MCH and Patch 4.05 or The Problem with not leaving well enough alone

Goodness gracious these changes. Hopefully a MCH far more talented myself will shed light. But these changes are just. It just

1. This DPS increase didn't end up being much of a DPS increase at all
2. Can overheat every wildfire, yet harder to overheat
3. Cooldown less per wildfire cycle resulting in a net DPS LOSS between wildfires
4. The DPS gain is marginal at best and a LOSS at worst
5. Change to heat management has made the job BORING
   and on to some other things
6. It takes even LONGER to optimally AoE because it takes twice as long to overheat and by proxy means it takes twice as long to start flamethrowing on the last overheat tick.

Please for the love of all that is holy revert these changes yoshi-p. I'd rather be frustrated with my mechanics than be bored to death doing what feelslike less damage or marginally more damage. Out of hours of hitting a dummy I barely averaged my old norm of ~3.6k. Seriously what is this? Never would I ever have thought they would make this job have a game feel that is substantially worse.

I only just picked up MCH since getting it to 70 to sit down and work on my rotation, but it feels so horribly clunky that I don't even want to play it now.

The wildfire window is so small and oGCDs seem really unresponsive I'm constantly missing things in the tiny amount of time wildfire is up while trying to madly mash everything in time. This is made worse by if overheat wears off while you're pressing a heated shot it interrupts it to change to regular shots.

My wildfire feels really weak, I'm only hitting 8.4k on average, I don't know what it's meant to be at but that definitely doesn't feel right compared to the 21k's pre-SB.

The heat gauge feels really counter-intuitive because it feels like it stops me from using ammo when I want to fill it. This makes me feel like our combo should just be made 100% proc at this point and ammo just be the potency increase.

Hypercharge feels like it should have had its CD reduced to 60 seconds to match basically every other CD, especially since it's pretty much the only support MCH offers now compared to everything BRD gives.

Trying out the susano ex dummy in average ilvl i303 gear I can only get it to around 10%, I'm sure I still need a lot of work on my rotation, but since stormblood was supposed to be simplifying rotations I think they failed horribly on that front with MCH.

100% agree shit is so slight its barely noticeable. woop de freaking do We do 3% more dmg and can overheat every wildfire. doesn't make up for the dps lose when you don't have a gb on honestly over overdrive is still a terrible move overheating is still terrible.

Friggin monkey's paw. I should have known better.

I don't get what they are so afraid of in regards to MCH? It is far from being able to break the game ... These changes feel like they are just swinging a stick and hoping it "fixes" something.

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Originally Posted by Shhikasan

overdrive

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If there's one thing I'm actually happy about with the MCH changes it's overdrive. It really has a good kick to it now.

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Originally Posted by s3ystic

I don't get what they are so afraid of in regards to MCH? It is far from being able to break the game ... These changes feel like they are just swinging a stick and hoping it "fixes" something.

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Eh the impression I get is that a lot of people were complaining that MCH was "High Risk/Low Reward" so they decided to fix half of that. Ironically I haven't overheated by accident this much since launch LOL. I keep expecting quick reload to pull me back to 85 Heat.

Alas, it was more of a mix up of how we play instead of anything substantial in what we needed- which was damage.

I don't really think SE knows what they want MCH to be as of now.

MCH design currently focus a lot on self restraint but usually a Gun Job would not have to have self restraint when they go full gun ho on a enemy and unleash a barrage of bullets. Then there is the question of technology being the usual theme for Machinist but so far 4.0 update focus a lot on the Gun over technology.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

I don't really think SE knows what they want MCH to be as of now.

MCH design currently focus a lot on self restraint but usually a Gun Job would not have to have self restraint when they go full gun ho on a enemy and unleash a barrage of bullets. Then there is the question of technology being the usual theme for Machinist but so far 4.0 update focus a lot on the Gun over technology.

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At this point (and yes this is going to be a bitter reply) I am convinced that SE wants MCH to be the lowest DPS. Someone has to be, so MCH is it, here is your cone hat. Heck it seems that if anything has a "pet mechanic" is has to be "the lowest" regardless of how those pets play: SCH, SMN, MCH!If tanks ever get a pet tank, guaranteed it will be the lowest performer. *grumble* If we had a job unique party buff I would take this damage issue with a grain of salt, because I could say then "yeah we are at the bottom of the damage pole, but look at this shiny we bring to the party!" I wont hold my breath anymore. I will just accept the fact that I will be shunned for anything other than basic content, at least ill look damn good at the bottom of the barrel.

