Machinist: The "Selfish" Physical Ranged that is not allowed to be Selfish

So, there's still a lot of problems with Machinist, and going into this expansion, I was thinking that it'd be able to actually become a job that can be big damage like its brother and sister BLM and SAM, since they've been left in the dust since Shadowbringers.

While BLM and SAM feel satisfying to play, just looking at MCH on paper feels...bad. While we consider Mobility to be a tax for Ranged, I feel like after they changed the job in Endwalker, they were missing something important - or should we say, a lot of things.

- Auto Crossbow is garbage. The fact that you also now have both Double Check and Checkmate with the SAME POTENCY AS AUTO CROSSBOW and now AoE fall-off makes this attack rather underwhelming. It requires 5+ enemies to even be a gain potency-wise compared to the Resets that Blazing Shot does. An AoE should not do that when we already have AoE abilities on jobs that do not go above 3+; also, can we please allow Auto Crossbow to reset Double Check and Checkmate even a little bit? It's jarring when you're so used to single target and on Auto Crossbow you don't get resets for your burst...

- Flamethrower is still extremely lackluster. 80 Potency for a channel that doesn't even generate Heat anymore for us since they scrapped that idea after Stormblood. 80p/s is ok, but you'd rather do anything else - like Scattergun in AoE. Flamethrower's only use now? AoE, and even in that department it sucks. For one, being a channel that doesn't even deliver on damage and gets outclassed by your basic AoE ability(that also generates HEAT!) shows that this should not have survived to the next expansion without a serious rework - even just a return to old Flamethrower with Heat generation would've been great.

- The one I will really drive home is Damage. MCH, in hindsight, has no buffs of any kind to allow the party to deal more damage. What MCH brings in terms of utility is the 15% DR and a 10% Damage Reduction. That's it. How is it not allowed to deal a large amount of damage when you have jobs like BRD/DNC that run a support niche with their constant suite of buffs and utilities? MCH has none of that. I can easily look at VPR and tell you how much utility it has: None, bar Feint. While Dismantle is essentially a good mitigation tool, it does not help MCH play into what its job is supposed to FEEL like. It's supposed to be selfish because it has very little raid utility compared to its betters, BRD/DNC, which provide more damage overall for their team; why is it not allowed to be selfish when this is an expac that could definitely have allowed it to be?

If anything, I wish that the developers could put some sense into MCH as a job because right now? Along with the rest of the Physical Ranged, MCH is truly bottom of the barrel when it comes to picking which flavor of "1% All Stats Buff" you want.

MCH hasn't ever been good since it was just Gunbard, and it likely never will be good again soon as Squeenix despises anything thats not a melee.

For the love of big boy numbers, can WF crit, dh or direct crit please? Its sad seeing its damage number be a limp noodle.

Big damage is a problem shared by the whole rphys roster. MCH is not faring worse than other rphys jobs (even it has had low bumps putting it dead last here and there in the game's history since shb). Pedantic note: ACB is not a gain at 4 targets, it just turns equal to blazing shot. The gain happens at 5+.

But I do agree with the feeling. If anything I'd like them to give us some battery AoE options. Even if just adding rook as an AoE option would go a great way to make it suck less. And it's not like it's going to make the job OP in AoE when you take a look at pictomancer or summoner...

Job not only needs a rework but all Physical range should have some sort of structure of Risk and Reward..

How you can balance range job with 0 casting?

I am not saying that Phy range should have a cast but the current state are just bad

How would people feel about mch becoming the only phys ranged with cast times?
Since bard/dancer have buffs, their low dps is more justified
but giving mch cast times (not every ability mind you) would ideally allow them to tune mch around sam/viper/blm levels
i personally think the ranged phys tax is stupid as hell, but they seem adamant about keeping it.

I'll repeat myself like a broken record but MCH changes in DT are fantastic. What is lackluster is what has not changed.
Blazing shot feels great to land, Checkmate and double check are cool, Excavator and Full Metal Field are very pleasant.

But we're still with Wildfire not doing aoe damages, Automaton Queen I'm not going to list all its issue again, Flamethrower is as fun as an emote, we still flip for no reason...
And of course as you mentioned, MCH suffers an identity crisis when it's a pure DPS in a role classified as support DPS.

I think DT MCH is the best iteration but held back by its old and outdated tools.

For the MCH selfish approach to actually have them much higher in the metrics (talking about Rdps here), they would have to drastically increase the complexity of the job, pretty much the same relationship from BLM to SMN, or else nobody would want to take DNCs or BRDs in the phys ranged slot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

For the MCH selfish approach to actually have them much higher in the metrics (talking about Rdps here), they would have to drastically increase the complexity of the job, pretty much the same relationship from BLM to SMN, or else nobody would want to take DNCs or BRDs in the phys ranged slot.

---

Yet in terms of complexity, BLM's only layer of complexity is Thunder DoTs, Timer upkeep, and Positioning being its mainstay with hard cast GCDs greater than your Recast. MCH doesn't have those drawbacks, but also doesn't bring anything forward to the table like the other two ranged do - and if I remember someone stating on the forums a while back, complexity =/= damage. VPR in particular takes the cake on that one.

Also in hindsight, rDPS isn't the main metric you should be looking at for MCH - we should be looking at nDPS. That is where we need to gauge MCH's problems from in regards to damage output, since the other two ranged rely on the rDPS metric to matter due to the nature of their buffs they provide. As said before, the only utility that it brings to the table is Dismantle - a 10% Damage reduction that's essentially Reprisal. How does that amount to anything considering survivability is something that we already see plenty of in current Tank/Healer kits?

Mch seems in a decent spot. per tradition, it will probably be drip fed 10-20 potency boosts every major patch until 8.0.

I wish they'd let us have Automaton Queen out full time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Yet in terms of complexity, BLM's only layer of complexity is Thunder DoTs, Timer upkeep, and Positioning being its mainstay with hard cast GCDs greater than your Recast. MCH doesn't have those drawbacks, but also doesn't bring anything forward to the table like the other two ranged do - and if I remember someone stating on the forums a while back, complexity =/= damage. VPR in particular takes the cake on that one.

Also in hindsight, rDPS isn't the main metric you should be looking at for MCH - we should be looking at nDPS. That is where we need to gauge MCH's problems from in regards to damage output, since the other two ranged rely on the rDPS metric to matter due to the nature of their buffs they provide. As said before, the only utility that it brings to the table is Dismantle - a 10% Damage reduction that's essentially Reprisal. How does that amount to anything considering survivability is something that we already see plenty of in current Tank/Healer kits?

---

But relying on rdps to matter is DNC and BRD's premises anyway, if you compare them with ndps, MCH will go way ahead, as shown in the data we have so far. A fair comparison must be all of the damage contribution in mind.

The whole 'selfish' approach to MCH seems much more encapsulated in the rphys bubble, since their rDPS values are similar. In the end, all boils down to whether or not you trust your whole team (BRD) / dance partner (DNC) to pull their weights or not 'outsourcing' your full dps contribution (MCH).