Media Tour MCH issues: MCH is now 4 times more punishing

[Aiscence]

As always i'm agreeing with you Lynn. I'm wondering if making HB not have any animation lock wouldn't solve that issue too tho, it would be weird, but allow the weaving more easily

[Arkenne]

Dunno if this will come in handy but, from what I saw in the Media Tour videos from youtubers hands on the job, there are some details about these Weaponskills behaviors.

Drill and Air Anchor may be Weaponskills that don't share theirs recast timers with the other ones, but they are not Empyreal Arrow.
When you use a Weaponskill, Drill and Air Anchor will enter on a 2.5 or so seconds CD. And upon using them all the other Weaponskills will enter in CD for the same 2.5 or so seconds.

They are not intended to be weaved between Heat Blasts. Drill and Air Anchor also cycle when you use Heat Blast.

The only thing that can be weaved inbetween Heat Blasts are abilities.

Gauss Round and Ricochet may be the only ones really forced to be used during the speed phase, but so long they don't overcap there is no need to rush their use either.
As the ShB MCH will technically be a Ranged Fell Cleave spammer with this, you only have to push 1 button till the end of times and maybe other 2 for the sake of not overcaping (maybe more but for other reasons). This should aleviate the skill input queue somewhat to my understanding... will not bet too much on it.

Wildfire at least seems to equal to exclusive Heat Blast spamming.

[Aeliott]

Gauss Round and Ricochet may be the only ones really forced to be used during the speed phase, but so long they don't overcap there is no need to rush their use either.

The thing is each use of Heat Blast reduces 15s cooldown of GR and Ricochet, 6 uses means completely capping on all charges for each. Unless you have them both as close to fully consumed and 30s cooldown left right before you hypercharge you're losing uses...based on the feasible number of HBs you can do I think that they do indeed intend you to weave the 2 between.

Not to mention raid buffs commonly lining up in 60s so that's another potential loss if you don't conform to that spam there. I know that one's less likely to be sympathetic to a more casual perspective but it's still jarring (most buffs wouldn't have similar cooldown multiples if there wasn't some stacking intent anyway). At least other buffs last longer than Trick Attack, how is that over-centralising canker sore still here with all the talk of lessening synergies...only reason Ninjas don't shout as loud as machinists about ping is because they're the gatekeepers. Anyway I digress :P

[Arkenne]

The thing is each use of Heat Blast reduces 15s cooldown of GR and Ricochet, 6 uses means completely capping on all charges for each. Anyway I digress :P

Well, my intent was not to say there wouldn't be any DPS loss or the sort out of the weaving of the GCDs.
But to point out that Drill and Air Anchor were wrongly being added to the formula of weaving in between Heat Blasts.

The lining up of other buffs from other jobs is a tangent for this point and kinda looking at the glass as half empty, so lets not delve that way for now. (Yes I sound like a filthy casual).

To my understanding, Wildfire only stacks from Weaponskills, the only weaponskill that actually matters using in this window is Heat Blast due to its 1.5s GCD, and Heat Blast reduces the cooldown of both Gauss Barrel and Ricochet in 15 seconds.
The idea here would be to be sure that those last 2 don't over cap. To be on the safer side one should burn them to 0 charges before even starting with the Heat Blast spam.

In an ideal world 1 window of Overheat should suffice for up to 6 Heat Blasts (with maybe even a 0.5s margin for error window), plenty enough to fill up both OGCDs charges to max, but that's also 6 opportunities to use one of each per GCD to avoid overcapping. This again, while not having to worry about the proc of a follow up RNG based combo or having a rush to boost Wildfire more since Wildfire, again, no longer cares about OGCDs.

In my opinion, I see more issue in the timing of the Queen summon -> rush into dps and Wildfire start up, as all her attacks but the last are also classified as Weaponskills, and I don't know if they count for Wildfire.

On the TA note tho, Wildfire accumulates 150 potency stacks per weaponskill, this means that it doesn't care about the potency of the weaponskills you used during its countdown, but the amount that falls in. For TA, all that matters is that the explosion of Wildfire happens in its window. For all intentions, you could burn all your Gauss Round and Ricochet charges asap, burn an Hypercharge and Wildfire, and make it so Wildfire's explosion, 2nd stack of Gauss Round and Ricochets and the 2nd Drill all fall of inside a TA window.

[AvenoMatt]

Queen doesn't count toward Wildfire so it is still mostly the same in that it only takes the user into account.

[Sigiria]

The thing is each use of Heat Blast reduces 15s cooldown of GR and Ricochet, 6 uses means completely capping on all charges for each. Unless you have them both as close to fully consumed and 30s cooldown left right before you hypercharge you're losing uses...based on the feasible number of HBs you can do I think that they do indeed intend you to weave the 2 between.

Not to mention raid buffs commonly lining up in 60s so that's another potential loss if you don't conform to that spam there. I know that one's less likely to be sympathetic to a more casual perspective but it's still jarring (most buffs wouldn't have similar cooldown multiples if there wasn't some stacking intent anyway). At least other buffs last longer than Trick Attack, how is that over-centralising canker sore still here with all the talk of lessening synergies...only reason Ninjas don't shout as loud as machinists about ping is because they're the gatekeepers. Anyway I digress :P

The question is, did SE really balance wildfire with 6 heat blast in mind? Since it's 0.5s of wiggle room to shove 6 heat blast in there and that's very short even with a good ping. If you look at this: https://youtu.be/sGQrLAohLZM?t=212
he uses wildfire, hypercharge and start spamming heat blast before he can even use it, and don't weave anything and still only manage to get 5 heat blast.
To me the whole thing make more sense with 5 heat blasts. Because you don't full refresh your charges unless there's already more than 15s off the cooldown and even if there is, since you're not pressured into shoving 6 heat blast you've got time to weave 1 of each oGCD and still get 5 in there.

