Machinist feels pretty good now.

So.... Can we get Flamethrower fixed and Bishop Turret back, please?

I often find myself wondering why I even have Flamethrower on my hotbar when Shotgun, Chainsaw and Bioblaster are all superior to it in every way.

And with Queen Automata being only a single target attacker, it would be nice to have Bishop Turret back, so Machinist has a an alternative turret that specializes in attacking groups of enemies

Machinist changes were a band-aid on a severed limb.

Yes, you can get 5 shots of Heat Blast off now, even if you live in Antarctica.

However, if you need the 5-stack system to fit 5 Heat Blasts in, then you will almost-certainly still clip your GCD if you try to weave during those 1.5s GCDs.

Therefore, this design still places high-ping MCH in a situation where the clipping caused to avoid overcapping Gauss/Rico charges will drift and derange your rotation over time, as well as necessarily push potency outside of the buff windows by which Jobs live-or-die now.

Are the 6.30 changes an improvement? Yes, in the same way that being fed a diet of 100% raisins is technically an improvement over being fed a diet of 100% chunks of concrete.

Is MCH now in an actually healthy state? No, I do not think MCH is there yet. But I am sympathetic that right now, MCH players must feel euphoric to have received any sort of positive attention at all from their neglectful and unstable parent. And, admittedly, for players who already had adequate latency to play MCH, the 6.30 changes are just a straight-up and fairly chunky performance buff — which is certainly nothing to scoff at.

However, I feel pretty strongly that the overall "band-aid" here has fundamentally failed to both understand, and to actually address, the most fundamental issues affecting MCH design, and so I think "Daily reminder that Flamethrower is bad" and "Surprise, I miss Turrets" — while both perfectly-cromulent personal opinions — seems lower on the priority list than, "Maybe this game should not force people to weave during 1.5s GCDs, all factors considered"... and so on.

Could the GCD clipping be fixed if Wildfire wasn't on a timer, but instead automatically goes off after a certain amount of attacks used by Machinist?

Admittedly, I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the intricate technical issues each job has.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

I often find myself wondering why I even have Flamethrower on my hotbar when Shotgun, Chainsaw and Bioblaster are all superior to it in every way.

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Chainsaw and Bioblaster, yes.
But Flamethrower has more potency than Scattershot.
The question is, does the heat gauge generation from Scattershot make up for it?

I think they should stick heat gauge generation on Flamethrower, and then make it share a cooldown with Air Anchor, so it basically becomes the AoE equivalent of it.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Machinist changes were a band-aid on a severed limb.

Yes, you can get 5 shots of Heat Blast off now, even if you live in Antarctica.

However, if you need the 5-stack system to fit 5 Heat Blasts in, then you will almost-certainly still clip your GCD if you try to weave during those 1.5s GCDs.

Therefore, this design still places high-ping MCH in a situation where the clipping caused to avoid overcapping Gauss/Rico charges will drift and derange your rotation over time, as well as necessarily push potency outside of the buff windows by which Jobs live-or-die now.

Are the 6.30 changes an improvement? Yes, in the same way that being fed a diet of 100% raisins is technically an improvement over being fed a diet of 100% chunks of concrete.

Is MCH now in an actually healthy state? No, I do not think MCH is there yet. But I am sympathetic that right now, MCH players must feel euphoric to have received any sort of positive attention at all from their neglectful and unstable parent. And, admittedly, for players who already had adequate latency to play MCH, the 6.30 changes are just a straight-up and fairly chunky performance buff — which is certainly nothing to scoff at.

However, I feel pretty strongly that the overall "band-aid" here has fundamentally failed to both understand, and to actually address, the most fundamental issues affecting MCH design, and so I think "Daily reminder that Flamethrower is bad" and "Surprise, I miss Turrets" — while both perfectly-cromulent personal opinions — seems lower on the priority list than, "Maybe this game should not force people to weave during 1.5s GCDs, all factors considered"... and so on.

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So it's fine as long as you don't live in Antarctica?
Weaving in 1.5s windows has never been a problem for me, and my ping isn't amazing.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

So it's fine as long as you don't live in Antarctica?
Weaving in 1.5s windows has never been a problem for me, and my ping isn't amazing.

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We're trying to fit two .5s animation periods, each with an additional uptime cost of roundtrip ping, right? So, we'd just need to be under 250 ms roundtrip ping, or what the game would call 125 ms, I'd imagine.

