MCH AoE level 89 and below

With the increase incentives for contributing to leveling roulettes in the form of cracked clusters. I was beside myself in joy when I saw this Adventurer in Need (DPS).

It took me all of 2 minutes into the dungeon when I remembered why I divorced myself from 50/60 and leveling roulette.

Machinist pre 70 AoE is rubbish. Quite awful. There is no good to be found here. This is the dark ages of MCH AoE. A WHM sneezed in my general direction and passed me on DPS
Let's dive right in:

1. The potency of spread shot was nerfed (potency decrease from 100 to 80)
2. Our Bishop Turret was nerfed ("Flare" damage fall off while keeping it's 3.5s recast)
3. Hypercharge was nerfed (A full 30 potency off of an already nerfed Bishop Turret)
4. We have no Damage over Time for multi dotting
5. You will NOT have Flamethrower
6. You PROBABLY don't have Ricochet
7. You may or may not have Hypercharge
8. We completely lost Grenado Shot

A recommendation list? Do I have to do one of those? I guess I'll try

1. Roll that damage out of flamethrower and back into our already existing kit

   It feels like our kit was weakened in general to accommodate flamethrower.
   I don't want to make that sacrifice when FT itself is also married into being a heat management tool! I don't do polygamy Yoshi-p!

2. Rebuff hypercharge

   That nerf was too much! Why does Bishop Turret have to be nerfed twice for one crime! This violates my fifth amendment rights!

3. Do something about our TP management

   We can't restore TP using quick reload, and we can't use promote between every pull. Make ammo let Spreadshot not use TP please. I'm dying of thirst in the desert sands of "not enough"

I want the fun placed back in my AoE. Or give me an AoE that actually isn't terrible. At the risk of angering lots of anti-gun activists. Put fun back into gun!
With our current pre 70 AoE (a topic for another time) the only thing we're whittling down is our sanity

MORE IMPORTANTLY THAN THE ABOVE QUESTIONS!

Level 89, but you're complaining about something from two expacs ago? Bruh. Git with the times, MCH is top 1337 deeeeeps!!!!

Joking ribs aside, I... kinda avoid doing low level dungeons due to lack of FLAMETHROWER.

And oh god the typo! It says 89!

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

It says 89!

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Is this the point where I say 'Use your post 80 tools already and #gitgud' while wearing hipster glasses? :3
/tease

I hope my post 80 tools include a time machine so I can undo my mistakes before they happen

At least your raid spot is safe.

Red Mages, Blue Mages, Yellow Mages, Purple Mages, Grey Mages...

What's a Black mage gotta do to get away from all these technicolored FREAKS.

You're using Flamethrower to do AOE damage?.......

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Originally Posted by Pence

You're using Flamethrower to do AOE damage?.......

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Well given just how high that damage is in two pack pulls AND the fact that you can snapshot it at 1 second left in an overheat and ride it out until GB on... Yes?

Yeah, I noticed this big hole in the revamped MCH toolkit when the new skills were shown, and I'm sorry to say that after trying it for myself it was just as bad as I expected. And frankly this worries me more than raw number tuning - because potencies can be rebalanced easily for endgame raiding, but to fix this weakness requires another big revamp that won't likely happen till 5.0.

You kind of have to ask yourself, if I pick MCH, "Do I really want to be miserable in roulettes for the rest of the expansion?", and I'm not feeling very optimistic.

It's not just about dungeons too, just to go on a tangent for a bit. Buffing our numbers is one thing, but not having tools like Lead Shot is a serious structural weakness in the job's design. It means you auto lose to bards in any fight (savage raiding included of course) with targets to multidot; I don't see them making machinists significantly better at single targeting to compensate, so all this means is that you're worse at something for absolutely no payoff.

#RemoveSyncAbilities

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Originally Posted by Myon88

You kind of have to ask yourself, if I pick MCH, "Do I really want to be miserable in roulettes for the rest of the expansions", and I'm not feeling very optimistic.

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It ain't that bad. Your roulettes don't take an exceptional amount of time by any means and rotationally nothing changed on trash packs except for primarily using cone aoe instead of circle aoe.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

"Do I really want to be miserable in roulettes for the rest of the expansions", and I'm not feeling very optimistic.

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Spread shot = roughly 1.3k HP a hit every 2.5 seconds.
Flamethrower= roughly 1.1k HP per second, totalling to roughly 2.8k HP a GCD. Both numbers are fully buffed, including ammo for Spread.

I'm perfectly comfortable with my roulettes.

This was also at ilvl300.

Just embrace your inner pyro! ψ(｀∇´)ψ

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

#RemoveSyncAbilities

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I will second, third, forth, fifth this. And take this with me on the campaign trail to get elected for my local office.

Even if it's better at 70, having your one of your best heat generators and one of your best AoEs tied to the same ability on a 60 second cooldown is a bit backwards design. It feels like having to choose one or the other is a bigger punishment than it should be. Heck, as much fun as I have with MCH now, I feel like my mechanics are constantly fighting with one another. I genuinely hope I'm not the only player who feels like the entire job just feels underwhelming. Which sucks, because, like I said, the job is really fun to play.