I'm sure 6 could work with a good enough skill speed and a good ping but would make the whole thing more clunky.

Edit: Also looking at the video again, Mrhappy get 5 heatblast not weaving anything and have time to manually activate the explosion of the wildfire. Which make me think a good thing to do would be Heatblast>heatblast>heatblast>heatblast>heatblast>any other GCD. You wouldn't have to worry about overflowing your charges of oGCD if you used them less than 15s before the heatblast spam and still get the potency of 6 GCD on the wildfire since there seems to be 1 extra second of it when the hypercharge stop.

[Jollyy5]

Bumped, there is no need for Rapid Fire, and a whole lot of people have been complaining about it and wanted change.

Then they go and make it worse, I'm really starting to think they outright ignore western players...

[Realism_Snide]

Never played Machinist, and never theory crafted anything, but I still want to try and give an idea. Everyone says that MCH has gone through so much change that it's practically a new job, so perhaps theory crafting should handle it like its a brand new job that nobody played before? Or theory craft a rotation that is completely different than a SB or HW MCH rotation?

[Kitfox]

After spending more time musing about the rotation the alignment issues of the new rotation have been resolved, we're only worried about how Hypercharge and Heat Blast work anymore. There's another really bad issue associated with locking Heat Blast behind Hypercharge that I completely forgot about when I made the initial post. Currently if you use a heated shot near the end of the Overheat window and you lose the buff during the animation, your heated shot gets cancelled because it's not available without Gauss Barrel or 50+ heat. The same thing will happen with Heat Blast unless it's made available outside of Hypercharge at lower potency like Cooldown is currently. This is actually a major issue considering how tight the new Hypercharge timing is and how big the ramifications of losing that last Heat Blast are.

Here's a compilation of all the possible fixes that we've come up with:
- Make Heat Blast available outside of Hypercharge at lower potency and without cooldown reduction effect.
- Reduce the effect of cooldown reduction to 10s or less (down from 15s).
- Increase the maximum charges of Gauss Round and Ricochet to 4 (up from 3).
- Increase the recast time of Gauss Round and Ricochet to 40s (up from 30s).
- Increase Heat Blast gcd to 2.0s or to an even slower speed (up from 1.5s).
- Increase Hypercharge duration to 9 seconds (up from 8s).

Lost potency should obviously be made up somewhere else. I would recommend adding it to Gauss Round and Ricochet.

[Arkenne]

Its actually 5

Now thats quite the piece of information.
Heat Blast will definitely not go under 1.5s.

So in an Hypercharge window we can't get more than 5 hits in, it would be best practice to have both oGCDs depleted to 0 charges and under 15s before starting the hypercharge and we would have a whole 1.5s worth of error margin for weaving in 1 of each oGCD as giving up in the 6th Heat Blast is already a given in a single unit Hypercharge.

It would be more of an issue on a double Hypercharge.

Would need to see how many Heat Blast actually fit in a 16s window...

Animation auto-cancelling issues and possible solutions.

I suppose this is the same thing that happens with BLM when they try to cast F4 and Enochian falls off before they finish.
The cast will continue but by the end of it it'll be cancelled.

Do you happen to have a video showing this? I would like to see it... I know it sounds like a challenge but I swear Im not >_>;;;

But again, if we were to already give up on a 6th Heat Blast in an 8s Over Heat window, there is still a 1.5s worth of time for oGCDs and by the end of it use a non-hypercharge-dependant skill like Drill.

I would be more curious to see how the spam and oGCD weaving would work on a 16s Over Heat window. Would there be a 1.5s of leeway like there seems to be on the 8s one? Will it be more convenient to have them separated to have a better time spending the oGCDs reloads before using the 2nd Hypercharge? Will it be a better practice to use Wildfire INSIDE a 16s Over Heat window as to have at least 1 or 2 more Heat Blast kick in?


On your suggestions tho:
- Making Heat Blast usable outside Hypercharge: Pretty sure this will confuse more than anything as the skill will kick in, but the 15s reductions and the 1.5s GCD will most likely not (because that would make sense knowing how SE works), and since it would be a DPS loss altogether becasue its weaker and slower, more than animation lock it would pop a whole new world of complaints...
- Reduce the cooldown to 10 seconds: this sounds more viable to me, I would like to have both Gauss Round and Ricochet OR Heat Blast to have a potency increase to math out for it tho.
- Increase the oGCDs charges to 4: I would love this one, but it would just add to the problem being discussed here: no time for oGCDs with 1.5s GCDs. It would make the job a 20% busier even (just off the top of my head). Also both of the involved abilities would need a potency reduction.
- Increase the oGCDs charge time to 40: Contrary to the previous one, the only thing would be that they would need a potency increase instead.
- Increase Heat Blast to 2s: This would make more people happy, pretty sure of it. Tho the adjustments for this would be an increase in potency to both Gauss Barrel, Ricochet AND Wildfire.
- Increase Hypercharge to 9s: I can't agree to this one. As of now with the 8s window making it impossible to hit in a 6th Heat Blast, the time for the Heat Blast is instead an error marging for the sake of weaving in the oGCDs. Having it last 9 seconds will force you to hit a 6th Heat Blast for the sake of making Wildfire stronger and reducing the oGCDs in extra 15s, which will circle us back to the latency issues because it will be impossible for high ping users.


On an out of topic side note: It still baffles me how SE was so adamant about MNK getting a 4th GL stack because "that would be too fast" yet gives away 1.5s GCDs to MCH as it if was confetti...