Perhaps that should be a bit lower than 125ms, for safety, if there's any need to account for time between the query's actual start and that of the server query check.

But... honestly, seems like there are a fair few of us who'd still fall above that.

The game quite simply shouldn't charge us twice our ping's worth of potential uptime after each animation. Once I could understand, but there's no reason for the game to then reset the animation timer on server confirmation of the action.


EDIT (for clarity):

Heat Blast itself, as with any other action, has a minimum period in which no other actions can be cast for a fixed length of 0.5s seconds plus whatever your roundtrip ping is (because you start the 0.5s animation lock timer and then it is reset when the server sends back confirmation of that action). From there, Gauss/Ricochet takes up another fixed mutually exclusive period of 0.5s, plus whatever your roundtrip ping is. That is still a "single weave."

A 1.5s GCD does not give you 1.5s of "GCD gap". It gives you, at 0 ping, exactly 1.0 second of "GCD gap". To double-weave in 1.5s, one would have to have literally 0 ping. To single-weave in 1.5s, one would have to have <250 ms roundtrip ping (what most games would show as <125 ms).

But many XIV players have pings exceeding 125 ms and will therefore lose uptime. That is a problem that would be easily solved if the game just didn't reset that minimum animation period upon server confirmation, in which case every animation time would be just 0.5s instead of 0.5s+roundtrip_ping.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

We're trying to fit two .5s animation periods, each with an additional uptime cost of roundtrip ping, right? So, we'd just need to be under 300 ms roundtrip ping, or what the game would call 150 ms, I'd imagine.

Perhaps that should be a bit lower than 150ms, for safety, if there's any need to account for time between the query's actual start and that of the server query check.

But... honestly, seems like there are a fair few of us who'd still fall above that.

The game quite simply shouldn't charge us twice our ping's worth of potential uptime after each animation. Once I could understand, but there's no reason for the game to then reset the animation timer on server confirmation of the action.

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Two? No, you don't need to double-weave Ricochet and Gauss in each 1.5s window. If you've depleted at least 2 charges of each already, you can just alternate them.
Double-weave during your regular 2.5s skills sure, to get those charges out of the way before you go into Hypercharge.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Two? No, you don't need to double-weave Ricochet and Gauss in each 1.5s window. If you've depleted at least 2 charges of each already, you can just alternate them.
Double-weave during your regular 2.5s skills sure, to get those charges out of the way before you go into Hypercharge.

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The GCD itself has an animation lock. If it were a double-weave, there'd be 3, which means you'd need literally 0 ping to do so within the 1.5s seconds.

Heat Blast GCD - Heat Blast ICD - GB/Rico ICD =
1.5 - (0.5s + RT_Ping) - (0.5s + RT_Ping) =
0.5s - 2xRT_Ping

You can support at most a roundtrip ping of 250 ms.

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Originally Posted by Soge01

So.... Can we get Flamethrower fixed and Bishop Turret back, please?

I often find myself wondering why I even have Flamethrower on my hotbar when Shotgun, Chainsaw and Bioblaster are all superior to it in every way.

And with Queen Automata being only a single target attacker, it would be nice to have Bishop Turret back, so Machinist has a an alternative turret that specializes in attacking groups of enemies

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Flamethrower could be changed to Electrical Charge and use as an AoE battery Dump for trash pulls. Because right now there's no use for battery gauge outside of Queen / Single Target.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

We're trying to fit two .5s animation periods, each with an additional uptime cost of roundtrip ping, right? So, we'd just need to be under 300 ms roundtrip ping, or what the game would call 150 ms, I'd imagine.

Perhaps that should be a bit lower than 150ms, for safety, if there's any need to account for time between the query's actual start and that of the server query check.

But... honestly, seems like there are a fair few of us who'd still fall above that.

The game quite simply shouldn't charge us twice our ping's worth of potential uptime after each animation. Once I could understand, but there's no reason for the game to then reset the animation timer on server confirmation of the action.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The GCD itself has an animation lock. If it were a double-weave, there'd be 3, which means you'd need literally 0 ping to do so within the 1.5s seconds.

