Machinist and Bard after 3.2

[Greywolfamakir]

RIP Bard 2013-2016. just with 2 mages comp is gonna be worth to bring a BRD when 3.2 cames out. MCH is gonna be mandatory for every "hardcore" progression raid I think, You can check Twitch.tv and you are gonna see really popular BRDs switching to MCH since partch notes come out. (I'm speaking about "hardcore" groups)

[Cetonis]

Obviously I was accounting for Foe + a caster when talking about contributed DPS. That's what contributed DPS means. Admittedly I hadn't thought very hard about Paean, which actually is probably worth around 20-25 cDPS or so. Pretty not-trivial.

Anyway, of course I'm not writing off player skill. I personally get to have zero concerns about having a spot in some group, because Mateus. But when there's no discernable skill gap, people default to whatever the popular opinion of the time might be. And popular opinion is often kind of stupid. It gets driven by what the world first groups do, what shows up in the week 2 fflogs data, etc., regardless of how much of whatever happens there is truly necessary for i225 groups. If Midas is sufficiently light on the kind of multi-target opportunities Bard now needs in order to keep up, MCH will come out solidly ahead on self-DPS, and it's easy to demonstrate that HC is now equal or better than all of Foe+Rain+WP combined.

That said, for people smart enough not to get caught up in such things, BRD's lag behind MCH should be lesser overall than what SMN's lag behind BLM was in Gordias, and that surprisingly managed to not become a problem. Though NIN vs. MNK apparently did, despite the two being closer numerically than the casters were. SE fixed both situations anyway, which is part of why it surprises me that they put MCH so plainly ahead on single-target (yet somehow also did nothing about their sustain) when they seemed to have a good handle on what was needed in other areas. I can only assume Midas will have more multi-target stuff than the trailer is letting on; i.e. maybe Voltron will split up for a phase, etc.

[Warlyx]

MCH , NIN , DRG , SMN , WAR , DRK , WHM , SCH

with this combo u have 40s of +10% physical dmg , + crit buff , -10% slashing , -10% piercing , selene , -10% dmg taken , int debuff.

we still dont know the numbers for tanks in 3.2 but still mch , drg , nin , war , drk benefit from the debuff thats more than half the party doing 10% more dmg for 40s

or u can time it if u want , TA on pull , hyper for the burst phase , having 2 jobs being able to put 10% dmg is nice , once u know the boss u can time both vulnerabilities to even push more dmg.

saying that a GOOD BRD player cant play MCH as good or any other job for that matter , a good player is a good player, changing job doesnt change that fact , yeah if u never played MCH before it takes time to learn the tricks , but still...some time to learn and u are more than ready to rock.

and saying that job population doesnt change....how many lvl 60 "main" PLD , AST or MCH do u see running around ? because i see almost none compared to Drg , War , SMN.

[Fyce]

-Snip-

Yeah, I get your point. It's just that even on populated servers finding two persons with an equal skill level, one MCH and one BRD, is unlikely. Especially with what Archaell said about the fact that finding good MCHs are still not a common thing.

I'm pretty sure that it'll all come down to "did you clear Stone, Sky, Sea?" in the end. And it'll be good enough, the DPS checks on Midas shouldn't be such a problem as it was with A3S/A4S.

[YGSLlew]

Well, seeing the changes, coming with 3.2, I would rather replace a ninja with Machinist, than a bard with machinist. Still, the biggest issue is, that a well played Ninja or Bard still pulls of more damage himself than a well played machinist. You can go ahead and see, how much a group would gain with the Hypercharge instead of the trickattack. However, I think, that in theory, BRD + MCH can be a serious benefit IF both are played well since they both have the benefit of being still more mobile than Melees in combination with their utility. I guess, in the end it mostly depends on how the new fights are designed. If mechanics have a bigger meaning for success than pure damage, as in Gordias Savage, I can imagine that many statics will bring both ranged to their raids in the future.

[Greywolfamakir]

Well, seeing the changes, coming with 3.2, I would rather replace a ninja with Machinist, than a bard with machinist. Still, the biggest issue is, that a well played Ninja or Bard still pulls of more damage himself than a well played machinist. You can go ahead and see, how much a group would gain with the Hypercharge instead of the trickattack. However, I think, that in theory, BRD + MCH can be a serious benefit IF both are played well since they both have the benefit of being still more mobile than Melees in combination with their utility. I guess, in the end it mostly depends on how the new fights are designed. If mechanics have a bigger meaning for success than pure damage, as in Gordias Savage, I can imagine that many statics will bring both ranged to their raids in the future.

A good MCH probably will do more DPS than a good BRD (with bosses like A1 probably not ) and MCH brings better overall DPS with 2 melee comp.

[Sidra]

Just went through some old parses on FFLogs to get an idea for the % of our party DPS that's magic as well as things like Foe's uptime to get some assumptions for some math behind the new Hypercharge v Foe's.

Foe's 0.3 0.133 0.25 1.00%
Hype 0.25 0.1 0.75 1.88%

First number is uptime, 2nd the dmg increase of the buff (about 1/3 of Foe's uptime is 20%) the next number is the overall damage distribution (varies per fight, but the 25 seems close, at least for my group). This is counting all of NIN as physical even though they do a little bit of magical damage. I am sure any team might be able to change up ther assumptions some, but as a general estimation this should be pretty good. Looks like Hyperharge will about about 88% better as a party DPS increase in a standard party setup - moreso with a quad physical dps setup.

So let's just ballpark 6,800k party DPS - that's a 60 dps difference. As long as the individual Bard - MCH gap eats all or some of that, I'd say the 2 jobs are still well enough balanced. But taking a dps caster out of the equation deftintely swings that to MCH favor - they may end up with some T11 type magic damage needed from a few of the Midas encounters.

[Ossom]

MCH , NIN , DRG , SMN , WAR , DRK , WHM , SCH

saying that a GOOD BRD player cant play MCH as good or any other job for that matter , a good player is a good player, changing job doesnt change that fact , yeah if u never played MCH before it takes time to learn the tricks , but still...some time to learn and u are more than ready to rock.

Mch is an all around easier class to play than BRD, any hardcore bard will be able to pick up MCH relatively easily.

[Cabalabob]

Think people are going a little overboard with the BRD is dead stuff, hypercharge still has far less uptime than foe. and BRD + mages are still going to be better for AoE situations (we already know that there's going to be an 8x Faust fight in Midas). This change is putting things the way it was designed to be, MCH is now the physical single target support while BRD is the AoE magic support, yes MCH can do magic support while BRD can't do physical support, but that doesn't really matter because BRD still does magic support better so you'd bring a BRD for magic over a MCH and a MCH over a BRD for physical.

The thing I find weird is that this really doesn't do much for MCH's sustained damage since hypercharge is something mainly used during wildfire for burst. So now their burst is even bigger but their sustained is still going to drop like a rock.

[Greywolfamakir]

There are two situations where you will bring a BRD over a MCH.

1-> 2 mages comp (BLM + SMN / SMN + SMN / BLM +BLM)

2-> If every encounter of Midas is designed for BRDs.

Any other situation you should bring a MCH over a BRD.