A Proposed small change to MCH

Just to preface this, I have no idea how balanced/imbalanced this would be.

I think a small Qol change that could be made to the MCH moveset would be to make it so that rather than having 3 charges each of gauss round and ricochet, they could instead make it so that we could have 6 charges total that could be spent on either attack, and then slightly buff gauss round while slightly nerfing ricochet.

The reason I say this is mainly because in order to keep your dps up, you HAVE to use ricochet, an aoe attack, often even in a single target rotation, which can be a pain in situations where you don't want to be attacking surrounding enemies. A change like this would both fix that issue as well as reward the player for using the correct skill for the situation.

Same for all jobs with forced aoe though. DRG, DNC, BRD, RDM, PLD, WHM, SMN, to name a few. Lot of jobs have skills that are integral to their damage rotation that happen to be AoE.

So...
It's a good idea.

But not for MCH.

Why that? We already have too many skills based on AoE/Single Target choice (ACB&Bio-Blaster). Your idea would basically remove one button from the already barebone rotation.
Also, I played most content and... I haven't seen any content where I did not wanted to attack a target in ricochet range. As far as I can remember, the Dolls in TEA (Phase 1) are spread enough to not aoe them by mistake. Garuda and Ifrit in E6S are also spread out.

In my opinion the idea is good. But not in this context, not for MCH.
It doesn't bring anything to the table, it only removes a button to correct a problem no one ever had and remove an additionnal button from the barebone rotation.

MCH's smallest problem is ricochet hitting multiple targets TC...

Disagree

Ricochet as a aoe is severely segregated from any aoe complimentary skills to fix this the charge system, or what little is present, needs to be fine tuned not so much the charges themselves even if they have issues all their own but lets stay on topic. Ricochet and Gauss do the exact same damage so in ST fights its just two of the same skills and in aoe circumstances youll spam rico but only use it on regular CD which is weirdly off hand. Having said system be tied down to a ST Skill that is only available during overheat and is recommended to spend during said overheat is ridiculous layers of clunky and poor job design.

Also having 6 free OGD skills right off the bat is also clunky and far to generous. like having DNC start with all feathers, or some other insta resource with its only real purpose is to blindly spam to oblivion.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Having said system be tied down to a ST Skill that is only available during overheat and is recommended to spend during said overheat is ridiculous layers of clunky and poor job design.

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Thing is Richochet and Gauss Round are not intended to be used during overheat (overheat only affecting weaponskills and not abilities). All of those rotations that interweave ogcds during overheat are the result of low ping that allows for weaving an unintended extra ogcd between gcds. The clunk as you call it is the result of players figuring out an unintended rotation that generates more damage because SE designs jobs to function with high ping and not low ping.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Thing is Richochet and Gauss Round are not intended to be used during overheat (overheat only affecting weaponskills and not abilities). All of those rotations that interweave ogcds during overheat are the result of low ping that allows for weaving an unintended extra ogcd between gcds. The clunk as you call it is the result of players figuring out an unintended rotation that generates more damage because SE designs jobs to function with high ping and not low ping.

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It is the intended rotation.
Don't look at this guide, but it is intended to weave-in between the heatblast, otherwise GR/Ricochet uses would be lost. If it was not intended, maximum charges would be 4.

The image is from the official guide released by SQEX.
There's major errors in it, but you can see how they intended the job to be played.

EDIT:
I'd like to see your sources about the job designed with high ping in mind.
In this same guide, there's a mistake:
Drill is used as the last GCD during Wildfire Window. The problem is that Drill has/had (if they fixed it) a delay before applying damages. If you have above average ping, the damages would apply after the Wildfire Window. In other words, it was tested and validated in a low ping environment.

I would love this suggestion. Even if they nerfed Ricochet damage to compensate you being able to use it 6x in a row in AoE scenarios. There are def. some times when I do not want to use Ricochet in single target, especially when fighting stuff on my own out there.

Maybe they could re-implement ammo in the interface as charges for these OGCD skills.

Or how about:

Heat Blast:
Additional Effect: Reduces the recast time of Gauss Round by 30s and Ricochet by 15s

Auto Crossbow
Additional Effect: Reduces the recast time of Gauss Round by 15s and Ricochet by 30s

This would have a similar effect, in that in single target, you can just hop between Heat Blast and Gauss Round, and similarly for AoE, Auto Crossbow and Ricochet.

It might be a bit too OP for AoE right now, but as a trait upgrade in 6.0 post level 80, it could be good.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Or how about:

Heat Blast:
Additional Effect: Reduces the recast time of Gauss Round by 30s and Ricochet by 15s

Auto Crossbow
Additional Effect: Reduces the recast time of Gauss Round by 15s and Ricochet by 30s

This would have a similar effect, in that in single target, you can just hop between Heat Blast and Gauss Round, and similarly for AoE, Auto Crossbow and Ricochet.

It might be a bit too OP for AoE right now, but as a trait upgrade in 6.0 post level 80, it could be good.

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MCh has the least amount of skills surely theirs room to fine tune each mechanic rather than trying to tie every single aspect to overheat and heat blast, heat blast shouldnt exist its a waste of a skill under normal circumstances being its saving grace are charge refuel which can easily just be tied to overheat where it resets endlessly until the overheat bypasses.

I seriously dont understand to what benefit exist to keep such a drab skill, rotation is fine as is gaining the speed boost not just one skill and one skill alone disregarding aoe of course

One thing I really don't like that they've been doing recently is giving aoe versions of single target skills and vice versa. It's kind of disappointing (to me) to look at new abilities when they come out and see that it's just the same move used the same way but this time an aoe! Sometimes you even technically lose a move by them doing this. On monk we lost Howling Fist and it was replaced with Enlightment, but I could use Howling Fist alongside my other moves in single target combat which I can't do with Enlightment.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

One thing I really don't like that they've been doing recently is giving aoe versions of single target skills and vice versa. It's kind of disappointing (to me) to look at new abilities when they come out and see that it's just the same move used the same way but this time an aoe! Sometimes you even technically lose a move by them doing this. On monk we lost Howling Fist and it was replaced with Enlightment, but I could use Howling Fist alongside my other moves in single target combat which I can't do with Enlightment.

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I believe this is to trim Skill bloat and make the job more structurally sound. It’s a shame HF was removed to be a more out of reach aoe resource but on the flip side Monk already has enough trouble pulling all its fast strings to operate while HF didn’t tie to anything and was just a “button that did damage”. BRD’s Kit is a good example of every single skill going unwasted. While MCH dog’s breakfast of a kit is so unstructured it gives off the illusion of speed with 2 skills that do the exact same thing with 3 charges each, 2 gadget skills, and its actual rotation all out with no core road map or a very loose one. Optimists would call this “fluid” I call it a mess in job design. Sometimes it’s best to leave the Aoe skills to Aoe

Ok, why not, but then auto crossbow should refund ricochet charges just like HB does to both

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Originally Posted by Endariel

Ok, why not, but then auto crossbow should refund ricochet charges just like HB does to both

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I dont understand this course at all to have Heat blasts Aoe variant to not have any refueling which almost completley eliminates Ricochet from the equation ya know besides the initial spam spam spam. MCH should just have a designated Skill that "reduces recast time of G and R by 30/15" rather than being tied to Heat blast, but would kinda bore the crap out of Heat blast. But MCH has alot of inconsistencies like this that make it a beta job or proof of concept rather than a complete one

MCH is -not- a beta job. There are only two legitimate issues with it specifically (we can talk numbers all day but they're an overall class design issue). I can think of several that are worse per job or per role. Hell even Dancer has bigger problems. One of those Machinist-specific issues is Heat Blast clipping due to ping, which means it just needs to be retuned to be a 2s GCD instead of a 1.5s one, with Wildfire, Heat Blast, and Auto-Crossbow's damage adjusted to compensate. The other is Flamethrower not being a useful skill in 90% of situations, which, outside of the specific janky context it was forced into the rotation within a month of SB's launch, was -still- useless.

