For anyone who won't see it, buffs to MCH not incoming

[Viridiana]

Anybody remember 2.0 warrior? SE said it was perfect and people didn't know how to play it. 2.1 Warriors got significant buffs

SE isn't always right

Remember 2.0 SMN, when everyone (myself included) said that SMN were **** DPS who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag with a chainsaw? And how once parsers were able to catch all their damage people suddenly realized that, oh, if it weren't for the loss of Thunder SMN would be crazy DPS?

Granted, parsers are in a much better position than they were in 2.0, but I would not be at all surprised if there were still errors. I know that even ACT isn't perfect on dot damage still. Time will tell who's correct, though.

[RiceisNice]

Remember 2.0 SMN, when everyone (myself included) said that SMN were **** DPS who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag with a chainsaw? And how once parsers were able to catch all their damage people suddenly realized that, oh, if it weren't for the loss of Thunder SMN would be crazy DPS?

Granted, parsers are in a much better position than they were in 2.0, but I would not be at all surprised if there were still errors. I know that even ACT isn't perfect on dot damage still. Time will tell who's correct, though.

This doesn't really apply to MCH as far as DoTs are concerned though. I can read through my logs and it picks up everything I'm doing, including wildfire and turret hits (which are labeled as volley fire and aetheric mortar for rook and bishop respectively). MCH only has one DoT, and even if it wasn't being recorded properly for SMN...they're still comparatively higher than MCH by a longshot.

We'd have to be missing something big if the parsers are always displaying MCH/BRD on the lower end of the damage spectrum even if DoTs were not being properly calculated with SS in mind.

I should have been clearer. I don't doubt that BRD and MCH are undertuned. I only doubt that they're quite as bad as the playerbase is making them out to be.

I've reached post limit. I'll try to abridge what got ate.

It's just that this line of reasoning is faulty trying to explain why we're behind or that the fault is on the players on not knowing how to play MCH properly.

By no means are the two classes that far that they should be excluded from content. But at the same time, other classes have gotten extra utility or better means of sustaining their resources. Especially when they're given WM/GB (which comes with their own problems that I'd really like addressed) and their regen already gives them a damage penalty to begin with.

[Viridiana]

We'd have to be missing something big if the parsers are always displaying MCH/BRD on the lower end of the damage spectrum even if DoTs were not being properly calculated with SS in mind.

I should have been clearer. I don't doubt that BRD and MCH are undertuned. I only doubt that they're quite as bad as the playerbase is making them out to be.

Edit for consistency:

I've reached post limit. I'll try to abridge what got ate.

It's just that this line of reasoning is faulty trying to explain why we're behind or that the fault is on the players on not knowing how to play MCH properly.

By no means are the two classes that far that they should be excluded from content. But at the same time, other classes have gotten extra utility or better means of sustaining their resources. Especially when they're given WM/GB (which comes with their own problems that I'd really like addressed) and their regen already gives them a damage penalty to begin with.

Yeah, I only mean that a small amount of the discrepancy is, I think, on the end of the parsers. MCH and BRD do have their own set of problems, some of which don't even overlap, and I don't mean to downplay them. I do think, though, that a number of people are making mountains out of molehills. I guess I should lay out my full thoughts on the matter, eh? I should note that I don't main either class, so I'm basing all of this from what I've seen posted here and on reddit.

1) WM/GB only appear to be strong enough to counter the loss of auto-attacks if it's a dummy parse. There's a little bit of leeway, and it might be a situation like BLM and DRG, where more SS will make things easier, but at this point I'd be hard pressed to say that WM/GB are worth using outside of AOEs and openers. Since they represent such a radical playstyle shift (especially for people who have mained BRD since 2.0), they should be more powerful, I would think. That is, I think they should be powerful enough that the default is "on" and only in extreme movement cases do you switch to "off."

2) BRD/MCH weapons are still about 10% behind the melee classes in WD. You used to be able to justify this based on their mobility. That is, BRD was the only class that could maintain 100% uptime on bosses while dodging mechanics. If someone else had more uptime on the boss than the BRD did, you should fire your BRD (unless you made the BRD handle random mechanics and such). With the cast times added on, though, they've lost that uptime advantage. As such, WM/GB need to not only make up for the lost auto-attacks, they also need to make up for the lost uptime. And if you're toggling WM/GB off and on, you run into a different problem. . .

3) Every time you toggle it, it takes 3 seconds to cast. This means that it now needs to be powerful enough to overcome the auto-attacks you lose, plus the uptime you lose, plus the further uptime you lose with each toggle, which is 1.2 GCDs and an extra AA. That's a lot for one stance to cover, and now you're looking at having to make it powerful enough to cover all of this while still not making it ungodly powerful during T8-style fights where there isn't as much movement. Or they could make it a normal stance toggle, being instant except for animation delay. I know MCHs were much more willing to go into GB when Rapid Fire was making it instant, because it's significantly easier to justify that than to justify 3 seconds of downtime.

