Fixing MCH gameplay at 70

Finally got both MCH and BRD to 70 and it kills me how brainless BRD is, but that's beside the point. My main is MCH.

MCH revolves around Wildfire every 60s, and the optimal Wildfire at 90-95 Heat (or Overheat if Stabilizer/Hypercharge is up) consists of 2 Cooldowns and 2 Heated Clean Shots (with a Slug Shot to proc the 2nd Clean Shot). i.e.:

Hot > Split > Slug > Split > Flamethrower 3-4s > WF > Cooldown > Clean > Slug > Clean > Cooldown blah blah.

The problem with this formula is by the time it comes for WF, the countdown on Clean Shot is 1-2s, so any kind of mechanic that delays WF (much less during WF) will screw this up. In addition, you have to stand completely still 3-4s channeling WF.

So that's 5-6 GCDs of time every minute where we have to be completely uninterrupted for our setup, then another 5 GCDs of Wildfire where god forbid you get interrupted or mindjacked or don't know the fight. And if you do, and it happens to be on an overheat/hypercharge/stabilizer set, that's a bunch of 2min CDs down the drain.

So in the middle of all this here's where all my frustrations stem from:
That 5GCD setup + 5GCD WF every minute.
1) Bosses need to stop removing control. These new forced march moves are awful for this. It's amazing when I have a full overheat WF set up on Halicarnassus and she cheats with a forced march. Maybe it's scripted? I don't know yet, but if I face her I should be able to shoot her.

2) I should be able to move with Flamethrower. I assume it's a technical issue but it's a fairly poor one. There's no logical reason why shouldn't be able to move with a flamethrower, just reduce our movement speed or something. It's terrible getting screwed out of heat because of needing to dodge.

3) Combo shot duration needs to be permanent or highly extended to ease up on the set-up time. 10s is brutally tight. 15s can buffer some reasonable mechanics especially if Flamethrower gets interrupted. Permanent until used if ammo is used is perhaps asking too much but why not.

Other things:
1) Overload is laughable. Boss transitions are so rare and even more rarely last less longer than the 18s you need to make the turret loss break even. In dungeons trash packs are typically 10s apart so it's not even helpful there. The repair duration needs to be lowered to 20s or let you pull out the other turret with a potency reduction.

2) Overheat needs to do more damage. If you're going to "punish" MCH at least make it worth something more than barely better than nothing. Either that or Overheat's lockdown needs to be less than 10s.

3) Gauss Barrel needs to automatically replace when overheat is done. There's never a reason to have it off once you learn it, and replacing it is unnecessary busywork.

4) Ammo needs to stop messing with heat below 50 mark. An overheat mistake is a mistake, but it shouldn't take 10s cooldown+5GCDs of spamming Hot Shot to recover from said mistake.

5) Finally, these tools, especially Cooldown, need to be accessible earlier on while levelling. MCH levelling experience was bad in HW, I can't even imagine how lousy it is now. You can't get people to level a job by making the levelling experience as janky as possible.


and on a more general note,

6) Duty Action buttons need to stop eating full OGCD slots like a potion. They need to happen outside the OGCD just like hitting SCH Fairy buttons or just short so it can be chained.

Here's my issue with the established rotation going around out there:

You're using the best heat management tools within a single cycle, and all to prevent a 10% increase from Overheating (to avoid the -5% penalty after). I agree the overheat penalty is a bit too long, but I utilize Flamethrower to quickly regain 50 heat (as opposed to using it to push to 90 after stopping the shots from doing so with Reload earlier - that seems redundant), instead of having to rely on Hot Shot x5 due to both Stabilizer and FT being on cooldown. I get that it's designed for not Overheating as much as possible, but I plan for and push my overheats based on having BS/FT available and I've seen good results from it.

I'm not pretentious enough to say "This is the right way to do it and all else is wrong!" It's worked for me, and effectively minimizes my downtime after overheating. From Susano to V4 today, I've really had little issue downing anything. MCH needs some fixing, yes, but I think we all might need to rethink how we're using the tools we have currently.

Okay. Having 90 heat gauge for wildfite confuses me lmao.
Where do they say for each 10th gauge there is a dmg boost?
Like having heat gauge on 90 with reload for wildfire instead of 50. Do 90 do more dmg than 50? Or what
Have tried both 50 and 90. And i still do same amount of dmg.
I have always thought that heat gauge above 50 gives extra dmg boost + heated shot. And not every 5th/10th gauge up too 95.

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Originally Posted by Johaandr

Okay. Having 90 heat gauge for wildfite confuses me lmao.
Where do they say for each 10th gauge there is a dmg boost?
Like having heat gauge on 90 with reload for wildfire instead of 50. Do 90 do more dmg than 50? Or what
Have tried both 50 and 90. And i still do same amount of dmg.
I have always thought that heat gauge above 50 gives extra dmg boost + heated shot. And not every 5th/10th gauge up too 95.

