Unless I'm blind, every post I see about MCH changes seem to be old reddit posts. Is there a site or actual notes about what to expect for MCH?
I just want to love my Job again......
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Unless I'm blind, every post I see about MCH changes seem to be old reddit posts. Is there a site or actual notes about what to expect for MCH?
I just want to love my Job again......
The MCH changes are called "Dancer."
Did you not see the Gunbreaker slide?
I wish for less ulcer inducing, gcd clipping, flamethrower unreliableness, latency dependent, high ping players cucking (thanks again for moving servers from Montreal to SanFran, really like my extra ping digit) experience.
But people also wish for world peace and its likely to happen before mch gets playable at 100 ping. Been trying to fit 6gcd in wildfire for hours at 2.40 recast with no avail, not if I want to use ogcd. Right now I have to deal with dealing 10k less damage per wildfire than your average east coast machinist.
I'm only partway livid
Prune weaponskills a little bit, make the 1-2-3 combo actually proc 100%, no RNG. Ditch the ammo mechanic but buff WS a bit. Gauss Barrel is... fine? It's sorta like Fist of Fire, but wears off if you overheat.
Flamethrower should just be a much more potent AOE ability for dungeon trashpulls. I haven't played MCH in a while, but I recall they only have the AoE turret and that other conal AoE that's rather weak.
I know the dev team likes their heat gauge, but instead of having to juggle the sweet spot while waiting for our CD to line up for Wild Fire, the Heat Gauge can remain full until you hit Wildfire and boom, instant nuke. It would be sort of like BLM's Foul but for MCH. Wildfire would only work once the heat gauge is at max, or close to max. There would be a catch, if you don't fire off Wildfire then your gauge will gradually decreases and gauss barrel would fall off.
Of course all of this is probably moot since we're so close to the expansion. Though I have to wonder if MCH will get any more raid utility? Hypercharge is okay, but I feel they might need something else... or make MCH the BLM of ranged dps, might be better that way.
iam guessing a new drone skill.
an actual turret maybe? that shoot canon instead of firecracker?
About all we know at this point is that it will see some changes, and probably more than the usual we've seen in the Stormblood expansion simply due to Dancer being introduced into the same category. They did recently buff the class across the board with a flat 5% buff to damage on all their abilities. If they're balancing it with player feedback in mind, wildfire will probably be reduced in importance as part of the rebalancing. I'd speculate it would be some change that makes it less critical in lining up perfectly with overheat.
I personally have no issues playing the role the way it is now, and have mained MCH since HW. My DPS is high, and I don't think it is that difficult to build damage. It is a lot of stuff to fuss with though, so I get why some people might want it simplified.
Unpopular opinion here, but I want Machinist to be more of a Machinist than a Gunner. Like, their Gun is their main arm, but let's not forget the roots of Machinists in the FF universe.
FF4: Cid wields hammers in battle and can use his special skill Analyze to examine enemy stats.
FF4 TAY: Luca is also able to use Analyze and has Big Throw, which lets her throw her weapon like a boomerang at an enemy so that she does full damage from the back row.
FF6: Edgar's job was Engineer, but the Game Boy Advance version renamed the job title to Machinist. He equips spears and can use the Tools command to attack enemies with various mechanical gadgets. His Tools include: Auto-Crossbow, Bioblaster, Chainsaw, Drill, Air Anchor, Flash, Noiseblaster, Debilitator.
FF7: Cid Highwind is a combination of Machinist/Dragoon. While he does wield a spear and uses jump attacks, he also throws explosives, and commands the Airship - Highwind to unleash a volley of missiles at his enemies. Additionally, Barret is somewhat of a Gunner/Machinist hybrid, using Grenades, Satellite Beams, and heavy artillery.
FFT: Mustadio is the most commonly known Machinist. Originally translated as "Engineer", but later renamed Machinist in the WoL version. He wields a handgun and debilitates enemies with aimed shots.