4) Based on the information I see, MCH seems to have less utility than BRD despite having roughly the same DPS. For starters, they seem to have no answer to Foe Requiem. I'm not saying they need to give MCH a Foe equivalent, but if BRD is balanced around being able to boost casters with Foe, what is MCH balanced around? Being able to decrease melee DPS by casting Blank? They can both boost TP regen fairly well (MCH regen is equal to Paeon, right? I haven't actually seen anything about the numbers here), but MP regen seems like it will usually be much more of a hassle for the MCH than for the BRD. If the majority of each raid fight is single target, then the MCH should have Rook out, but that's TP regen and not useful as a safety net if a healer dies and needs MP regen upon rez. For the MCH to swap to MP regen, they have to swap turrets, promote, and then eventually swap back (and promote again? as I said, I haven't played MCH and am going off hearsay). And of course, each swap is a ground-targeted ability, which brings up its own problems. Meanwhile, the BRD just has to hit one button. Even if the MCH can do all of that in 3 seconds, he's still having to work 3x as hard as the BRD does for the same effect. Granted, for farm content he has an easier time hitting TP regen, I think, but you don't balance for farm content. . .

Basically, both classes need work. It's impossible for me to say how bad off they really are, but I have learned that people (myself included) have been known to over-state how bad things are. As such, I'm willing to wait until people have spent more time with it and tried it in more content before saying that it's completely useless. Again, though, I do agree that they're in a bad spot; I just don't think it's a hopeless spot.

[MrSmiley]

First thing in order is GB and WM need to be a worthwhile stance, not a joke. After that we can look at other numbers, I hope its not only WM getting buffed....

[Alchemii]

-snip snip snip-

So first and foremost the thread where I'm putting my thoughts: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-and-Thoughts I've actually covered some of your points already in this area, or at least I feel like I have.

Yes I'm still updating this, and in fact working on a post about party mechanics and MCH interactions involving directly working with other players. However, as it stands right now I'm wanting a little solid hands on proof but I'm having controller issues which is slowing my progress down. So when I do put it up, it will be a theorycrafting set up.

So for the Foe Requiem debate, MCH does infact have a replacement to this. It's called Hypercharge, to be exact it's Hypercharge Bishop Turret as the only people that really get any benefit out of Foes are casters. Now I did go into how a MCH has to handle there TP regen duties should they have too, but honestly a MCH shouldn't handle those duties, they should be backup to those duties.

As for the blank problem, that's just bad players being bad. I've personally only used it a couple of times, on purpose, to knock an enemy back, and most of those times it was to stop bombs from blowing up, and the other times were followed by a foot graze, cause I had hate and the tank was dead. Outside of those cases it is infact a DPS increase, but should only be used on enemies that are immune to knock back.

Hmmmm I think that's it. For now.

[Odowla]

No just no, MCH is not hard to play at all.

I find it hard to believe that EVERY player playing MCH is doing it wrong by SE logic...

Clearly everyone's doing something wrong if everyone's saying the class is very weak except for a small few.

Note your wildfire damage, if its not consistent (aside from crit-city) you are doing something wrong. This goes for EVERY one of them including the opener, BTW. If you're getting 6k everytime or w/e you're getting, if you get higher than that once in awhile in a run and you didnt crit all over the place, you need to practice.

This class really is a try-hard class - you'll really know the difference between trying and not trying.

[Amulrei]

Am I missing an entire page on my skill list that has all this supposedly wonderful utility that Yoshida is talking about? All I am seeing is weak damage debuffs on laughably long cooldowns, status effects that 99% of bosses are immune to and turrets that dribble out MP/TP at the cost of making our already piss weak damage even more laughable.

Meanwhile classes like DRG get to do full damage and drop PARTY WIDE 15% crit buffs. How the hell is that even close to fair...? Having very niche support that is only really handy a tiny fraction of the time is not an excuse to be close to useless damage-wise at every other point in the game.

[stuscott]

For the MCH to swap to MP regen, they have to swap turrets, promote, and then eventually swap back (and promote again? as I said, I haven't played MCH and am going off hearsay). And of course, each swap is a ground-targeted ability, which brings up its own problems. Meanwhile, the BRD just has to hit one button.

To me at least, it's very simple and easy to swap out and promote turrets as neither swapping nor promoting has cast times - so I can fit it in between GCD. In fact in most pulls I usually throw the bishop out and once down to one mob, swap to Rook. It's very easy to do and I can see that utility being useful in raids because you don't have any cast time. To me it's just as easy as casting a bard song except I can still dodge while I'm doing it. Granted, raid mechanics may not make it as feasible, but that has been my take on it so far.

[seekified]

Am I missing an entire page on my skill list that has all this supposedly wonderful utility that Yoshida is talking about? All I am seeing is weak damage debuffs on laughably long cooldowns, status effects that 99% of bosses are immune to and turrets that dribble out MP/TP at the cost of making our already piss weak damage even more laughable.

You're exaggerating this so much it's not even funny. Like I said on a previous page good machinists put out 800 single target and anywhere between 1000 and 1500 in AoE situations with 4+ mobs. I'm a good dragoon and I'd struggle to top that in many situations involving downtime due to movement, which is as it should be. I dunno what you're doing but I've seen plenty of MCH that are right where they should be.

[OPneedNerfs]

Why is there even a need to bring parsers into play here?

Everyone who has done any content with a BRD/MCH compared to any other DPS classes can tell that things die significantly slower.

With such a large pool of players and data, it's hard to believe ALL BRD/MCH players are garbage and ALL other DPS class players are amazing.

All I can say is, prepare for people to leave/instant vote dismiss once Rav/Bis EX hits DF because chances are you'll run into a full BRD/MCH party at least once.