Machinist Skill Speed

I'd like to hear all of your opinions on skill speed vs crit vs det. Personally I feel more comfortable with a ss>crit>det build. With all the bis for skill speed your gcd is reduced to around 1.97s, and I was wondering if it is more viable to have this than to jump on the crit bandwagon.

I'm no MCH, but I think your dps would profit more from crit than SS considering the auto-attack of your turret isnt affected by it. Having too much ss also mean you are having less crit and det, meaning they are hitting less by default. Crit is also very good on MCH considering the fact that you have a Auto-crit move much like Dragoon's Life Surge. So I think you would benefit more from having more crit than SS for base damage, but also for Wildfire. In your opener, if you have a dragoon near with Battle Litany, your crit rate is going through the roof, and critting everything in your Wildfire means you get pull a really huge amount of damage.

But again, I'm not a MCH.

Crit is the greatest factor to wildfire damage.

I'm sitting at 578 skill speed (2.41gcd) and ideally, I'm not overshooting my refresh on hot shot/leadshot or getting oGCDs inbetween the period where I don't have hot shot for that inbetween GCD. I;d imagine having higher SS would cause you to overshoot the refresh by one tick on lead shot. Other than that, I haven't seen any official statements on patch notes saying that skill speed affects turret damage (only spell speed in regards to summoner pet).

I thought ss did affect your turret. Then again, I could be wrong. However, every 30 s I am reapplying my leadshot dot, which benefits from more skill speed. I only use wildfire about 3 times in a fight. It IS a lot of damage, but I figure the extra skill speed would make up the damage from wildfire on cooldown while I'm getting MORE procs per hit plus the extra dot ticks. And with TP not being an issue for machinists on single target, it just makes more sense to stack as much skill speed as possible. Yes , crit weighs in with my 100% crit ability (reassemble), but that's a 60s recast.

Imo, Skill speed > other secondary stats. I'm still wondering if crit or det should be following it though. If anyone has any parses of skill speed build vs crit build please do not afraid to show me/prove me wrong.

I would say, you should probably build for a higher crit or have priority on crit. Otherwise do a good balance on Det and SkSpd. Not to low on both but not too high to the point where you have TOO much of one. Now if this was 2.xx series, I would say Crit Det beats anything else but then Heavensward happened lol.

When it comes to gear i think Priority should be like:

1.Crit + Det
2.Crit + SkSpd
3. Acc + Crit
4. Acc + Det
5. Det + SkSpd
6. Acc + SkSpd

Course this can change if you are in need of Accuracy o3ob

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Originally Posted by HM01

Imo, Skill speed > other secondary stats. I'm still wondering if crit or det should be following it though. If anyone has any parses of skill speed build vs crit build please do not afraid to show me/prove me wrong.

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Skill Speed boosts your DoT damage (not tick frequency), but MCH is so very dot independent compared to BRD. On top of that, having a lower GCD means you're probably going to be overshooting the refresh on your hot shot and lead shot, or let it drop of completely and have a period of time where you're weaving oGCDs without hot shot. Don't forget that det also boosts your overall damage, as well as crit damage (alongside crit rate). Rapid Fire is also a period of time where skill speed does nothing because it becomes a flat 1 second GCD.

I've always had better results with crit>det>SS on BRD, and going into 3.0, crit has been buffed comparatively to det (which got nerfed to not affect autos), while someone has done Skill Speed comparisons on BRD DoTs and find very minute increases.

As a MCH myself, I find that crit and determination are far more useful than skill speed. Yes, you can get slightly faster attacks from skill speed, and yes it does boost your Lead Shot damage slightly, (which is your highest potency attack aside from Wildfire, once it runs it's full course). However, as your argument is in part in favor of the buff to Lead Shot, you have to remember that each individual tick from DoTs has a chance to crit. This means that by boosting your crit rate, you have a higher chance that any or all of the DoT ticks from Lead Shot will score a critical hit, any one of which would make up for the minute amount of damage that you would gain as a whole from skill speed, while determination on the other hand is a boost to all your skills and not just Lead Shot. Don't get me wrong, there are benefits to boosting your skill speed, but I certainly wouldn't boost it over crit and determination.....

I've been wondering a bit about SS on MCH too. Isn't there a soft cap to reach so that you can squeeze one more GCD into your wildfire ?
Getting to this cap then going to the crit might be the best choice, if it does exist >.>

Det and crit increases dmg on all skills, even the Dot ticks. SS increases dmg on DoT ticks.

