Machinist feels like it got destroyed

Maybe not from a damage point of view, because we wont know that until 70, but we just lost a bunch of our oGCD skills that we were using to pop off with wildfire.

Raging Strikes
Blood for Blood
Hawks eye
Quelling strikes
Blank (does no damage now)
oGCD stun/silence that shared a cooldown now do no damage as a class role
Lead shot also got deleted, which was a dot that took some planning to figure out when it was optimal to cast

I liked playing machinist because it was a good combination of mechanical play and having to think about your next step. The heat gauge will be interesting but man I feel like from a button pressing perspective I'm going to be falling asleep. Especially because we don't have GB cast time anymore so it's going to feel like there's even MORE dead time between abilities.

Well the truth was it did need a revamp - it was the most unpopular class by far, and for a reason. I appreciate you may have liked it as it was, but personally now there are big changes I actually feel like trying it. Which is the whole point really :)

Umm.. I admit the same Fate met Bard, a lot of buffs disappeared.. And in fact for the sake of casual players things got "easier". I would still wait til lv70 til you unlock all your gcd/ogcd skills and then complain again. I didnt touch MCH yet, will do once I got bard to 70 but yea.

Honestly, MCH was supposed to have many attachments. In 3.x we only had Gauss Barrel. Now we get a Flame Thrower and some other nifty tools/abilities, rather than half of our skills coming from Cross-class and relying mostly on a one-trick pony Wildfire mechanic. Also the gun mage thing was annoying. Now MCH feels like an actual Machinist, using tools and devices and weaving in gun damage in the meantime, rather than 3.x MCH which felt more like a Gunner job 1-52 and then a Gun Mage 52-60.

Other jobs loose all that you have listed as well....

I like the changes to white mage so far >.>

Removal of class complexity is a general theme with this expansion. Not specific to MCH.

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Originally Posted by MomoOG

Removal of class complexity is a general theme with this expansion. Not specific to MCH.

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So you're saying this is the SE-version of WoW legion - dumbing down everything as far as humanly possible?

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Originally Posted by daedalusAI

So you're saying this is the SE-version of WoW legion - dumbing down everything as far as humanly possible?

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correcto mondo

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Originally Posted by Yoruichi4478

For me, and I'm toying with swapping to mch, is what they did to my beloved bard.... I am no fan of the ffxi bard, boring to even watch and was looking forward to no more cast bar on bard, but when I logged in this morning, all I could do was stare at the more utility based it is and I hate the proposed playstyle of song weaving and let the tears flow and started planning a funeral for a job I've been since ARR came out. I don't like being forced into a more support with some dps role. That's not me.
They even took away my Flaming Arrow......and removed the dmg Repelling Shot could do when used. SE can keep their bloody harp. I'm a dps.

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I don't even know where to begin here. You've been Bard since ARR came out but you didn't want to be a support with some dps? That's what Bards were from the very beginning! They had significantly lower DPS built in to make up for the massive support role they held. HW messed that up and anything that goes back in that direction is SUPER welcome. There are plenty of DPS options to take instead!

I mean, geez...Bards even used the healer Limit Break through all of ARR because they were a support class.

honestly i don't know whats gone thru their gawd damn heads but removing our only single target dot... that's pretty fucked up, and it makes mch feel so much weaker now..

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Originally Posted by Xdark93

honestly i don't know whats gone thru their gawd damn heads but removing our only single target dot... that's pretty fucked up, and it makes mch feel so much weaker now..

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That's odd. DoTs were probably our most invisible contribution to our DPS. It was there but it was never felt.

Only problem I have with it being removed is I keep trying to hit it after Hot Shot.

When they buffed bard in HW they took a step in the right direction. Too many ppl were dumping on bard on my server. Mch was the preferred job because it was the new shiny in the ranged support and bard was looked upon as weak, but still expected to bring it. And the job felt more of a dps than support tbh, you sang when u had to. Even my caster is salty about the change to Foe Requiem. I was fine being a dps with some support, not the other way around as you put it.

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

I don't even know where to begin here. You've been Bard since ARR came out but you didn't want to be a support with some dps? That's what Bards were from the very beginning! They had significantly lower DPS built in to make up for the massive support role they held. HW messed that up and anything that goes back in that direction is SUPER welcome. There are plenty of DPS options to take instead!

I mean, geez...Bards even used the healer Limit Break through all of ARR because they were a support class.

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Originally Posted by Yoruichi4478

When they buffed bard in HW they took a step in the right direction. Too many ppl were dumping on bard on my server. Mch was the preferred job because it was the new shiny in the ranged support and bard was looked upon as weak, but still expected to bring it. And the job felt more of a dps than support tbh, you sang when u had to. Even my caster is salty about the change to Foe Requiem. I was fine being a dps with some support, not the other way around as you put it.

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I couldn't disagree more with you. They went the complete and utterly wrong way with the class. The problem was is that they balanced HW completely differently from how ARR was balanced and it made the support that Bards brought nearly useless. With their support being unnecessary, there was no reason to take one of them over any class that could do more DPS than them. Turning them into a DPS that can match everyone else is what killed that class for almost everyone that mained them prior to HW(Like myself). I, like many who loved Bard, ended up going MCH because while they also had the 'gun/bow mage' thing going, their class was at least designed for it from the ground up. Bard got shafted badly with a forced clunky mechanic that ruined everything beloved about the class. And that's why they are thankfully gone back in the other direction.

But again, that wasn't my point. You claimed to be lover of Bard from the launch of ARR and they were 100% a support class from the beginning. If that's now what you wanted then you signed up for the wrong class. We have more than enough DPS-centric classes as it is. Please play another one of them and let Bard be the support it was always supposed to be. We desperately need some differences in roles again.