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90 heat is the sweet spot for how your Cooldown ability will interract with optimizing the damage within the wildfire without dropping below 50 while getting off your 1-2-3's in there as well.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

You're using the best heat management tools within a single cycle, and all to prevent a 10% increase from Overheating (to avoid the -5% penalty after). I agree the overheat penalty is a bit too long, but I utilize Flamethrower to quickly regain 50 heat (

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Heating with FT from a reset to 0 is, among a few things 10 seconds of -5% potency, a loss of 30-40 potency per step in your combo, and a 380 potency loss in the time you use your flamethrower to reheat. It's never going to be worth it to overheat without Barrel Stabilizer. This isn't an opinion, it's hard math.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

(as opposed to using it to push to 90 after stopping the shots from doing so with Reload earlier - that seems redundant)

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You've used reload at this point to setup your wildfire. You get two cleans,a slug, two overloads, ricc, and GR. It's necessary. Any other order of operations wastes DPS

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

I'm not pretentious enough to say "This is the right way to do it and all else is wrong!" It's worked for me, and effectively minimizes my downtime after overheating. From Susano to V4 today, I've really had little issue downing anything. MCH needs some fixing, yes, but I think we all might need to rethink how we're using the tools we have currently.

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Nobody is saying that MCH is so unviable that you can't do damage or clear (admittedly easy) Savage Trials. They're saying the damage to effort ratio is eschewed. For those who have become proficient is achieving the closet to max pps possible, we see the the difference as clear as day. I saw a MCH who never used Riccc, Reload, Reass, or GR in a single Wildfire and who's damage was poor. Naturally it worked for him. And that's fine. But that has nothing to do with the current perceived dilemma

Don't think I haven't tried it. Looking at that rotation that was put out drove me insane with how impractical it seemed. And trying it myself, unless there's some wildly different variable here, produced worse results for me at least. Having both BS and FT on cooldown, if you accidentally overheat, hell even if you do it purposefully, you're boned. However having one or the other to almost always utilize helps to minimize downtime, which also effectively allows you to plan and use Overheating instead of working so hard to avoid it. I'm not saying just push an overheat whenever and use one of those to bail you out, but know that you have them, be in a position to fully utilize it, and once you HAVE to deal with the penalty, ramp yourself back up as quick as possible. A few seconds of FT (again this is back to 50) is much faster than Hot Shot x5.

If I weren't hitting numbers comparable to what's been deemed capable and proper (as the job currently is), I would certainly question what I do. And for the sake of ensuring I wasn't somehow turning down or missing something important, I tried it out. Over and over. And results were simply poorer for me. For this reason, I remain rather objective about it.

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

You've used reload at this point to setup your wildfire. You get two cleans,a slug, two overloads, ricc, and GR. It's necessary. Any other order of operations wastes DPS

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That's one of the ones that left me questioning it. You've used reload to proc your wildfire, then use Flamethrower to generate the heat the shots would have done anyways had you not used Reload prior to. Similar, but of course different, I reload AT 90, use my shots to proc what I need for Wildfire, then push the overheat with Hot Shot (at the same time refreshing it) and use what I got. It's different from what's been established, but it works. I wish I could elaborate, truly. But the results there in my face show me it works.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Don't think I haven't tried it. Looking at that rotation that was put out drove me insane with how impractical it seemed. And trying it myself, unless there's some wildly different variable here, produced worse results for me at least. Having both BS and FT on cooldown, if you accidentally overheat, hell even if you do it purposefully, you're boned. However having one or the other to almost always utilize helps to minimize downtime, which also effectively allows you to plan and use Overheating instead of working so hard to avoid it. I'm not saying just push an overheat whenever and use one of those to bail you out, but know that you have them, be in a position to fully utilize it, and once you HAVE to deal with the penalty, ramp yourself back up as quick as possible. A few seconds of FT (again this is back to 50) is much faster than Hot Shot x5.

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I think a portion of the misunderstanding is that you're assuming that if you're not at 50 heat for 10 seconds after overheating then you're at a disadvantage which is untrue -if you're intentionally overheating at the right times and the bonus damage you got from your overheated wildfires puts you at a net gain in damage despite returning to non Heat Enhanced 1-2-3 for 10 seconds.

Another misunderstanding I think is being has is that if you accidentally overheat and are left without BS that using flamethrower to quickly return to 50 heat is the best course of events potency wise when it's actually better for your damage to return to 50 heat through through 1-2-3 and naturally occuring hotshots and exempting your Quick Reload til 60 heat.

Flamethrower has a few uses but quickly generating 0-50 heat is one of those situations where the intuitive thought behind it isn't backed up by the math.