FFXI: Puppetmaster is the FFXI equivalent of Machnist. While the PUP itself doesn't have many abilities, they command a robot that uses attachments which are more or less gadget/tools (Flashbulb, Heatsink, Tension Spring etc).
That said, I'd like for 5.0 MCH to focus less on fancy gun actions and more on using complex machines and gadgetry. Maybe their Turret builds up 2-3 points of "Ingenuity" per auto-attack and at 80+, the MCH can use "Promotion" which transforms the Turret into a mecha like Rival Wings (King Turret or Queen Turret depending on if you promote Rook or Bishop). Basically, in this form, you have 2-3 pet actions to use in a 20s duration and then end it with a finishing blast. Like the non-promoted form, King would specialize in ST and Queen would specialize in AoE. Would kinda be like Summon Demi Bahamut, but for MCH.
https://pvpaissa.com/storage/app/med...gs-machina.jpg
Hell, what if we summon a Mustadio replica and he comes down and whips out his Sniper Rifle and does some cool attack for the level 80 skill?
I would want drill/chainsaw for mch, as well as maybe a bioblaster upgrade for flamethrower if we're doing away with heat.
I'd also like for MCH's to have a phase where you pilot a magitek armour ending with the armour self destructing, maybe summoning in Nero's like we used near the end of heavensward with its flashly lasers.
Given the in-game lore, it shouldn't be too hard to lead into something like this either. Stephanivien just needs to have some new genius ideas, even better than his "combining guns with magitek" thing, and needs you to test them out.
And with Ishgard actively at war with Garlemald now, there should be some new and interesting things to salvage from the battlefield.
I think the solution to mch is rather obvious if you really think about it.....
https://i.imgur.com/JQbagin.gif
...2 guns
Allow my 10,000 hours of ms paint experience to simulate such a thing:
https://i.imgur.com/DhMPK4v.gif
I rest my case.
However, for the 3rd expansion, 3 being the most stable amount of sides in geometrical shapes, and to confirm half-life 3, i think we need to go deeper
https://i.imgur.com/2R7hCna.gif
this just might be mch's final form
I always roll my eyes at dual-wielding guns (as someone who owns and uses guns in real life and knows how impractical it would be to aim, stabalize, and reload them), then I saw the tri-wielding and laughed.
instead of dual wield gun, why not just summon a bigger gun that need to use 2 hand to use it (cool looking rifle in essence), when it active your MCH circle gauge become an energy meter 0-100 and it deplete everytime you use skill. when run out it become your normal gun again.
but personally i want something like canon or a proper turret... like construct a real human size turret like borderland turret skill
Would be cool if MCH could drop a turret in (their LB3 turret flies by and drops it from above) and the MCH can run over and activate it and use 2-3 different actions on it (think of the dungeons where you can mount a turret and use a few skills, like in Steps of Faith, Stone Vigil, etc.)
Its not quite that its difficult to play, if anything, its been simplified from HW MCH (which I loved) and its very easy to pick up and get the hang of quickly, the problem with MCH is that it is incredibly annoying to play for many different reasons.
For one, the heat gauge is crap, MCH functioned perfectly fine without it in HW, your opener would allow you to naturally slip back into your burst without having to force into a 10s window that is fiddley at best, obnoxious at worst, if you are running with high ping, you can get screwed over hard and jobs that get heavily screwed by ping are never fun, they basically took the nice flow of MCH and made it cumbersome and rigid for no real reason other than to give the gauss barrel a reason to still exist, despite it being an empty holdover from HW when MCH had cast bars, overall not a great direction they took for MCH.
Second is a couple of oddities and annoyances, making Flamethrower's main purpose be to slip into overheat feels clumsy and the aforementioned ping issues can make this quite frustrating if you are trying to maximize damage. We also have Overdrive killing the turret, which is fine, but having to place the turret again is just annoying, not like SMN has summon their egi again when they summon demi bahamut, I would just make it shut down the turret for 30s and have it reactivate, just a needless annoyance I felt like pointing out. There are also the heated animations, which I actually find nice, but when you have to look at them constantly, they tend to lose their luster, the whole heat thing in general is pointless, you either hover around 50-99 or you don't bother, less than 50 might as well not exist.
