Attention SE: Flamethrower is USELESS to MCH in PvP

You've given a RANGED JOB whose problem was lacking any of its previously useful oGCD skills like Gauss Round or Ricochet, and whose best cc skill required them to go into melee range an aoe they have to stand still to use for damage over time. . .

AND you took away something more useful rather than fix it (Report).

Let me be blunt in saying this was a very poor choice. Ask yourself, who's NOT going to target the now-stationary MCH trying to burn everything in a cone before them? I for one would simply run past them (since they CAN'T TURN AROUND WITHOUT CANCELING IT) and Blank them into whatever mob they're foolish enough to try and use that on.

Flamethrower is USELESS in PvP. Giving us back Gauss Round, Ricochet, or even Lead Shot would've done more to help, but all you've done is take a ranged job that was actually falling behind the others in PvP and give them nothing useful, while even removing something that was.

Nice Job.

I agree....I can't see a situation where I would use this over any other skills, especially how easy it is to avoid or interrupt. Maybe if I want to break up a big group of people? I guess they'd probably all scatter once they see it....but then i'd also be in their melee range and advocating my position and inability to do anything...

I admit: I was laughing hard when I saw that.

They literally traded one of the best party support abilities for the most useless ability out there. Even in PvE, Flamethrower only has two applications, AoE and forcing Overheat, neither of which has any relevancy in PvP. Maybe if it did bonus damage to Ice or something xD

You know what would work better for area denial?

The Bishop Autoturret, a.k.a the pet for the one pet job that doesn't have it at all in PvP.

Seriously, I say this AS a MCH: Pull in/knock back/cc ANY MCH foolish enough to even try using this skill.

This is literally some "Fix this by 4.11" nonsense.

I guess you could snapshot overheat on ice while you chat for 10 seconds....

Yeah, why not remove the most usefull skill (MP Regen) from MCH and give it the most useless skill (Flamethrower) instead? Make healers life even harder.

Nice job.
Nice job.
Nice job.

Noot like this. https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/35...1306598401.png


What is the actual use of Flamethrower in PvP? You generate alot of Heat in no time. You can even use your stun gun to get into overheat from 0 to 100. Why flamethrower? SE, I m very curious.

I realized I misread it. I thought the duration was 6 seconds. It's 10. 10 seconds of being stationary for a conal aoe. . . I am really struggling to find any semblance of logic behind this.

Again, Gauss Round would've been better. Ricochet would've been better. Giving us back a bind would've been better. OUR TURRETS would've definitely been better.

But you picked THE WORST skill we received in Stormblood as our first new PvP skill and removed something more useful in the process?

Here's hoping I get the plot I want so I at least have somewhere to kill time til they remove this awful skill and replace it with something more sensible for PvP.

Maybe it's a 20 yalm conal AOE then I won't complain :thonking:

YES MAKE THE ENTIRE MAP FILL WITH FLAMES

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

I realized I misread it. I thought the duration was 6 seconds. It's 10. 10 seconds of being stationary for a conal aoe. . . I am really struggling to find any semblance of logic behind this.

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It's 16 seconds really, the first 10 seconds are the skill, the next 6 seconds are the debuffs duration. Each 1 second = +250 potency, for a total of 2,500 per tick. (Stacks 10 times over 10 seconds).

New thought: Melee on ice. They tend to focus it and forget everything else, and you can easily hit every single melee on the ice while hiding behind it.

Teamwork. It's not like your players are affect by the Flamethrower. Battlefields do have locations in which you can bottleneck players. It provides a mean of forcing the hand of the opponent.

Granted yes pushback would hurt this a lot there is utility in which this could be a useful skill.

Also gotta keep in mind that it stacks so if one can weigh down a target, stun them, sleep them, push them back into the Flamethrower, you offer a very strategic ability for MCH.

Another thing Flamethrower does is control the movement of the enemy. They will want to actively avoid it, limit melee to attack from range if they don't want to risk running through the flames and give your team time to recover if one is about to die.

Flamethrower actually sounds cool from the way it's explained I see a lot of strategies one could use with it heck this ability is deadly in Frontline, get 2-3 MCH around a big ice and surround all sides so any DPS that try to enter it will get hit by the Cone AOE. DPS won't be able to just run in if there is a MCH and if they do it will provide a small space to fight from, giving someone like a BLM with a LB an opportunity to hit more people.

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Originally Posted by Airget

Another thing Flamethrower does is control the movement of the enemy. They will want to actively avoid it, limit melee to attack from range if they don't want to risk running through the flames and give your team time to recover if one is about to die.

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I think you're overestimating it - It's roughly 750 potency per second, depending on how you calculate the DoT (250 upfront, 500 delayed in DoT). For single-target, that's nothing to write home about. For AoE, it's quite good, but only bots are gonna allow you to just keep it up. If you don't have a healer backing you up, people can just gib you through it and even if you do, there's still CC - It's probably gonna be broken by stuns, sleeps, draw-ins and knockbacks.

The skill will probably shine bright in Rival Wings to take down the Mammets, but I'm not seeing much use in actual player combat. I mean, with the frontline bots, it'll be good as well, since those also ignore you, but, uh... yeah.

Yes, even if the dot stacks and. . . rough mathing. . . amounts to 4000 potency over 16 seconds, the issue then is the obvious startup, range to enemy, ease of disruption, and being forced to remain stationary for it. No one's going to stand still for 10 seconds in a PvP match, and stuns last 2 seconds.

EDIT: If the dot stacks, that math is wrong, but the rest of the issues remain. Mulling over it a bit, I can see potential defensive applications for it in say, the Feast, but outside of choke point control/area denial, or - ick - ice damage, I retain my previous statements about Flamethrower.