Just throw us MORE dps and fuck the rest, dont need it dont want it...just dps nothing else

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Don't think I haven't tried it. Looking at that rotation that was put out drove me insane with how impractical it seemed. And trying it myself, unless there's some wildly different variable here, produced worse results for me at least. Having both BS and FT on cooldown, if you accidentally overheat, hell even if you do it purposefully, you're boned. However having one or the other to almost always utilize helps to minimize downtime, which also effectively allows you to plan and use Overheating instead of working so hard to avoid it. I'm not saying just push an overheat whenever and use one of those to bail you out, but know that you have them, be in a position to fully utilize it, and once you HAVE to deal with the penalty, ramp yourself back up as quick as possible. A few seconds of FT (again this is back to 50) is much faster than Hot Shot x5.

If I weren't hitting numbers comparable to what's been deemed capable and proper (as the job currently is), I would certainly question what I do. And for the sake of ensuring I wasn't somehow turning down or missing something important, I tried it out. Over and over. And results were simply poorer for me. For this reason, I remain rather objective about it.


That's one of the ones that left me questioning it. You've used reload to proc your wildfire, then use Flamethrower to generate the heat the shots would have done anyways had you not used Reload prior to. Similar, but of course different, I reload AT 90, use my shots to proc what I need for Wildfire, then push the overheat with Hot Shot (at the same time refreshing it) and use what I got. It's different from what's been established, but it works. I wish I could elaborate, truly. But the results there in my face show me it works.

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I assume you are talking about the opener that was presented on the reddit thread. Yea, if you took the time to practice it you would realize how nice it is to have all your CDs line up. Its not impractical at all, just requires you to know what you are doing. You should never accidentally overheat. That problem should be remedied after an hour or so of hitting a dummy. Using FT to heat yourself is the worst possible option DPS wise. Going from 10->50 heat is 2 gcds and 2 to 3 autos. At a minimum you are going to lose roughly 160 potency. Then you are playing catch up with heated skills. As dumb as it sounds, mathematically 5x hot shot is technically the "best way" to get yourself back to 50 heat if you accidentally OH. I don't think people really grasp how bad FT really is. Its quite the damage loss, which is why we set it up to be used to push from 70h/80h to 90h/100h. Use it as an oGCD to set up WFs. There is nothing wrong with not liking something, but to call it impractical is a little silly. With the way we set it up on opener your WF is thrown up literally as soon as trick attack goes up. If you are doing any other opener, especially the ones that throw up WF super fast you are losing 1~3 GCDs of trick, that is bad. Trust when I say all this stuff has been HEAVILY discussed and talked about.

Also I am not sure where you are getting that we don't OH from. We OH on every odd wf after the first (3rd 5th 7th). When ever barrel stabilizer is up. OH without BS is just a straight damage loss. This is not even an arguable point.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

That's one of the ones that left me questioning it. You've used reload to proc your wildfire, then use Flamethrower to generate the heat the shots would have done anyways had you not used Reload prior to

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I don't think I can explain anything better than Epiher has done

almost no reason to overheat.
Flamethrower and Overdrive are terrible skills just remove overdrive from your bars.
Don't bring mch into raids and don't allow them into raids they WILL Slow down Fights. this IS ONLY STATING THE FACTS.

Fixes honestly potency boosts across the board Flamethrower and Overdrive need to be changed and the overheat mechanic needs to be worth it.

and the problem I'm more fearful then anything is Square Fixing mch sooner then later. i mean the excuse they gave mch players during early HW days was learn to play the class(this was never the dam case it was just Doing terrible dmg coupled with Losing Dps when having to move and nothing proc etc) currently Mch IS in a Far worst state then it was doing HW time. like I've said earlier they will slow down fights. play mch during susano Ex saw enrage quite a few times(even with dmg lb3) swapped to another class NEver saw enrages ever again and it comes down to players not shocking the raid.

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Originally Posted by Shhikasan

almost no reason to overheat.
Flamethrower and Overdrive are terrible skills just remove overdrive from your bars.
Don't bring mch into raids and don't allow them into raids they WILL Slow down Fights. this IS ONLY STATING THE FACTS.

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The only Fact is that I will outdps the average DPS in any fight. I don't care if I have lowest possible damage. If I can perform at 90% and beat everybody's 75% I'm fine enough to get myself into a raid. I won't just eject a MCH without cause if the content is clearable, and I expect everybody to similarly hold up to this standard.

I'm curious about what other MCH are doing during dungeon pulls. Any tips? I usually start with FT until OH and then hot shot+reload, rapid fire and spread shot spam with a quick reload in the middle. Then I use Barrel Stabilizer and repeat every time I can use BS. Am I doing something wrong?

