Another thread about MCH or in other words "Yoshi Please!"

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Hi, if you got something to say, I'm right here.

P.S. I've never said the job was perfectly fine as is, but I neither tore it down as unplayable, made it sound entirely unviable for endgame, or said it was boring. You can look and several times I have said along with others that the job needs some improvements. Needs improvements, but plenty of people are still playing it, some better than others as it always was.

So don't put words in my mouth.

[Elnidfse]

decent talk least you are not third child saying its ok blah blah blah.
but as someone whose basically mch 100% since hw launch till basically the first week act was out and counting everyones numbers.

HEat needs to be changed I don't mind sitting between 50-95 heat at all times I like managing heat 4.0 was fine 4.05 made it shit
Wildfire hits like shit my lvl 60 sam was out dmging wildfire every midare
overheating has basically been confirmed at this point to not bother as you basically need a perfect wildfireoverheat every 60 seconds to not get a dps lose.
overdrive seems to be the only fix that mch got but even that could still use another bump

back in HW Casting was just terrible while some say ya it worked for mch doesn't mean it was good for mch it was still terrible mechanic to slap onto brd and mch.
Mch along with everyone just got a rework and mch badly needs a whole nother rework there is frankly to much wrong with mch right now

Normally I would agree that casting was bad for MCH but our entire kit worked with it. Rapidfire, ammo, procs all ignored casting. BRDs didn't get to ignore all of their casting like we ignored all of ours. That's without even mentioning all the weaving we could do with gauss round, head graze, and blank. BRD has to conform to casting while we thrived through it. Not as if we ever had to respect cast time anyways.

I will agree that I don't like heat now but only because it made our job gauge boring. Don't get me wrong. It probably needed to change. It was punishing, almost too much so, and that certainly needed to be addressed but I think they went too far or changed too much too quickly.

[Velhart]

I applaud this thread. Well written, well organized, and how most of us feel about the job, especially those who played MCH main from 3.0. I hope developers at least know that MCH are not in a great position at this time and take action besides just making the job easier.

[RiceisNice]

The issue with changing wildfire back how it was before (Specifically, having a 15 second duration) creates the issue of problematic boss timers (again). Off the top of my head, I can immediately say that this will disallow me from getting a second wildfire on Susano, and a third on Lakshmi before their phase change (and made even worse since they go completely invulnerable and whiff it completely).

It's fine the way it is, but if MCH's overall damage really does need tuning...Which imo, should be done towards the (over)heat aspect rather than wildfire.

[Elnidfse]

The issue with changing wildfire back how it was before (Specifically, having a 15 second duration) creates the issue of problematic boss timers (again). Off the top of my head, I can immediately say that this will disallow me from getting a second wildfire on Susano, and a third on Lakshmi before their phase change (and made even worse since they go completely invulnerable and whiff it completely).

It's fine the way it is, but if MCH's overall damage really does need tuning...Which imo, should be done towards the (over)heat aspect rather than wildfire.

This problem would be now as it was mitigated then. With bigger damage. And just like then we could adjust how we deal with that like we could do now, by just using your wildfire more properly. In the raids that exists that wouldn't be a problem anyways, and if it was reverted to how it used to be we would just be one of the many people that have to deal with the so called problematic timers. SMN and DRG deal with that now. Mind you I'm not advocating simply raising the timer.

Having a wildfire you use often is not as fun as having a stronger wildfire that hits harder once. It's what makes an ability special. Having a wildfire jumped on sucked but it felt that much more rewarding when I blew up

[RiceisNice]

Having a wildfire you use often is not as fun as having a stronger wildfire that hits harder once. It's what makes an ability special. Having a wildfire jumped on sucked but it felt that much more rewarding when I blew up

I don't know, i feel like having it up every minute makes MCH more engaging than doing my 1-2-3 for 70 seconds after a wildfire, on top of it not lining up with reload. Like I mentioned earlier, if they want to bump up MCH damage, I'd rather it be done through their heat mechanic and give that more meaning than just tacking it on.

[LunarEmerald]

Machinist is suffering what Bard suffered in Heavensward.

Bard was given cast times because Machinist had them. This wrecked how Bard played because the job wasn't designed with cast times in mind. The job felt like it was fighting against itself.

Now, Machinist had its cast times taken away because Bard lost theirs. This has wrecked how Machinist plays because the job was designed with cast times in mind. Now the job is fighting against itself.

Their attempts at trying to balance both jobs together ends up ruining one of them.

[Elnidfse]

I don't know, i feel like having it up every minute makes MCH more engaging than doing my 1-2-3 for 70 seconds after a wildfire, on top of it not lining up with reload. Like I mentioned earlier, if they want to bump up MCH damage, I'd rather it be done through their heat mechanic and give that more meaning than just tacking it on.

I don't think 3.x wildfire was tacked on and it worked that way.

There are other ways to make the job more engaging, as with the aforementioned heat mechanic. Wildfire should not be something that's just part of the rotation because that brings us to 4 buttons we only use when wildfire is up. Wildfire, Reassemble, ricochet, and Rapid Fire. It also lowers the impact of each individual wildfire. Wildfire should be an impactful part of our rotation, not just another bit of it. It's worked that ways for years before it was arbitrarily assigned the role of DPS filler. It's not even the hardest hitting ability in our arsenal, that goes to turret overdrive, which also has the benefits of being able to crit and/or direct hit. (though I should mention that this is only in a pre jump situation. Of course turret overdrive doesn't even compete normally)

That's backwards.

