ShB Machinist personal retrospective after 4 months

[Ryaz]

Its 1200 potency, however it has no ability to crit or direct hit, meaning it will lose out to Sensei just from that, but also bear in mind that Samurai also has a 13% damage up constantly too, so its more than 1100 potency really.

Didn't realize it couldn't crit or dh. They should add that. Especially considering it's no longer based on damage percentage.

[StriderShinryu]

Really didn't play MCH at all before ShB so my perspective is probably a little different than the more experienced MCHers here, but I'll throw in my 2 cents anyway. Not getting into specific numbers or detailed changes since the theorycrafters will run my limited knowledge into the ground instantly.

- Anchor and Drill having the same Potency feels weird. Not that I specifically prefer one to the other but something about it just feels lazy as if they could have just given Drill a second charge or shorter CD or something instead of a new skill that basically does the same thing. I like both skills but think there should be some sort of extra difference between them other than just being two separate buttons, even just slapping a short Slow/Stun onto Anchor or something since it is, you know, an anchor with giant chains.

- Flamethrower is so underwhelming compared to what it could/should be. It really should be a Heat spender and would logically fit the role of AoE Heat Spender much better than Auto Crossbow. Barring that obvious change, maybe make it pay off as something that procs a special effect on targets that have been poisoned by Bio Blaster. If it's functionally not going to be any different then it is now, at least give it a quality specific use.

- Auto Crossbow should be made into a combo skill off of Spread Shot so that AoE is a little more interesting. If Flame is made the AoE Heat Spender then this seems a good use for a decent enough animation if nothing else.

- Queen replacing Turret seems strange. It feels like they should be able to be used at the same time or, if you can't use both at the same time, make it so that you can choose which one to use with each having specific strengths. Maybe Queen is a single target focused summon and the turret works AoE or something. Either way, having the entire battery meter dedicated to this feels like a waste as it is.

- Skill spam during Overheat should be more interesting. I don't really enjoy this with any class but it's even more noticeable on MCH because it's such a big part of the class. I'm not sure what the answer is because I do like the concept as it applies to MCH but it just feels too limited right now (and that's not even getting into latency issues).

Overall, I like the concept of MCH quite a bit and do find it mostly fun to play but it just feels sort of half baked in it's current form. I don't know if it needs a full rework but it does need some help to really make it feel fully considered and fleshed out.

[Ayanumi]

Side topic since this isnt really regarding the jobs balance or gameplay but its something I want to bring up anyways:

A really big gripe for me about this job now is that thematically almost none of it makes sense.

Heated shots
Why does the 1-2-3 combo upgrade into heated varients of that shot, but they have no further interaction with heat than the original 1-2-3 combo does, it generates the same amount of heat and it isnt unlocked by being above 50 heat like the old combo was. So why are they still called heated varients? Literally unrelated...

Auto Crossbow
StriderShinryu mentioned before that flamethrower would make more sense as the AOE heat move, and its true, what in the name of yoshi.p does the auto crossbow have to do with heat? Heatblast makes sense partially because you are literally venting the built up heat of the gun out in a focused direction towards the target, but the auto crossbow is just a part of your multi-tool. I dont see why hypercharging would unlock the auto crossbow tool at all thematically.

Barrel Stabalizer
Even in SB this didnt really make sense, because you were adding heat to your gun by stabalizing it? But at least back in SB it brought you back into the heated GCD range so it was passable, but now heat isnt detrimental and it doesnt effect any of your other GCDs so how is your guns barrel being stabalized by you adding more heat to it? (btw did I mention that the animation for BS has literally nothing visually that would indicate it adds heat to the gun, it looks more like target analysis or something like that)

Heatblast
Thematically, why does this effect gaussround and ricochet at all? Sure we are venting built up heat from the gun but how does that relate to gauss round and ricochet?

Battery gauge
Queen spends battery but using drill, airanchor, autocrossbow and bioblaster which are clearly gadgets dont consume battery? but cleanshot and airanchor generate battery? whats the logic behind this?

Small things in the context of the jobs issues but compared to previous expansions so little of this job actually makes sense.
Just an opinion.

Maybe if we ever get more job quests they will explain some of this?

