MCH feedback and suggestions.

[Lastelli]

Hey guys, I decided to create this thread because of the several doom threads on MCH of the last few days. I hope to make this into a constructive thread that someone in the dev team can hopefully use as a reference to fix the few problems MCH currently have (yeah I want to believe...), so please if I say something wrong correct me and give your constructive opinion as well. And I just like discussing about this stuff. Also, please forgive possible mistakes, english is not my native language.


The Good

1) This is purely subjective, but I think that MCH core gameplay at level 70 is extremely fun and pleasing to the eye. HW MCH felt very bland from an esthetic point of view and it got criticized for this...it almost feels like the dev team wanted to avoid those comments and just gave MCH flying satellites and giant homing bullets. This may look a little silly to someone but I actually think it's pretty cool.

2) CD alignment: simply elegant, CDs allow you to overheat for every odd numbered wildfire after the second one assuming a full uptime encounter and you always have full ammo at every wildfire. Makes sense and feels nice.

3) MCH is now less dependent on DRG and its disembowel debuff. Good. Having your DPS reduced by 10% only because there isn't a DRG in your party was terrible and in my opinion a very bad choice. To be honest, I was very surprised that ranged dps jobs didn't receive some tool to apply the piercing resistance down debuff. This kind of forced party synergy just leads to troubles when balancing the jobs and I think that MCH and DRG current issues have a lot to do with it, but this is another story.

4) Hypercharge now applying a vulnerability up debuff will hopefully put a stop to the silly full physical parties we had for creator speedrunning.

5) AoE damage: Flamethrower->overheat->rapid fire+ammo+spread shot spam feels nice. I don't know if it's optimal but it feels good


The Bad

1) Punishing job mechanic, namely the overheat mechanic. While I really like the idea of overheating to make the most of a wildfire session, accidently overheating is way too easy, especially in mechanic intensive fights. Furthermore, the punishment for it is out of proportion.
Suggestion: Cooldown (the skill of course) should decrease your heat gauge while in overheat to 25. Why 25? Because I fear that anything higher might result in overheating during every wildfire becoming optimal and this would make Flamethrower and Barrel Stabilizer totally useless. Also, add an auditory warning when you overheat. In mechanics intensive fights constantly checking your heat level is too stressful so you need some other way to understand whether or not you accidently overheated. If this happens, just use cooldown, hot shot and activate your flamethrower for 3 seconds and you're ready to go. This is still punishing, but not at the current, insane level.

2) Personal DPS: it's low, that's all there is to say. Not TOO low, but still I really don't understand why they thought that giving BRD higher damage and more party utility was a good idea. Considering that BRD is not punishing at all (the worst you can do is you forget to sing a song for a few seconds or mess up your iron jaws but the punishment for it is still very mild), this is a big deal.
Suggestion: since they clearly want Wildfire to be the focus of MCH gameplay, I say buff Wildfire from 25% to 30-35%. This should be enough to bring MCH dps into line with BRD's. Also, my highest Wildfire was about 12k...thinking back to 3.5 Wildfire dmg just pains my heart, please I want to see some decent number when that thing explodes.

3) Dungeons: AoE damage requires a lot of positioning. You have to place your bishop turret and hope that your tank sees it and doesn't start moving the mobs around too much. Even worse if you just used Flamethrower and and AoE pops under you a** or the aforementioned tank thinks him/herself a dancing queen and starts moving adds in circles.
Suggestion: let MCH use Flamethrower while moving.



The Ugly

1) Rook/Bishop Overdrive: yesterday I was doing an ex roulette with two buddies and while on TS one of them noticed the Turret Reset debuff and asked what that was. I explained that I made my Rook Turret explode when the boss' HP was about 2% and I had to wait 30 seconds to deploy a turret again. Then I said that the damage was 10k crit and we both burst into laugher. Seriously...I understand that this is supposed to be the MCH version of Tornado Kick but making it deal 5x(turret AA damage) is just silly. You have to time it perfectly if you want to gain around 5k damage, and while it is indeed a dps gain, it's just SO SAD.
Suggestion: increase the Overdrive potency to a little less than double, say 180% current damage. There's no reason in the world why a skill like this should be so ridiculously weak with such a ridiculously long (30 seconds) penalty, even more so the AoE Bishop Overdrive, especially when we have things like deathflares, akh morns, fouls and triple flares, guren and kaiten+tenka goken, rain of death+quick knock spam (ok it's rng if you have no empy but still dots on 3 mobs and the rain just won't stop) and God only knows what other kind of insanity on the jobs I haven't leveled to 70 yet.

