ShB Machinist personal retrospective after 4 months

[InfiniDragon]

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.

Gun Machinist comes from Mustadio in Final Fantasy Tactics, that is what original MCH was based on. Prompto also uses tool + gun as MCH.

They since mixed it with Edgar's toolset but they won't get rid of the Mustadio influence, Yoshida loves Matsuno and the Ivalician lore.

[Kaiserdrache]

In one thing the rework of MSC was bad - by removing all the gun gameplay around the bullets. I hope that Bullets return later in an overworked betterr way and that it got removed only, so that with the shadowbringer's iteration of MSC they could completely focus themself first to get the machine tool skills n mechanics right, to feel good n work smootly - what they do, except the silly fact that they removed too many skills and made queen replace the turrets whats absolute nonsense and makes MSC look like stupid kids that throw away everything and forget about it that it existed the very moment they get in thei opinion a more shiny n' prettier looking new toy that is more powerful than the previous one... as if turrets n' mechs don't can work together and well... harmonize in their gameplay, no just remove for removing's sake >_<

I hope we see somewhen a MSC iteration that makes also full usage of it's whole potential that this job has to make alot of fun and not just 50% of it, because of some devs being outright unclear about which kind of identity the MSC job is.
Yes, before of the redesign MSC felt much more like a Gunslinger with just a few helpful turret tool and had no machines at all, their only extra weapon was the flamethrower, which felt in the past as like now in the present way too weak, underwelming to syy is even an understatement, so weak is it, that waiting its 10 is as waste of time and pure dps loss, cause in these 10s do you deal with the 3 hellshot rotation alot more damage, especially if you deal with them also direct critical hits, what flamethrower can't do.

At that form MSC felt like 90% Gunslinger and 10% Machinist. Then came the remake and now it feels more like 30% Gunslinger and 70% Machinist. I do hope, that SE changes this scaling by the end of the job progression and job balancing laterr closer to a 50/50 sition, where both sides are equally represented and powerful parts of the MSC job, so that neither gun gameplay, not maschine tool gameplayx gives players later the feeling, that one side is more important and useful, over the other. Both sides do belong equally to the MSC job and for my personal taste has SE tried with the remake too much to transform basically the Mustadio/Ivalice Gunslinger MSC into a FF15 Prompto Clone MSC, and it is quite obvious that they did, if you just look at the machine tool skills that we got with Bio Blaster, Air Anchor and Drill Cannon/Arbalest, all stuff Prompto had in FF15 as well too kinda.

[MyakotApelsia]

Flamethrower is purely aoe move, like bioblaster. What is the reason you would ever use it in single target? Oh, you want it to give heat? You know that one of the reasons mch was so hated in sb aside from wildfire is because flamethrower was just channel ability used just for heat?
Bring back normal 1-2-3 combo that would become heated at 50+ heat? Oh, remember how fun it was in stormblood, when you dropped after burst phase to 0 heat and had to sit around doing weak shots for 10 seconds?
Latency existed before as well, but before even i with my ping couldnt fit everything in my wildfire, while now i can use it at top damage reliantly. Oh, burst phase with putting all your gcds and ogcds in 10 second 25% dmg up window was completely ping friendly and not clunky at all, which made the job most popular job in the game.
I suppose devs should bring back sb iteration and make mch the clunkiest, unforgiving and the least played job again. Cuz thats what was fun about it, right?

[MerlinCross]

Gun Machinist comes from Mustadio in Final Fantasy Tactics, that is what original MCH was based on. Prompto also uses tool + gun as MCH.

They since mixed it with Edgar's toolset but they won't get rid of the Mustadio influence, Yoshida loves Matsuno and the Ivalician lore.

Not saying get rid of it, just move it to a different job. OG might have been based on Mustadio and Guns but now it's Edgar through and through. Split the job to have Edgar Job and Mustadio Job.

Also if that's the reason we still have the Grazes is due to his love of Mustadio, Yoshi needs a talking too.

[Kaiserdrache]

For that to work I think they would have to give the spllited job an own weapon and to make it more interesting imo a different role too, like this

Gunslinger = DPS + Guns with Bullets Mechanic
Machinist = Tank + Maces/Wrenches with Turrets, Mechs, Drones ect.