[ReiMakoto]

Heated shots
Why does the 1-2-3 combo upgrade into heated varients of that shot, but they have no further interaction with heat than the original 1-2-3 combo does, it generates the same amount of heat and it isnt unlocked by being above 50 heat like the old combo was. So why are they still called heated varients? Literally unrelated...

The heated shots are honestly my biggest gripe too, and they dont seem to mesh well with the new kit. The new moves are lugging around big heavy multitool, yet your basic attacks are flipping round like an acrobat. At this point I almost want mch reworked to always use the multitool and not the gun, the gun seems almost pointless at this point.

[MerlinCross]

The heated shots are honestly my biggest gripe too, and they dont seem to mesh well with the new kit. The new moves are lugging around big heavy multitool, yet your basic attacks are flipping round like an acrobat. At this point I almost want mch reworked to always use the multitool and not the gun, the gun seems almost pointless at this point.

Given the fact they removed all the Bullets from the Job, personally I say remake Machinist to use the new multitool as your actual weapon, split off all the gun stuff off to another class called Gunslinger.

I mean Edgar didn't use a gun and I don't recall Basch using techy stuff.

[Cetek14]

Gun is part of the lore. In game lore it's basically gunner, but it's called Machinist, so people demand some machines in gameplay.
It's really problematic case, but i would say Machinist has very bad design since 4.0 (well, 3.0 wasn't great either, but it was definitely closer to perfection than now), and 5.0 wasn't great improvement. It feels very cheap, especially because of multitool appearing out of nowhere.
It really needs an actual rework from scratch, i wouldn't call 5.0 a rework.

[Ayanumi]

Gun is part of the lore. In game lore it's basically gunner, but it's called Machinist, so people demand some machines in gameplay.
It's really problematic case, but i would say Machinist has very bad design since 4.0 (well, 3.0 wasn't great either, but it was definitely closer to perfection than now), and 5.0 wasn't great improvement. It feels very cheap, especially because of multitool appearing out of nowhere.
It really needs an actual rework from scratch, i wouldn't call 5.0 a rework.

I could agree with this, personally I thought SB MCH was only like 3 QoL changes away from being its ideal iteration (rework on flamethrower, overheat+lockout and charges added to GR) but oh well, if they want to make the job work again it really feels like it needs a redesign from the ground up. DNC came out the expac and plays very intuitively in my opinion with its flourish and proc system, saber dance is a well designed move too as it gives you a GCD worth of skipping you can do to avoid overridding procs going into flourish or standardstep (although I think the current way of generating esprit is way too RNG and unreliable). Not to mention to fact that 5.0 MCH has like the lowest amount of skills out of any job in the game currently? Overall feels like they have a really strong base with DNC to build upon but MCH just feels like its going to get reworked again in 6.0 because its core rotation and job gauge just dont feel like they really interact with each other in any meaningful way.

Tried playing MCH again over the past few days to see if I could vibe with it and was able to get solid purples although sadly orange was just out of reach, but the heat gauge just being something you use so freely feels very strange almost like theres no point to when I use it other than because its a DPS gain and queen feels incredibly clunky for what is essentially a over glamified DoT.

[Brinn]

Agree with everything. I really tried to like the rework because mch was one of my favorites to play in SB. It really feels like they designed the animations for the reveal video before designing how it would actually play.

[InfiniDragon]

I'm one of the people that vastly preferred the StB MCH, so I would be glad to see it back, but I know that's a pipe dream since by and large no one played that one, whereas ShB MCH is better received despite as you said, having the same problems but worse.

I also agree Flamethrower in its current incarnation feels more jank than the old one, like a remnant of the old MCH that didn't need to remain.

[MerlinCross]

Gun is part of the lore. In game lore it's basically gunner, but it's called Machinist, so people demand some machines in gameplay.
It's really problematic case, but i would say Machinist has very bad design since 4.0 (well, 3.0 wasn't great either, but it was definitely closer to perfection than now), and 5.0 wasn't great improvement. It feels very cheap, especially because of multitool appearing out of nowhere.
It really needs an actual rework from scratch, i wouldn't call 5.0 a rework.

Honestly it feels like them writing themselves into a corner and frantically trying to fix it. Then again that’s how Job seems to be in general, putting themselves into a corner and then fighting to get out/fix it.

Wake me when fusilier is added.