MCH “tiny buff”

I would like to make the suggestion that Wildfire is allowed to crit. It’s a 1200 potency attack that even with full raid buffs barely matches the 700pot DHcrit Drill. Please please SE make zero other changes and ruin MCH. Just allow WF to crit lots of love. Every machinist ever

A little backstory from Stormblood first:
Wildfire was a 60s cooldown, it used to work in a different way.
Instead of cumulating potency, it was cumulating damage inflicted.

In other words, every crits and DH would be taken in account, making it a "Critable cooldown".
Due to the frequency and high damage of the wildfire phase, any critical hit would make a big difference.
There was simply too much RNG in MCH.

That's why Wildfire works this way. Most MCH welcomed these changes as the rotation already was revolving around Wildfire way too much.

The real problem is that Wildfire lost what it made it interesting gameplay wise, the 3-2-3, the ammo...
Well, that's gameplay wise. I'm not a math wizard but:

Wildfire has the least impact on MCH DPS. It is about 3% to 3.5% of our total DPS. 450~550 of MCH DPS. The only weaker cast is Roller Dash, the Automaton Queen's gap closer.
There is less than 10 casts every savage and on E8S, that's at most 7 casts.
I believe current BiS raise around 27% chance of critical. You will definitely see cases where a MCH did not crit a single wildfire. You would also see the opposite.

Your suggestion is to buff the MCH by giving it a random chance of dealing more damage on one ability. An ability that has little presence over a fight and little interactivity.
It would not save the state of Wildfire, might even make it worse by adding a "If you're lucky enough...!" condition.

A correct buff would be to halve its cooldown, it currently has really bad damages overrall, on top of being a boring cooldown to use.
Another correct buff would be to make the detonation an AoE, often asked by the community, useless this tier but would definitely be a small buff in dungeon.

Thanks for the story. I’ve played mch since 3.0. I just want wildfire to crit. Nothing more, especially not a bedtime story

And originally it was a 90s CD. FYI

And just because I can’t be bothered to edit replies. Mch doesn’t need a massive buff. The current wild fire is perfectly fine and hits from 60-80k depending raid buffs. That’s no crit, bass damage at 1200 potency. Allowing it to crit would only make it similar to dancers or ninjas and their high pot attack. Wildfire may be a small % of the mch overall dps. This is why making it crit would actually not be a huge dps gain or huge buff. In turn making the job perfect

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Originally Posted by Wyakin

And just because I can’t be bothered to edit replies. Mch doesn’t need a massive buff. The current wild fire is perfectly fine and hits from 60-80k depending raid buffs. That’s no crit, bass damage at 1200 potency. Allowing it to crit would only make it similar to dancers or ninjas and their high pot attack. Wildfire may be a small % of the mch overall dps. This is why making it crit would actually not be a huge dps gain or huge buff. In turn making the job perfect

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sorry but whats your end goal ? do you think mch should get a buff ? because in that case what you propose would be so tiny, adding the rng layer on top of it would seriously make it worthless, thats "margin of error" level of a buff, like yea obviously you could at worst break even but thats a level of buff you wouldn't even realize was there, making it pretty unnecessary.

if on the other hand you don't really think mch needs any kind of buff than what is gained by doing what you proposed ?

adding rng for rngs sake is completly unecessary and would help literally no one, you might aswell propose that we add another layer on top of crit+dh on every skill, lets call it "supercrit" and have a 10% chance of triggering on every dh+crit raising damage by another 20% if proccd just because

She just wants the numbers to be bigger.

So we can just make it so the Wildfire scrolling number shows as a DCrit.

99999 is less exciting than 99999!!

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Originally Posted by Akiudo

adding rng for rngs sake is completly unecessary and would help literally no one, you might aswell propose that we add another layer on top of crit+dh on every skill, lets call it "supercrit" and have a 10% chance of triggering on every dh+crit raising damage by another 20% if proccd just because

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supercrit, supercrit. She's supercritty!

I'd rather have them fix the ping dependent design.

They massacred Wildfire in 5.0, and seeing everyone saying “they fixed MCH” on a job they never leveled bugs me in a odd way. A longer cooldown and less weapon skills to utilize, plus hindering speed if you use anything besides 2 skills is just bizarre to me. I usually stay quite on this manner since I’m definitely in a minority on this.

