MCH in the new PVP

I'm a main machinist in PVP, so I can compare a little bit for that job between the past seasons.

On this season, I feel like MCH got a huge nerf, while it was not even considered an "OP job" before. Yes we do a little bit more damage now, even if our lb didn't benifit any boost while every jobs got their HP pool increased. Full Metal Field is a nice addition to the rotation, and everything else is mostly the same.

I'm not concerned about the damage, I usually ends up in the top 3 of any match I do, and it's not way bigger than any other jobs, so I don't feel the problem is here.

But, the problem is more how easy to kill this job is now, with no mobility skills and honnestly very few Cc. Yes, our shotgun got a small pushback, and yes we can stun if we analyse and happens to be with our Air anchor skill on the rotation.

Before 7.1, it was doable to a MCH to 1v1 any melee job for a while, and even win some of those fight. But now, it feels that every melee job got a huge buff of damage versus the few HP we got in out HP pool. Most of them can stun you, charge you, have mobiility skills and cc, while the mch got almost nothing. Kiting a melee is now almost impossible as, if you are just in 1v1, it will end killing you, because he got more Cc and more mobility than you have, and more HP for about the same amount of damage.

The HP increase on MCH was probably too low versus the damage of any melee dps. And maybe we deserve a mobility skill too, maybe not as much as a melee because they need to charge in to get in close combat, I get that, but, in any other game, a range dps can kite a melee dps. It feels like it's impossible to do that now.

I'm not talking about the case where you use all your CD and mana in a fight and get chased down, that's totally legit. I'm just telling that now, MCH vs any melee in 1v1 ends up dying easily.

I have arround 350 match this season, I don't pretend to be the most skilled MCH but I think I'm decent, and I almost never win a 1v1 fight in practice in wolf's den vs a melee. I manage to outplay one sometime, but it really feels like we have a huge disavantage since the patch. I was not struggling like that before the change.

So yeah, it feels like the MCH got nerfed a lot by making him too easy to kill. That's my opinion on MCH right now, I don't know if it's shared with anyone else...

I'm still playing it because I like it, it's just way harder to win and play... I am almost back in platinum too, I have hopes that this time the queue won't be dead when I'll want to play as a plat, last season that's what killed me from doing pvp.

I'm not sure about the dueling melees part to be honest. Before 7.1 they already hard countered ranged, and at best you generally could hope to peel one off you with help or punish one with your LB if you had it. It's always been a huge weakness for MCH and the turret really helps. If anything it's a strong tool now and gives you a window where the melee will be unable to really harm you a lot. The best answer is still to play with your team when playing ranged. If your melees aren't doing their jobs as frontliners and peeling for you or healers healing you, it's not really on you. You're not supposed to 1v1 as a ranged job, only DNC can, and after 7.1 jury's still out with all the damage potency losses the job has had.

There is some changes that I find good, like defining a bit more the role of each tool especially regarding the Analysis bonus where you have the buff guard piercing damage button, the stun button, or the vuln the enemy team before big friendly AoE, but the loss of heavy on bio just made it even more useless to analyze in my opinion.
The addition of FMF to control heat is good, but the main problem of the job right now in my opinion is that they literally turned it into a pve rotation, which lends very poorly to pvp. The amount of hits required for WF is crazy even if we have detonator to work with. It's basically nerfed our bread and butter old burst combo (scatter/tool) to oblivion. The LB has also been pigeonholed into an execute tool to punish people once they go out of guard and cannot be used properly for any burst setup, which may be good for the game idk, but very bad for the job viability.

Decision to remove the heavy from bioblaster sure was a choice someone made, yeah. Not like you had a tone of control over when you can use your CC since the tool rotation made it more opportunistic anyway.
I definitely feel like at this point the LB needs... some kind of buff at this point though. It was perfectly fine, good even, at launch. But HP pools have been increased multiple times at this point, and the pure single damage, no other effects at all LB just isn't keeping up anymore. Especially now that all other jobs that had self buff LBs before now get follow up attack(s), and shit like Samurai and Ninja's executes automatically scale.