I can still play MCH and push solid numbers and perform well, but I find it just so cumbersome and annoying compared to any other job, a far cry from how I felt about it in HW, where it was my favorite dps job, that said, its still relatively fun in PVP.
tldr: MCH had a solid foundation to grow in HW, but the way they simplified it in SB was a large step back in eyes of many players, to the point where Yoshi had to apologize for the current state of it and promised a rework in the future.
just make it deploy and forget type of skill, it will target whoever you are attacking at that point, put several turret only skill on your hotbar (missile, charge shot, etc) and voila, mch turret.Quote:
Given how god awful turret control schemes are, please no.
I personally prefer guns over gadgets, and would love a skill that uses something like Omega's Peripheral Synthesis to duplicate your gun for a dakka-dakka channel skill like Flamethrower, but single target and not for 10 seconds.
However, at the end of the day, I just want MCH to be fun rather than stressful to play for higher ping players, and not have everything fall apart forever if you get a lag spike or something.
Currently MCH's rotation is so delicate that it can, and will break into pieces if so much as a baby hamster the next state over sneezes.
Yeah but MCH is more than just a "gunner". Think of Edgar and Prompto's "Tools". Just like how DRG's story follows story threads of Nidhogg's aftermath, MCH's could follow Omega's, and we could maybe uncover and reverse engineer some of that Peripheral Synthesis stuff and generate large auto-crossbows, chainsaws, and drills as oGCDs. Or summon a floating Omega core that does a Delta Attack or Wave Cannon.
How about a "stance" called Omega Protocol, where your shots are replaced with Wave Cannon, Atomic Lasers, Homing Missiles, etc. MCH should be more than a gunner and should use other kinds of armaments and machines.
I love the new animations for MCH, I really wish those was the standard animations for it's skills. I like the 60 sec interval of burst windows, just make it easier for those with higher pings and cut down on the number of various openers that job has. Get rid of the strictness of the job and that means getting rid of the heat gauge and throw away the barrel while you at it. Also would like a way to not be punished so heavily for dying. As it is if you die your entire kit is thrown out of wack and it takes a good deal of time to get back into the flow.
I would like to see MCH lean more on the tech side in the future. The animation for Stabilizer is cool, so I'd like to see more techy looking skills like that personally.
It's not the same situation, because DRG is launching off MSQ events. When you get access to the Lv60-70 quests there is 100% certainty that you've defeated Nidhogg, so the DRG story can incorporate that fact. But Omega is entirely optional, and it's unlikely they'd set it as a prerequisite to your MCH job quests.
given how "high tech" the empire side is, i have a feeling the upcoming mch quest will deal with them. or in fact probably start at one of the empire town
really? and here i though we finally can visit one of their town =/Quote:
There won't be any Garlean cities for something like that.
I just want to get out there that there's a lot of misinformation being spread about MCH, primarily due to the discussion surrounding MCH being spearheaded by people who don't play the job much. That's fine however, as MCH is the least popular job right now by a fair margin, so the goal for SB would be to make the job appeal to a much wider audience. The main misconception I want to get out of the way though is the notion that MCH is a hard job.
It isn't, straight up.
Optimal MCH gameplay boils down to pressing buttons off cooldown and learning potential WF setups. Heat management is negligible. If you're using 3-ammo, you press Cooldown once when not overheated. If you're using 2-ammo, you're not pressing Cooldown at all outside of WF. The other belief is that MCH is very punishing, which once again, there are easy workarounds for mistakes, just like how there are for every other job, which result in only small losses in output. People say that because of how 'difficult' MCH is to play, it would be a nightmare to prog with, where in reality, the job plays quite similarly to RDM, where you're just reacting to procs the majority of the time and then executing on a burst phase every so often, albeit a harder one. I prog the majority of my content as MCH and also through pugs.