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Originally Posted by Pence

You're using Flamethrower to do AOE damage?.......

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70 MCH AoE goes something like this:

>start at 50 heat
>Hotshot
>Hypercharge
>Spread shot till overheat
>rapid fire+ammo once overheated
>weave a WF and Ricochet
>clip the last second of your overheat with your Flamethrower
>Overdrive

Now hope that everything is dead, otherwise you are left with spamming spread shot for pitiful damage. Also, pray that
a)your tank doesn't pull mobs away from Bishop
b)your tank doesn't pull mobs away from Flamethrower
c)you don't stand in an AoE during your flamethrower
d)you have enough time till the next pack so your turret can regenerate

Oh and somehow all that feels like it does less damage than good ol' Grenado Shot/Lead Shot spam.

Yeah I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss grenado shot

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

Yeah I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss spreadshot

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Grenado Shot, you mean?

And hell, as bad as my Lead Shot uptime was, I would take it over the gimped Bishop we have now.

I just want spreadshot to have it's potency increased if we can't have our dot anymore. I barely even tick on the enmity meter as a lower level machinist and where I used to pull all kinds of hate in dungeons below thirty I now have to fight for it. All in all pre-62 MCH is very unsatisfying to play for me.

It's pretty unsatisfying to play for everyone

Meh the only time the Bishop should be used is when you face 3 or less enemies and when you want to apply a massive AoE Vulnerability debuff. Anything else it is best for rook if the mobs are HP heavy targets but Bishop is still good for those weak HP enemies 4.0 dungeons now seem to love dropping on players during dungeons.

it is disappointing but for now make the best of things until they adjust MCH hopefully for the better.

I know. I'm just bringing the predicament to attention in the hopes that the more people talk about it, the more likely it will be to be addressed.

Inevitable 4.05 notes:

We felt that Flamethrower and Spread Shot were doing too much damage, so we are adding damage fall-off effects to them to bring MCH more in line with other DPS.

Additionally, we've increased Bard's Raining Death potency by 100. Because why not?

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

And oh god the typo! It says 89!

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We limit break already? I cant find Maat.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

It ain't that bad. Your roulettes don't take an exceptional amount of time by any means and rotationally nothing changed on trash packs except for primarily using cone aoe instead of circle aoe.

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You might not think that trivial content like roulettes is worth being annoyed over, and that is your prerogative, but that is the premise of this entire thread. It's undeniable that our AoE capabilities have taken a hit in most roulette content (the vast majority of which is below level 70); spread shot got nerfed from 100 to 80 potency, and bishop got given the flare treatment with damage falloff.

The other more important change, and the one that makes me wonder how you can say 'rotationally nothing changed' is that we lost lead shot. We lost an entire element of decision making to do with AoE, which was deciding when to stop multidotting things with lead shot in order to start AoEing proper with spread/grenado shot. Pulls often take some time to set up before the tank finds a comfortable spot to stop in, and lead shot gave us a way to use that dead time to pre-dot everything with lead shot, so the whole group was ticking with that juicy 480 potency's worth of damage before you even began to AoE. Even for pulls where combat proper begins immediately, you still had to do the math in your head whether investing a GCD on lead shot was worth the tradeoff compared to the more immediate payoff of spread/grenado shot.

Now, losing that depth to the gameplay is one thing, but it also represents another hefty nerf to our damage throughput, as lead shot used to be one of the highest potency/GCD and potency/TP skills in the game by far. Multidotting is so strong that you should feel the loss of that damage output very acutely across the entire spectrum of downsynced content.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Spread shot = roughly 1.3k HP a hit every 2.5 seconds.
Flamethrower= roughly 1.1k HP per second, totalling to roughly 2.8k HP a GCD. Both numbers are fully buffed, including ammo for Spread.

I'm perfectly comfortable with my roulettes.

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I agree with you that at level 70 in dungeon-type content, machinist AoE isn't all that bad. While we are no longer as good at multidotting many separated targets as bards, our burst AoE on clumped targets is still somewhat decent in short timeframes (ricochet got a buff too which helped). But as the title of the thread says, it's below-70 content the OP is mainly talking about and I agree with him that it is a miserable experience with our current toolkit.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

You might not think that trivial content like roulettes is worth being annoyed over, and that is your prerogative, but that is the premise of this entire thread. It's undeniable that our AoE capabilities have taken a hit in most roulette content (the vast majority of which is below level 70); spread shot got nerfed from 100 to 80 potency, and bishop got given the flare treatment with damage falloff.

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I never said we didn't take a pre 70 hit. I said it's not a big deal and that rotationally we didn't have to do much different now. I don't do as much damage as I used to in 60 dungeons- what I am saying is that it wasn't hit hard enough for me to consider never doing my lower level roulettes- or rather not any less consideration than when the cap was 60 anyways.

