Fixing Mch: A Few Ideas

I'm gonna start off by saying, most of these are ideas are not mine, however they are interesting enough I felt they should be included.

So, as we all know SE has seriously messed up Mch, again, but rather than just complaining about it I thought I'd throw a few idea out there on how to fix the class, along with giving it it's own identity which it sorely lacks right now, and make it all around more interesting.

I've been playing Mch since it's release in 3.0, and I do love the job, but as it stands right now, it's useless. We don't bring enough utility or damage to the table at any point weather it be when we're trying to burst, or just overall dps. However, that doesn't have to be Mch's role in the raid. Personally I always felt like Mch was leaning more towards the role of the Debuffer, a type of support character that specialized in weakening the enemies defenses. This would keep it within SE's idea of ranged support while still giving Mch an identity all it's own.

So with that in mind, here are the changes I think would seriously help the class:

1) Undo the changes made to heat management in 4.05. These changes were just horrible. However, as I stated this is not about complaining but offering ideas, so rather than reducing the heat skills produce to make it easier for new players to adjust to the heat system, reduce the amount of heat needed for Shot Mastery, 40% should be ideal. However, I believe that CoolDown should be kept at 50%, this would keep the ideal balance between 50-95% heat going, while making it easier to work with some minor mistakes.

2) Hotshot: So putting Hotshot at 8% is a step in the right direction, though not far enough if you ask me, however I am going to purpose an alternate idea. Add a ground based AOE dot to Hotshot, while keeping it's damage bonus. Now if this is done, I would expect to see Hotshot's damage bonus reduced back down to 5%, however this would make the ability less of an ability bloat, and something more interesting. I know Bard use to have Flame Arrow which did the ground AOE and it was removed, however I believe the idea fits better with Mch, seriously you shoot a bullet or use a gadget that catches the ground on fire, that just screams Mch.

3) Fix Flamethrower...... Ok there have been a number of ideas thrown out on how to fix Flamethrower so I'm gonna give two ideas on this. One that is likely to happen, and one that I would like to see happen as it would be more interesting. The first one is simple, buff the potency on Flamethrower, obvious fix I know. However I did say I was going to give two ideas here, and the second one is far more interesting. The second idea is rather than buffing the potency on Flamethrower, have it give a stacking debuff, something along the lines of a 1% vulnerability per tick for 5 seconds, stacking up to 10 for a total of 10% vulnerability for 5 seconds. This would make sense, as your using a Flamethrower, and it would allow mch to bring more utility to a raid group.

4) Increase the duration of Dismantle. So as it stand Dismantle has a duration of 3 seconds, obviously this was meant to weaken one big attack, however with a duration of 3 seconds if your lagging it's useless, if the wind-up of the attack is longer than anticipated it's useless, if your even half a second late on pressing that button it's useless. What I'm saying is that a 3 second duration makes it useless, now it doesn't need to be increased by a lot, but enough, maybe like to 5 or 8 seconds

5) Allow turret auto-attack and Overload to affect Wildfire, or at least allow Overload to affect Wildfire. It seriously doesn't make sense to me that it doesn't work this way, it's the mch's turret, your blowing it up, this should add to Wildfire, but it doesn't. Myself, and many other's, really enjoyed the Mildfire-Wildfire dynamic that Mch had, and now it's just not there. This would bring that back, while helping to fix the biggest problem Mch has right now, and that is just damage. Simply put Mch doesn't have enough of it.

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Adding in Everyone's ideas here. There will be some changes and editing in order to save space.