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

I'm curious about what other MCH are doing during dungeon pulls. Any tips? I usually start with FT until OH and then hot shot+reload, rapid fire and spread shot spam with a quick reload in the middle. Then I use Barrel Stabilizer and repeat every time I can use BS. Am I doing something wrong?

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You can start with Hot shot 1rst, while you are on your way to get to melee to Flamethrower :) And maybe even one Spread shot just before using Flamethrower which is an oGCD.

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

The only Fact is that I will outdps the average DPS in any fight. I don't care if I have lowest possible damage. If I can perform at 90% and beat everybody's 75% I'm fine enough to get myself into a raid. I won't just eject a MCH without cause if the content is clearable, and I expect everybody to similarly hold up to this standard.

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your 90% is still lower then their 75%

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Originally Posted by Shhikasan

almost no reason to overheat.
Flamethrower and Overdrive are terrible skills just remove overdrive from your bars.

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MCH is in a bad place- nobody argues this. Want to know what makes the matter 3x worse? People like you spreading misinformation like this. Trying to make the worst out of a bad situation.

And a quick FYI- if you're hitting enrage on either primal then you were playing MCH poorly. There's no reason to ever enrage with "decent" gameplay. You'll be so far in the green enrage wise with the DPS MCH can put out that if you're not meeting the checks that's completely on you and not even the "bad class".

2 things i would have liked to see change was that Gauss Barrel don't drop off after an over heat.

And that the PVP mch's reload get's moved over to pve whereby we no longer use TP in our attacks but instead on quick reload.

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Originally Posted by Shhikasan

your 90% is still lower then their 75%

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Not according to the parses I'm looking at

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

MCH is in a bad place- nobody argues this. Want to know what makes the matter 3x worse? People like you spreading misinformation like this. Trying to make the worst out of a bad situation.

And a quick FYI- if you're hitting enrage on either primal then you were playing MCH poorly. There's no reason to ever enrage with "decent" gameplay. You'll be so far in the green enrage wise with the DPS MCH can put out that if you're not meeting the checks that's completely on you and not even the "bad class".

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ya cause last time people let it slide nothing fucking happen to mch for 7 months.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

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From my experience there is two types of gameplay style a MCh can go for at level 70 being....

1) Manage heat between 50 to 100 gameplay to keep a steady Overheat skill use while using cooldown to keep it between 50 to 99.

and

2) The Burst where players keep building to 100% for a full burst moment with wildfire constantly.

Though as of now I think there could be more things added to MCH Heat mechanic such as Cooldown turning into a stronger skill on Overheat or provided 100% chance of 123 combo proc during Overheat.


Then there is Hot Shot, being that it feels more like a annoyance than actual part of MCH mechanic. You basically have to keep track of two things due to this being Hot Shot timer before it ends every 30 seconds and also your heat guage so it does not over heat too soon when the Hot shot buff is about to die out on its 30 second mark. They could add that every heat adds addition seconds to Hot Shot buff such as 5 heat adds 5 seconds to Hot Shot buff.

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Originally Posted by Shhikasan

ya cause last time people let it slide nothing fucking happen to mch for 7 months.

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You misunderstand. Intentionally spreading misinformation because you're mad at your class is detrimental. MCH wasn't "bad" for 7 months because Shika Naito "let it happen". SE isn't going to take what you say to heart, but people coming for MCH information just may which is why you saying rubbish like ignore your skills and remove them from the bar is detrimental.

Unless you have some ploy to actively reduce the average dmg MCH put out across the board in order to get SE's attention, then you have nothing to gain from spreading falsities- so don't give me this "7 months of nothing".

there is no ploy but your few remaining avg mch aren't great considering it already takes huge amount of effort just to do the poor dps it does now. Hell I haven't even seen a lvl 70 mch outside of myself. plus avg players aren't that very good What would make anyone hosting A pf go Oh I want a random Mch i don't know in my party a class Known to have the worst dps currently or just get one of the many brds who does everyhing a mch can do but better.

As for FT, I agree with an earlier comment- I don't see why I can't move while using it. At a reduced speed? Sure. But it's frustrating when every little movement I make wastes the ability.

I find myself skipping OH on WF entirely, only pushing it when additional burst is necessary. I know this gimps my DPS a bit, but it just feels more fluid than the current meta rotation.

The lockout and removal of GB after OH feels too punishing to be worth the 10%, imo. Instead, why not just reset heat to 0? Is that not punishing enough? Ultimately, I'd like to see less focus on a perfect WF and more into sustained dmg, maybe by buffing the potency of Heated Shots while between 50 and 100 heat.

If anyone has any tips to ease the transition between the old and new MCH that I may be missing, I'm all ears. But please be gentle, I'm already thinking about dropping my most beloved class for BRD, and I really don't want to be discouraged further. :(

Agreed. MCH is terrible at the moment