Problem is, Gunslinger with that alone would probably feel by now with this only like a stronger ranged version of Gunbreaker, so I prefer just staying with Machinist and reworking it over time just to a better 50/50 relation, while giving them their Bullets back and removing therefore the charges on Ricochet/Gauss, because with the charges these skills already feel like the Bullet Mechanic in principle with an integrated Reload Mechanism by having certain ways restore the charges like using Heatblasts.

Gunbreaker is personally also a Job that I would have never wanted, this silly job exists only out of FF8 Fanservice, because people screamed for gunblades due to that dumb Gaius using one in ARR. I doubt it, that this class would even exist now, if Gaius would have been designed with something else, like a Katana or Dual Swords and we would probably have gotten with Shadowbringers then a different REAL classic job, like the Chronomancer aka Time Mage eventually as first magical tank job that is full of crowd control and reverting things that happened or preventing things, before they can happen kind of as a Tank/Healer Hybrid, instead of getting just another Tank/DPS hybrid that we already have with Warriors >_>

[Jandor]

I'd get rid of heat, have the battery be the default. You build it up and then cash it in for either special ammo or fancy robots.

Never been a huge fan of heat.

That said, I don't mind current MCH. I'd like to see some changes to the basic formula, but wouldn't be devastated if it didn't get them.

[InfiniDragon]

Not saying get rid of it, just move it to a different job. OG might have been based on Mustadio and Guns but now it's Edgar through and through. Split the job to have Edgar Job and Mustadio Job.

Also if that's the reason we still have the Grazes is due to his love of Mustadio, Yoshi needs a talking too.

Considering he even made him a boss in the game, that's entirely possible haha.

[Ayanumi]

Flamethrower is purely aoe move, like bioblaster. What is the reason you would ever use it in single target? Oh, you want it to give heat? You know that one of the reasons mch was so hated in sb aside from wildfire is because flamethrower was just channel ability used just for heat?
Bring back normal 1-2-3 combo that would become heated at 50+ heat? Oh, remember how fun it was in stormblood, when you dropped after burst phase to 0 heat and had to sit around doing weak shots for 10 seconds?
Latency existed before as well, but before even i with my ping couldnt fit everything in my wildfire, while now i can use it at top damage reliantly. Oh, burst phase with putting all your gcds and ogcds in 10 second 25% dmg up window was completely ping friendly and not clunky at all, which made the job most popular job in the game.
I suppose devs should bring back sb iteration and make mch the clunkiest, unforgiving and the least played job again. Cuz thats what was fun about it, right?

Noones trying to say that the SB iteration didnt need changes, try not to get too worked up about it, the 1-2-3 combo being perma-heated is fine and its fine that theres no RNG. But lets not pretend that the issues MCH had couldnt have easily been fixed by:
1. making Flamethrower immedietly overheat you instead of requiring heat ticks, and have the cooldown period just return you to whatever heat you had at the time of pressing flamethrower. Now you have overheat thats less clunky and a cooldown period that isnt punishing, doesnt require you the reequip gauss barrel and wouldnt be the only function barrel stabalizer could serve.
2. the change to wildfire is good, and people had been asking for it the entire SB expac. It was nice that they listened to the feedback but not so nice that they totally changed the job to be unrecognizable in rotation and gameplay to what it had been before.
3. the only thing that made old MCH unforgivable was the having to use everything on CD, a issue that becomes non-existent with the addition of the charge system to shadowbringers, if you had given old MCH charges of 2 on gaussround and ammo then it would have immedietly been more forgiving.

[MyakotApelsia]

1) Flamethrower instantly overheating you on one hand would make job more fluid. However, if flamethrower was not a dot ability (like pvp version), it would still be channel and would still be clunky and awkward to use. Altho even as dot ogcd it would still be awkward, since at the start of overheat you would need to use gcd instantly and then apply wildfire. With channel ability you could interrupt it with ogcd as soon as overheat started, preventing you from losing delicious damage up; on ogcd it would delay your gcd, which would only be fixable by increasing wildfire duration by 1-2 seconds (which people begged for during several patches, with sqex saying "lol no wait for 5.0"
Cooldown time returning you to whatever heat you had (and i suppose you meant it returning you to everywhere between 0 and 95 instead of just 50) would kinda make job smoother as well, however, overheating at 50+ would keep your heated level up all times, making everything before 50 heat (and normal shots) completely useless. And barrel stabilizer, with its only function to just return you to 50 heat after cooldown, would turn useless as well aside from using it at start of the fight to get to 50 heat instantly and then overheat. You could make it serve another function, but the job was loaded enough to add anything else to it.