The next misconception I want to address, and this is quite controversial, is that for the level that the majority of the playerbase plays at, ping doesn't play a big part in your DPS. The differences in DPS based on ping is only very relevant at top percentiles. This, of course, is only referring to complaints about DPS based on ping, and not clunkiness based on ping which is a valid issue. The majority of your damage as MCH will be based on RNG, team comp and padding, with the top 5th percentile being based on your ping.
Also, one quickie that I want to throw in, MCH AoE is very good but somewhat boring.
Anyways, the previous points segue into some complaints that I think are completely valid, which are MCH being clunky, MCH having no room to optimise, and MCH being repetitive.
1. Clunkiness
All the complaints about MCH feeling clunky are perfectly valid, with the main issue I run into being 1-tick overheats. To put it simply, if your ping is high or spikes, your 1-tick FT won't generate heat, and that's really annoying. This issue alone is what turns me off using 2-ammo rotation. If you have to 1-tick overheat, you will FT in the later half of your GCD in order you give yourself the best chance to fit the last CD under overheat, but half the time the tick wont generate any heat. You could alternatively FT at the start of your GCD to guarantee an overheat, but then you won't be getting the last CD under heat. This issue could be completely offset by overheat not starting until Flamethrower ends. One thing I would like to touch on here is that people attribute this to MCH being poorly designed, whereas I would have to disagree. Having a job be centred around a burst window, managing a resource until that window then overcapping that resource to get a temporary damage buff the same time as your burst makes a lot of sense design wise. Just thematically, doing it through a Flamethrower doesn't do the fantasy of using a Flamethrower any justice. There are a few other clunkiness issues with MCH that I also notice, such as Gauss Barrel > Barrel Stabiliser double weave and also placing down your turret.
2. Optimisation
MCH has by far the least opportunity to optimise out of any job. It has no DoTs to snapshot, no cast times to greed, no specific uptime strats like with melee jobs, it doesn't even have things like holding oGCDs to align with raid buffs. It only has Turret Overdrive and proc optimisation for WF, and those are arguably a part of the basic MCH rotation. As such, trying to personally optimise MCH at an end game level is quite frustrating as all you can do is hope for a good team comp, stable ping and a bunch of direct crits at the right times. What they can do to make MCH more able to be optimised I'm not sure of, and it's one of the things I would like to be addressed going into 5.0.
3. Repetitiveness
The MCH rotation is definitely repetitive due to, as mentioned previously, no way to change your rotation to optimise which results in pressing buttons ASAP almost always being the optimal way to play. Honestly though, every job is quite repetitive. When you throw yourself at the same content over and over again, you'll find that you'll be pressing the same buttons at the same time every run. I feel like with MCH however, the repetitive nature of most rotations is especially apparent due to how barren the 60s MCH loop is. You have 10s where all your buttons are pressed, then 50s of downtime. That 50s can be further broken down to 1 Reload, 4 Quick Reloads and 3 Gauss Rounds, maybe a splash of Hypercharge. I agree that it isn't terribly compelling gameplay. However, the main suggestion I see to combat that is the make the 123 combo guaranteed to proc, and that makes such little sense to me. All that would serve is to make the job more repetitive. At least reacting to procs adds some level of variance to the rotation. Personally, and I've thrown this suggestion out before, I would like to see more actions originate from the turret so they become completely independent of WF, which can be used to fill in the downtime between WF. I understand that pet response in this game is quite slow, but I think this will probably be the best way to go about it without making arbitrary rules as to what skills do and don't affect WF.
The only thing we know is that MCH is getting substantial changes going into ShB, which I'm kind of sad about because I really enjoy the current iteration of MCH, but can also understand that MCH needs to change in order to appeal to a wider audience. Many people in this thread have expressed that they want MCH to be more tech-based, and I'd be all on board for those kinds of changes. However, I think WF is a perfectly fine ability that should stay as part of MCH (after all, it's basically a 25% damage buff for 10s), and all the new tech stuff can be incorporated into the 50s of downtime between WF. The other thing I would like to see is a re-purposing of Flamethrower, so that it's beneficial to get a full channel of it single target. If we were to keep the same framework that MCH has now, perhaps it could only be used when Gauss Barrel is OFF, so it can be used to fill the 10s of downtime after overheating. We would need another way to overheat, I was think of an oGCD skill that makes your next GCD overheat or it could be used to re-purpose Reassemble.