The charge refresh on Heat Blast is an idea lifted from SB when SCH had a similar ability called Quickened Aetherflow. On that job it was busted as all hell because it trivialized their healing resources. On MCH? Not a big deal, at all. It makes Heat Blast windows more interesting because it forces you to dump your passively building Gauss Rounds and Ricochets before you enter Hypercharge. The fact that you can flex those two buttons, Hypercharge, and Automaton Queen around based on downtime and your raid composition's burst windows means it's one of the few DPS with a varied play-pattern in every single instance you're in. That's what grants the job some modicum of depth. And it does it without engaging in any RNG shenanigans like the other two ranged DPS do. Aesthetically I like that it went full Edgar but I'm not sure if it's worth the loss of ammo management from Heavensward. I do -not- miss Stormblood's Overheat nonsense. If I was going to improve the job, I'd change Hypercharge to work like a 20% haste buff for 5 hits then mess with its basic combos a bit more (possibly returning the RNG and ammo, possibly adding finishers to simulate that feeling a bit), either reworking or tossing Heat Blast out in the process, and otherwise turning Flamethrower into a Bio Blaster equivalent for Air Anchor. I'm not perfectly happy with the direction they took, but pretending it's 'too simple to be a real job' is disingenuous.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

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When did i ever say those exact words (though dig deep enough and you can find me comparing MCH to alot of things, training wheels, a Condo among homes, a few memes here and there) Petty jab asside i doubt any job can ever be too simple for FF14 they inherit at least 20 skills you have to deliberately try to make each and every one of those skills redundant or have lots of those upgrade skills to disguise yourself of growth...oh bad example. Jokes asside i dont think MCH is "too simple to be a real job" whatever that means it has all the tools needed to be great it just clumped together without much thought. Im reminded of the 4 ff6 skills added in that dont add a lot in the grand scheme of things so tacked on i doubt MCh core mechanics would loose anything if they were removed. adding on to its dogs breakfast of aoe that dont coordinate with eachother like SMN or SAM does, at best feels sporadic which defines the job nicely. Bioblaster who? Flamethrower what? Turret where? Wildfire how?

onto your example on how spamming 5 buttons to a weak skill is fun and intuitive somehow much less 2 identical skills that also dont tie very well with much besides being said Spam blast. Sure everyones into different things I guess. it boggles me they both have 3 unearned charges each with no buff like devilment or raging strikes to benefit in keeping em so the best and only course of action is to Spam spam spam the hypercharge and continue to spam spam spam, add onto that the most mundane rotation in the game and thats literally MCH give or take 4 skills u press occasionally with no correlation toward much. No they arent abilities just "Fleche" like skills that are just sorta there i do include Queen and wildfire as Queen is just a lesser Bahamhut that is just a glorified Lead shot or can easily be replaced with a dot and wildfire being so long in CD and so simple its hardly worth talking about.

MCH has many avenues for improvement im just nervous the devs will not take any or trim even more like removing wildfire or doing what they did with MNK remove a old skill (howling fists) and replace it with "new ones" (Enlightenment) or just let it stagnate and give us even more boring "upgrade skills". Hoping for a better MCH

the buff i want is to make wildfire just have a chance to crit or make it to be able CDH. any other changes can wait until 6.0

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Originally Posted by Jukebox12

the buff i want is to make wildfire just have a chance to crit or make it to be able CDH. any other changes can wait until 6.0

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I’d rather have it reworked tbh. As for patch changes I doubt the job will budge a inch in all honestly so we’ll have to wait for 6.0. If MCH gets any they might just give it 1 Aoe and call it a complete job for all we know

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Originally Posted by Jirah

I’d rather have it reworked tbh. As for patch changes I doubt the job will budge a inch in all honestly so we’ll have to wait for 6.0. If MCH gets any they might just give it 1 Aoe and call it a complete job for all we know

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Indeed, no mechanic will change heavily for any jobs, they don't want to and already have MNK to care about.
Currently you could remove wildfire and balance the potencies here and there, MCH rotation would not change at all, that's how unsignificant Wildfire is.

The rework was good because they removed all the bad mechanics, but didn't added much good to the job.

So far, I've seen that a majority of MCH feels let down with the current state of the job. I truly hope SQEX listens to the feedback that has been going around those forums this year and not just only the rDPS aspect.

Not that I play MCH much if at all but I would like Wildfire to just be a DoT you use on cool down that then Explodes at the end of it's duration for the total amount of damage it did during it's timer.

I also think MCH needs more machines and less focus on Overheating and Heat Blast and it's oGCDs but that's just me. :)

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Originally Posted by Jirah

I’d rather have it reworked tbh. As for patch changes I doubt the job will budge a inch in all honestly so we’ll have to wait for 6.0. If MCH gets any they might just give it 1 Aoe and call it a complete job for all we know

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i would make wildfire easier something like bushin but it only looks on auto-crossbow and heat blast.