2) To be honest, its a change that had to happen if job mechanics of 4.x were to be fixed. Did bullets bring much to the gameplay? Well quick reload maybe, but reload, as far as i remember playing it, always had strict usage. Remove that, do we need proc based combo anymore? Since wildfire is not glorified 25% damage buff anymore, but 200 potency buff to gcds, your best bet would be to just fit as much gcds as possible, right? Rapid shot is not that reliable thanks to it being only 3 gcds and you having to fit everything else in one wildfire. Making it 5gcds like current heat wave would just make matters worse since people would find it hard to press more than 3 buttons one after another. Heat waves being too latency dependant? Maybe, but waste all your gr and ricochets and then you would have to, at most, weave only 1 ogcd into heatwave, making it just matters of spamming one button over and over. Ofcourse, one way to fix it would make wildfire last longer and then remove rapid shot (or keep it), it wouldnt become much better than what we had right now
Hot shot was a useless buff mostly, because it didnt bring anything to the table aside from 30 seconds of damage buff. It didnt have its own damage. Why keep it as damage up if you can just make it deal lots of damage?
People asked for complete rework, people got it.

3) So you are saying that having to overheat before every wildfire (every 60 seconds) with flamethrower, and then in 10 seconds of overheat place wildfire, do 3 rapid fire gcds, then fit heated clean, slug shots, cooldowns and ogcds (including turret overload and reassemble) was more forgiving than having to use gcds on cooldown? Well maybe, but i would rather take doing ogcds on cd rather than losing my damage just because i couldnt fit last gcd in my wildfire.
That isnt to say that if you kept old wildfire with charges to gauss round and ricochet, it would be even worse.
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All that doesnt mean that i hate sb mch. I enjoyed it, but it doesnt mean that job wasnt just busted completely at that point

[Ayanumi]

1. Simple fix that people had already been asking for, just make it work like acceleration or rapidfire used to. "Flamethrower instantly overheats you, the effects of which end upon using x GCDs" naturally this buff would still need a time restriction on it, but much like new acceleration you can give it an insanely long buff time if you wish and it doesnt matter because at the end of the day you can only use it for 5 skills. The benefit of having overheat stay in the job had they not reworked it was mostly due to its interaction with cooldown (being that you could use cooldown as many times as necessary in overheat windows and it would maintain its higher potency). Cooldown time returning you to whatever your heat was before overheating I suppose would only function well if the heat gauge was changed to just be fuel for using a buffed cooldown (would need higher potency) instead of it being a gauge that unlocked your access to the improved 1-2-3. Sorry I should have specified that I agreed with them making the heated 1-2-3 permanent and instead having heat being used only for cooldown, much like esprit is. (or some other skills they could had added instead of it just being purely used for hypercharge+heatblast spam)

2. I agree, I dont think the RNG combo was necessary to have at all, esspecially since apparently it made the skill floor too high for whatever reason. Honestly the 1.5s recast is going to be a problem in the job for as long as it exists unless they prevent you weaving during its windows. Regarding your chime in, who actually asked for the complete rework? Thats a very throw away claim but I havent really seen anything to suggest that considering SE arent exactly the most transparent on WHY they do anything, or what they base their decisions on.

3. I'm not saying that it was more or less forgiving that new MCH, new MCH is an incredibly simple job that has barely any complexity or optimization to it at all outside of queen usage. I cant even compare them sorry. (by the way the last GCD in your wildfire was actually incredibly hard to miss unless you were trying to do the low ping rotation on high ping, at most the only thing you should have been missing was 1 overheated GCD right?)

I dont have anything against the people who like new MCH, and I agree that SB MCH had a lot of issues that needed to be looked at but its a shame they didnt even bother to try and make the QoL changes, almost all of SB people were giving feedback and suggestions to SE on stuff they could do on the job but the only response they ever got was an apology during a live letter from yoshi.p followed by the job being totally reworked with the people who didnt even play old MCH in mind. Almost non of the original kit the job launched with in HW has survived long enough to see ShB, now its just an extremely empty hotbar and equally empty feeling job. But thats just my opinion obviously.