Culling and restructuring skills to make room for 5.0 abilities

[Sylvain]

It's disturbing to see people with such a different view on MCH, but I guess that's why the class is broken to this day. MCH is anything but isolated mechanics, the whole class is basically a single mechanic since absolutely everything syncs up with Wildfire burst. I also view Rapid Fire as one of the greatest design flaws because it makes the class near unplayable at higher latency. The fast gcd wouldn't be a problem by itself (see RDM), but the total-kit-sync compounds the issue into a big problem due to ogcd weaving.

I personnaly don't consider that because every MCH CD sync on a 60s basis they're all considered one mech.
WF is simply a 25% dps buff for 10s. Nothing more nothing less. The only unique thing it has to it is that you can see how much extra dmg you actually did.

To me, a mechanic is something unique to the job. The random nature of MCH main combo is a unique twist, how it's tied to the bullet system (which I consider to be a mechanic) is also something unique that, imo, defines MCH.
Altough it isn't the most developped system, the Heat is also unique within the game. Only the MCH has a special ressource that it must keep between 2 values until a very specific moment (the famous burst window).
But at this point it's just wording so let's move on.

So you might consider that at X% dmg bonus for Ysec is the most interesting part of a job. I don't.

Rapid Fire is a design flaw because of the nature of ogcd and animation lock.
But it is fun. I like rapid fire, I vastly prefer Rapid Fire to WF.

Same goes for the heat, I like the heat system (I prefered it before the rework but I understand how it made the job even clunkier)
And as I pointed, there's a lot they could do with it. They can expand on that system like they expanded on the SCH Eatherflux. It was undermining, now it defines the job because they are the unique twist the SCH have over the other healers.

What can you do with WF? Let say they remove the Heat system and bring it back to HW.
What can you add to WF? How many more ogcd does the job need for that 10s window?

[SpeckledBurd]

What can you do with WF? Let say they remove the Heat system and bring it back to HW.
What can you add to WF? How many more ogcd does the job need for that 10s window?

You don't need to add more oGCCD abilities to cram into it, you can go a different direction and have proper execution of GCDs and Abilities within the Wildfire duration build meter. Proper execution of the Wildfire rotation will build the greatest amount of meter and from there you can go any number of directions with it. Spend meter to make the turret execute a powerful Ability, maybe spend it on Machinist for a powerful death ray GCD. There's plenty of options from there.

[Shurrikhan]

I would also prefer them to expand on the overheat mech instead of wildfire.

<snip>

And I don't know about you but my definition of fun isn't to have a boring rotation for 50s and then press 15 keys simultaneously for 10s.
...

To clarify: I meant only to state that if we went through another stage of job-appendage-severing skill culls, I'd rather lose Overheat than Wildfire. This is not because I feel like Wildfire can be better worked off or improved than Overheat; quite the opposite. I find Wildfire something very nearly complete in itself that would work well with a mechanic that Overheat seems to have been slated to fill (i.e. some secondary, synergetic mechanic), but has failed to manage quite "right" in its current implementation. With the current implementation out of the way, we might see a less awkward synergetic mechanic that allows for less bottlenecked and more broadly nuanced gameplay.

If you've some ideas for how Overheat might be redone, I'd love to hear them. My own ideas have sounded nice conceptually at first, but have been difficult to envision the practical effects of.

(For instance, I've considered making Gun Heat increase both damage and attack power, increase granularly at both flat amounts and a portion of missing Heat, and for Heat to diminish continuously. Hot Shot would simply be a massive Heat generator to jump-start rotation or fill pivotal areas. Gauss Barrel would be toggleable to chamber your Heat, allowing for greater control and for heat->damage expenditure on abilities. I'd still probably need additional Turret stuff to really fill out the gameplay, but I like the idea of timing fluid & dynamic peaks and troughs of burst damage, if I could just figure out the technicals required.)

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

If you want an idea of how to rework Overheat, I've got one proposal that also fits with a single similar change to Wildfire. Make them both stack-based effects. 6 stacks each, for 6 shots total in each window. In order to make Overheat more interesting in this situation, we build on the Heat mechanic, by adding a mechanic to skip the penalty phase. Your heat is temporarily uncapped and some weaponskills would change their effect, primarily in heat generation. Ammo would still reduce heat generation to 0 during this period. The goal is to get your heat down to 50 or lower during this period, and stay below it once Overheat runs out. The result for doing this correctly will be skipping the lockout phase. Obviously Overheat and Wildfire would both be indirectly nerfed as a result of these changes, but this alone would massively help MCH's QoL at the cost of DPS. I can see making Gauss Round and Richochet into weaponskills similar to Empyreal Arrow, and adding two more shots into the Wildfire/Overheat effects specifically for them, but that might not even be necessary. Rapid Fire would still be clunky but you wouldn't lose a WF/OH shot because of it anymore or because of waiting on a flamethrower tick. And being able to use Flamethrower for its full duration while recovering TP for Spread Shot without losing the Overheat bonus would actually help balance out MCH's AoE a little too, though that's more of a side benefit.

[Raikai]

To clarify: I meant only to state that if we went through another stage of job-appendage-severing skill culls, I'd rather lose Overheat than Wildfire. This is not because I feel like Wildfire can be better worked off or improved than Overheat; quite the opposite. I find Wildfire something very nearly complete in itself that would work well with a mechanic that Overheat seems to have been slated to fill (i.e. some secondary, synergetic mechanic), but has failed to manage quite "right" in its current implementation. With the current implementation out of the way, we might see a less awkward synergetic mechanic that allows for less bottlenecked and more broadly nuanced gameplay.

If you've some ideas for how Overheat might be redone, I'd love to hear them. My own ideas have sounded nice conceptually at first, but have been difficult to envision the practical effects of.

(For instance, I've considered making Gun Heat increase both damage and attack power, increase granularly at both flat amounts and a portion of missing Heat, and for Heat to diminish continuously. Hot Shot would simply be a massive Heat generator to jump-start rotation or fill pivotal areas. Gauss Barrel would be toggleable to chamber your Heat, allowing for greater control and for heat->damage expenditure on abilities. I'd still probably need additional Turret stuff to really fill out the gameplay, but I like the idea of timing fluid & dynamic peaks and troughs of burst damage, if I could just figure out the technicals required.)

I REALLY like your Gun Heat idea. In that case, if you accidentally overheated your weapon too much, you'd still have to deal with those seconds of "overheated" phase? It would be like a gamble of trying to stay... like 90-99% for most damage output? I like that! The skill floor would be a "safe" play, staying at 80-90 heat... the skill ceiling would be players that properly can juggle 90-99 heat.

If you had... say, something big coming off cooldown (Like Wildfire), then you'd purposely lower your heat levels with Cooldown, just enough for it to detonate at the 90-99% (saying, like, the detonation itself wouldn't add heat). It would create some interesting calculations on how much to reduce your heat not to overheat by using your dps cooldowns.

As for Wildfire, If the heat mechanic worked like you suggested, then I wouldn't see it as an issue anymore, especially if the horrible clipping issue of rapid fire would be dealt with. I'd just advocate, then, for a better visual effect to it.

Also, Flamethrower need to be looked upon and really brought as a major dps cooldown instead of the gimmick that it is right now.

On top of that I really like your idea of Gauss Barrel something to control better your heat. Not quite sure on how that would work mechanically, but at least it's a concept that would take GB off the limbo of an ability that it's currently at.