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Originally Posted by Elnidfse

To chime in:
1) If they wanted to make the job less punishing, buff FT's cooldown to 30 seconds or something. There would be woefully few times where you'd actually accidentally overheat and be locked out of FT for 10 seconds. It's not like our AoE is so broken that this change would upset the job dynamic. I'm even willing to have this thing tick for TP/MP if the tradeoff is usability
2) I don't think a ground based AoE on top of our ground based aoe (hypercharge) would be a good idea. Not to mention that they'd have to give it a CD, just like flaming arrow, which then removes our ability to pre-refresh our damage booster
3)I already mentioned flamethrower with 1. No dots, no vulnerability. Give it damage or give it up time. It's one of the most underwhelming level 70s in the game right now. We don't need double vuln. We need an ability that's either more useful or more damaging.
4) Dismantle is a weaker Reprisal. For that matter, why does this exist in it's current form while still keeping a 90s cooldown. I will trade this back in a heart beat for dismantle/rendmind. Because you only ever used it for one damage type. Take your ability pruning back Square. I do not want it.
But seriously. I dislike flamethrower. It locks a supposedly mobile ranged DPS job in place for however long you want to use it, cancels on movement, and only job seems to be pushing an overheat in boss fights. And that would be fine and acceptable if it was worth a damn for AoE as well. And while it technically is I would trade this garbage back in a second for grenado shot back into my aoe rotation. And on the topic of AoE. It is not useful and will not be useful in fights that allow you to burn on two targets because of obvious heat management related reasons. I hate this ability.

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Originally Posted by s3ystic

I'm coming from the idea of not competing with BRD for buffs, but instead becoming the ranged debuffer of the team. Also I wouldn't want ALL of these added to MCH just 2 or 3 of them. Im spit balling ideas that wouldn't include more buttons or changing how the class plays (too much.)
1) Add a vulnerability down debuff to our 1-2-3 combo .. 1-2%, and it can be maintained by doing this combo. Let the debuff fall off in 5-10s
2) Give us our old DoT shot back. Or add a lingering DoT effect to flamethrower so it can spread DoTs around and get a little extra on the bosses.
3) Up the duration of dismantle.
4) Add a bind or stun to the knockback shot.
5) One of our turrets could have a vulnerability down debuff attached to it.
6) One of our turrets could slap on a slow debuff, or damage down debuff, or a silence debuff.
7) Rapid fire could spread a critdown debuff, or blind.
8) (My only party buff idea) Turn cool down into a party haste instead of an attack (spreading the heat to make everyone quicker, because magiteck reasons.)

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Keeping the potencies of the 4 main shots in mind, along with +25 with ammo, I would say the shots themselves are fine, procs are fine too. Greedily, I'd ask for the procs to just be 100%, but there's no way we can have that then +25 potency on demand.
Instead, I'm looking at the Overheat mechanic. What if Overheating worked similarly to a balance card, and the party gains perhaps half the damage increase (10 for you, 5 for them)? Because of its short duration, allow it to be stackable with other party buffs. Or perhaps Overheating grants the procs on the shots guaranteed without the required setup beforehand? (Think SAM's Meikyo Shisui) This could allow for use of ammo for further increase during an Overheat. Might seem a bit easy, but the bigger idea is making an intentional Overheat more of a payoff.
With Flamethrower, I originally had the mistaken impression it would leave a burning DoT. I still wonder why this isn't a thing. We're setting things on fire. Come on. I felt similarly about Cooldown. It's a necessity, and a great shot skill, but we're literally purging heat from a weapon. THAT if anything should leave a DoT.
Dismantle would be nice for 10 seconds again, but currently, I just wrench the big hits.

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Originally Posted by StockSyn

Lead Shot
Potency: 50 *Small buff from 3.x
DoT Potency: 35 *Nerf from 3.x
DoT Duration: 30 Seconds *No change
Additional Effect: Open Wound (-5% Piercing Resistance on affected target.) *NEW
It is a straight DPS gain for MCH (~12%) on the magnitude needed to put us above BRD and adds a bit more dimension (snapshotting LS into personal + raid buffs) for the class after neutering the heat dynamic in 4.05. Also adds small utility bonus for cases of when a DRG and/or BRD is present.
Second change I would love to see is in Dismantle. Either reduce the cooldown to 60 seconds or increase the duration to 10 seconds. The 5 second duration is too clunky at present, especially when the recast is 90 seconds. Just give it the Disable treatment. If 60 seconds is too short for SE, then increase the duration to 10 seconds. Makes it less hectic to use.