Well that's your opinion and I respect it - but I'm just saying for me the difference in performance is enough to make me just play bard instead. Otherwise for this whole expansion in roulette content I'll be thinking "Gee, this could be going so much faster/smoother if I had a different job stone equipped", and it would be true - I'm not prepared to put up with that.

If you're implying you'll be using bard for low level roulettes, good on ya. I'm glad you're sticking with MCH otherwise.

If you're implying you're leaving MCH for BRD overall because of leveling roulettes, I'm sorry you're settling overall to save yourself that precious minute. Also in this case, I recommend many different classes- all of which are faster than bard in dungeons.

On your last point, no there really isn't - especially not now that bane got hit with a nerf as well. There's something to be said about a single job being good in multiple things being a small bonus as well. Less hassle managing different gearsets, not having to put up with playstyles you don't particularly enjoy, and so on. Hey, maybe the only glamour set I like is a ranged one!

It would be one thing if machinist had something else going for it right now - endgame raiding performance, PvP viability, anything really - but sadly none of them are the case. I'll be happy to re-evaluate that judgment once new information comes in, but rest assured until then I'm sticking to my bard for raiding and the rest of the game as well, it would be irresponsible for me to bring a machinist.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

hat I am saying is that it wasn't hit hard enough for me to consider never doing my lower level roulettes- or rather not any less consideration than when the cap was 60 anyways.

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Was an easy enough decision making process for me. When you roulette with friends and the tank is keen to do super pulls. You start to outright feel it in your soul. Given the solo nature of the new incentives. I feel it that much more when I have to marry myself into a dungeon for 30 minutes. It's terrible!

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Originally Posted by Myon88

It would be one thing if machinist had something else going for it right now - endgame raiding performance, PvP viability, anything really - but sadly none of them are the case.

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I'm going to preface this with, "I don't personally know cause I don't PvP", but from my understanding, MCH is incredible at PvP right now. Every single person in my FC that PvPs, any PvP shout convo that happens, a few actual relatives of mine, even certain people on this forum, they ALL say MCH is pretty great/OP. So maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I can't imagine I would see it so much if it wasn't.

More on topic though, I fully planned on never using roulette as MCH again when I get something else to 70. Low level MCH just isn't really fun.

I don't want to derail the thread with a PvP discussion on MCH, but I have had the opposite impression. They were extremely strong in 3.x PvP and overshadowed bard there, BtE was very easy to setup and hard to predict, while Barrage was the opposite - it telegraphs itself very obviously and can be shut down by crowd control/line of sight. Now in 4.0 the situation is reversed, there is no easy way to proc BtE's cc requirement in PvP with the loss of foot graze, and what's left of machinist's PvP burst is lackluster compared to bard's toolkit with far more instants and on-demand burst.

Bear in mind there are many people playing PvP for the first time now so experiences will be skewed - lots of easy kills and inefficient play that you would not normally see - you can go on a killing spree with almost any job as long as you're better than your opponents.

Stun Gun still sets up the now-double damage of BTE, but also forces an Overheat. Beyond that, we traded our big burst for constant, sustained pressure. Not terribly bad.

And as far as PvE, someone mentioned it earlier, but we really are fighting against our own kit more often than not. Stormblood made several jobs a bit easier to understand, but it's convoluted the hell out of MCH giving it questionable new skills, and a gauge mechanic that works against itself and the player more often than not. I love the job and will keep it as my main, but right now, I almost don't want to play anything on my main, and just go SAM instead. At least that kit just works, and works well.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

snip

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I'd like to elaborate on this a bit, but I really do like the rework from 3.x MCH, which was honestly a just a very methodical flowchart class. The addition of heat management makes for very engaging gameplay for me, but by adding that 10 second timer after Overheat, MCH now feels more punishing for bad play than it does rewarding for good play. Our kits and gameplay could work, you can see how it could work, but the job is mired in conflicting mechanical choices that it's a constant fight with itself just to be able to pull not even comparable numbers to bard, our brother class with more tools. Most of us aren't even asking bards to be nerfed to the ground, just that we get brought up to a competitive level so that those of us who are looking for statics don't get instantly refused because of our job choice.

You nailed the fact that we have many conflicting mechanical choices within our kit, and that really does more harm than good currently. I would ask SE to look at both the old 3.x WAR and the 4.0 BRD, even both SAM and RDM as prime examples of kits that simply work well within themselves, and reapproach MCH with that kind of mindset to improve it and make it work FOR, and not against itself.

To be completely honest. I'm okay with the kit. The only thing that's like a bit iffy for me is weaving Gauss Barrel Back on. I hate it

Why use flamethrower...

Because it does damage to multiple things at once

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Originally Posted by Heimdalgc

Why use flamethrower...

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Quickly heat up to 90 in your opener, heat up to 90/100 for ideal wildfires depending on which wildfire you're on, snapshotting overheat damage at 1 second left to ride you through 10 seconds of no GB during AOE trash packs.

Aoe should be buffed