MCH changes are unfortunate

[Greedalox]

Welp, can't wait til 5.0/6.0 and some other ranged is added, then suddenly "No one will ever bring a BRD. . ."

They never said that MCH would be in a terrible place forever- it was a mention of the current patch and it's iteration of MCH- and she's right. I'll be starting my raiding tonight as MCH, but I'm lucky because I raid with friends. If a raid group is given a choice between a MCH and a BRD, they will take a bard and frankly theres more BRD than MCH anyways so it's not even going to be a "their loss" situation.

The only reason to bring a MCH to raid is if you were grandfathered in or somehow every BRD has been scooped up. We flatly just aren't good or equal in comparison under ANY team setups- sure you can say that we can make up for it with faith and tryharding, but what happens when a BRD tryhards? They'll be better than us.

[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.

[CosmicKirby]

BRD, sorry, Archer starts at 1 if anyone's never touched it. And I want to laugh at that "correct consensus" bit, but you were serious. I suppose it's easy to let metas decide for you. I mean, why should anyone think or choose anything for themselves in this game, right?

Welp, can't wait til 5.0/6.0 and some other ranged is added, then suddenly "No one will ever bring a BRD. . ."

My point being, you HAVE to go back as a new player to start as a MCH. You can reasonably pick ARC as your first and stick with it all the way through. Most people probably max the first job they pick I imagine.

If you compare a BRD and MCH of equal skill level, there's no reason to bring a MCH over a BRD.

You're the kind of person that doesn't understand tier lists. If ALL OTHER FACTORS are equal, X or Y? The 'meta' or tier lists are what points you to the better of alternatives. Any amount of 'don't let the meta decide!' is the concept going over your head.

Is the best MCH going to be better than a lot of BRDs? Yes. Would that MCH be performing better if they were JUST AS good with any other job or BRD? Also yes. There's no performance argument to be made in MCH's favor.

[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.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

My point being, you HAVE to go back as a new player to start as a MCH. You can reasonably pick ARC as your first and stick with it all the way through. Most people probably max the first job they pick I imagine.

If you compare a BRD and MCH of equal skill level, there's no reason to bring a MCH over a BRD.

You're the kind of person that doesn't understand tier lists. If ALL OTHER FACTORS are equal, X or Y? The 'meta' or tier lists are what points you to the better of alternatives. Any amount of 'don't let the meta decide!' is the concept going over your head.

Is the best MCH going to be better than a lot of BRDs? Yes. Would that MCH be performing better if they were JUST AS good with any other job or BRD? Also yes. There's no performance argument to be made in MCH's favor.

Oh I understand tier lists. You assume far too much, and we just don't bloody well know each other like that. At least offer me dinner first.

But if we ARE going to go there, RDM outdamages BRDs, yes? And can help cure in a pinch, AND can raise in a pinch, and Embolden is quite nice. QUITE nice. Damage, support to an even greater degree, and arguably simpler execution. . . Why bring a BRD when you can bring an RDM? Meta said so?

I mean if it's a matter of performance and what brings what to the table, let's skip the freedom of choice and simply look at the top. Forget play what you love, forget actually being good at it when you can just be better at something else. "If you ain't first, you're last", right?

I grasp the meta concept enough to know just how many times it simply didn't matter thanks to that one variable no amount of professional mathematics can account for: the human element. I've done more with less, and I've seen a player completely shatter what the meta says firsthand. Not in this game, no, but overall it was the eye opener: put the right tools in the right hands and they can get the job done. Doesn't matter if they're weathered or top of the line. Might seem hard to grasp sometimes, but once you've seen it, it's hard to unsee. At least if you're really looking.

But don't take my word for it. Go ask the meta or something.

[Greedalox]

But if we ARE going to go there, RDM outdamages BRDs, yes? And can help cure in a pinch, AND can raise in a pinch, and Embolden is quite nice. QUITE nice. Damage, support to an even greater degree, and arguably simpler execution. . . Why bring a BRD when you can bring an RDM? Meta said so?

You're being facetious and comparing apples to sausages. It doesn't help anyones argument to shoehorn the comparison of non alike party roles. Plus yes to what you're saying. We've seen it before- when things get out of hand certain classes can transcend even party roles. That's why we have see plenty of all physical groups and Brd + Mch groups.

Because the meta said so. But our current situation isn't meta. There's ZERO instances and party comps where MCH outdoes BRD. That's not meta, that's a bad class (At the moment). We have no quirks, limelight, minutes or moments for MCH- and pretending like that's okay is harmful. It's okay to still love the class and admit it's NOT in a good spot at all.

Right now in a fight if our mana battery utility wasn't necessary at all and no bards were available you can bet your behind that another class would fill our spot better.

[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.

[Velhart]

A dev response to this would be very nice. I at least like to know the intent. If we intentionally have less utility than a BRD, then makes sense we have better DPS, right? Is this the intent? We don't know because SE doesn't know how to communicate this job. I really wonder if any form of play testing was done at all. We do dramatically less DPS than BRD and have no where near the amount of support functions that BRD does. I really just need to know what was going on when they redesigned our job.