You make valid points, but I've seen too many Machinist mains try and defend MCH by pretty much always resorting to "you/they just don't play it enough", which might be part of it, but I doubt MCH would be more or less completely abandoned by the majority if it was simply an issue of "not playing it enough".
I've played MCH on both NA and EU servers, it was flat out impossible to get anything good going with 200ms latency on NA servers, so I gave up. I picked it up again on EU servers, hoping I'd have a better time with it, and I did for a bit until I joined a static and tried to start optimizing, and soon realized it's not fun, but stressful to play as you pray to server tick and lag spike gods to not screw you over big time.
The whole Overheat window is my single biggest gripe with the class really. As you said, there is oftentimes this problem where you are either not entering Overheat on beat, or you fail to squeeze in that last GCD in there at the end of overheat, and that's the problem really, MCH ends up feeling REALLY punishing when you hit that last Cooldown on the wrong side of server tick, and end up losing 130 potency to unheated Cooldown + the 20% damage boost and whatever damage it would've contributed towards Wildfire.
It feels horrible losing about 200 potency because you couldn't land that last Cooldown in time, you did everything correctly, but you did it 0.1 seconds too late because the neighbor sneezed.
If only they just had Overheat give you 5-6 Overheated Shots that you could spend within a 20 second window, it would behave exactly the same, no matter if you have 300 ms latency, or if you live in the server room.
Yes, I can definitely sympathise with a lot of the latency based issues surrounding MCH. I probably should have mentioned in my original post that I myself play MCH at around 130 ping which would be well over 200 ping without a VPN, and can still do fine, which is why my stance on ping and MCH is the way it is.
I could be completely wrong on this, but I feel like a people jump ship on MCH because the rotation isn't very intuitive, while also having a pretty awful levelling experience that gives players the wrong idea about the job. Most of the jobs in the game you can kind of get a feel of without having to read a guide, whereas MCH has a splurge of abilities that to a person who hasn't studied a guide might get overwhelmed by. So in saying that, I feel like it's less "you don't play it enough" and more "you haven't tried playing it properly. In saying that, no other job is really like that, so it would make sense for them to make the MCH rotation more natural and intuitive for all players going into ShB. There's also the issue that MCH is no longer essential to current meta speed run comps, and especially since it competes with a lot of jobs to fit into a composition. At the same time however, there's lots of SAM around so I don't know how well that thought holds up. Even way back in HW, MCH was quite unpopular despite not really having the ping-related issues it has now and also being essential for speed kills.
How about some wholesome traits?
Overkill
While Heat Gauge > 50, when Rook or Bishop deal critical damage with auto-attack or Turret Overload, Heartbreaker can be used regardless of target's current HP value.
Additional Effect: Heartbreaker recast is reset.
Bullet Hell
While Overheated, Autoattacks are tripled.
i really wish we have option to turn on/off post heat animation, i like my mch shooting stuff normally, not twirling and somersaulting like crazy =/
also option to remove barrel visual, i cant help it but remembering R-type game everytime i see my gun with barrel attach to it lol
I would like to see the unnecessary fluff skills removed.
MCH already has to keep track of ammo, turret, sometimes-RNG-rotation, heat, and wildfire burst... the following things are dumb extras:
Hot Shot is not interesting. Just make it a trait.
Gauss Barrel is not interesting. Just make it a trait (and remove the stupid appearance; many don't seem to like it).
Why not rework the entire job completely? It feels like SE is putting some ducktape to keep the job together.
Wildfire sounds good on paper, but works not very well ingame. Overheat and Overdrive are even worse. And yes, GB visuals should be removed completely. On one wants this thing!