Man mch is actually fun now, so ya speak for yourself lol.

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Originally Posted by Xdark93

honestly i don't know whats gone thru their gawd damn heads but removing our only single target dot... that's pretty fucked up, and it makes mch feel so much weaker now..

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I tested it on the SSS dummies earlier. I went in blindly making up new rotations and I actually did more damage by a little bit than 3.x MCH with a studied rotation despite all the lost buffs and attacks.

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

But again, that wasn't my point. You claimed to be lover of Bard from the launch of ARR and they were 100% a support class from the beginning. If that's now what you wanted then you signed up for the wrong class. We have more than enough DPS-centric classes as it is. Please play another one of them and let Bard be the support it was always supposed to be. We desperately need some differences in roles again.

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I'm a lover of archer classes. The fact that there is only the wet noodle damage spoony bard instead of a ranger class is annoying. Despite the casting time and lack of mobility 3.0 was more useful. You could do damage when you wanted or needed to and you could CHOOSE to whip out the support when needed. I do like not having to stand still again but 30 second songs with a cooldown? It makes you play songs you don't even need to keep that 5% damage buff up. Not well done.

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Originally Posted by savageink

I'm a lover of archer classes. The fact that there is only the wet noodle damage spoony bard instead of a ranger class is annoying. Despite the casting time and lack of mobility 3.0 was more useful. You could do damage when you wanted or needed to and you could CHOOSE to whip out the support when needed. I do like not having to stand still again but 30 second songs with a cooldown? It makes you play songs you don't even need to keep that 5% damage buff up. Not well done.

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Eh, 3.x Bard had really really high burst damage and far more consistent (if not outright broken) AoE potential. Problem is, actually utilizing the entire Bard skillset to be able to pull that off basically turned Bard into the most difficult to optimize/most punishing job in the entire game with the largest skill gap between different players of the same job, for all the wrong reasons. And it was all because of 3.x minuet making buff weaving far more complicated than it should be. And I say this as a Bard that cleared A12S.


So far, what I've observed is that 4.x Bard is probably even harder to optimize than 3.x Bard, mainly because you need to be planning out your approach over the next minute rather than focusing all attention towards 90 second burst windows. So while it's harder to optimize damage, failure to do so doesn't result in nearly as much as a DPS loss compared to 3.x Bard.

(I've had the fortune of just queuing into random Lv. 60 dungeons with friends in order to hunt down new orchestrion rolls, and one of the things I've observed is that 4.x Bard in Saint Mocianne's Arboretum makes the honeycomb skip absolutely trivial. Paeon after the first honeycomb, dot everything as the party rushes to the second honeycomb (and dot THAT too with full Paeon stacks), then swap to Minuet and enjoy constant fully powered up Pitch Perfects to burn it down. I was able to pull off six fully powered Pitch Perfects before the honeycomb straight up died to my barrage.

Oh, also Bards can speedrun the hell out of low level dungeons. I ended up in a Tam Tara normal in leveling roulette, and I realized I had invigorate AND Tactician available as role skills for that dungeon, which meant I could Quick Nock AoE spam like crazy, in a dungeon where only one other job has the ability to AoE at such a low level (Black Mage) and they can't spam it nearly as much as I can. The tank did huge pulls once he realized how much TP sustain I had, and we burned the place down in like 15 minutes, even with the healer being completely new to the dungeon. To give you an idea, I could Quick Nock for a minute straight without running out of TP, and that's actually a low estimate when factoring in how much TP Tactician actually restores over time.)

EDIT: On second thought, Machinist can pull that off too.

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

EDIT: On second thought, Machinist can pull that off too.

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Yeah, I was about to bring up MCH. The first thing I did when I set up abilities was to make sure I had invigorate and tactician within easy reach. On the MCH side it is nice they have access to second wind now as well. But yeah, as a Bard I think this redo is going to take a bit of getting used to. I've been maining Bard since ARR, but might have to see if MCH is now closer to my play style. I'm going to give it a go either way.

As someone who hasn't even hit HW content yet, I'm looking forward to not having to relearn all those 50-60 tricks and rotations and just learning the new way as the only way.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

As someone who hasn't even hit HW content yet, I'm looking forward to not having to relearn all those 50-60 tricks and rotations and just learning the new way as the only way.

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until the next expansion, at least. ;)

Honestly, the job felt kind of incomplete until I hit level 64, then suddenly it came alive and if anything is more fun that it's ever been

Arbitrarily hitting half a dozen "Adds damage" cooldowns every minute is not good gameplay. Buff bloat was an issue in particular.

I haven't actually tried out the new MCH, but I liked it prior to the changes, and every change I saw was okay in my eyes, so I'll definitely give it a spin once PLD and NIN are done with.

I plan to judge again at 70. I stayed with bard all this time as I was an archer first in 1.0, loved the class, just a dps class then, and since the job didn't branch into anything but bard I stayed with it, partly hoping they'd intro Ranger or a dps side of the class form and they could turn bard into "watching paint dry" with songs but they haven't, not yet.. I feel so naked with only a single buff and it's only a 10% buff. Poor mch, though, they lost Raging Strikes entirely, and Lead Shot.

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

Umm.. I admit the same Fate met Bard, a lot of buffs disappeared.. And in fact for the sake of casual players things got "easier". I would still wait til lv70 til you unlock all your gcd/ogcd skills and then complain again. I didnt touch MCH yet, will do once I got bard to 70 but yea.

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Originally Posted by Yoruichi4478

they could turn bard into "watching paint dry" with songs

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Bravo! Bravo!

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Originally Posted by Yoruichi4478

Poor mch, though, they lost Raging Strikes entirely, and Lead Shot.

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Using raging strikes and pressing Lead Shot always after Hot Shot wasn't exactly riveting gameplay.