Suggestion: Upgrade Machinist to full DPS instead of support DPS

Hello everyone! Somewhat long post ahead.

OK, so the main issues with Machinist are somewhat low damage for a lot of trouble (its not that bad, but could be better) and that, compared to Bard, it brings nothing truly of note to the table. Yes, the job can clear all content given enough player skill but I would suggest something different.

Take a good look at Bards support capabilities (cross-role not considered) and now look at machinist.

Now take a second good look at Machinists moves; you will notice that, given the moves they have, the dev. team will never be able to squeeze enough unique support to be able to match Bards capabilities.

If you were to buff party members (for example, boost crit), which move would be able to do so? Kind of hard to put it there without making a whole new move or risk things getting silly, isn't it?

No, Machinist abilities are interactions between self, turret, and enemy. This is not exactly support type style, is it? What they do bring (again, not counting cross-role) is Dismantle (reduce enemy damage for a short bit) and Hypercharge (increase enemy vulnerability for a little time). That's it. These abilities also have a somewhat long cool-down making them less reliable considering their useful nature.

In Final Fantasies past, machinists were never really party support, but more crowd control and damage. Their tools and abilities mainly focused on dealing good damage and, occasionally, debuff a target with blind, poison or some other status effect. This does not work in this game either, as most bosses are not really affected by regular debuffs. Stun and Silence only work if a mechanic is involved, Blind is useless and poison is a DoT, which we had one but was removed.

There are also some machinists in the past that focused on elemental weakness fiddling but, again, this does not work in this game as elemental weaknesses are not a thing for enemies, only for us and only as debuffs for some mechanic.

Go back to Final Fantasies of the past. FFIV we had Cid, he had scan, hit hard with his hammer and an ability called Upgrade which added elemental damage to his attacks. Again, elemental weaknesses are not a thing in this game and we already have a self damage boost in the form of Hot Shot. Next.

Edgar from FFVI, he had machinist tools in spades and with them he would deal good damage, poison, flash and even attacks that ignored defense. He also had 2 ways of inflicting instant death in the form of a lucky chainsaw strike or the heat debuff with Air Anchor. Attacks that ignore enemy defense in an MMO such as this sounds all sorts of tricky to balance around so that is a no. You could say our Wildfire is a form of of the heat debuff. The heat debuff I speak is a debuff that would kill a target if they did a physical attack with it. Obviously, instant death stuff is a no in a game like this.

You see where I am going with this? Mustadio from Tactics only had stun, disable and petrify besides his gun. The Machinist from FF Explorers is more akin to what we have but their move set is all about dominating with lots of fast attacks, the gun drone (like a turret) and big damage. They also had other abilities but we kind of have them in one way or another. Check FF explorers firearms abilities for yourselves, you will see.

No, the way machinist is set up now simply does not work as a support DPS and will, in all likelihood, never be as desired as a bard in terms of support. No, they are more akin to Ninja in terms of tools than anything else. Hence this suggestion to the development team. Please consider making Machinist a full DPS job so that they can join the fray along with the others instead of warring with Bard over who is more worthwhile to bring to the more difficult content.

Who knows, it might just be what Machinist needs so they can really shine.

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Originally Posted by Erudito

they are more akin to Ninja in terms of tools than anything else. Hence this suggestion to the development team. Please consider making Machinist a full DPS job so that they can join the fray along with the others instead of warring with Bard over who is more worthwhile to bring to the more difficult content.

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My thoughts exactly. I play MCH and NIN and they both have a similar feel to them. Every 60s, press a bunch of buttons really fast and deal some big damage while the boss is vulnerable (or in the MCH case, covered in Wildfire). If they turn up the numbers of MCH then it'll fill a similar role to ninja and become more valued. I wonder though if it should get a piercing debuff as part of its kit. Maybe the turrets can apply it? Who knows.

While I don't have the same vision for MCH you have I still support your plea to SE. I want us to not just feel special, but BE special. If that means being the top physical ranged DPS or the premier Physical DPS/Debuffer I don't care. This is one of the go to job for CID for Final Fantasy sake! You would think they would have put some more love into it.