The character may not have mch levelled but my main certainly does. And the end result is simple. BIG NUMBERS plus a tiny tiny buff

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Originally Posted by Jirah

They massacred Wildfire in 5.0, and seeing everyone saying “they fixed MCH” on a job they never leveled bugs me in a odd way. A longer cooldown and less weapon skills to utilize, plus hindering speed if you use anything besides 2 skills is just bizarre to me. I usually stay quite on this manner since I’m definitely in a minority on this.

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They did fix MCH, SB MCH was absolutely awful (a fact even the devs acknowledged) and while I think the job was at its most fun in HW, I think they did a decent job reworking it, it could be better of course, most problems with the rework are a consequence of how badly they screwed up with SB MCH's design.

I will agree that Wildfire could use a looking at, maybe a buff in the form of lowered cooldown or making it a guaranteed crit, something to make it more exciting to use.

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Originally Posted by Tizzy_Tormentor

They did fix MCH, SB MCH was absolutely awful (a fact even the devs acknowledged) and while I think the job was at its most fun in HW, I think they did a decent job reworking it, it could be better of course, most problems with the rework are a consequence of how badly they screwed up with SB MCH's design.

I will agree that Wildfire could use a looking at, maybe a buff in the form of lowered cooldown or making it a guaranteed crit, something to make it more exciting to use.

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They mostly fixed the Heat gauge and lack of machineries, replacing the ammos/rng.
The thing is, it felt like a half-done rework. I still enjoy and welcome this rework, it's by far the job I played the most since I started the game and the Stormblood iteration was incredibly disappointing. But there's many buts:

Ping issues still exists.
Flamethrower, for some reason, also remains and is mostly an emote. One of the most boring abilities in the whole game.
Automaton Queen is a glorified DoT with no way of redirecting it, with little to no interaction.
And the gutted utility, of course.
Wildfire is not interesting to use and has little impact.
Hypercharge is not interesting, a "fast phase" is cool but not spamming the same GCD while weaving in-between.

Compared to HW MCH, there's an obvious lack of depth.

I 100% love current MCH. And my one complaint about 3.0 MCH was simply having to summon the robot every pull in dungeons. I just wanted it to follow me like a pet. Current MCH I only want that 1200 potency hit to crit. Simple. No other changes please

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

They mostly fixed the Heat gauge and lack of machineries, replacing the ammos/rng.
The thing is, it felt like a half-done rework. I still enjoy and welcome this rework, it's by far the job I played the most since I started the game and the Stormblood iteration was incredibly disappointing. But there's many buts:

Ping issues still exists.
Flamethrower, for some reason, also remains and is mostly an emote. One of the most boring abilities in the whole game.
Automaton Queen is a glorified DoT with no way of redirecting it, with little to no interaction.
And the gutted utility, of course.
Wildfire is not interesting to use and has little impact.
Hypercharge is not interesting, a "fast phase" is cool but not spamming the same GCD while weaving in-between.

Compared to HW MCH, there's an obvious lack of depth.

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I feel that the ping issues are really hard to avoid if they want the job to retain its speed, personally I think that the Hypercharge phase is fun and I disagree that its "not interesting" but I wish Heat Blast itself was a more impactful skill, but its far above just spamming the same skill like Inner Release -> Fell Cleave/Decimate, the fact that you weave in oGCDs as they reset helps it a lot, its not really spamming the same skill in the general sense, you are alternating between 3. I've seen the main fix for it either being make Heat Blast have 5 charges, or tone down the animation lock on Gauss/Ricochet/HeatBlast, either way, I greatly enjoy this aspect of MCH, but I can see how those with high ping would struggle with it.
Flamethrower is actually a powerful tool for MCH aoe, its just below Auto Crossbow in terms of potency, its very much worth it, I've seen people suggest that it should generate heat, but I disagree on the grounds that it could make it mandatory to use it on single target, which was one of the reasons SB MCH was so annoying to play.
Since SB, they have effectively done everything they can to remove the turret from the players consciousness, I miss being able to interact with it, I didn't mind that you had to place it every time, but with ShB, the turret and by extension, the Queen, are nothing but glorified DoT's, much like DRK's Living Shadow, it looks cool, but all it is really is a fancy DoT.
I wish MCH retained its status as a debuffer, I liked that it debuffed the enemy more than it buffed the party, making it the "selfish ranged" was a bad idea, numbers are nice, but it can never realistically reach the numbers any of the other "selfish" dps can.
I feel that Wildfire is just a consequence of how poorly they streamlined the job for SB, they had to rework it and Wildfire ended up being an afterthought, I hope going forward they might be able to tweak it a little, I feel the impact could be strengthened by making it a direct/crit, but that would be similar to how Reassemble works, but its one I thought that would strengthen the impact of it, I feel that Wildfire should definitely be MCH's hardest hitting attack in terms of raw numbers.

Compared to HW, there's an obvious lack of depth on almost every job, they have gutted most of the job synergy, greatly culled skills and crowd control, ranged can no longer restore MP or TP (which is gone entirely) aggro control is almost entirely gone, with all forms of aggro tools being stripped and many of the jobs were heavily streamlined with a lot of depth being gutted out to make them easier to play. There is a solid foundation to build on going forward, but given how hit and miss their streamlining tends to be, I'm not too optimistic.

All very good points. Welcome to the discussion. I just want wildfire to crit. Nothing more, no changes. I like mch as It is

Bring back the Bishop!!!

Honestly imo, a major issue for MCH gameplay right now is Queen AI. You almost have no control over it, and it can't switch targets until the current target it's punching is dead, and it can't handle changes in terrain (Looking at you uplift).
And sometimes it just bugs out if the boss moves or is moving away.

I outlined my thoughts a while back in another MCH thread regarding Queen AI:

> Automaton Queen will ignore all collisions.
> Automaton Queen Roller Dash will instantly refresh its cooldown when MCH switches target.
> Automaton Queen Roller Dash will cast the instant MCH changes target.
> Automaton Queen will receive a buff every 1.5 seconds that will increase the next Arm Punch's potency by 150, if it's not punching anything
> Automaton Queen will change its target to the MCH's current target without fail, every single time.

My thoughts on flamethrower is that it should complement bioblaster and the autocrossbow spam like so:

> Bioblaster will apply [Toxic Substance] to enemies hit by it.
> Flamethrower will add 5 to the heat gauge every second. Enemies that have [Toxic Substance] will be inflicted with [Burning], refreshing Bio Blaster duration and inflicting a second separate DoT to the enemies.
> Autocrossbow will reduce Ricochet and Gauss Round cooldown, just like HeatBlast.

Essentially, this will change MCH's AoE rotation to two phases and will probably reduce Carpal Tunnel for the players as well.
A Flamethrower "Rest Mode" and the hypercharge crossbow, Rico GR spam.
Spreadshot will be there just in case you die and need to rebuild Heat Gauge.

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Originally Posted by Payotz

Snip

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I like the idea of Bio Blaster having synergy with Flamethrower. That would be cool.
However to fix the Queen, I think it would be easier to use a "Charge" mechanic rather than what you proposed.

The AQ gets 1 charge per 10 battery.
Roller Dash costs 2 charges, Arm Punch costs 1 charge.
At 0 charges the Queen uses Pile Bunker, potency depending on battery consummed.
Hitting an invulnerable ennemy should not consume charges.
An ability to order the Queen to change target should be implemented. If the Queen aims for the MCH last damaged ennemy, it'll get confused with AoEs.

As for Flamethrower, I always have a wet dream about the MCH using the Multi-tool as an actual Flamethrower.
The ability would change Split Shog, Slug Shot and Clean Shot into more powerfull variants. It could consume heat to activate while having its own cooldown (Basically like Living Shadow consumes Dark Blood)

But for this level of rework, we'll have to wait next year.

To bounce back on Hypercharge discussion, I'd like if there was "something more", like PLD uses Confiteor to end Requiescat phase. I like the fast pace, just wish it would not be spamming Heatblast.
Also that my Australian friend could enjoy MCH the same way I do.

Wildfire... Honestly I just want this cooldown to be gone or buffed. It's been simplified so much it's now a 1200 potency cooldown with a delay.

the Job just lost its complexity, 6.0 they need to either remove the uncanny robot or add more things to it. Wildfire is a massive bore in 5.0 where spamming Heat Blast over and over and over again equals GG. Can’t throw in a Drill or Split Shot or else the overheat slows down, can’t use Ricochet and Guass Barrel Since those aren’t registered as “Weaponskills” but “Abilities” so they’re **** in the wind for wildfire.

I feel a lot more can be done with it. Bards Pitch perfects are cathartic and flashy and have some element of control with Empyreal Arrow. Continuously hitting a button isn’t fun, and I feel the reason why it’s every 2 minutes as to not bore the player but you also need to spam to refuel your battery gage.

A lot of people love Neo-Machinist and that’s fine, I’m just not too happy with it personally. And getting a second rework is highly unlikely when other jobs need some love too

All of you are entitled to your opinion. I just hope SE listens to none of you and simply makes wildfire crit. Happy mer, problem solved

To what point? Wildfire critting means nothing. ShB machinist is not perfect. It’s a lot better than it was in sb thats for sure, but wildfire being able to crit means literally nothing. It’s a meaningless change, and distracts from actual issues.

Queen is very much fire and forget, flamethrower while not useless does not feel good. While some would argue it should generate heat. Let it give battery, so you have at least one skill in your aoe rotation that grants battery.

For those wanting to shift away from the ping reliance. Wf needs the bunshin treatment or split gauss round and ricohet. Make acb recharge ricochet and keep it in an aoe rotation and heat blast recharge gauss round.

Personally the current set up doesnt bother me much because even with ping issues. I have found a way to alter the rotation enough to allow me to play as optimally as possible without any issues.

Literally nothing more than the pleasure of seeing a lovely big number. The job itself doesn’t need a large buff. I just want the 1200 potency attack to do a lovely nice pretty big number that’s better than drill. That’s all.

MCH is a load of issues, the inconsequential Dot robot, the most basic rotation in the game from a ranged no less, the one-hit-wonder wildfire button , along with wildfire being 120 seconds rather than 60 seconds, the overheat cripple speed, the one button ur alloud to use for wildfire is weaker than slug shot that u spam 5 times, as i stated earlier 4.0 is debatably worse with ammo and overheating and being very easy to mess up with very small margin for error. wildfire damage being on par with a reassembled overhated drill if not lesser considering u can pull off two in the time wildfire opens up is a good debate but if u want big numbers and zero changed to a heavily flawed job, go play Monk or Samurai

I hate to state the obvious here. But assuming you know how hypercharge and heatblast work you’ll know that being a 220 potency attack and hitting 5 times in 8 seconds means it’s 1100 potency in that time. Doing your 1/2/3 combo (which is all you can achieve in the same time period) yields 990 potency ish. Then factor in the resetting gauss round and ricochet.

To your second point. If I wanted to play monk or samurai I would. I don’t. So I won’t. I enjoy mch as it is. Said several times already. I literally just believe two things. It needs a tiny buff and to do that all the devs need to do it allow wildfire to crit. This will also fix how you feel about wildfire and be more satisfying as an ability getting that 1200 potency crit

Idk if there's such a thing as padding a thread to make it either more relevant or make it longer but if there is such a thing than the OP has definitely accomplished it.
Point in case... I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread is absolutely aware you care about nothing more than having Wildfire crit.. you've said it nearly 10 times now, if not past that. No need to repeat yourself more, OP. Let people carry on with their discussions about their own opinions on the job and not be completely dismissive and rude about it :D.

As for my own opinions on MCH, I'd agree with making Wildfire a 60s cooldown, but not allowing it to Crit. Enabling it to crit is a big RNG buff and... bleh. *If there were anymore buffs for the job*... I'd say allocate it to Hypercharge. Buffing Hypercharge would benefit players able to utilize the ability under buffs, Optimization, which is pretty neat (honestly this is just a side note I thought I'd add in). With regards to Wildfire specifically though like I said earlier, and as CKNovel originally stated as well, half the duration!

