MCH: Flamethrower?

It says potency 100. But it clearly is hitting more then once? Think of it as a DOT that I have to stand in place to apply?

How often does it hit? Is it better then my main 3 hit?
How about comparing it to my normal spread shot?
Auto crossbow?

Does 100 pps for 10 seconds. So it's a 1000 pot channeled dot.

So 1000 overall.

Spread is 180 per 2.5. In comparison Flamethrower in the same amount of time does 250 pot in 2.5 seconds.

Auto has 1.5 second GCD so it's better then both.

AoE still feels very weak even with Bioblaster.

Either FT needs to do more damage or provide some effect or it needs to pair up well with BB.

I'd be fine with making it an AoE turret. As is I find it very niche and visually in dungeons it isn't very impactful and feels like a wet noodle.

My math could be wrong, but if I did everything right it's a slight gain to use FT over Spread Shot spam into Auto Crossbow (assuming Reassemble is on CD). Please correct me if I've miscalculated or failed to take something into account.

So SS is a 180 potency AoE and generates 5 heat, so the question is how much potency is heat worth? Both three SSs and five ACs fit into a window of 7.5 seconds, both having 180 potency, making AC a gain of 360 over the SS spam. 360/10 (the amount of SSs required for the 50 heat) give us 36, so 180 plus that gives you an average of 216 with SS + AC.

Now onto FT, which is way more simple. Like the previous person said it ticks once a second, so 2.5 seconds makes it an even 250. 250 > 216 therefore FT wins, but again be sure to Reassemble. Again math isn't my strong suit so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: I mean Reassemble a SS or AC.

Flamethrower has the same issue it had when it was released as a capstone skill in Stormblood, it's not interesting nor effective enough by itself to warrant being the level 70 skill. You really shouldn't have to even think about whether a capstone ability is beneficial to use or not, it should be obvious enough to distinguish itself. You don't see summoners having to do math to figure out that, yes, summoning bahamut is a 3.7% dps increase. It needs to do more than just be a slightly and conditionally better spread shot.

1. Why doesn't it interact with the heat gauge at all? It's kind of a flavour fail to have a move called flamethrower that doesn't affect your heat. Maybe it maxes out your heat gauge so there's a bit of depth to having to spend your heat before you go into flamethrower. Or if having even more heat gain/hypercharge spam is boring, make it drain heat while channeling but make the exchange rate so good it's a no brainer to use in aoe, maybe even single target (e.g drains 10 heat/deals 200+ potency per tick for up to 10s total).

2. Being a 10s channel it has poor synergy with the short 20s cooldown of drill/bioblaster too. It's annoying enough finding safe windows of time to complete a full hypercharge without drill coming off cooldown halfway through. If it were up to me, it'll be a 1.5s cast or something that just winds up and deals all 1000 potency instantly. You could tweak the numbers for sanity, but it's not like machinist doesn't need a bit more damage, and I wouldn't mind having to use it in single target if it were that good. It's kind of strange to have a capstone ability you don't even touch in most boss fights.

As things are flamethrower is tuned way too conservatively both in numbers and gameplay. Bard is already the undisputed king of long term sustained aoe via multidotting different targets, nothing wrong with machinist filling the 'burst aoe' niche in turn.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

Flamethrower has the same issue it had when it was released as a capstone skill in Stormblood, it's not interesting nor effective enough by itself to warrant being the level 70 skill. You really shouldn't have to even think about whether a capstone ability is beneficial to use or not, it should be obvious enough to distinguish itself. You don't see summoners having to do math to figure out that, yes, summoning bahamut is a 3.7% dps increase. It needs to do more than just be a slightly and conditionally better spread shot.

1. Why doesn't it interact with the heat gauge at all? It's kind of a flavour fail to have a move called flamethrower that doesn't affect your heat. Maybe it maxes out your heat gauge so there's a bit of depth to having to spend your heat before you go into flamethrower. Or if having even more heat gain/hypercharge spam is boring, make it drain heat while channeling but make the exchange rate so good it's a no brainer to use in aoe, maybe even single target (e.g drains 10 heat/deals 200+ potency per tick for up to 10s total).