Wildfire should always be the most damaging ability in our arsenal. This isn't a MCH damage statement. It's a wildfire damage statement. I'm not saying that "to raise MCH damage they should focus on wildfire". I'm saying "wildfire should do more damage no matter what in our damage they have to cut". It should return to it's 3.x days because it sure as sin was what we were balanced around. By removing all impact/punishment from wildfire it removes it's bite. A MCH absolutely should be affected if a boss jumps on a wildfire. Making everything easy for the sake of convenience is not good design. It cheapens the reward for doing well.

Moreover:

Out of the entire raid only V4 has any kind of jump that you have to care about. Alte Roite, Catastrophe, and Halicarnassus have very few things that would end up negatively impacting your wildfire in any significant way. And it's not as if the lower timer allows us to throw it on burn targets anyways (like V3S adds) as they die faster than that 10 second timer on top of whatever setup you have left. Of course primal's have jumps and that's been a thing we've dealt with for years but when balancing passes are expected, what do we always hear?
"Wait until the raid." Primal fights matter very little when it comes to balance, it seems.

And on the topic of engaging, we had that in 3.x too with our ability weaving, fight timers, and an actual proc based gameplay that you actually could take advantage of.

Doing the same thing every wildfire at all times is not engaging, it's binary. And that's what a simple heat tweaking would be. More binary changes to what was once an engaging job.

[RiceisNice]

I don't think 3.x wildfire was tacked on and it worked that way...

Well this is a matter of perspective. You'd see wildfire as something that should be "MCH's hardest hitting attack", I see it as a inverse of a damage cooldown where it builds up 25% of your damage dealt rather than buffing your damage by 25% for 10 seconds. Just as your example of turret overload being your strongest hitting attack, it also comes at a cost of disabling your turret for the duration (being an equal tradeoff, and only a net gain if you had outside damage amplifications or downtime), a frontloaded damage cooldown if you will.

I honestly felt the 3.x rotations was a lot more binary than what we have right now (before 4.05 anyway) because of the longer cooldowns inbetween. Sure we have more weaving, but that's a buttload more buttons for the sake of having buttons

And yes I'm considering outside of raids. While raids are where balancing really matters, I'd like to very much be able to enjoy my wildfires actually going off on primals and dungeon bosses.

[Elnidfse]

*snip*

That's what I'm saying. Landing a wildfire wasn't any more complicated to hit then than it was now. It wasn't some unlandable thing you know. And the payoff was far proportionately larger. And I'm not talking about the rotations, of course the initial 4.0 MCH felt a lot more dynamic but the wildfire game was far far different. Here you use the same wildfire every single time. And if you're trying to keep your rotation tight to stack up with your cooldowns and raid cooldowns it won't change ever. Even if you get a few procs it'd end up being better to just bulldoze right over that proc and ignore it so that QR comes back up in time. The old wildfire/mildfire dynamic is far better than just putting 100% into every wildfire every time in the exact same way. Because even in 4.0 that never changed about your wildfire. And that's boring.

I also don't think weaving is fluff. It gives the job more to press instead of 1-2-3, and outside of refreshing hotshot that 1-2-3 is indeed what we're pressing most of the time with a single gauss round sprinkled in every 15 seconds. I liked the old jokes about playing the piano to play MCH. I preferred a MCH that had that many button presses. It may be fluff to you but landing them was an integral part of the old gameplan.

Wildfire had a large payoff because it still had a large risk, and it still has that large risk. There aren't many dungeon bosses you throw that far out of the loop. Out of everything I can think of maybe Yojimbo is like the only one because he leaves so soon that if you didn't fire him in 10 seconds of pull you wouldn't be able to land that explosion. Everything else is still going to be leaving regardless of your 5 seconds or not. You won't be throwing that on adds at a high enough damage in dungeons because you'll melt them way too quickly or be pulling them in a large group. For bosses, the few of them that do jump don't do so for nearly any amount of time that would ruin your wildfire timing. It extends to bosses to. Lak has a very large grace period before she jumps away and your post jump Lak is still something you'd probably be better of saving your wildfire for group buffs after the confusion. Take Susan as well: you'd still be able to land 2 fires with just enough time leading directly into swords and have another one for the phase after sword. 15 seconds on a 90 second timer isn't as restrictive that you think it is.



That said I think this is one of those "agree to disagree" things. I'm not so haughty to not realize that I'm extremely biased because of my affection for 3.x MCH. Which I enjoyed greatly. I like 4.x MCH as well, but I wish the impact of certain job features (i.e; wildfire) wasn't so dramatically altered from what it was. And as I mentioned (i think I mentioned?) before; it's just me musing. Regardless of how long wildfire lasted. It wouldn't be able to function longer than 10 seconds because none of our new adjustments(bullets, overheat, hypercharge to a lesser extent) would be able to accommodate it. So of course I wouldn't actually hope they increased it's duration to 15 seconds. Nothing would work with it. But a man can dream, no?