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

• Turrets: All Turret-Attacks affecting Wildfire
  (to increase Wildfire-burst, because we lost all of our cross-class-buffs)

• Hot Shot: 10% Bonus-Damage, adds Piercing-Damage-Debuff
  (to make BRD+MCH-Groups more valuable. Sorry DRG)

• Hypercharge: 10% Bonus-Damage instead of 5%
  (good old Hypercharge)

• Dismantle: 60s Cooldown instead of 90s
  (90s is a bit too long)

• Gauß-Barrel: GB will be not removed after Overheat, but still 0% for 10s
  (Overheating is double punishing, because its a DPS-loss and you have to keep an eye to re-attach GB)

• Overdrive: Rook will be destroyed, but Bishop can still be used (and vice versa)
  (I m wondering, why both turrets cant be placed, when I m just blow up only one turret)

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Originally Posted by Kill3rkoi8082

I think overdrive should not destroy the turret. SE should treat it like a burst ability. Destroying the turret seems like a punishment. For example when you overheat and use overdrive for the sake of WF for burst damage the dps loss after is for nothing. I find myself just not risking it.

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Originally Posted by maskeXD

1. Make Hot Shot do a flat Slow debuff. I don't know about the math to set its optimal duration, but it's a little something to help the MT survivability, like BRD does with Nature's Minne and Warden's Paean. It's not something that would break the game, since SCH and SMN already have a 25% Slow uptime with Shadow Flare.
2. Make Overload do Piercing Resistance Down. It could be just for a small duration, like 10s. It would incentive us to use Overload more (besides pre-downtime and during Vulnerability Down), as we would do more damage when the turret is down and it would increase the damage of BRDs and DRGs in our parties, specially in AoE situations.
3. Give Flamethrower a little DoT. It could be something weak that lasts a few seconds. It wouldn't do much of a difference, but come on, we're a debuff focused job, but we we almost don't see negative status icons applied by us on the enemies. And it's a freaking Flamethrower, so it makes sense for the enemies to catch fire.
4. Give Heated Cooldown a little DoT. On the same vein as Flamethrower, the enemy could catch fire for a bit. Since we're using this skill a lot less with the recent Heat Gauge changes, it wouldn't boost our damage by much anyway. And it'd be an incentive to Overheat, as the DoT would snap the 10% buff.
5. Reduce Dismantle's cooldown. Using Dismantle just right already feels amazing. The 5s duration would feel more justified if we could do it more frequently, though.

These are some suggestions to make Machinists feel like they are supporting the party more, while staying true to their debuffer concept. What do you guys think?

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Originally Posted by ChocoChick

It’s clear a lot of people are disappointed in the recent MCH changes. It seems to lower their difficulty too much which makes it less enjoyable and it seems SE is purely encouraging us to never over heat as our main method of dealing damage.

However I feel like there should be benefits to overheating to make the class more interesting.

In particular, I believe overheating should be encouraged during wildfires. Wildfires for MCH should mean pumping out as much damage as possible. So overheating, on top of hypercharging your turret, using rapidfire, unloading as much as you can, detonating your turret then BOOM. That wildfire should hit hard. That would make for a satisfying and challenging gameplay experience.

Perhaps a 20% overheat damage buff is required, but much more careful analysis on potency and damage needs to be done. You want to make sure it’s worthwhile to overheat during wildfire, but not worthwhile to overheat without wildfire. Otherwise players would constantly want to overheat, which makes managing heat between 50-100 irrelevant (and not as fun).

Currently, it’s really quite boring because it feels like it’s harder to stuff up on the class. If we had to overheat during the right times it will make MCH much more interesting to play again. There’s something wrong if players actually enjoyed the previous MCH and with the intention to buff MCH, you somehow made players dislike it after the changes.