2) Sub-level 62 gameplay. It's awful, a total clunky mess. Cooldown should be available as soon as the heat mechanic is introduced.

[Salmanz90]

OMG everything you said is true, i though i was thinking literally everything you said by my own, and before i checked your post i was asking players in steam forums why my friends were laughing at my damage so i had alot of doubts on MCH,

i really hope Square Enix Listen to this post, as for now i am not going to wait for a fix that may come very late, im a new player going to start a new job, any suggestions?

[Scarabea]

Thumbs up from me - I agree

[Fannah]

Just to be sure, I just take arguments in the order, so it will start with something I disagree, but i'll agree later, don't worry

Suggestion: Cooldown (the skill of course) should decrease your heat gauge while in overheat to 25. Why 25? Because I fear that anything higher might result in overheating during every wildfire becoming optimal and this would make Flamethrower and Barrel Stabilizer totally useless. Also, add an auditory warning when you overheat. In mechanics intensive fights constantly checking your heat level is too stressful so you need some other way to understand whether or not you accidently overheated. If this happens, just use cooldown, hot shot and activate your flamethrower for 3 seconds and you're ready to go. This is still punishing, but not at the current, insane level.

I dislike this suggestion, what is cool it to play above 50 heat. Getting only to 25 would be just so annoying. Remember it's boring to go from 0 to 50. Overheating is all about being used to it. Doing mistake at such early stage of the game is normal.
Train on a dummy again and again to kinda get a habit of the awareness it needs.

Suggestion: since they clearly want Wildfire to be the focus of MCH gameplay, I say buff Wildfire from 25% to 30-35%. This should be enough to bring MCH dps into line with BRD's. Also, my highest Wildfire was about 12k...thinking back to 3.5 Wildfire dmg just pains my heart, please I want to see some decent number when that thing explodes.

It's just me, but I believe the DPS of the machinist is lower on purpose as their burst for dps check is higher on purpose too. I don't believe dps to be that important if the character actually fits the system of the game which is "phases where we don't care about dps and you just have to survive" then "phases where you have to dps check or you all die". Don't get me wrong, I also believe the machinist to be weak, but their burst possibilities are still higher and kinda fit the battle system. It's like the dragoon, he has lower dps but has those skills which are made to make everyone deal enough more easily at dps check phase. I think it's actually weird to only think about overall dps in this game as the battle system is not made this way.
And I don't think it's only about +5-10% on Wildfire to be at the right level of dps.

Suggestion: let MCH use Flamethrower while moving.

I agree with this one, haha, it would be a great thing. Maybe with a "Heavy" effect still. But yea, being able to move a bit would be great.

Suggestion: increase the Overdrive potency to a little less than double, say 180% current damage. There's no reason in the world why a skill like this should be so ridiculously weak with such a ridiculously long (30 seconds) penalty, even more so the AoE Bishop Overdrive, especially when we have things like deathflares, akh morns, fouls and triple flares, guren and kaiten+tenka goken, rain of death+quick knock spam (ok it's rng if you have no empy but still dots on 3 mobs and the rain just won't stop) and God only knows what other kind of insanity on the jobs I haven't leveled to 70 yet.

Yea, this turret overdrive move is really underwhelming, but once more, I believe it's only designed to assure a good dps check. I hope they still will boost it in a way or another.

[Elnidfse]

Don't get me wrong, I also believe the machinist to be weak, but their burst possibilities are still higher and kinda fit the battle system.

If you don't set up an optimal widlfire. i.e; our burst. You will do less burst damage on it's explosion than every other job. If you setup the best wildfire, it's 21 seconds from intent (11 seconds being the wildfire window) to explosion. It's not the case as it was in 3.x. where all of our damage when blowing CDs for our WF was high and the WF itself was high, Wildfires in general only account for ~6% of our total damage. The only "on demand" burst we have is sequence breaking our CDs (a big no) or using Overdrive to blow up our turret. Which while good at pushing an objective, is a massive DPS loss. At any case, given the damage we don't do, our "burst" is more of a slow burn.

