MCH (a mostly positive viewpoint )

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

If anything breaks the "flow" of MCH, it's literally the heat gauge itself.


Ideally, you overheat for 10% extra damage on demand, preferrably lining it up with Wildfire and utilizing certain skills to manage ideal heat ranges besides.

What actually happens is a frequent start-stop micro-management of the gauge. Don't use your reloads under 50 heat. Don't overheat without the utilities to ramp back up as needed or it's a DPS loss. Manage ideal heat ranges (now impossible anywhere between 52 and 62. Reloads alone simply won't prevent it). The slightest mistake is costly, and mechanical interferrence (a la stuns, extreme caution mechanics, damage debuffs, etc.) can completely ruin Wildfire, and while that's always been a concern, combining that with overheating makes missed Wildfires even more punishing.

In BRD's case, there's almost no time you'd ever hesitate to use a skill. No worry of possible penalties for using what you've got. If you got it, use it, and keep that damage rolling. Songs are practically autopilot support on fairly short cooldowns, which you'll be rotating through anyways, thus keeping up the passive crit bonus, and most song mechanics working off your DoT ticks. Let me repeat that: Working off your DoT ticks. MCH currently has little that works together, and many elements that can work against each other (i.e. reloading under 50 heat stopping/slowing down heat generation, lengthy cooldowns on essential skills). As a 60 BRD, I've hit a Pitch Perfect crit nearly on par with Wildfire at 70. This hardly makes MCH unplayable, and I very much still love the job, but it really does highlight the disparity between the two:

BRD: passive party support through songs, ability procs/augments between songs, simplified DoT management allowing for constant damage uptime
MCH: conflicting skills, constant micro management to manage Heat gauge (less for optimal range, but more for prevention of poorly timed Overheat so as to minimize the damage penalties after) leads to awkward stops in execution, a full 10 levels of missing essential Heat gauge management for anyone between 52 and 62, and poorly implemented changes to things that worked fine as they were previously.

MCH currently works harder to achieve less and that's just not okay.

[Greedalox]

MCH currently works harder to achieve less and that's just not okay.

I don't see it really as hard work and I don't see an issue with classes having different difficulty curves because promoting identical workload inevitably thins the options for a class to have unique mechanics- I also don't believe that a class being more difficult is grounds for necessarily higher payout than its competition. I agree with you that MCH is a naked class before 70 that needs all of its tools and that needs editing, though I don't know how they'd do it personally.

I just don't think we have to castrate any semblance of difficulty with maintaining our heat to bring our "difficulty" curve in line with the other mana battery.

Edit: I use the word difficulty a few times which I feel is too stern a word for what I mean. Perhaps "alternate thought processes" for playing a class would be better heh.

[Exterium]

MCH currently works harder

Played both, MCH definitely doesn't work harder than BRD, at least if the BRD is doing everything he is suposed to do.

If you only look at the DPS "rotation" yeah, overall, no.

[AmandaLashaquoa]

Excuse me, your MCH is lv. 65; You haven't got to the end yet to judge that MCH is not harder than BRD; Third Child is only lv60 BRD too, and I am Lv.36; None of us have enough experience to judge the other class, including me. What we say is what it ~looks~ like; But we all know that we cannot say X is good or bad if we don't go all the way.

You do have the most lvs with both, but still; The community does say that MCH plays harder than BRD due to all managements, one good example of this is that BRD does not have to manage a gauge and their Straight Shot; The equivalent of Straight Shot to MCH is Hot Shot, but on BRD you have a 20% chance to proc a critical on a skill that increases 10% of your crit chance, MCH does not have this "incentive" to apply Hot Shot, so you have to apply it by yourself; BRD's DoTs can be applied pretty much one after the other, so you can't simply forget it, as far as I know, you don't need to know simple math while playing a BRD to make all your skills align and while doing your priority "rotation" you need to keep track of your gauge so you won't shoot away your chance of a decent Wild Fire and so on~
I am only lv36, what do I know, but I am enjoying BRD yes, but even at lv36, I can understand why it is easier to be efficient as a BRD than as a MCH, I do intend to keep leveling it asap to 70 so I can take it to my static raids, because it will benefit everyone in it.
But anyway, MCH priority rotation is not fluid at all, you have to preemptively think about your moves, BRD is just fluid, I might be wrong later on, but so far its what it feels like.