I believe you need to take the opportunity to make the overheat mechanic more interesting and not just about keeping it between 50-100 at all times.

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Originally Posted by Valenten

I think the easiest way to help MCH out would be to ensure that they have at least a guaranteed combo that always increases potency like most classes. Then have the ammunition be an aspected type of dmg that is bonus on top of the dmg there. You could choose the aspect of the ammunition to fit the need of the fight. The bonus dmg would have to be a fair bit imo plus have the aspected ammunition provide some utility of some sort based on the aspect.

Just make split shot a 100% chance to increase slug shots dmg which would have a 100% chance to increase clean shots dmg at the very least... The aspected ammunition would give it some great utility that the class is currently missing which is why Bard tends to outshine it a bit.

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I'm not sure the proposed hot shot changes are good. They seem interesting though. I think that another ground based thing would be bad cause you already have Bishop Autoturret though.

I would honestly have preferred if they got rid of hot shot and kept lead shot. Just make all the potencies 5% higher or something. DoTs don't feel like bloat as much as a self buff attack does.

I think that Flamethrower is fine as is though, just a slight potency increase to make up for loss of auto attacks. It shouldn't really be used in single target fights other than to push into overheat without losing a bit of time in it because of a GCD.

Dismantle could use a 10s duration too.

To chime in:
1) If they wanted to make the job less punishing, buff FT's cooldown to 30 seconds or something. There would be woefully few times where you'd actually accidentally overheat and be locked out of FT for 10 seconds. It's not like our AoE is so broken that this change would upset the job dynamic. I'm even willing to have this thing tick for TP/MP if the tradeoff is usability
2) I don't think a ground based AoE on top of our ground based aoe (hypercharge) would be a good idea. Not to mention that they'd have to give it a CD, just like flaming arrow, which then removes our ability to pre-refresh our damage booster
3)I already mentioned flamethrower with 1. No dots, no vulnerability. Give it damage or give it up time. It's one of the most underwhelming level 70s in the game right now. We don't need double vuln. We need an ability that's either more useful or more damaging.
4) Dismantle is a weaker Reprisal. For that matter, why does this exist in it's current form while still keeping a 90s cooldown. I will trade this back in a heart beat for dismantle/rendmind. Because you only ever used it for one damage type. Take your ability pruning back Square. I do not want it.

But seriously. I dislike flamethrower. It locks a supposedly mobile ranged DPS job in place for however long you want to use it, cancels on movement, and only job seems to be pushing an overheat in boss fights. And that would be fine and acceptable if it was worth a damn for AoE as well. And while it technically is I would trade this garbage back in a second for grenado shot back into my aoe rotation. And on the topic of AoE. It is not useful and will not be useful in fights that allow you to burn on two targets because of obvious heat management related reasons. I hate this ability.

I'm coming from the idea of not competing with BRD for buffs, but instead becoming the ranged debuffer of the team. Also I wouldn't want ALL of these added to MCH just 2 or 3 of them. Im spit balling ideas that wouldn't include more buttons or changing how the class plays (too much.)

1) Add a vulnerability down debuff to our 1-2-3 combo .. 1-2%, and it can be maintained by doing this combo. Let the debuff fall off in 5-10s

2) Give us our old DoT shot back. Or add a lingering DoT effect to flamethrower so it can spread DoTs around and get a little extra on the bosses.

3) Up the duration of dismantle.

4) Add a bind or stun to the knockback shot.

5) One of our turrets could have a vulnerability down debuff attached to it.

6) One of our turrets could slap on a slow debuff, or damage down debuff, or a silence debuff.

7) Rapid fire could spread a critdown debuff, or blind.

8) (My only party buff idea) Turn cool down into a party haste instead of an attack (spreading the heat to make everyone quicker, because magiteck reasons.)

Keeping the potencies of the 4 main shots in mind, along with +25 with ammo, I would say the shots themselves are fine, procs are fine too. Greedily, I'd ask for the procs to just be 100%, but there's no way we can have that then +25 potency on demand.

Instead, I'm looking at the Overheat mechanic. What if Overheating worked similarly to a balance card, and the party gains perhaps half the damage increase (10 for you, 5 for them)? Because of its short duration, allow it to be stackable with other party buffs. Or perhaps Overheating grants the procs on the shots guaranteed without the required setup beforehand? (Think SAM's Meikyo Shisui) This could allow for use of ammo for further increase during an Overheat. Might seem a bit easy, but the bigger idea is making an intentional Overheat more of a payoff.

With Flamethrower, I originally had the mistaken impression it would leave a burning DoT. I still wonder why this isn't a thing. We're setting things on fire. Come on. I felt similarly about Cooldown. It's a necessity, and a great shot skill, but we're literally purging heat from a weapon. THAT if anything should leave a DoT.

Dismantle would be nice for 10 seconds again, but currently, I just wrench the big hits.

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It's a necessity, and a great shot skill, but we're literally purging heat from a weapon. THAT if anything should leave a DoT.

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That's a really solid idea. Have it last for 30 seconds and you plan your heat around it. I really miss having lead shot.. more than I thought I would have.

my opinion is just give us back 3.5 MCH (I actually miss that version... minus the hand-wave casting)

About hot shot, since because of it boosting your damage it is the very first attack skill you want to use and have always on, i kinda dont want an aoe on it at all. Because there is plenty of time i want to pick up one mob, and only one, from afar, without aggroing all those next to him who i dont care about.

One thing I've considered for a possible change to MCH since 4.0 is adding back in Lead Shot with changes:

Lead Shot
Potency: 50 *Small buff from 3.x
DoT Potency: 35 *Nerf from 3.x
DoT Duration: 30 Seconds *No change
Additional Effect: Open Wound (-5% Piercing Resistance on affected target.) *NEW

It is a straight DPS gain for MCH (~12%) on the magnitude needed to put us above BRD and adds a bit more dimension (snapshotting LS into personal + raid buffs) for the class after neutering the heat dynamic in 4.05. Also adds small utility bonus for cases of when a DRG and/or BRD is present.

Second change I would love to see is in Dismantle. Either reduce the cooldown to 60 seconds or increase the duration to 10 seconds. The 5 second duration is too clunky at present, especially when the recast is 90 seconds. Just give it the Disable treatment. If 60 seconds is too short for SE, then increase the duration to 10 seconds. Makes it less hectic to use.

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I love the current iteration of MCH and do not think SE was wrong with the direction they took. Was it enough? idk. I personally believe we were not really intended to Overheat (I mean, it doesn't even sound like it would be a good thing) and I am thrilled that they don't try to force us into doing it. It seems like Overheat was designed that if you mess up, its not the end of the world, but it probably is better to stay between 50-95. Now again, I'm saying probably. I don't parse, but I feel like I make a solid contribution to any party I join.

I have two DPS jobs at 70, MCH and SMN and both are geared iLvl 315. I have no idea how much merit this has, but I tried the Sky, Stone, Sea for DeltaScape 1.0 Savage, and I was able to clear it with MCH with 20 seconds remaining. I have no idea if this is "good", but my SMN could not clear it.

I originally thought I would miss 3.0 MCH, but I don't. Less RNG and more Wildfires (which are extremely fun to use) is just better and more fun. However, I do miss Lead Shot. They should just make Hot Shot do two things... the 8% increase AND a "burn" DoT that is equal to/slightly weaker than what Lead Shot was. I do feel that Flamethrower is totally useless and needs serious work, however.

If SE isn't going to give us more utility to make up for underwhelming dps numbers, I'd be happy with potency increases on the heated 123 and/or turrets contributing to wildfires...making Overdrive worth using.

I think the current rotation is interesting and great. It made me spend more than 2 days just trying to figure out the best rotation! My opinions are in this forum post, which is actually my first time posting something in these forums. However, MCH is now lower utility and thier damage just can't match BRD or any other job for that matter, so I really do think MCH needs a bit more of a buff.