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i'm very confused by these statements. you're saying you're double weaving ricochet and gauss between your heat blasts? because if so, that's why you're having issues. you're supposed to single weave / alternate as Seraphor said. and im not sure what you mean by there being an animation lock? heat blast, or wild fire, or anything like that doesnt have an animation lock. flame thrower (sort of) does, but i dont recall anything else having one

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The GCD itself has an animation lock. If it were a double-weave, there'd be 3, which means you'd need literally 0 ping to do so within the 1.5s seconds.

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I'm kinda confused with this. Before Heast Blast can completely finish it's animation (be it swinging close to the ground), you can clip the animation about 75% through and instantly round/richo and you'll also cancel richo full animation of jumping and landing (meaning mid air right after the jump, you'll magically appear on the ground and do another Heat Blast).

Not sure what animation you are speaking of when all 3 can be cancelled.

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Originally Posted by Caddo

I'm kinda confused with this. Before Heast Blast can completely finish it's animation (be it swinging close to the ground), you can clip the animation about 75% through.

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That's because the "animation lock" (0.5 seconds + roundtrip ping from the start of the animation) =/= the total animation time. Else old oGCD Tornado Kick would actually have taken a full GCD of uptime with its 2-second animation.

With very few exceptions (traditionally, pretty much just gap-closers, though even those have shortened greatly by now), all use that exact same .5s_+_2x_ping internal cooldown.

That internal cooldown simply has happened to be typically called the "animation lock" since "ICD" is typically used instead for shared very short recast times or for the safety periods over which consolidated buttons transition between states.

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Not sure what animation you are speaking of when all 3 can be cancelled.

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Not the animation. The "animation lock" / "animation period," which is the same one every time: 0.5s (+ roundtrip ping).

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Originally Posted by Zomkei

i'm very confused by these statements. you're saying you're double weaving ricochet and gauss between your heat blasts? because if so, that's why you're having issues. you're supposed to single weave / alternate as Seraphor said. and im not sure what you mean by there being an animation lock? heat blast, or wild fire, or anything like that doesnt have an animation lock. flame thrower (sort of) does, but i dont recall anything else having one

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This.

Your not supposed to double weave during heat blast. Single weave for the 5 shots.

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Originally Posted by Caddo

I'm kinda confused with this. Before Heast Blast can completely finish it's animation (be it swinging close to the ground), you can clip the animation about 75% through and instantly round/richo and you'll also cancel richo full animation of jumping and landing (meaning mid air right after the jump, you'll magically appear on the ground and do another Heat Blast).

Not sure what animation you are speaking of when all 3 can be cancelled.

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I think he is referring to the inbuilt 0.5s GCD lock. Not the animation.
Every OGCD ability had a 0.5s lockout after pressing it, people double weaving during hypercharge windows are using 3rd party programs to remove that lock.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Flamethrower could be changed to Electrical Charge and use as an AoE battery Dump for trash pulls. Because right now there's no use for battery gauge outside of Queen / Single Target.

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That would be neat! :D

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

I think he is referring to the inbuilt 0.5s GCD lock. Not the animation.
Every OGCD ability had a 0.5s lockout after pressing it, people double weaving during hypercharge windows are using 3rd party programs to remove that lock.

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Close, but not quite.

Let's say you have 200ms of ping. When you use an ability, you enter a mandatory 0.5s animation lock. This is true for all abilities, GCD or off. Your client says "I'm using this ability now!". That hits the server 100ms later. The server then says "okay sure, that ability isn't on cooldown and your job can use it. This looks okay. Use it." Let's say it takes 0ms for the server to say that, even though there's still a tiny amount of time there. 100ms later, your client gets the thumbs up. You're now 200 total milliseconds into your 0.5 second lock, so you've got 300ms to finish out before you can queue up another ability. Makes sense, right?

Except that's not how FF14 works. FF14 takes that request 100ms in, then replies with a packet that takes 100ms to get back. You're now 200ms into your animation lock. FF14 resets your animation lock back to 0.5 seconds at this point. So your *actual* animation lock is 0.7 seconds. It's 0.5 seconds + your ping, due to this reset. Stupid, right?

Those third party programs don't remove the 0.5s lock (I think you could set them up to, but they don't by default). They instead ignore the instruction to reset your animation lock, making your client behave like every other professionally-designed MMO does with an internal animation lock that doesn't artificially double tax you for the sin of not living in the server closet in San Francisco.