To FFXIV Team From a Concerned Machinist

[Caitlyn]

HW-MCH was fine (except that phys./magical Hypercharge). I dont understand why SE removed the cast-times but adding the Heat-Mechanic instead... .

[Dualgunner]

Not necessarily. 1: MCH doesn't compete with BRD now because it offers nothing BRD either doesn't do better or easier. 2: Even if MCH were buffed into the moon or BRD nerfed hard, a significant factor in MCH's lack of play comes from how unfriendly the job feels overall. It's similar to the complaints WARs had at the beginning of Stormblood. They had to work twice as hard to achieve the same results as DRK and PLD.

3: Regardless, forcing a Caster into the comp is simply lazy design and does nothing for MCH.

Let me crystallize my argument:

Machinist cannot be buffed to Bard's level because that affects caster balance; it does this because of how inherently good Bard is. Bard is probably the most important job in the composition, it's why most meta comps are built with a Bard in mind. If you buffed Machinist to the same level as Bard, perfectly balanced against it, they're not going to fight for the same slot in the group, and instead slot somebody else out so they can party together; we saw this in Deltascape, and we saw this in Creator. This is why Machinist cannot compete with Bard right now.

My suggestion, lazy in design or not, is to enforce limit break rules again.

1:Yes necessarily. Bard and Machinist cannot fight each other alone, because there's always the option of dropping someone else to take a second ranged DPS. Imagine if you ripped Machinist's kit away completely, put in Bard's, and just called it "Bard Two" for instant absolute balance: like you and Hyo both said, casters are immediately gone. Without an artificial restriction, or an extreme rollback of the DPS potential of the ranged DPS subcategory, it really won't ever be "Bard vs Machinist", and yours and Hyo's immediate reaction to an (outrageous) buff suggestion is a perfect example of my point. MCH having 10% damage up every 2 minutes, for instance, doesn't affect Bard. It affects Summoner, Red Mage, and Black Mage.

2: How Machinist plays isn't relevant to the point at hand. You could switch Machinist's and Bard's roles completely right now, and the problem remains that if they were balanced towards each others' level, you're most likely going to render the entire caster subcategory worthless.

3: It allows Machinist to be able to be balanced against Bard, instead of against casters. It also allows casters to be balanced better against each other as well, since a huge issue in ye olde Caster Wars was the fact that all three casters had to compete with Machinist to have their spot in the first place.

[MoroMurasaki]

I can't believe I'm here. I'm sorry for responding to you specifically, Cass - it certainly grew more general as I went but I think I got all my thoughts out. Thanks for being my jumping off point! ~

Regardless, forcing a Caster into the comp is simply lazy design and does nothing for MCH.

As a caster I have a vested interest in at least retaining a level of viability within my role so I guess I need to understand all of this stuff. Bear with me.

You (I suppose a collective you, for sure anyone feel free to respond to this despite my initial post being aimed at Cass) are opposed to the mandate via LB generation that both a Caster and a Ranged make it into most party comps. This means by default all casters and ranged are being weighed against each other.

If it's a matter of weight BRD is a freaking hippo - no brainer choice against all of its competition. Clear rates attest to this, it is simply the most played job in Alphascape by a wide margin.

These two things are why MCH is competing with the Casters. While melee are fighting amongst the four of them for two spots the dominance of BRD has left the rest of the Ranged category (the same number of jobs as melee) squabbling over just one spot.

If we are going to assume two spots will always be melee (which I think is fair, at the very least I see no reason right now why that wouldn't be the case) then the elephant in the room is BRD taking up far more than it's fair share of the pie. For any one of the five to be such an obvious choice seems like a natural disadvantage to the rest of them, forcing them to fight amongst themselves because of a perceived scarcity.

It's easy for MCHs to point at caster buffs or even LB generation enforced mandation of a caster in the party as the source of their woes or as balancing without them in mind. In the same vein Casters can talk about the Piercing meta and MCH's favorable alignment with common raid buffs on a 60 second basis as the reason we may find ourselves entirely out of the meta.

As a former WHM main I made the mistake of pointing the finger at AST for a long time before I knew better. I saw myself as competing directly with AST and saw that AST brought so much more than I could to a party on WHM and assumed it was ridiculously OP. Many other WHM's did the same. Take a glance at healer clear rates in Alphascape and you'll see the real difference maker - SCH is completely owning it's competition. Is part of this due to WHM's lack of rDPS potential? Sure, just like some of MCHs issues are based in it's highly ping-dependant gameplay.

The point is you can't only fix jobs when they're lagging far behind or you'll find yourself with some jobs always lagging far behind. This is why simply buffing BRD or nerfing MCH or LB mandating a Caster won't do muh for MCH alone. Balance comes from bringing the bottom up and the top down to narrow the gap in desirability of all jobs. Right now that means doing something to make BRD less desirable while making MCH more desirable so thay instead of the incredibly skewed clear rates we now see we all move towards something at least resembling parity.

tl;dr - BRD being so desired has left us in the situation of "Four Jobs, One Spot" and that is a situation none of us is going to leave looking our best. Rather than flinging poo and getting everyone dirty I think we need to look at alternatives to open up the second Ranged slot to something other than BRD. Flexibility is key.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Machinist cannot be buffed to Bard's level because that affects caster balance; it does this because of how inherently good Bard is. Bard is probably the most important job in the composition, it's why most meta comps are built with a Bard in mind. If you buffed Machinist to the same level as Bard, perfectly balanced against it, they're not going to fight for the same slot in the group, and instead slot somebody else out so they can party together; we saw this in Deltascape, and we saw this in Creator. This is why Machinist cannot compete with Bard right now.