• Turrets: All Turret-Attacks affecting Wildfire
  (to increase Wildfire-burst, because we lost all of our cross-class-buffs)

• Hot Shot: 10% Bonus-Damage, adds Piercing-Damage-Debuff
  (to make BRD+MCH-Groups more valuable. Sorry DRG)

• Hypercharge: 10% Bonus-Damage instead of 5%
  (good old Hypercharge)

• Dismantle: 60s Cooldown instead of 90s
  (90s is a bit too long)

• Gauß-Barrel: GB will be not removed after Overheat, but still 0% for 10s
  (Overheating is double punishing, because its a DPS-loss and you have to keep an eye to re-attach GB)

• Overdrive: Rook will be destroyed, but Bishop can still be used (and vice versa)
  (I m wondering, why both turrets cant be placed, when I m just blow up only one turret)

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Originally Posted by Orias

Less RNG and more Wildfires (which are extremely fun to use) is just better and more fun.

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Sure, you have more wildfires, but without our cross-class-buffs and their shorter duration, they become extremely weak.

the heat changes to skills need to be reverted this has made the class less fun to play.
Flamethrower needs more use then used for a few seconds to push overheat(don't actually overheat) and aoe. overdrive I think needs another 100 potency
give us back the dot is an option to increase our dps or increase The potency on attacks across the board. another option is increased hotshot to 10% as well.
like many said The turret needs to be allowed to help build up WF


the fact that we still have dismantle is pretty sad when tanks have a 60cd second version of it in role skills and ours somehow made it past the skill cut and lead shot some reason needed to go.
I do like the idea people have been posting to do a lot more Vulnerability to the boss I be Stacking debuff etc i mean a number of stuff does it currently but to kinda of have an high uptime due to one class aka MCH would probably make Mch more sought after.

1) Don't change cooldown
Cooldown is not a dps mechanic, it's part of heat management. If heat was a dps resource, it wouldn't be reduced by ammo and cooldown's potency would be higher.

2) Don't change flamethrower
Flamethrower has a niche, and thats OK. Its great at its niche, and we don't need it to be changed to be part of a single target rotation for no good reason.

3) Add an identity to MCH that is not DPS-related.
We have nothing to compete with Nature's Minne, Troubadour et al. How about a raid wide speed boost? Teleporter that moves raid members between two spots? A way of spreading powerful party buffs on you to the whole raid? Just brainstorming.

4) Make it clear how Overheat is intended to be used
Right now, MCH's disagree on how Overheat is used because it isn't clear. SE should take a side. Either make Overheat an OBVIOUS dps mechanic that you need to do often, or make it an OBVIOUS punishment mechanic that hurts you when you don't manage heat.

I'm on my phone right now, but tonight when i get home I'm going to be updating the the first post to include everyone's ideas. That way should the devs decide to look at what the players think need to be done about mch, they will have a more organized list to look at, rather than trying to dig through countless posts in multiple threads.

I think overdrive should not destroy the turret. SE should treat it like a burst ability. Destroying the turret seems like a punishment. For example when you overheat and use overdrive for the sake of WF for burst damage the dps loss after is for nothing. I find myself just not risking it.

Ok! I have updated the main post, to include the other ideas I've seen recently. If I missed your idea please either post it here, or link me too it. Also of course if you have any other ideas you'd like to throw out there, I'll try and put them in the main post as well. Thank you!

I've been thinking of what they could do to make MCH unique with their own HI identity type thing.

Maybe instead of a fixed heat gauge that only changes using skills, what if the heat gauge starts at 0 and as you build it up, the gauge is trying to "cool down" over time... like you lose 5 every 5 seconds or I don't know... So the challenge is to keep the heat as high as possible to deal more damage with slug, split, clean, while every so often expending your heat to use strong skills: ie cooldown (single target) or flamethrower (aoe)

I think that would be really cool