To FFXIV Team From a Concerned Machinist

[Elnidfse]

On the topic of:
Heat
Pre 4.05/4.06 was frustrating. I get that. Nothing was as heart searingly unfortunate as locking yourself out of an entire raids buffs because you split when you should have Cooldowned. But some people, myself included, just wanted a higher payoff. Frankly I would be happy to give away ALL of my rDPS if it meant we got SAM/BLM levels of pDPS. I've already heard to death that the reason we can't have great rDPS or compete directly with BRD is so that double rDPS doesn't become a meta again. Alright then. Scrap the support entirely. What's the point. Of course I can understand that being a point of contention losing support but something that gets punished hardcore for a single passive slipup is a bit much without the associated reward. And I don't think the solution to that problem should have been making heat irrelevant.

On that same note. I don't think Heat should just be a spender. We have 2 jobs right now whose main mechanic is nothing but a spender. Heat was something different and WAS far more engaging to deal with even though it was extremely frustrating to mess up

With all of that out of the way I thought I'd talk about things that I DO want to see:
Wishlist

• Abilities we use outside of and with wildfire instead of only with wildfire.
• More engaging turret gameplay. (With the loss of promote, our turret interaction has shrunk to using two abilities that we'll almost only ever use on cooldown)
• More tools, more weapons, more gadgets. With the loss of grenado shot our lunchbox has turned into a glorified ammo and turret box.
• More single OGCD weaves.

Of course. Given that MCH is pretty much just 90% gun by design, while I know some ideas just aren't happening ever, I do still want to toss out things that I wish it could have. We'll call it:

Never Ever "Wishlist"

• I want our job quests have us actually learning something or building something of our own.
• Let our turret contribute to our WF.
• Gimmie a construct/magitech armor of our own
• Different attachments for gun since Gauss Barrel is never going to have a unique appearance.
• Different types of ammo or shots
• Different abilities that depend on turret positioning + the ability to move the turret. Or
• Removal of the turret and integration of it's skills.

But hey. No matter what. At least it's comforting knowing that MCH is going to get shaken up again next expansion.

[kobe-sabi]

who cares about the clears, just make the job better, and less on small windows of burst especially since server tick sucks for people who bad connect due to server location. they could added a few seconds to wildfire, buff a potency here and there, give turrets a buff and added back an old skill to hold people over. while giving a service apology on the few who played the job, hell i barely see any play Mch, SE act like people are asking for too much. Sure expert players will gain the most from buffs, which will make expert Brd players come out and say Mch needs nerfs.

I think that's what wrong with FFXIV people are always ready to say nerf, remember mediocre players and casual players don't benefit nothing from nerfs. they tend to go to the job people are asking for instead of playing a job they want to play, causing them to feel alienated or disgusted in playing due to people want the optimum jobs. lets be real Casual's pay the bills, i don't see that many veterans pay $30 dollars on mounts, but i do see a lot of casual and mediocre player spending that big money on these over priced mounts and clothing. So SE can act like they hear the public on jobs who need a little love because lets face it,their is no such thing as OP jobs, just OP players who know their job from top to bottom.

[Darkpaw]

You all have come up with some seriously daring and innovative solutions. It’s fascinating to read. I wonder if the dev team will take anything from the ideas you all have provided.

[Raikai]

Wishlist:
- Something done with the clunky way Wildfire + Overheat behaves right now, especially some fix to make it viable for people without that perfect 50ms ping.

- Turn Gauss Barrel into something else or remove it altogether. Currently there is absolutely no thought in using it. You just have to press as soon as it's available. (I still don't understand how people think this ability is "cool" because visually it ruins our weapons, and mechanically it the classic example of a button press for the sake of button pressing).

- Hot Shot is also weak because it's a bland maintenance buff that you always refresh during the same periods (usually OH downtime). I'd think it would be more interesting if it was a +% damage taken (dealt by anyone) debuff in the enemy, or +% critical chance. The ammo upgrade could be an AoE version, for trash packs.

- Flamethrower makes no sense being used like it is now: just a tick to activate overheat. If it had its dmg buffed, perhaps you could really use it properly as a dps tool, reduce your heat to 0, then Flamethrower.

- I would think the bullet system be more smooth if they condensed both reloads into just one ability, then you'd have 4 bullet "slots" with their separate recharge timers, so basically you'd use these on demand without the need of having 2 separate abilities that do almost the same thing.

- Wishlist for future 5.0 abilities: Add more TOOLS... inspired maybe by FF6's Edgar tools. How cool it would be if we had a Bio Blaster, to inflict the enemy a fixed utility debuff + many other ailments if they are vulnerable to them. Or maybe the pesky melee pvp player would think twice before engaging a MCH because they would have that Jason-mask-chainsaw to gyrate about.

[Lyth]

Role actions aside, it seems strange that MCH is lumped in the same category as BRD. I understand that MCH was initially implemented as an attempted BRD substitute historically, and there have been tiers (Midas) in which MCH was used in its place, but it more often seems to be designed to work alongside BRD as a caster substitute. The problem is deeper than winning the war for that vaunted "BRD slot".

It also seems strange that a dedicated "BRD slot" exists in the first place. You have nine dps jobs competing for four dps slots. Your group wants a BRD. Your BRD wants a DRG. Your group also probably wants a NIN, but might settle for a SAM or MNK in a pinch. That leaves about six jobs competing for that last "caster" slot. That in itself takes you from a bit less than 50% representation down to 16%. This is just going to become a bigger problem when you introduce more jobs. You have to closely look at must-pick jobs (WAR/SCH/BRD) and address the factors that cause them to dominate in every expansion.

Another issue is that MCH is a bit of an esoteric job. It's locked behind Ishgard/Heavensward for starters, which means it's probably not overly visible to newer players just starting up (although this hopefully will change for all of the Heavensward jobs with the renovation of Ishgard). RDM and SAM resolved this issue by keeping the Stormblood job trainers in Ul'dah. MCH also suffers from the fact that it doesn't have a very clear identity, which is unfortunate, given the fact that there's probably a lot more Final Fantasy series lore behind Machinist than there is for Bard. Even setting aside the long line of Cids (could Analyse/Libra be implemented as some sort of vulnerability debuff?), you have Edgar's tools as mentioned above (Auto-Crossbow and Bio Blaster please), as well as Mustadio's elemental guns (although abilities like Head Graze do contain the occasional nod to his character). I think in a game which is built off of series nostlagia, it becomes really important to ground job identity in homages to older games when the lore exists to support it.

[Darkpaw]

I think you're missing one key component of why I feel MCH doesn't work. The sole fact is that MCH is a series of competing systems that just don't gel together like they were intended to. Turrets are fire and forget mostly, ammo system is just really there for artificial filler at this point and feels like it lacks real depth, Wildfire is a great concept but horribly flawed in it's execution, and Heat/Overheat was just not thought out nearly enough for it to be engaging. All of these systems are supposed to flow into each other effortlessly and feel like they converge to make the job feel whole, but it does the exact opposite. It feels like very disparate systems that just fight each other relentlessly. It feels like you are playing a slow moving train wreck, and trying to mitigate the fallout of it by making as little collateral damage as possible.

Yes, MCH needs a core identity. Whether that be with alternate gadgets and gizmos, or fully dropping into the whole gunslinger aspect I don't really mind either way. Just pick one and go with it. At the same point in time they need to find one or two systems and make those work symbiotically before layering more systems on top. MCH needs to be a well structured class and right now it just does not feel that way.

Bringing bard down will be difficult but I feel like that may be something that they are looking to address with the tp/mp merge specifically though it's hard to quantify why I feel that way or put it into words. Just a gut feeling. Because you really can't do anything to nerf bard which is the singularly most popular class in the game. So they have to tread lightly with how they decide to equalize bard a bit. Because right now it is just way too good to warrant not taking one.

[Derio]

I see MCH getting a complete overhaul in 5.0, same with DRK, and WHM getting some serious changes as well.

[Caitlyn]

I see MCH getting a complete overhaul in 5.0, same with DRK, and WHM getting some serious changes as well.

Both will be deleted and combined as one job: Gunblader.

[Darkpaw]

So guaranteed buffs for MCH, and at least acknowledgement that there have been calls for certain systems to be revamped within the three jobs getting adjustments in 4.5 but won't happen til 5.0 so.. eh it's something I suppose

[Sylvain]

So guaranteed buffs for MCH, and at least acknowledgement that there have been calls for certain systems to be revamped within the three jobs getting adjustments in 4.5 but won't happen til 5.0 so.. eh it's something I suppose

Not sure what you were expecting ?
A proper and complete rework wouldn't happen before 5.0 and MCH clearly needs more than tweaking a few skill like they did for SMN and WAR

Altough i'm still impressed they've never increased the wildfire duration to 11s. That alone would have solved many issues