To give you an idea. A non max potency wildfire will do less damage than a barrage refulgent arrow. But it still takes 21 seconds to perform a max potency one. Most of our on demand burst was shifted into Rook Overdrive. Which when combined with the other options is a lot of burst. But as it's a major DPS loss...

[Lastelli]

I dislike this suggestion, what is cool it to play above 50 heat. Getting only to 25 would be just so annoying. Remember it's boring to go from 0 to 50. Overheating is all about being used to it. Doing mistake at such early stage of the game is normal.
Train on a dummy again and again to kinda get a habit of the awareness it needs.

This is the problem though. The "amount" of awareness it needs for the privilege of doing less damage than any other dps job in the game. I honestly don't have any issue with managing my heat gauge but if they want the heat mechanic to be so punishing, correctly managing it should be rewarded with a decent amount of damage and this is simply not the case at the moment. Also I feel that 25 is a fair amount, you can literally use flamethrower and go back to 50 in less than 3 seconds.

It's just me, but I believe the DPS of the machinist is lower on purpose as their burst for dps check is higher on purpose too. I don't believe dps to be that important if the character actually fits the system of the game which is "phases where we don't care about dps and you just have to survive" then "phases where you have to dps check or you all die". Don't get me wrong, I also believe the machinist to be weak, but their burst possibilities are still higher and kinda fit the battle system. It's like the dragoon, he has lower dps but has those skills which are made to make everyone deal enough more easily at dps check phase. I think it's actually weird to only think about overall dps in this game as the battle system is not made this way.
And I don't think it's only about +5-10% on Wildfire to be at the right level of dps.

The problem is that MCH burst is not so amazing right now. A SAM with all resources available has a higher burst, for instance (Kaiten Midare + Guren is a combined 1880 potency in 1 GCD and if you have Hagakure and Shisui available that allows for Shinten spam right after that the burst is just insane). If rng is kind towards you, and it will be kinder the more crit you have, BRD's opener is more bursty than MCH's (just tested it, barrage+refulgent arrow is insane). But even if MCH burst phase was more potent, do we realistically expect many 15-20 seconds dps checks in relevant content? I'm not sure :/

[Caitlyn]

3) MCH is now less dependent on DRG and its disembowel debuff.

It is?

5) AoE damage: Flamethrower->overheat->rapid fire+ammo+spread shot spam feels nice. I don't know if it's optimal but it feels good

Flamethrower is too weak. Its just a flaming Barrel Stabelizer.


In my opinion, MCH is much harder to play and is a lot more punishing. Less utility, less damage. You have to care on even more things simultaneously.
- Hot Shot is still up?
- Heat Gauge is ok?
- Turret is placed well?
- Wildfire is up?
- Ammunition ready?
- Boss mechanics?
- Anyone need MP/TP/Palisade?
- Overheated! Damn... dont forget to put GB on!
- Still enough TP for AoEs?
- I messed up with Hot Shot... again : (

And I m absolutely agree: Overdrive is a joke. One weak hit, then no turret for the next 30s. Since Stormblood, I overheated way to often by accident or forgot to keep Hot Shot up. And the new burst rotation needs a lot more preparation than before. MCH is no fun anymore!

Here is my suggestion: Give me my Heavensward-MCH back!

[AmandaLashaquoa]

SE reply: Nah, BRD is the one who needs really a buff.

[Lastelli]

It is?

Here is my suggestion:[/B] Give me my Heavensward-MCH back!

To be honest, I think that the current MCH in more interesting to play. It feels really nice...until you mess something up and if you're not parsing, and as we all know, we shouldn't be doing it anyway, right?
As for disembowel...yeah, as I said, I'm really shocked that BRD/MCH can't apply a pierc res down debuff themselves, but still, 5% is lower than 10% so it's a step in the right direction I guess :/

[Elnidfse]

To be honest, I think that the current MCH in more interesting to play. It feels really nice...until you mess something up and if you're not parsing, and as we all know, we shouldn't be doing it anyway, right?
As for disembowel...yeah, as I said, I'm really shocked that BRD/MCH can't apply a pierc res down debuff themselves, but still, 5% is lower than 10% so it's a step in the right direction I guess :/

I'm pretty sure the level of fun provided is inversely proportional to how well you want to do with it. The nanosecond you try to clean up your rotation it's all over.