Reading your post gave me a different idea. Make mch the enemy debuffer. Give them a vulnerability debuff equivalent to nin's trick attack. Bard can stay uber at party buffs, while mch can be more about debuff utility. Enhance dismantle in some way, duration and reduced recast time maybe. But yeah, on top of it all, raise personal dps some more to make people excited about playing mch again.

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Originally Posted by Erudito

*snip

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Let me go through this a bit while mixing in my own thoughts.

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Mustadio [...] Cid

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Cid was more of a warrior really and Mustadio was the old MCh archetype. He had the ability to seal actions like we used to have baseline before it was packaged up and given to BRD as well. Kind of putting a hamper on our class identity.

But let's talk about class identity. Edgar was where we should have went
A MCH uses gunplay and devices. In HW this showed. Gadgets (Grenades, our lb3 stat cannon, gauss round, bishop and rook turrets, and our ability to interact with them via Promote and Hypercharge) and gunplay (split, slug, clean, hot, lead Gauss Round, and Ricochet). In Storbmlood we get...? I would love to include the flamethrower but even that just comes from our gun and is mentioned as gunplay. What a disappointment!

My ideas?

• We could have had a mechanic that uses our aetherotransformer to make even MORE lightning aspected aether to power different devices. Maybe put that in place of the heat gauge with the accumulation of energy just allowing an ability to be used without affecting the gauge or something.
• The heat gauge could be rewarded with the payoff of a strong ability when managed properly or giving cooldown a special interaction when used while overheating.
• We could have used MP as actual magic points necessary to power devices like bio blaster and/or flamethrower.
• We could have gotten to keep rend mind and dismantle, with them changing them so that they could be used consistently with each other. Maybe gave us debilitator as well for that supportive flare that we're currently lacking
• If we're bringing explorers into the mix, we could have gotten the ability to place more turrets or place a turret concurrently that interacts with our abilities or duplicates them and reward playing well. Hell our turrets could have had some benefit when staying above 50 heat.
• Or Turret overload? What about that? We could have blown that up and used the aether to empower ourselves or use a unique attack that differs depending on which turret was blown up.

There's also other tools in the kit. I mean we have to be close as hell for flamethrower right? Where's chainsaw and drill? Where in the world are they.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Reading your post gave me a different idea. Make mch the enemy debuffer. Give them a vulnerability debuff equivalent to nin's trick attack. Bard can stay uber at party buffs, while mch can be more about debuff utility. Enhance dismantle in some way, duration and reduced recast time maybe. But yeah, on top of it all, raise personal dps some more to make people excited about playing mch again.

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A dedicated debuffer can't work. It's either outright useless (as was the case of our stun, slow, silence, and bind in the majority of all boss battles) or it would be overpowered (if you overbuffed dismantle, all comps would include a MCH for progression). And anything more basic like debuffing resistances would just turn us into a support anyways. Which is what we are, but our debuffs are limited to two abilities and are crap.

The thing is...I look at the ex bosses for the top 10% of this week, the week after 4.05. Wouldn't you know it? Guess who is sitting there, right under SAM?

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Originally Posted by Farrell

The thing is...I look at the ex bosses for the top 10% of this week, the week after 4.05. Wouldn't you know it? Guess who is sitting there, right under SAM?

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This isn't a monk thread

I really would like if instead of that heat thing we had an aetherotransformer meter that fuelled things like flamethrower, chainsaw, auto-crossbow and bio blaster :P

I also really want grenado shot back. I don't think I would have been nearly as excited for flamethrower if I knew I was going to lose one of my more useful AoE abilities. Especially with the nerf to spread shot and bishop... Is it really getting a new ability if they nerf/remove your old ones?

MCH and DRG seem to suffer from the same issue: we have MINOR support capability in comparison to BRD/NIN yet SE seems to think that is far better than those 2 classes (which is like saying WAR isn't a tank because of their DPS). SE needs to have their team communicate with each other as it feels like there were differing ideas that were never truly fleshed out in a greater context.

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Originally Posted by Erudito

No, the way machinist is set up now simply does not work as a support DPS and will, in all likelihood, never be as desired as a bard in terms of support. No, they are more akin to Ninja in terms of tools than anything else.

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This is an interesting idea. Then they can add a job like Dancer to be more on par with Bard as support. :cool: