Should Machinist Be Relocated or Reworked?

I seriously think machinist needs to a tweak to be an option for melee spot 2 or get some sort of raid buff already. It's role and function clash hard. It is not buff loaded like the other phys ranged and not a melee or black mage in damage.

Should it remain the same as a good prog option since it wont rely on team mates but fall of when fight knowledge ticks up?

What should machinist be changed into with 8.0 on the horizon?

I like the current iteration minus auto crossbow not resetting checkmates and no aoe damage on the queen.

I'd like a mech mounting mode added. not like a full gundam but a mega man x ride armor from x1-3. I wanna see myself on the top so my glamour is visible unlike sch and reaper super modes.

I didnt adresss the relocation part but I meant to ask if machinist should be reclassed as a scouting job and be worse than viper and ninja in 1 target and better in 2 target fight. Range tax is pointless when Viper was blowing up m6s at range.

I'm somewhat in favor of moving it off the pranged category since I figure one reason they can't really make MCH too strong is because that'd lock the pranged slot to them, but I kinda want the dps categories themselves changed up at that point.

Make all the non-raidbuff dps jobs its own category that gives its own party comp bonus, letting MCH properly compete with BLM/VPR/SAM instead. If MCH needs more complexity so be it (though I'd prefer not giving it range/mobility restrictions). Doing that could allow jobs like RDM/DNC to take a melee spot so they can keep uptime without them needing to bend those jobs to content like they did with manafication and flourish too.

It is weird that Machinist is stuck in a role designed specifically for ‘providing support for companions’ then giving it virtually no ways to provide support for companions lol.

At the same time though they’d probably give some ‘oh but spaghetti code’ reason as to why it’s impossible to change a job’s role designation. It would definitely make more sense in any other dps sub-role than phys ranged with how they balance it currently though.

Personally I don’t think Machinist having some actual support would be extreme homogenisation either; the game has literally no ‘debuff’ oriented class anyway, so why not make that Machinist? Then it can still be more offense oriented than the more defensive Bard, or Dancer which provides extra healing (outside of their standard damage+% raid buffs )

MCH kinda used to be debuff oriented at launch, and in fact had the most debuffs of any class: dismantle, rend mind, suppressive shot, headgraze shot, leg shot, foot shot (guess how many ended up as role actions after?)... And hypercharge vuln debuff.

And point blank if you want to count knockbacks I guess.

Give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP, and let it be a proper pure DPS. The easy mobility that phys ranged have is a failed design concept, and needs to be done away with, and shoehorning phys ranged as a pseudo support role is also holding the role back. These are designs for a game that does not exist anymore. It's time to move on.

I dont like walking cast. I'd rather they just get a channeled machine gun if we move in that direction.

I still think rotational complexities could be enough to make MCH not be an instant pick should it ever hit melee numbers, mainly RNG, compounded by things like old Wildfire where its damage scales off damage done so you need to manage resources and play around buffs even more carefully.

Range tax only really makes sense when there's enough moments where the other roles can't attack and lose enough dps to be a lot closer, but that heavily relies on content and the other roles keep getting more tools to keep uptime on top of that, so we instead have a higher skill ceiling on non phys ranged jobs while phys ranged get the easy label.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

I still think rotational complexities could be enough to make MCH not be an instant pick should it ever hit melee numbers, mainly RNG, compounded by things like old Wildfire where its damage scales off damage done so you need to manage resources and play around buffs even more carefully.

Range tax only really makes sense when there's enough moments where the other roles can't attack and lose enough dps to be a lot closer, but that heavily relies on content and the other roles keep getting more tools to keep uptime on top of that, so we instead have a higher skill ceiling on non phys ranged jobs while phys ranged get the easy label.

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And therein lies the problem with phys ranged, so long as they continue to design it as the easy role, and what feels like 'the easy role for players who are bad at the game,' it can never be taken seriously. That mindset cannot be brought into 8.0.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

And therein lies the problem with phys ranged, so long as they continue to design it as the easy role, and what feels like 'the easy role for players who are bad at the game,' it can never be taken seriously. That mindset cannot be brought into 8.0.

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yes but I think saying that mobility restrictions are the only justifiable way to make a job difficult is a really narrow view, which you seem to be implying with your attachment to walking casts.

I woldn't call phys ranged easy but comfy. The only super mobile one is dancer and they gave them some gauge management to think about this expansion and aren't quite simon says anymore. I miss shadowbringers dancer melee combo but oh well. bard has a lot of room for experimentation from fight to fight and machinist takes a lot more brain power to aoe with efficiently than either bard or dancer because that part of the kit is super jank still. Flamethrower is better now but machinist doesn't have the readily available ranged aoe burst viper has with that broken uncoiled fury ranged aoe nuke.

Honestly I think Melee's get too much credit for being "hard" Ninja is the only melee I think is super challenging and I feel playing caster is the hardest dps role by a mile. You get punished far more than any non caster dps for not knowing a fight. Even summoner gets ruined by a death because your primals are now out of alignment. Ranged didn't have any sort of edge in Endwalker when boss hit boxes where huge and only in this more ddr centric expansion does the free movement of feel remotely advantageous.

If you think ranged is the EaSy role then I firmly believe you follow an outdated mindset because the most dps are a lot easier today than before. Phys ranged are squishy and have terrible defensive cooldowns for solo content. melee's get blood bath in addition to shields, third eye, lots of dashes to avoid damage. Casters get vercure, summoner shields and heals itself, black mage has a long cd fat shield and two teleports with short cds and picto has a two part shield and an aimable dash.

Melee skills that can be used from ranged have gotten stronger and more plentiful with each expansion. Look at how much piercing talon cost in TP in stormblood for the tickle damage it dealt. Nowadays melees can spam that junk for free and the potency is higher and skills like communion, iajutsu, gierskogul, stariver, riddle of wind, riddle of fire, ninjutsu, and uncoiled fudging fury that are all nukes usable from range. This bias against phys ranged movement hold now grounds anymore and should never again. Let them just be strong and let people play whatever they want.

Viper is easier than 2/3 of phys ranged and rest of the melee isnt much harder so that argument isnt valid

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Originally Posted by Shyxx

Viper is easier than 2/3 of phys ranged and rest of the melee isnt much harder so that argument isnt valid

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True, although that's largely on fight designed ~never wanting to challenge melee contact range (either way, disallowing it for multiple GCDs in a row or constantly barraging close targets with damage, both traditional reasons why melee DPS in MMORPGs got more defensive tools and more damage) and also never wanting to challenge positionals either.

In theory, and unlike casters, this would not need changes to the classes to fix. Most bosses just need to put out untelegraphed 360° cleaves (so the more melee DPS, the more your healers have to heal), and also disallowing either specific quadrants or entire melee contact extensively. Casters OTOH need to be fixed class-side, massively increasing the amount of casted spells and their cast times, in return for a moderate~large buff to damage output since so many now have to be aborted or even never started.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP, and let it be a proper pure DPS. The easy mobility that phys ranged have is a failed design concept, and needs to be done away with, and shoehorning phys ranged as a pseudo support role is also holding the role back. These are designs for a game that does not exist anymore. It's time to move on.

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You want to add cast times to jobs that have literally zero mobility beyond their full uptime (DNC excepted)? MCH and BRD are the two least mobile jobs in the whole game, period. Even healers have more mobility.
BLM can tp to allies every 10s, PCT can dash over 15 fucking yalms and sprint after for free every 20, SMN isn't even a caster and can still gap close, RDM can gap close and back step at will... So what you're saying is that you want rphys to be even more true to the turret gameplay than actual magical casters?

Like for real, if I had to choose between DNC dashes and PCT smudge, I'd take smudge without looking back, that's how better than DNC PCT is on mobility, when DNC used to be considered as the most mobile job in the game. That's how much mobility has crept in other roles. And that Aetherial Manipulation with 10s recast? Yeah you can literally play turret BLM with a macro that constantly rubberbands you to an ally every 10s for mechanics at this point.

A less-mobile job for variety is a bad thing now?!