So even if SS increased DoT dmg more than crit + det, you still get more dmg increase to other places along side the lesser increase to DoT ticks. So from that perspective I'd say crit + det beats SS on any class (excluding "soft cap" for SS to get 1 extra GCD out during certain skills for example Warrior + berserk)

If mch had say 3-4 DoT skills, it could possibly be different case. But with only 1 I don't belive SS being better choise considering dmg output

There might be a certain number for skill speed you might want to reach(on bard and dragoon it's ~600) - and similar for accuracy. After that though crit and det all the way really.

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Originally Posted by AniCelestine

Det and crit increases dmg on all skills, even the Dot ticks. SS increases dmg on DoT ticks.

So even if SS increased DoT dmg more than crit + det, you still get more dmg increase to other places along side the lesser increase to DoT ticks. So from that perspective I'd say crit + det beats SS on any class (excluding "soft cap" for SS to get 1 extra GCD out during certain skills for example Warrior + berserk)

If mch had say 3-4 DoT skills, it could possibly be different case. But with only 1 I don't belive SS being better choise considering dmg output

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Even if mch had 4 dots it wouldn't change. Take a look at smn, the job gets the most out of the SS dot dmg increase out of all the jobs, +SS affects pet attack speed, and it's still smn's lowest weighted stat.

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Originally Posted by MrCookTM

Even if mch had 4 dots it wouldn't change. Take a look at smn, the job gets the most out of the SS dot dmg increase out of all the jobs, +SS affects pet attack speed, and it's still smn's lowest weighted stat.

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I grew bored of smn in 2.x(kind of totally forgot we had it in this game really now) so I hadn't looked up at all what they want for stats etc, but that even further proves why SS wouldn't be the best stat for mch if considering dmg output.

Although it seems like MCH is DoT INdependent, Lead Shot is still one the most potent DoTs in the game. 490 base potency (588 with +20% dmg trait). Strongest DoT in the game is Chaos Thrust which is only 12 more potency. It's our strongest single damaging attack not counting Wildfire/LB.

Skill Speed on MCN is pretty bad compared to DET/CRT.

There is no minimum SPD for MCN either. It would take enough SPD to reach a 2.1s GCD to get an additional attack into Wildfire otherwise you can comfortably get your normal rotation into WF with the base GCD of 2.5s, as well as minimal Hot/Lead shot clipping.

While the Turret is unaffected by SPD, by both damage and/or frequency of attack, it does seem to have a larger increase from the DET stat compared to other jobs/pets. Crit will be your bread and butter for hitting those high Wildfire bursts.

To summarize...avoid SPD where possible as it is the lowest weighted stat for MCN, by a significant amount.

Also if you can picture it and how the Ammo system works on a static timer, the quicker your shots then the higher % of shot you will have without additional ammunition. If you are doing harder hitting slower shots, then you will have a higher % of ammo loaded shots, which leads into harder ammo procs etc. This also plays into the how the job plays due to the overall number of oGCD skills it has on quick timers which are completely unaffected by the SPD stat.

On average 40% of MCN skills are completely unaffected by the SPD stat, which includes the Turret. So do you want to use stats that are working 60% of the time, every time? or 100% of the time, every time?

ALWAYS take crit and det over ss. Not only is it worth the least in stat weights, it will also make your weaving so much worse, and mch has the most ogcd to weave.

Ok so I parsed myself with a skill speed build (ilvl 206) and a crit build (209) on a dummy. Roughly enough for 2 wildfires.. so about 2 minutes 10s each. Seems like the skill speed build did more dps.. about 40 more dps @ around 1048. My gear isn't the best though. I will post my gear and stats soon.

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Originally Posted by HM01

Ok so I parsed myself with a skill speed build (ilvl 206) and a crit build (209) on a dummy. Roughly enough for 2 wildfires.. so about 2 minutes 10s each. Seems like the skill speed build did more dps.. about 40 more dps @ around 1048. My gear isn't the best though. I will post my gear and stats soon.

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You should parse 3-4 minutes for MCH. It has such high initial burst that it takes a while to even out. Lucky crits during the initial WF will really skew your comparison.

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Originally Posted by HM01

Ok so I parsed myself with a skill speed build (ilvl 206) and a crit build (209) on a dummy. Roughly enough for 2 wildfires.. so about 2 minutes 10s each. Seems like the skill speed build did more dps.. about 40 more dps @ around 1048. My gear isn't the best though. I will post my gear and stats soon.

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Did you ever do further testing?

The unproven stat weights show SkS to be pretty weak but the more I have the smoother my gameplay gets. Which leads to me actions being done.