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Originally Posted by s3ystic

At this point (and yes this is going to be a bitter reply) I am convinced that SE wants MCH to be the lowest DPS. Someone has to be, so MCH is it, here is your cone hat. Heck it seems that if anything has a "pet mechanic" is has to be "the lowest" regardless of how those pets play: SCH, SMN, MCH!If tanks ever get a pet tank, guaranteed it will be the lowest performer. *grumble* If we had a job unique party buff I would take this damage issue with a grain of salt, because I could say then "yeah we are at the bottom of the damage pole, but look at this shiny we bring to the party!" I wont hold my breath anymore. I will just accept the fact that I will be shunned for anything other than basic content, at least ill look damn good at the bottom of the barrel.

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If SE wants a class to have the lowest dps it should be Brd instead because brd buffs makes up for it's dps, while mch utilities does not make up for it's own dps.

I think they didn't thoroughly think about the effect the heat changes would have on damage. In their mind they probably just thought they are increasing MCH dmg by 3%, allowing for more overheat opportunities, and making heat management easier. All positives right? They didn't put all the pieces of the puzzle they were changing together and say how it effects the overall rotation/dmg. I can only assume the person who made the balance changes isn't an actual MCH player.

Nuts, was thinking of trying ranged dps and thought, "Wow all of those notes they must have really duped things up with MCH." But those who know say no. :/

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

Nuts, was thinking of trying ranged dps and thought, "Wow all of those notes they must have really duped things up with MCH." But those who know say no. :/

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Phone typo. Meant suped. But I guess I will leave it.

I did some new content today and I find that I'm often at ~80 heat when WF is up again, for that I feel like our heat management a bit messed up. I get that we should go overheat every WF but the heat reduction on all skills force us to use FT a lot more often and for longer duration. Total DPS is increased quite a bit but the playstyle feels worse. This might be my personal issue but I hope we can get our turret and hotshot buff shown on job UI, it's just harder to look at skillbar, buffs/debuffs and job UI all at once while doing fight mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Jilliebeans

If SE wants a class to have the lowest dps it should be Brd instead because brd buffs makes up for it's dps, while mch utilities does not make up for it's own dps.

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I totally agree here.

So lets see here, if SE want to keep us at the bottom of the dps charts... We should get:
A turret that gives regen in an AoE, cant tell me we cant have it because RDM can heal.
Or a Tactical Computer link up that gives everyone a critical buff, Brd has something like that.
Or maybe a Turret that gives a flat 2% damage increase to those huddled around it. AST would have a buddy now.
Or we could have a drone that can follow us around for a few seconds that gives party stealth, that has some neat implications for teaming with NINs.

If SE doesn't want anyone taking us for damage, then for the love of all that is Final Fantasy, give us some party synergies!

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

Never would I ever have thought they would make this job have a game feel that is substantially worse.

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So are you saying all this would of been a good idea if all the heat costs just stayed the same? I will tell you right now, if people complained that heat was too hard to manage, this is their change and I we will probably have to live with it. Maybe instead of asking for them to revert heat costs, we could ask them to adjust cooldown for the new heat costs. Keep everything the way it is, but cooldown only reduces ten or fifteen heat. It will be slow to build heat still, but cooldown could be added much more freely and give you the chance to interact with your rotation more than we have now, as well as giving you some semblance of managing the heat gauge. Just a thought. Maybe they will revert the heat costs, but I would be very much surprised.

Or how about they just give us our friggin OGCDs and heat management back and actually add some damage.
By killing heat management they've killed any nuance the job have left.
By removing all of our OGCDs they tanked down busy work the job had that felt alright.
By reducing BS they reduced the wildfire/mildfire dynamic and the feeling of getting a good overheat wildfire in general.

And on top of that, the job feels worse to play now. Even when we weren't optimal in HW it still felt fun. This is a joke! I can't believe that I finally feel like making another rDPS after near two years of MCH!

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Keep everything the way it is, but cooldown only reduces ten or fifteen heat. It will be slow to build heat still, but cooldown could be added much more freely and give you the chance to interact with your rotation more than we have now, as well as giving you some semblance of managing the heat gauge. Just a thought. Maybe they will revert the heat costs, but I would be very much surprised.

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All that would do is turn heat into the sort of gauge warriors/Paladins/Dark Knights have but with only one skill to interact with it. And my current peeves are rather tepid in comparison to how the JP forums have conflagrated. Who in the world test played these changes and thought "nah this feels good"!

What's more people complained that the rotation was job was difficult but offered very little reward. So they just nipped that in the hindside by making the job braindead easy. That way people can't talk about the difficulty to payoff clause anymore while they flounder as the worse DPS still.

i give up on mch it was my fav job in hw, i dont like that fact that i have to crammed on my dps in a small overheat 10s window to get a decent WF.