It can be handy in seize if you need to interrupt capping, now that almost all AoE is gone capping tomeliths became way too easy if you just throw bodies on it.

The moment you see a MCH position and stop before a group, you'll know it's coming. Stun, sleep, Unmend, Holmgang, Blank, Fluid Aura, Aura Blast and crush.

I retract my statement that it's useless, but MCH could be served FAR better with other skills.

I'm really disappointed in flamethrower as a skill overall, it's nothing but a liability in PvE for the same reasons (stationary, channeled) and it's totally underwhelming as a level 70 skill. I'm sad to see that its now come to plague mch in PvP as well.

This only serves to show that PvP could REALLY benefit from an actual two-way communication between the players and devs. . . When did ANY of us say "Hmm, MCH could really use Flamethrower in PvP because [insert reason here]?"

I know several of us noted that Report offered too little MP for the lengthy cooldown it had, and rather than fix it, they just removed it.

Like, seriously, what feedback was THIS based on? Because I certainly didn't see any MCHs asking for this.

I am absolutely furious right now.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

I realized I misread it. I thought the duration was 6 seconds. It's 10. 10 seconds of being stationary for a conal aoe. . . I am really struggling to find any semblance of logic behind this.

Again, Gauss Round would've been better. Ricochet would've been better. Giving us back a bind would've been better. OUR TURRETS would've definitely been better

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At least BRDs get a bind with Repelling Shot on top of self-knockback! And even a 5% damage up or vulnerability down with Troubadour! Balance!!!

Bard getting a bind is pretty amazing tbh. The trade-off they've always had for being able to silence was their lack of hard cc/peel, while MCH had that utility in the form of stun gun and leg graze. Now bard gains the ability to control movement as well which rounds out their already amazing toolkit even more.

Of course if you use a bind carelessly it will be broken almost instantly, but there are many situations in frontlines for example where stopping someone for even a moment to let your alliance catch up with them is all that's needed. I might add that if dots work the way they do in PvE, periodic damage from existing dots doesn't break binds either - which makes them slightly better duelists by letting them kite in a 1v1 situation.

Shadowbind, even in all of its heavy nerfing early on was an effective bind.

Also this serves to show that perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to arbitrarily strip down each job to a 9 button standard. . . Not when players had the freedom to remove less effective skills from their hotbars (the very same ones they used for PvE) and customize it as needed for PvP.

Still I stress, for all that MCH lost from 3.x PvP, and now the removal of Report, we have gained nothing. Flamethrower is a disservice, and answers none of the issues we had in PvP, and no one asked for this.

You could theoretically interrupt your enemy's burst with flamethrower to peel for your healer or other DPS. Either the enemy stays in the flames and gets a bunch of DoT stacks before you overheat or they have to fallback. This is assuming they already used their CC to try and kill the person they were targeting. It won't work against ranged DPS but i'm assuming they're primarily balancing around Feast, especially ranked Feast, where the team composition auto-balances to include one melee DPS on each team.

Its kinda funny that BRD got bind to repelling when repelling is already really strong escape tool when combined with bolt, looks like melee has now almost zero chance to win against bards if its 1v1 situation(nin might be only one that has a chance as its only melee that has CC). Also WAR got one of the thrills back! only 9 more skills to go and i might start to enjoy WAR in pvp again.

Nice Job!, Nice Job!
Good Balance!, Good Balance!

Can we have Good Balance! as a chat command in feast. Please.

utility of flamethrower :
1 - get near ice/big drone
2 - BURN MELEES+Ice/drone WITH FIRE

that is the only time it could be useful because people will be too focus on ice/drone and not focus enough on killing people
3 / 4 mch could secure ice for few second and burn brainless melees to death

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Shadowbind, even in all of its heavy nerfing early on was an effective bind.

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I'm referring to 4.0 bard of course, who doesn't have shadowbind. The hard cc gulf was even wider in HW with machinists having arm graze on top of stun gun.

It's kind of funny how the relative positions of bard and machinist have reversed since the last expansion. Machinist used to be the superior overall ranged while bard's main advantage was bar-emp burst which was gimmicky and vulnerable to cc. Now it's bards doing everything better and machinist being saddled with the easy to spot and punish burst sequence.

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Originally Posted by yukkan

3 / 4 mch could secure ice for few second and burn brainless melees to death

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That's not half bad actually, similar like 4 / 5 Casters LB tactics. But requires very strong coordination and some sort of AoE bind tool (multi stun guns?).
,

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Originally Posted by uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu

That's not half bad actually, similar like 4 / 5 Casters LB tactics. But requires very strong coordination and some sort of AoE bind tool (multi stun guns?).
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not really.

People tend to run back within 2s when they see aoe lb aoe area application on the ground

the adventage of Flamethrower is it is instant and people won have the reflex to run back. need less coordination

and yes stun gun could help too. because the gauss canon will overheating anyway

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Originally Posted by yukkan

People tend to run back within 2s when they see aoe lb aoe area application on the ground

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I've seen it effective in group of people, there's 4-5 Cometeors laid in not on same target but several/separate making it very large and hard to run from.
It's an easy 8 stack battle fever on Frontline especially with BLMs Freeze binding the group. I can see the same thing being done with Flamethrower, making mch very positional.

I mean I know MCH is really strong right now but this is a big nerf. I die a lot trying to use cometeor because of the small self stun, this is just an easy way to tell everyone you're an easy kill.

it could be good to get wolf heart or adren boxes but outside of that i dont see a purpose

I can guarantee that every Flamethrower in the Feast is going to be immediatelly stunned.

I must say it's rather worrying they even come up with stuff like this... goes to show they don't have much idea what they're doing...