Ideas for More Ammo Utilization for MCH

I feel like this aspect of MCH feels incredibly under utilized. When we got previews, I thought the idea of ammo would have a much larger presence in MCH's gameplay, but instead it's only ever delegated to three abilities.

The flat 20 potency is just sorta...there. No other skill gains an additional benefit from ammo outside of that. How about something like...

Lead Shot: Spreads the DoT to one other target thats not already affected by it.'

Gauss Round: Gains an AoE effect on primary target.

Hot Shot: Heals you for 100% of the damage dealt.

Yes? No? Reroll?

Hot Shot looks juicy. We already have Ricochet, which is what you want Gauss Round to be.

While I'm perfectly fine with ammo as it is, I can get behind the idea of it adding a different effect to skills outside of the primary 1,2,3 rotation. Though I'm fully aware that it only works on weaponskills and not abilities, I'm going to include an effect for all the skills/abilities except for buffs/debuffs and the turrets......

Hot Shot - Heals you for 100% of the damage dealt. (As you said. We DESPERATELY need some form of self-healling that isn't potions.)

Lead Shot - No initial damage bonus, but DoT damage is 1.5 times. (I think it would be a bit over powered if it worked like an instant hit Bane as you suggest. As is though, the potency buff only affects the initial impact, which is pretty useless in the long run.)

Spread Shot - Same effect it currently has. (This works well because it's our basic AoE damaging attack, so raw damage is good here.)

Grenado Shot - Knockback on all targets radiating from the point of impact, and inflicts stun with a duration of 1s. (Good way to save yourself or someone else if a swarm of enemies comes by, or at the very least buy time for the tank to be revived in group content.)

Heartbreak - Inflicts 10% Physical Damage Vulnerability for 2s. (The point of this skill is to make finishing a target off a little easier, so why not reflect that more. The short duration means that you can only effectively get off one skill during this time however.)

Leg Graze - Inflicts 20% Slow for 5s. (Making the skill actually somewhat useful in party content where you have a tank that isn't losing adds left and right. Cross-Classed Feint does this as well, but it also has an immunity timer if used again on the same target, while this skill would not.)

Blank - Reduces aggro on target slightly. (The reasons for this should be self explanatory, but just in case, it's due to the fact that aside from enemies that are immune to knockback, in group content you're only using this if you need to keep something from killing you anyhow, and reducing your aggro would allow the tank to grab it back easier.)

Foot Graze - Refreshes the duration of Lead Shot already in effect on the target. (Direct attacks free bound targets. DoT damage does not. Might as well make sure your DoT on it can make full use of it's bound time.)

Head Graze - Increases effect duration to 4s. (This effect of this skill is pretty useless against most enemies, so why not make it more useful against the enemies we need it for?)

Wildfire - Attacks for the first five seconds of Wildfire accumulate 30% damage instead of 25%. (Simple damage buff to the skill, without making it too overpowered.)

Suppressive Fire - Removes Stun effect, but grants the player a weak regen effect. (Again, we need a healing skill. By removing the stun on this and replacing it with a regen, we also have reason to use it during dungeon runs where we normally can't without risking messing up the stun immunity on bosses.)

Gauss Round - Increases the player's critical chance by 10% for 10s. (Just another damage buff here, but one that could give us quite a bit of damage increase in the long run if we get lucky.)

Ricochet - Removes the AoE effect and increases potency by 20. (Basically this gives us increased damage, and means we can use the skill on an enemy surrounded by adds without it being a waste.)

Cross-Classed Feint - Does not consume ammo OR increases potency by 20. (This should honestly be the case already. It's pretty annoying that this skill doesn't get the damage buff from ammo, but still consumes it if you use it while ammo is up.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BannedatRegistration

Hot Shot looks juicy. We already have Ricochet, which is what you want Gauss Round to be.

