【Suggestion】MCH "Pure DPS"

Hello, I wish to hear feedback from the community about the idea.
I want to play MCH, but it is considered very weak right now as a pure DPS.
This makes me uncomfortable and many recruitments exclude MCH (FRU)
There is a lot discussion about the firepower from MCH and the handling of gauge.
Because I am not a very smart thinker, I may be wrong in my suggestion.
Please feel free to share your ideas/thoughts and if I am wrong correct me.
(Please be kind to each other in the comments)

My idea of thinking for suggestion is:
Would it make a difference if MCH changes from "Pure DPS" to "Raid support DPS"?
Meaning, it receives a raid buff and it no longer is pure DPS, so it supports the rDPS?
For example, Bard is not meant to be "high firepower driven job" but it balances by song.
I wonder if this could help out the MCH? Because I do not know how balance works,
I could be imagining something unrealistic, so please let me know in the comments.

I just wish they'd either commit to selfish DPS levels of damage, or give it some support back. Right now it has neither, outside of role skills (and Tactician, which might as well be a role skill, since it's identical to Shield Samba and Troubador anyway).

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Eh... no, I'd rather it stayed a pure or "selfish" DPS, as I'm not much inclined to play a "support" one to the point that BRD is one of my least favorite jobs precisely because it feels boring to me just standing there buffing, managing DoTs, and hitting like a wet noodle otherwise while everyone else gets to have fun. (DNC at least keeps me awake and I only really need to pay attention to one other person.)

Tactician is about the extend of how much I'm willing to support others while playing MCH, and even then it's a case of "I'm going to pop it when *I* need it, and if it happens to help someone else, good for them".

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Thank you for giving feedback as a Main Machinist how you feel about this!!! I do not like DoT management myself, I truly do not like it on RPR also, especially as it takes a GCD and gauge management tougher (depending on what raid, it is fine most raids) but are you saying when a DPS becomes support, it is often with DoT? That makes sense, I did not think about it or put it together.
I was only wondering "Adding a raid buff" and that is all, but not change the entire rest of the job itself! I wonder what you think of this? So, nothing but "1 raidbuff", but the rest maintains.
Since MCH already has a unique secondary mitigation, tactician becomes "raid buff" instead, if we imagine it this way, what do you feel?

I've never been a MCH-main(so take what I say with a grain of salt) but ever since ShB, I don't think the dev team had any idea on what they wanted MCH to be. They gutted a lot of their old mechanics (even stealing their RNG weaponskill procs for DNC) just to make it a vanilla, quick burst DPS. （●´・×・｀●）

I used to be in the pure dps camp but I can take either after learning what the job used to be before ShB. I think it had both higher dps and more support skills back then.

Hypercharge used to be a move that makes turrets apply a defense debuff on targets, turrets used to have modes to heal mp/tp, gauss barrel increased potencies at the cost of adding cast times, it had a stun that shared its cooldown with head graze, wildfire used to do damage based on the amount of damage you squeezed into its window, you had to watch when to fill the heat gauge to line it up with Wildfire, and the main combo being proc-based also played into it. It also had lead shot as a dot to sustain but I don't think that's needed though.

I mean, as someone who started in ARR the idea of Machinist being a Black Mage / Samurai counterpart is just bizarre.

If you ask me they should be throwing out turrets to pulse buffs / debuffs, throwing wrenches or whatever was going on with Rend Mind, damage reduction skills like role skill Palisade (i remember you, Palisade!). Basically, something closer to PvP Machinist than what we have now. Frankly I just don’t really get the point in having another ‘big burst no(low) support high numbers’ DPS when there’s already literally an entire category of DPS whose main design philosophy is ‘big burst no(low) support high numbers’ (it’s melee). Not you, Ninja.

Plus doesn’t making it a pure selfish dps make it literally unbalanceable?

The phys ranged role is supposed to provide ‘support’ and ‘sustained damage’ (lol wut), but if there’s one that has absolutely no support, that entire role identity goes down the drain and ultimately devolves into a Heavensward BRD vs MCH buff battle where any single adjustment on one job basically cancels out the other. I.E MCH is pure personal dps BRD is support. Any buff to MCH is going to be a buff to BRD too, so either it’ll need super high personal dps which would cause problems for other roles (why take a melee or a caster when you can take a lolranged), or Bard (or Dancer) would pull ahead and Machinist would be useless. Likewise if Machinist’s personal dps is higher than the rDPS Bard/Dancer output, it just invalidates their existence. I mean, I highly doubt people would give their melee/BLM spot to a MCH just so they could also take a Bard or Dancer (which is impossible anyway because I think it’d still break lb generation?)

I actually really like the similar ideas people have given out!! I hope in time the posts will be noticed for the good constructive suggestions!
It also makes sense what many people point out. I hope to hear more about it!

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Originally Posted by Connor

it’ll need super high personal dps which would cause problems for other roles (why take a melee or a caster when you can take a lolranged)

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I kinda think that's largely because current MCH has very few fail states or mobility limits compared to any other job in the game, let alone SAM and BLM.

imo it comes down to whether people want its easy rotation to stay or not. A complex rotation for higher personal dps, or more support skills.

WHM and SGE are also in a similar pit.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

I kinda think that's largely because current MCH has very few fail states or mobility limits compared to any other job in the game, let alone SAM and BLM.

imo it comes down to whether people want its easy rotation to stay or not. A complex rotation for higher personal dps, or more support skills.

WHM and SGE are also in a similar pit.

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Haven’t those fail states all but gone for the majority of classes though? I’ve seen the esoteric secrets of 100% instant cast BLM rotations.

I mean, does it really need to be so all-or-nothing? Like couldn’t Machinist have a satisfyingly complex rotation and more (or just any lol) support capabilities? Does a ‘complex rotation’ necessarily need to output mathematically superior dps? To me it wouldn’t really matter what the actual output was as long as it was fun, interesting, and had its own distinct identity other than ‘does what BLM/SAM do but worse but you can jump while attacking’.

They should give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP which will dramatically increase its damage output, and then give it a grappling hook, and rocket jump as movement abilities.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

They should give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP which will dramatically increase its damage output, and then give it a grappling hook, and rocket jump as movement abilities.

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It'd be such a nice detail for the aiming jobs to actually walk slowly and aim as they do in PvP
I believe in the mobile version of the game the bard's songs also behave kind of like mini rhythm games, where you have to press the skills at certain times so that could be cool

or it's just a way to visually show the bar filling up and when you can use the skill, but it'd still be nice
press at the right time to deal max damage, else do reduced damage

for the topic though, I wish Machinist did more damage
It's meant to be top of the aiming jobs but it feels pretty underwhelming
I like the shotgun skill, they should keep it
I want the sniper rifle from pvp

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Originally Posted by Akamadoshi

Hello, I wish to hear feedback from the community about the idea.
I want to play MCH, but it is considered very weak right now as a pure DPS.
This makes me uncomfortable and many recruitments exclude MCH (FRU)
There is a lot discussion about the firepower from MCH and the handling of gauge.
Because I am not a very smart thinker, I may be wrong in my suggestion.
Please feel free to share your ideas/thoughts and if I am wrong correct me.
(Please be kind to each other in the comments)

My idea of thinking for suggestion is:
Would it make a difference if MCH changes from "Pure DPS" to "Raid support DPS"?
Meaning, it receives a raid buff and it no longer is pure DPS, so it supports the rDPS?
For example, Bard is not meant to be "high firepower driven job" but it balances by song.
I wonder if this could help out the MCH? Because I do not know how balance works,
I could be imagining something unrealistic, so please let me know in the comments.

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It wouldn't change anything much, this is a problem of job balance. If they make potencies higher, a job will hit for higher damage, that's about it. The only thing that raid buffs bring to jobs like bard and dancer is that raid buffs scale naturally with big damage dealers firepower, where mch selfish dps doesn't scale as much with raid buffs over time since its theoretical cap is lower (for example, if your total damage is 100, and over the span of the expansion it goes up to 120, then raid buffs coming from your bard or dancer will benefit naturally from this 20% increase... meanwhile if your total mch damage in comparison is 90 and ramps up to 110 over the span of the expansion, then your raid buffers will benefit less from your contribution, and you will more likely than not not even have a bard or a dancer to feed into their buffs because you're already occupying a rphys spot).

Anyway they tend to buff jobs that lag too much behind over the span of expansions and it's been the case since ShB and EW where some jobs started with crazy discrepancies like that (BRD over 10% in SHB, MCH in EW and now DT...), and got buffed until the gap lowered to about 5%. Why they do not learn from this and keep repeating the pattern at release and during the first tiers of expansions, I do not know. Anyway, this just goes to show that if they want to buff numbers, they can, but they won't.

As for myself I'd really like raid buffs to come back to MCH, because that's what the job used to be, and that's also literally what's written in the job role description on the guide page...

The debate whether MCH should be selfish or buff dps is more a question of flavor than an actual damage balance consideration in my opinion. Much like me saying I'd want pre ShB MCH back because what we have today is absolutely bland and boring to me is mostly a question of taste. If anything ironically, MCH used to be the highest burst job in the game back then (with close to half its damage concentrated within a 10-15s burst every minute or 90s depending of the expansion). It would have fared a lot better in ultimates within its old form.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Haven’t those fail states all but gone for the majority of classes though? I’ve seen the esoteric secrets of 100% instant cast BLM rotations.

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There's less of it, but I still find it easier to maintain MCH's rotation than the majority of jobs. I do think its numbers are way too undertuned/the others are overtuned right now, but I don't think its current design justifies it doing as much damage as BLM/SAM either. It's also not like I'm okay with them sanding away more and more complexity from all the jobs anyways.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I mean, does it really need to be so all-or-nothing? Like couldn’t Machinist have a satisfyingly complex rotation and more (or just any lol) support capabilities? Does a ‘complex rotation’ necessarily need to output mathematically superior dps? To me it wouldn’t really matter what the actual output was as long as it was fun, interesting, and had its own distinct identity other than ‘does what BLM/SAM do but worse but you can jump while attacking’.

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I think it depends on how much people want the job to play differently from how it does now. The subject of whether WHM, SGE, and MCH should get raid buffs or not's been a pretty common topic in their threads in the JP forums, but I've only really seen it be brought up as an alternative to adding more complexity to their kits, so I usually take that as people not wanting those jobs to feel any harder to use.

No dev will ever read this

This has to happen. A physical ranged job without a raid buff is fated to be at the very bottom, with little incentive to be picked in a decent group. Considering how RPR and PCT were at release, it is obvious that the next physical ranged is going to make current MCH irrelevant for an entire expansion.

If MCH/BLM/SAM/VPR are not topping the median rDPS charts of their roles, there is no reason to pick them. Now this is much worse for MCH than the other jobs, as SE is still overcorrecting the mistake they made in Stormblood by making the physical ranged as irrelevant as possible, so players will never consider having 2 physical ranged in the same party. And also due to the fact that DNC and BRD buff more than any caster/melee.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

There's less of it, but I still find it easier to maintain MCH's rotation than the majority of jobs. I do think its numbers are way too undertuned/the others are overtuned right now, but I don't think its current design justifies it doing as much damage as BLM/SAM either. It's also not like I'm okay with them sanding away more and more complexity from all the jobs anyways.

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That is true; fail states have been loosened quite a bit, but even then Machinist doesn’t have the same considerations for things like uptime. Like, even though the ‘fail’ bar has went down by a lot, Machinist is still below that lol.

And with that mentioned, I do find it ironic that SE has been sanding down so much complexity from jobs to make them ‘all equally accessible’, but then that removal of said complexity causes so many of its own balancing issues. Like phys ranged struggling because content has (generally) been fairly favourable towards melee with things like giant hit boxes and the Viper simplifications. And of course Pictomancer too lol. So the whole ‘mobility advantage’ thing phys ranged have is much harder to capitalise on.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

I think it depends on how much people want the job to play differently from how it does now. The subject of whether WHM, SGE, and MCH should get raid buffs or not's been a pretty common topic in their threads in the JP forums, but I've only really seen it be brought up as an alternative to adding more complexity to their kits, so I usually take that as people not wanting those jobs to feel any harder to use.

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I think I get it. For many people adding complexity to the job itself isn’t necessary, so the question is ‘what else can it get to improve things?’. I think Machinist could work with its own type of ‘support’ and/or ‘raid buffs’ or whatever. And, personally I would like to see more abilities/skills that we have (more) control over but aren’t necessarily part of the ‘standard damage rotation’. But I have no idea if that’s like, a ‘hot machinist take’ or not tbh lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

I think I get it. For many people adding complexity to the job itself isn’t necessary, so the question is ‘what else can it get to improve things?’. I think Machinist could work with its own type of ‘support’ and/or ‘raid buffs’ or whatever. And, personally I would like to see more abilities/skills that we have (more) control over but aren’t necessarily part of the ‘standard damage rotation’. But I have no idea if that’s like, a ‘hot machinist take’ or not tbh lol

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This is kind of where I'm really conflicted on wrt adding a raid buff. They're currently really simple to execute despite adding a considerable boost to rDPS, so to me it often looks like folks wanting them on WHM/SGE/MCH want to increase their damage contribution without making the job any harder. It barely does anything for raising the skill ceiling when it's so close to the floor for these jobs.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

This is kind of where I'm really conflicted on wrt adding a raid buff. They're currently really simple to execute despite adding a considerable boost to rDPS, so to me it often looks like folks wanting them on WHM/SGE/MCH want to increase their damage contribution without making the job any harder. It barely does anything for raising the skill ceiling when it's so close to the floor for these jobs.

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Yeah I can get that. With how raid buffs usually work it’d just be another ‘press button every 120s’ deal rather than something interesting that develops the job’s gameplay in some way. I guess for some it’s more about the end dps result rather than developing the gameplay of the job in a meaningful way (especially if that result is easy to get to lol).

Plus there’s the whole homogenisation issue which would be made worse if those jobs did get raid buffs, since that’s kind of the main thing separating them from their rivals at the moment (but then also sort-of the cause of the issues lol).

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Originally Posted by Connor

Yeah I can get that. With how raid buffs usually work it’d just be another ‘press button every 120s’ deal rather than something interesting that develops the job’s gameplay in some way. I guess for some it’s more about the end dps result rather than developing the gameplay of the job in a meaningful way (especially if that result is easy to get to lol).

Plus there’s the whole homogenisation issue which would be made worse if those jobs did get raid buffs, since that’s kind of the main thing separating them from their rivals at the moment (but then also sort-of the cause of the issues lol).

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I'd be more interested in this had raid buffs needed a lot more thought to their usage. Like if this kind of raid buff could be used whenever they like at the cost of ~50 battery, you'd have to weigh when the gains from the buff are worth losing the potency from Queen. It'd be even more challenging if burst timings for every job weren't just every two minutes like they were before EW.

MCH is the worst job on this game. Like for real, this job current state is close to HW PLD, trash. I'm not saying is mch is unplayable but why pure selfish is so ass on phys range, they need to hit like a truck or something.

Mch, prolly best single target than any other jobs (personally think), really just needs potency increases to it. However its, AoE is total garbo, needs changes a plenty to it, for now id just be happy if they increased its damage overall proper...

bring back hot shot's old effect, change nothing else, and MCH is top tier again

Change Flamethrower to be a true OGCD again, which deals 150p on use, and then however much per second afterwards as you channel it.

Add a line to Flamethrower's effect which says 'initial potency is tripled (450p) when used on a target suffering from Bioblaster'.

Now in the 1min burst window, we swap a non-Reassembled Drill (600p) to a Bio+FT combo (300+450p), for a gain of 150p per minute.

This also makes both Bioblaster and Flamethrower see use outside of EX roulette, and feeds into the MCH identity by having two more 'tools' in the single-target rotation

I dunno if 300p more per 2min is enough to solve the MCH issue, but it can't make the situation any worse

At least MCH is still top tier in PotD.

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Originally Posted by Andevom

At least MCH is still top tier in PotD.

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As a MCH main on all deep dungeons + solo , yesyesyesyes!!!
Out of Deep dungeon? Nonono. People talk about the heatshot "ping issue" as I play with 250 ping sometimes, I never had the issue.
True issue is: Queen never starts fighting because the sevrer lagging, nobody has spoken about it, but maybe because I put the timing wrong. I don't know, she seems very.... ready to retire.
(If you think this is my own mistake, please tell me!!! anyone who reads this. I wondered about this also!)

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

I just wish they'd either commit to selfish DPS levels of damage, or give it some support back. Right now it has neither, outside of role skills (and Tactician, which might as well be a role skill, since it's identical to Shield Samba and Troubador anyway).

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That's a matter of not waiting it to be punished for packing any limits to relative mobility (neither limited range nor any car times), not a matter of it being judged as annoying less than "selfish". At time of writing, its damage is leagues above the rest of its role. It has more rDPS than BRD, DNC, or SMN even without having any raid buffs, and when then adding in its actual exploitation value from others' buffs (-> cDPS), MCH is mid-tier despite being a physical ranged.

Given that the interdependence of a buffer is slightly higher than a non-buffer, as one provides a lower base contribution than the other, we would normally expect the more finicky to provide faintly more cDPS. Instead, effectively, we get three flavors of unique actual utility across Bard's Minne, Dancer's Waltz, and MCH's Dismantle, but MCH leads in cDPS and even rDPS in addition to the obvious aDPS.

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Moreover, how would stripping identical effects of their unique names and animations benefit parity in any way? It's purely aesthetic, so the parity would be identical, yet you'd have dropped aesthetic differences nonetheless helpful to job flavor just for kicks. Why?

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Originally Posted by Connor

Plus doesn’t making [MCH] a pure selfish dps make it literally unbalanceable?

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Not really, or else it'd be impossible to balance MNK/DRG against SAM, within the melee role.

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Any buff to MCH is going to be a buff to BRD too

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That's not how buffs work, though.

Yes, MCH and BRD would have to be able to compete with each other, but you're conflating intra-role and inter-role balance here.

Intra- and inter-role balance are two different beasts (or, at least, two very different steps). Moreover, we already have a fully selfish MCH and that doesn't make the problem of cDPS parity across its role any more confusing than between SAM and MNK do for theirs, so it's not as if the one necessarily bottlenecks the other to some unique degree among Physical Ranged.

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Likewise if Machinist’s personal dps is higher than the rDPS Bard/Dancer output, it just invalidates their existence.

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Judging by the typical standard (95th percentile Savage logs), MCH's rDPS is already (barely) higher than that of BRD or DNC, to be fair. Though yes, that would be a (slight) problem (dwarfed by the relative underperformance of the role as a whole) if it didn't at least flip in favor of BRD/DNC nearer to perfect play. [Honestly, aside from PIC, intrarole balance is really solid.]

Ideally, assuming equally valuable utility, jobs should have, across sufficient sample sizes, roughly equal cDPS within their roles on average across a given tier and none too sharply different cDPS across individual fights given near- (but not necessarily wholly) perfect play.

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I mean, I highly doubt people would give their melee/BLM spot to a MCH just so they could also take a Bard or Dancer (which is impossible anyway because I think it’d still break lb generation?)

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For that, one may as well simply collapse all Ranged into a single role, LB-wise. I'm not sure why we have 3 melee sub-roles and 2 ranged sub-roles but force said 3 melee roles to compete for 2 slots while forcing 1 each of the ranged sub-roles to be taken.

Granted, since physical ranged would then have to compete with magical ranged, we'd have to buff the physical ranged to be more tightly competitive (instead of relying on an arbitrary shoehorn).

And if that then meant you had jobs easier to get near-full (and sufficient for all contents even with minimally viable gear) value out of than others, you would want to slightly raise the skill expression available to the easiest somewhat as not to discourage use of harder jobs among skilled but imperfect players. But I'd argue Bard, Dancer, and Machinist would more than likely each be more enjoyable for having done so.

(For MCH, my preference would be to actually make the different weapons, you know, feel at least remotely different. Give me the shotgun, the sniper from PvP, etc., as real and meaningful options with branching ideal timings. Imo, MCH should be about having the right tool for nearly any situation -- noticeably so as long as you know how to prepare just right in advance to maximally leverage it.)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Moreover, how would stripping identical effects of their unique names and animations benefit parity in any way? It's purely aesthetic, so the parity would be identical, yet you'd have dropped aesthetic differences nonetheless helpful to job flavor just for kicks. Why?

