feels bad to play when you keep clipping with Heat Blast and weaving oGCDs.

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2018:
Usability evaluation of Machinist

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

The main culprit behind latency problems is Rapid Fire in combination with ogcd weaving. Rapid Fire lowers gcd to the floor value of 1.5s similar to RDMs' melee combo. This is fine on its own, but it becomes problematic when ogcd weaving is required during it. With animation locks being roughly 0.70-0.75s in practical gameplay with good latency that leaves almost zero room for lag. Double weaving ogcds during slow gcd is already too much for many players but this is far worse. Since this is a compound problem with the combination of Rapid Fire, Overheat and Wildfire, any of the following solutions would help alleviate the issues.

1. Reduce the required ogcd weaving during Rapid Fire
This would require combining abilities, such as reloads, direct damage abilities or wildfire+overheat, into a single ability or changing them to have longer lasting effects so that they can be applied outside of burst, like Hypercharge. Alternatively, a SMN-like approach could be used, locking some of the abilities during Overheat so that they can't be used. The downside is that the rotation might become more bland or feel boring with less abilities used.

2. Significantly reduce animation locks
I feel that this would be insufficient for most players, but it would retain the current structure and feeling the gameplay has. This would help alleviate issues with ability weaving but only if it was possible to implement fluidity similar to NIN mudras.

3. Change how Rapid Fire works
If Rapid Fire gave a damage boost through other means besides reducing gcd timer, it would allow for double weaving ogcds more easily. This would no doubt have a big impact on gamefeel, and the excitement of a fast burst rotation might be lessened.

4. Make Wildfire and Overheat longer so that ogcds are not required during Rapid Fire
This would give more ogcd space between gcds simply by extending the buff period. This would introduce an old problem with Wildfire, the difficulty of delivering the payload damage before phase changes or interruptions. It would require a mechanic similar to Deathflare or Eartly Star to explode the collected damage before the Wildfire timer is up naturally, a manual detonator.

5. Make Overheat and/or Wildfire work based on gcd count instead of timer
As suggested in the OP, this would alleviate issues with the tight timers and large damage loss due to latency, although the problems with ogcd weaving would remain.

6. Make Overheat timer not tick down before Flamethrower is interrupted.
This would get rid of the human error with the timing and actually make the Overheat window comparable to other buff windows. It would also allow Flamethrower to actually be used for AoE damage instead of a simple heat tool.

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Moderate Latency (150~) + Impacts of Double Weaving

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Originally Posted by SleepyNeko

After looking around the forums for DPS that is good with a high latency, these are the common responses:

SAM/BLM - Least affected
MNK - Moderately affected
RDM/DRG - Abit more moderately affected
NIN/BRD - Don't even try.
SMN/MCH - Didn't see any responses so no idea.

I'm getting into the DPS role and have raided with BRD/NIN/MNK/SAM. With 150 ping I cannot fit 2 ogcds most of the time without clipping into the next gcd.

So my questions are:
How much damage am I losing if I don't strictly follow the optimal openers and just try to spread everything out evenly (single weave everything), over the entire fight.

Second, are dragoons really that dependent on double weaving? I've looked at the CPM for DRG and it is fairly low for most fights.

Should I just play whatever class I want and single weave everything or change to a slower class like DRG/BLM? (All my friends are playing SAM already).

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MCH biggest issue?

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

Another personal gripe I have is forced ogcd weaving during Rapid Fire which is caused by the tight OH/WF window, it's cancer especially for high latency people. Ogcd weaves during Rapid Fire have zero room for latency (gcd anim lock + ogcd anim lock = 0,75s + 0,75s = 1,5s = gcd during RF) which is even tighter than double weaves during normal gcds (0,75s + 0,75s x 2 = 2,25s < 2,5s base gcd) and even those can be a pain for people with high ping.

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Been gone a bit: is MCH still crippled by latency?

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

I observed back when playing XIV some months ago that MCH was literally crippled by latency because it meant you couldn't get the maximum number of attacks off during an overheat if you simply lived too far away from the servers. Others confirmed this as well.

Is this still the case or have they actually fixed that?

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

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I’d wager the main reason why MCH has no changes or even QOL adjustments is due to the reception being near flawless. Even in the forums where critique and observation are law people often defend MCH for being well made job. In the eyes of the devs, MCH in 5.0 was a success and was partially the reason why SMN rework was dim. For every complaint about the job you’d get 10-20 compliments. Hell even now people still praise the job for not changing in EW. Imagine praising a job for not improving.

With so many jobs to juggle, any job with such a spotless record will definitely be ignored in favor of more vocal jobs like MNK, BRD, SCH, DRK, SMN and having said this even the loud critique of some jobs like DRK and SCH go ignored or worse, in SMN case. It’ll take a massive outcry to have any meaningful change to MCH and even if such a outcry exist it’ll most often than not take years to even evaluate if they dare to care about it, or it’s just easier to let it be.

MCH ping issue is one thing but it has peaked not in a admirable way but in a finite shallow pond way. There is nothing to add to the core without a major face lift, reworking of tools and assets, major mechanic additions or a total rework. QOL cannot carry the weight of rejuvenation