---

Ricochet is literally the worse ability for me to use the way it is right now. It's weak on Faust, trash mob groups and trying to single out targets in PvP because of the 200 potency being split. And its' a 1 minute cooldown

I have no ideas... but these all seem amazingly fun. I DEMAND MOAR!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

Ricochet is literally the worse ability for me to use the way it is right now. It's weak on Faust, trash mob groups and trying to single out targets in PvP because of the 200 potency being split. And its' a 1 minute cooldown

---

So you're saying a 1 minute cooldown skill that does massive damage in single target situations, (still far less useful if even two targets are together, but on bosses or last remaining enemies it's amazing), is "worse" to you than Suppressive Fire that only stuns a target for 2 seconds, shares a cooldown with Head Graze, (same damage but with an effect that doesn't screw up the stun limits), and is guaranteed to do less damage per shot, (Ricochet is guaranteed 100 potency plus the 200 split potency means that even if you hit 200 enemies at once, you'd still be doing more damage to your target as you'd be at 101 potency). I mean I guess you can say that over the course of the minute that Ricochet is down you can use Suppressive Fire twice, which means that if you are in a situation with more than two enemies you can do more damage on a singular target over the course of the same time, but even then, you're still putting out more DPS over all with Ricochet.....

I don't get people acting like it's a bad skill. It does a nice hefty chunk of damage if your fighting a boss, particularly if you use it as part of your Wildfire rotation, (which you should definitely do if you're a level 60), and it still does that same amount of damage but spread out if you're fighting a group. How you choose to use it is situational, which is a big focus of the MCH class since we have such a variety of uses to our skills......

Also, I don't like Suppressive Fire since 99% of the time it's pointless to use over Head Graze, but it's a situational skill that allows us to react better if that 1% scenario comes up, and our ability to react to changing situations, is part of the way MCH is set up......

Now that I tried machinist in a2. Our aoe is a tp sink. I wish we had a chance of getting free spread shot or grenade.

Something like quick relaod, grenado, free spread shot. Or the other way around, quick relaod, spread shot, free grenado.

Similar to the 123 proc system but aoe. Using ammo. Even if reload gives a chance of a Tp free aoe skill, 70%.? 60%?

Another thing I mentioned in another thread, remove the counter on ammo and keep it on as long as it's not used. Similar to aetherflow stacks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gamer3427

...

---

I see Ricochet as a damage skill in a higher regard than headgraze/supressive, because you know, level 60 skill and 1 minute cooldown and all. I do more than just raid (and even then it's frustrating to use at times, such as ravana and floor 3), so yes, it's pretty frustrating to use in PvP when I want to single target down someone in the crowd or clearing trash packs in a roulette.

I'm not usually for these types of threads but that suggestion to Hot shot seems like a good way to impliment a self heal.

I like the Hot Shot idea, though I have to ask what would be the limiting factor of it? (Because there's no way they'd give us a spammable self heal). Perhaps an Ekpyrosis/Antivirus type debugging where the healing effect can't be applied again for a reasonable duration?

How about an ability to sacrifice some of your turret's HP to heal your own ? A "Recharge" ability with a similar (NOT SHARED) cooldown to Hypercharge?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

I like the Hot Shot idea, though I have to ask what would be the limiting factor of it? (Because there's no way they'd give us a spammable self heal). Perhaps an Ekpyrosis/Antivirus type debugging where the healing effect can't be applied again for a reasonable duration?

How about an ability to sacrifice some of your turret's HP to heal your own ? A "Recharge" ability with a similar (NOT SHARED) cooldown to Hypercharge?

---

The limiting factor is that you're dealing significantly less damage if you were to use up all your ammo on it. It's 120+20 potency and no comboing.

Honestly, if I had to change anything about MCH, it would simply be having Reload be our Barrage ability. You expend all 5 shots on one shot, greatly increasing its potency. Increase the cd to match Barrage and lower Quick Reload cd to be a global, ala MNK'ss Meditation. It slightly slows down our pace by having us QR after every shot but eliminates the RNG issue of shots. Remove QR potency increase. This still allows us to weave in OGCDs in between QRs while guaranteeing our combo goes off, finishing with a 5 ammo Reassembled Cleaner Shot for max burst.

I agree that I'd like to see ammo do more. As mentioned before, the preview made it seem like ammo would unlock hidden abilities on a bunch of different skills when all it really does is play the part of a band-aid for our RNG. It's like they got lazy and decided the original version was too hard to pull off. Heck, it may have been. But what we have now is just a bit boring.

they should give y'all and bards an offtool quiver/ammo box. the only thing that comes to my mind for them would be element aspected rounds but we have no element wheel to work with. im sure you guys can think of better implementation than me though lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nomad-phx

they should give y'all and bards an offtool quiver/ammo box. the only thing that comes to my mind for them would be element aspected rounds but we have no element wheel to work with. im sure you guys can think of better implementation than me though lol

---

That's one thing I miss from FFXI. Elemental weaknesses.