Why do so many people say that MCH doesn't need a buff? It definitely needs a big buff to make it comparable to SMN/SAM/BLM.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...t=95&class=DPS

I would think you could reduce the CD of Wildfire to 60 seconds and make it a GUARANTEED CRIT skill (or at least let us use Reassemble on it to force the crit) and we'd still be below the pack but it would close the gap a bit.

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Originally Posted by Wilkoss

Why do so many people say that MCH doesn't need a buff? It definitely needs a big buff to make it comparable to SMN/SAM/BLM.

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...t=95&class=DPS

I would think you could reduce the CD of Wildfire to 60 seconds and make it a GUARANTEED CRIT skill (or at least let us use Reassemble on it to force the crit) and we'd still be below the pack but it would close the gap a bit.

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MCH can't be compared to SAM/BLM/SMN, it has to be balanced inside the ranged role. If MCH gets buffed alone, it will leave BRD and DNC as dead classes because of their inferior dps in the ranged bracket. All jobs must be balanced within their role, and MCH is balanced at least with DNC, so it doesn't need a buff. BRD is a little bit behind and could use one though. If anything, all ranged jobs could use a small buff, but it can also be argued that they don't need one because of the freedom of movement.

I don't like the idea of 60s Wildfire at all. It would make the class incredibly inflexible with skill speed, just like the 60s Reassemble did at the release of Shadowbringers. It would have to be a 55s cooldown, but that would possibly bring another set of issues along with it. Outside of completely reworking the rotation, I still think the best alternative would be getting rid of the Hypercharge and Wildfire timers and giving us 5 stacks of Heat Blast and having Wildfire go up to 6 stacks on the target before exploding.

The best change would be a complete change in job design philosophy that would do away with stringent weave windows, not just on MCH, but on other jobs as well. I really hope remote work will open the devs' eyes to the existence of ping.

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

exploding..

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Emphasizing this word because more explosions is always great.

#MakeWildFireAoE

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

MCH can't be compared to SAM/BLM/SMN, it has to be balanced inside the ranged role. If MCH gets buffed alone, it will leave BRD and DNC as dead classes because of their inferior dps in the ranged bracket. All jobs must be balanced within their role, and MCH is balanced at least with DNC, so it doesn't need a buff. BRD is a little bit behind and could use one though. If anything, all ranged jobs could use a small buff, but it can also be argued that they don't need one because of the freedom of movement.

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Yep, buffing MCH only would bring a loads of issues...

As for the freedom of movement, we already talked about it but there is currently many issues with it:
-Instead of a "DPS floor", the gutted DPS for mobility is a "DPS ceiling". Meaning it helps you to deal more DPS at a lower player level but also prevents you from doing more when mechanics are mastered.
-This tier is one of the most mobile tier and BLM/SMN were at the top during progress exactly where ranged should have shined. I strongly believe mobility is not the game changer but the ranged abilities are what makes the difference, the fact that one doesn't have to move to respect certains mechanics or interpret those in a whole different way.
-SMN shouldn't count due to its broken, unhealthy state, but yet it exist at a 40% unpunishable instant cast.
-The point of mobility is to bait specific mechanics but it's a design left for dead in this expansion (Or that must be done by 2 players including a caster)
-Mobility is often used to increase your melee DPS, not the Ranged's DPS

And then you have the whole story about gutted support.
I believe the problem is not the DPS but most likely the ranged identity, SQEX removed what made them the "Ranged DPS" and reworked them into pure DPS with no casts and a DPS ceiling.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

Yep, buffing MCH only would bring a loads of issues...

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Yep, not saying only buff MCH. I main DNC and while it's not in a bad place it could also do with a couple of small tweaks. At least when Dancering people expect you to be a bit down on the DPS leaderboard, when I play MCH which brings no buffs to the party it feels a bit crappy being 3rd behind the casters/SAM. I'd rather see a bit more complexity added to MCH to enable it to have more DPS without sacrificing movement. Plus letting us reassemble WF of course.

As a whole it’s accepted that ranged are the lower end of the dps ladder. So they need a buff? Yes. But not much. 250-500 dps give or take. But certainly not to samurai level. Enough so that the game from top to bottom isn’t 2000 dps though

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Originally Posted by Wyakin

As a whole it’s accepted that ranged are the lower end of the dps ladder. So they need a buff? Yes. But not much. 250-500 dps give or take. But certainly not to samurai level. Enough so that the game from top to bottom isn’t 2000 dps though

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that does beg the question though, considering bard (and dancer isn't really that much better of, it just lends itself more to speedruns and curing waltz is way more useful support than anything bard has) is on average 500 dps below mch, thats allready including one fight where bard can multidot for a while, and really the extra support (not talking dps buffs here, as obviously we are talking raid dps) is extremly situational and even than not worth much, what does this mean if you compare those ? does bard need a 500 dps buff and mch is fine ? does mch need 300 dps and bard should get 500 and we just pretend that a skill you can use in one out of 8 savage fights these addons is worth the difference ?

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Originally Posted by Akiudo

that does beg the question though, considering bard (and dancer isn't really that much better of, it just lends itself more to speedruns and curing waltz is way more useful support than anything bard has) is on average 500 dps below mch, thats allready including one fight where bard can multidot for a while, and really the extra support (not talking dps buffs here, as obviously we are talking raid dps) is extremly situational and even than not worth much, what does this mean if you compare those ? does bard need a 500 dps buff and mch is fine ? does mch need 300 dps and bard should get 500 and we just pretend that a skill you can use in one out of 8 savage fights these addons is worth the difference ?

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It’s just a rough estimate honestly. And my reasoning is that the lowest dps (that isn’t ranged) is 700-1000+ dps ahead of all three ranged. That gap is simply too large. Bard itself does 10-12% less damage than the top DPS. Is movement tax worth that much seriously?

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Originally Posted by Wyakin

It’s just a rough estimate honestly. And my reasoning is that the lowest dps (that isn’t ranged) is 700-1000+ dps ahead of all three ranged. That gap is simply too large. Bard itself does 10-12% less damage than the top DPS. Is movement tax worth that much seriously?

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my point was mostly that any support bard has left (actual utility support, so no passive or even active dps boosting) is so weak right now, thats basically the realm of lip service that they let the stuff in bard still has. so putting that aside for a moment if you buff bard by 500 dps it would be about as strong as mch is now, so again, is mch fine right now ? or does bard in fact need more ? that isn't meant to criticize you, its just that people allways talk about "ranged" as if the 3 phys ranged are anywhere close to on the same level right now

I don’t believe mch is ok no. All three need a boost of an equal amount of around 250-500 dps in my opinion. Remember it is just that, an opinion those who disagree. However that being said, bards “support” is dumb. Give it goes again, remove those passive buffs. Make it the middle ground between mch and dancer. Happy life

And after all this. All I want is wildfire to crit. That’s enough of a buff for it. Nothing else would need to be changed

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Originally Posted by Wyakin

And after all this. All I want is wildfire to crit. That’s enough of a buff for it. Nothing else would need to be changed

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If 6.0 only does this MCH will be bare none the worst job in the game to play.With its disconnected Aoe, and 3 main half baked mechanics that have bugger all to do with eachother , which are Wildfire favoring Speed rather than power, Turrets which is just a Dot at this point and redundant overheating giving you damage up for a 220 potency skill which can be replaced with Rapid Fire for the difference it makes, and the New Battery gage which just restricts turrets and no aoe options.

It all screams placeholder and feels like Beta-MCH. It didn’t rework much it gave MCH charges and deleted most of the skills.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

but if u want big numbers and zero changed to a heavily flawed job, go play Monk or Samurai

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What's wrong with SAM?

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Originally Posted by Jirah

which are Wildfire favoring Speed rather than power,

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Which is far more consistent in the long run. Wildfire's previous implementations were incredibly swingy at no fault of the player.

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Turrets which is just a Dot at this point

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As compared to an autoattack/origin point for party buffs? They were pretty much drop and forget prior to ShB.

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and redundant overheating giving you damage up for a 220 potency skill which can be replaced with Rapid Fire for the difference it makes,

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Hypercharge's potency boost is so that it is actually useful between level 30 and 35.

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and the New Battery gage which just restricts turrets and no aoe options.

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Flamethrower is supposed to be the aoe equivalent of the Rook/Queen, but since it lacks Heat generation spamming Spread Shot leads to higher dps on average.