MCH changes are unfortunate

[Greedalox]

With the community reaching the (correct) consensus that there's no reason to take a MCH over a BRD now. I heavily doubt many new players will play MCH at all.

True true! But even when MCH was top dog it's playerbase could never touch the likes of RDM or SAM. A lot of people don't like gun classes in their swords/magic/bows fantasy games and that's just a natural truth to it. There's just no reason to harm the existing MCH player base to cull new MCH's because anybody who was going to be a MCH was probably gonna end up there anyways. They probably lost a few seasoned MCH with this, funnily enough.

[NoblePigeon]

True true! But even when MCH was top dog it's playerbase could never touch the likes of RDM or SAM. A lot of people don't like gun classes in their swords/magic/bows fantasy games and that's just a natural truth to it.

That logic never made sense to me. Final Fantasy has always had distinctly non "fantasy" elements to it, and FFXIV is no different. Not withstanding the Allagan stuff who had starships, computers and genetic engineering, you also have the Garleans, who possesses technology that, at its greatest, is somewhere in the early 1900's. (No spoilers, but this is most evident in Stormblood, especially with a certain scorpion boss...)

I couldn't tell you why MCH is the least played class, but I'm not sure that reason is a big one.

[Jijifli]

I couldn't tell you why MCH is the least played class, but I'm not sure that reason is a big one.

Just a quick guess here, I assume MCH's play rate is lower due to the class's difficulty to play efficiently. When you compare MCH to BRD, MCH looks more difficult, and the average player would rather lean to the easier job if they still enjoy it. For some players, having too much to keep track of can be a push away, or at least, that's why I never played it.

[Gun-Cat]

True true! But even when MCH was top dog it's playerbase could never touch the likes of RDM or SAM. A lot of people don't like gun classes in their swords/magic/bows fantasy games and that's just a natural truth to it. There's just no reason to harm the existing MCH player base to cull new MCH's because anybody who was going to be a MCH was probably gonna end up there anyways. They probably lost a few seasoned MCH with this, funnily enough.

I enjoy the Machinist archetype and think Aether powered guns are cool. But the problem is that SE does nothing with the archetype at all. First, "Ranged Physical DPS" is such a confused category. While never stated ingame, the playerbase expectations are that these jobs bring support with them. Somehow, the managed to fill this for BRD well while MCH feels lacking. Second, our machines do very little gameplay wise. You place the turret. No interaction at all with it, no special skills linked to it other than blowing it up. Heat is a fine mechanic and could lend itsself to a lot of fun and flavourful skills. But it didn't and we are back to optimizing WF as be all end all of our gameplay. The only gadget we got was the Flamethrower and that is... yeah...

[CosmicKirby]

I enjoy the Machinist archetype and think Aether powered guns are cool. But the problem is that SE does nothing with the archetype at all. First, "Ranged Physical DPS" is such a confused category. While never stated ingame, the playerbase expectations are that these jobs bring support with them. Somehow, the managed to fill this for BRD well while MCH feels lacking. Second, our machines do very little gameplay wise. You place the turret. No interaction at all with it, no special skills linked to it other than blowing it up. Heat is a fine mechanic and could lend itsself to a lot of fun and flavourful skills. But it didn't and we are back to optimizing WF as be all end all of our gameplay. The only gadget we got was the Flamethrower and that is... yeah...

- The turret and it's abilities don't scale with some stats and barely scale with others.
- Are fire and forget with virtually no interactivity, promote was removed making this even more apparent.
- Takes up a good chunk of our DPS ability, meaning the rest of our potencies are gimped to compensation, so we can't get the high individual numbers that are a huge draw for being a DPS in the first place.
- The turret doesn't contribute to wildfire damage, nor does Overdrive. Overdrive is a really weird player ability that commands our pet to do an attack, and as such any buffs on the player don't work for this ability, at all. (Is this the same with SMN?)
- The turret is in a weird position of sometimes being effected by AoEs/Mechanics/Status effects, and sometimes not. Yet is also easily replaced, it's a wonder why it can be hit at all.

The turret is horrible, it's not fun or interesting, it's almost better at this point to remove it considering square doesn't seem to want to do anything with it. 1 Expansion later, and they REMOVED and GAVE the turret an ability, it's basically the same thing it was before, no changes. Boring.

[RiceisNice]

SAM: Outdpses MCH. Has a DoT with Lead Shot's old potency (then, the highest DoT), and twice the duration.
BRD: Outdpses MCH. Has 2 DoTs with a literal reset switch (for those that complain of MCH too easy/boring)

. . . Give us back Lead Shot please.
"

That's not how damage tuning works. If they were to give lead shot back to MCH but still want our damage to be around what it is now, they'd still have to adjust overall potentiates to accommodate for that. It's the same deal for when they pruned DPS cooldowns like raging strikes and hawk eye; their dps potential is tuned in consideration of not having it. If MCH's damage is too low (and it probably is in the big picture), not having lead shot is not the reason why. Abilties like Lead Shot, plhetobmize and fracture are text book example of ability bloating that needed to be removed.

- The turret doesn't contribute to wildfire damage, nor does Overdrive. Overdrive is a really weird player ability that commands our pet to do an attack, and as such any buffs on the player don't work for this ability, at all. (Is this the same with SMN?)

Turret (and Egis) benefit from player buffs. This includes self buffs (back when they still had it) such as raging strikes and hawkeye, given buffs (Balance) and food/potions. Go pop food right now and you'll see the exact same buff on your turret/egi. Only hotshot is excluded from this (and summoners don't have an equivalent of this)

That aside, I do agree that the turrets are very un-involved, but honestly with the terrible pet AI this game has, I'd rather not have them be more involved with placement or have summoner-esq pet bars.

[CosmicKirby]

Turret (and Egis) benefit from player buffs. This includes self buffs (back when they still had it) such as raging strikes and hawkeye, given buffs (Balance) and food/potions. Go pop food right now and you'll see the exact same buff on your turret/egi. Only hotshot is excluded from this (and summoners don't have an equivalent of this)

A worthwhile correction: It doesn't scale with our primary damage cooldown, nor our basic potency up ability. Why the random discrepancies? Is this a glitch?

It's scaling with Gauss barrel, potions, food, debuffs ON the target.
It's NOT scaling with Hot Shot, Wildfire.
It is working with Balance.
It is NOT working with Embolden.

I just tested these and again, for something that is a constant factor of our DPS, it just doesn't scale with certain key abilities for arbitrary reasons.

On a tangent: I think that Reassemble needs SOMETHING to make it not just a worse version of Lifesurge. (Which can't effect our strongest ability, Overcharge) Perhaps making it ensure Critical Direct Hits? (it only ensures normal Critical hits)