We saw this in Creator and Deltascape because nothing was done to accommodate the Casters or address why Physical Range jobs have dominated. While I cannot disagree your suggestion could work, it remains a lazy approach when the linchpin here is what Moro brought up: Bard is omitted from the range war because it's virtually guaranteed a spot. There is no reason why all five range jobs can't be balanced against one another. Should Blue Mage release, we'll have potentially five melee DPS vying for a spot. If it works for the melee, it can work for range. Which circles us back to why the Casters always lose in a war with Bard and Machinist.

Simply put, they have no answer to Refresh. That is perhaps the biggest factor. We've previously discussed Mana Shift is basically trash. Another factor is the limited support they do offer isn't great. Embolden gets meme'd on for a reason and Devotion isn't exactly stellar either. The supposed trade off is Casters bring higher damage, but outside maybe Black Mage, this is quite debatable. At least when it comes to rDPS.

In the end, enforcing a Caster/Range dichotomy can work. I just see it as a lazy approach when all five jobs could be looked at and balanced against each other. Frankly, I suspect we see this constant issue because the devs haven't done this and merely assume we'll want one of each. So I suppose if that's the philosophy they plan to stick with, then yes, enforce it. Even if I don't particularly like it.

[Grimoire-M]

Simply put, they have no answer to Refresh. That is perhaps the biggest factor. We've previously discussed Mana Shift is basically trash. Another factor is the limited support they do offer isn't great. Embolden gets meme'd on for a reason and Devotion isn't exactly stellar either. The supposed trade off is Casters bring higher damage, but outside maybe Black Mage, this is quite debatable. At least when it comes to rDPS.

In the end, enforcing a Caster/Range dichotomy can work. I just see it as a lazy approach when all five jobs could be looked at and balanced against each other. Frankly, I suspect we see this constant issue because the devs haven't done this and merely assume we'll want one of each. So I suppose if that's the philosophy they plan to stick with, then yes, enforce it. Even if I don't particularly like it.

This is part of why I've advocated for combining Refresh and Mana Shift into one button, effectively acting as Mana Goad. It's also why I would like to see more self-sustain in the healer/caster classes that need it. AST could survive without Refresh, but RDM needs their own MP cooldown badly in order to make up for the loss. Ideally Refresh shouldn't be required at all. It should be a 'recover from death' button like Goad/Tactician are, not a 'let's skip piety' button, but the latter is inevitable if SE doesn't want to make Piety better (such as tweaking it to instead boost healing potency at a high enough rate to consider it over DET & DHIT in prog). That's the ultimate reason why 'a' ranged DPS is required at all. Making it so the healer MP economy is now split across two ranged/caster dps in a more fair manner means you'll want at least two of those classes for your healers.

As for what that would look like: Use the same tick potency & duration as Refresh, but only apply it to a single target ally. Not including self. Give it to the casters and ranged DPS, then give Goad and Diversion to the ranged DPS to replace Tactician.

Embolden is better than it looks, but really needs to apply to all classes to show that. Same goes for Brotherhood. Devotion has extra value in specific windows but isn't a game breaker by any means. I have more problems with Contagion/Radiant Shield than it even after the nerf to the latter, but they don't have to deal with their raid utility, just pet QoL. TA and Piercing both need to be looked at on the melee side to break those required slots up too. If Slashing/Blunt/Piercing were removed I'd hope they would add a NIN-only version of the slashing debuff to TA to keep NIN's personal dps where it is while still nerfing their overall raid dps. Beyond that, BRD needs to not scale on crit rate raid buffs.

Saving MCH at this point looks nearly impossible without a full on rework regardless, but all of those things need to happen alongside it in order to keep them balanced against other classes in the process.

[Darkpaw]

you all are coming up with great ideas and great points. Yes, Machinist needs a full rework. We know this. I love the points coming out . I still think it may help if you all make calls for the game's creative and community teams to answer our question. Perhaps if enough of us ask in the same thread they will finally stop ignoring us and acknowledge the problem. Perhaps not fix it but atleast acknowledge it.

[Darkpaw]

bumping it back up

[Darkpaw]

Well it looks like we have finally gotten our acknowledgement. The dev team has atleast seen the feedbacks according to the Q&A thread they just did. So we will see if anything comes of it.

[Ryallen]

Just to bump this up and make sure that any members of the FFXIV team are aware that MCH needs adjustments, if not an outright rework. I don't know or even play MCH but I think the previous comments speak for themselves.

[Darkpaw]

Just to bump this up and make sure that any members of the FFXIV team are aware that MCH needs adjustments, if not an outright rework. I don't know or even play MCH but I think the previous comments speak for themselves.

Thank you for the bump. During the Q&A session before the live letter Yoshi P himself has acknowledged our feedback and it seems likely that we will get reworked in 5.0 and it was said we were in the discussions that haven’t been finalized for 4.5 for adjustments and possible fixes.