2. Being a 10s channel it has poor synergy with the short 20s cooldown of drill/bioblaster too. It's annoying enough finding safe windows of time to complete a full hypercharge without drill coming off cooldown halfway through. If it were up to me, it'll be a 1.5s cast or something that just winds up and deals all 1000 potency instantly. You could tweak the numbers for sanity, but it's not like machinist doesn't need a bit more damage, and I wouldn't mind having to use it in single target if it were that good. It's kind of strange to have a capstone ability you don't even touch in most boss fights.

As things are flamethrower is tuned way too conservatively both in numbers and gameplay. Bard is already the undisputed king of long term sustained aoe via multidotting different targets, nothing wrong with machinist filling the 'burst aoe' niche in turn.

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They divorced flamethrower from heat so that it doesn't become an obligatory part of your single-target rotation. Assuming every 5 heat is worth 36 potency, capping out your heat would add 720 potency to FT for a total of 1720 potency over 10 seconds. That will almost certainly move FT into a required part of your single-target rotation.

But if flamethrower instead gave just 20-25 heat over the full 10 seconds, that would put it on par with spread shot spam over the same time frame, and make it unambiguously better in AoE. It would also stay too low to break into the single-target rotation, because it would have lower potency-per-second than our normal 3-part combo. Dropping the duration would be great too, even if they drop the overall potency as well. I'm pretty sure the sound effect cuts out at 3-4 seconds anyway.

Yes, I would prefer having a reason to use it in a single target rotation. It's your fancy level 70 toy and I'd like to have a strong reason to use it in important content like raids too, not just dungeons and the occasional joke fight like a2s. Of course, there are other issues I outlined with that, like it being a 10s channel which is a liability when trying to play around drill's 20s cooldown. Well, it has always been a very troubled skill, even with the recent (and you might say fairly successful) machinist revamp, it remains the black sheep of the toolkit.

Your suggestion would certainly make it 'unambiguously better' than spread shot, but that's not good enough for me personally. It has to be at least.. three times as good. A 2 minute cooldown shouldn't lose to autocrossbow which you can pull out way more often than once every 2 minutes, or bioblaster which you can use every 20 seconds. There's also the issue of the damage being spread out over so long that there will be occasions you'll be forced to cut it short due to aoes; that's not exactly rare in the most common use case - large packs of dungeon trash with mobs spinning around randomly and throwing out aoes.

is there a mch guide that someone point me to because im clearly missing something.

What if something like Flamethrower making your Bioblaster dot tick a second time or something of that sort. Or Flamethrower deals x% amount of dmg more if you have Bioblaster on the target. I do agree though that it should have some interaction with our kit and/or utilize the heat gauge. Seems like an afterthought for the devs.

Just add 5 heat per tick of FT and it's good to go.

What if Flamethrower did more damage if used above 50 heat?

I think Flamethrower should be moved to the turret and make it a mode switch that does more damage the more battery it had when summoned. This fixes the lack of Battery usage in AoE situations.

MCH produces nearly too much heat in dungeons as is, really don't need to add heat on flamethrower.

AOE priority: Bioblaster > Auto-Crossbow > Flamethrower > Spread shot

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Originally Posted by XgungraveX

is there a mch guide that someone point me to because im clearly missing something.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...t?usp=drivesdk

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

MCH produces nearly too much heat in dungeons as is, really don't need to add heat on flamethrower.

AOE priority: Bioblaster > Auto-Crossbow > Flamethrower > Spread shot



https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...t?usp=drivesdk

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thxs much foe guide

It should give a burn DoT that refreshes in duration every tick, so that even after the 10s duration, the mobs are left burning for another 10s of potency or something.

What if they made it so flamethrower's potency was higher based on the amount of heat you have but slowly depleted the heat gauge as it's channeled? Then the potency of flamethrower would slowly drop as the heat gauge is depleted.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

It should give a burn DoT that refreshes in duration every tick, so that even after the 10s duration, the mobs are left burning for another 10s of potency or something.

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I was thinking this exact same thing. If flamethrower ticks placed a 9-12 sec dot on the mobs for 20 pot which refreshed on ticks, then you would get an extra 60-80 pot per mob after flamethrower has ended on top of the 3-4 ticks during flamethrower as well as the standard 100 pot tick damage.