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Role skills don’t need to have the same animation by necessity; we saw that during Stormblood with Refresh/Tactician having different character animations. It was the same particle effects sure, but I don’t see why that has to be by necessity either, if the animations can be unique.

Plus, there is the sad truth that we live in a game with (apparently) limited design space. Putting literally identical skills (i.e 10%DMG reduction on phys ranged) in the role skills section just frees up an additional ‘ability’ slot for them to actually do something unique with the jobs instead of just ‘exact same ability different particles’.

Isn’t that like saying Scholar and Sage are two completely separate and unique jobs because all their nearly 1:1 ability counterparts are visually different and draw from (very slightly) different systems? Even though they’re effectively the same thing at their core?

I mean, why wouldn’t you want skill duplicates moved into the role skill section? When the alternative is forcing every job within that role to learn effectively the exact same skill; the only tangible difference between them is learn level (for idk ultimates or MINE or something). I’d rather have the extra space for more unique and interesting abilities and effects personally. Wasn’t that one of the reasons they added role skills in the first place? Along with deleting cross-classing and needing a replacement lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

Role skills don’t need to have the same animation by necessity; we saw that during Stormblood with Refresh/Tactician having different character animations. It was the same particle effects sure, but I don’t see why that has to be by necessity either, if the animations can be unique.

Plus, there is the sad truth that we live in a game with (apparently) limited design space. Putting literally identical skills (i.e 10%DMG reduction on phys ranged) in the role skills section just frees up an additional ‘ability’ slot for them to actually do something unique with the jobs instead of just ‘exact same ability different particles’.

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A few things:

1. Having the unique animations per skill requires unique skill IDs per skill. So, it would save zero space to remove the name and icon. In fact, you'd now have to add three around this new "Role Action".
   
   
2. The game still stores the animations, icons, etc., of removed (and even never-used) abilities (as we know from mods being able to swap animations to those of said removed or even never-added skills [Power Slash, Brimstone, etc], so removing the unique names and icons would also save no space. It would be solely a net increase in space used.
   
   
3. These amounts do not remotely matter anyways. The "space" they consume is primarily client-side and, altogether, is a fraction of a fraction of a percent, while spell/action IDs already allow for many orders of magnitude more actions than we have.

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Isn’t that like saying Scholar and Sage are two completely separate and unique jobs because all their nearly 1:1 ability counterparts are visually different and draw from (very slightly) different systems? Even though they’re effectively the same thing at their core?

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???

No, it's saying that having the same effect but different names and icons is marginally but noticeably better than having the same effect, name, and icon -- That two-to-three points of job flavor is better than (n)one.

How did you arrive at this reduction?

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I mean, why wouldn’t you want skill duplicates moved into the role skill section?

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Because it's no easier to equip the skill from the Role Action menu than from the Job Action Menu despite, again, the latter permitting unique names, icons, and animations.

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I’d rather have the extra space for more unique and interesting abilities and effects personally.

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Purposely removing job flavor from among what we've had has never caused us to get more job flavor in other ways -- especially not in unique or interesting ones.

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Wasn’t that one of the reasons they added role skills in the first place? Along with deleting cross-classing and needing a replacement lol

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The latter was the only actual reason. (Removing cross-class was done to remove the "irritations" of being incentivized to multi-class and being punished (or, punishing one's group) if refusing to do so, but that's a separate matter.)

Role Actions "saved"... nothing -- neither server space nor hotbar space. But by originally giving 10 Role Actions and allowing players access only to 5, they were able to maintain a brief pretense of customization, allowing them a new "feature" as a selling point despite its utter lack of any real benefit.

Ultimately, Role Actions' largest effects were just to (A) slightly nerf Monk skill expression (primarily via competitive GCD thresholds and rotational/positional flexibility) through the removal of XC-Fracture (though that's arguably just the removal of Cross-Class / "Additional Skills") and (B) nerf Dark Knight dungeon kit through the gutting of Low Blow. The addition of Rescue, Arm's Length, etc., could as easily have been done through cross-class as before or by separate job actions, be that with identical effects or otherwise.