Man & Machine: a MCH Thread

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

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I will look for the apology, I believe it was during one of the fanfests before ShB in 2018-2019 in a panel/Q&A, but old archives aren't all that easy to find and they tend to be very long, but I will try comb through old footage if I can find it.

The 1-2 complaint was directed at Bard, not Dancer, perhaps I should have clarified, one of the key points of your argument is that 1-2-3-1-2-3 with breaks for Drill Air Anchor is boring, yet bard will mostly be doing 1-1-2-1-2-1-1-1-2 with breaks for Apex Arrow and Iron Jaws, MCH will be using Gauss/Richochet which are both on 3 charges each, BRD will be using Emphreal, Pitch Perfects and Blood Letters, the difference being resets for MCH happen in its Hypercharge and use its resets very quickly, for BRD, they happen over time, different flow, but for the most part, deliver a similar experience, I will definitely agree that Bard has a more interactive kit with lots of abilities that work off each other, I enjoy playing it for that reason, but Bard hasn't had a major rework this expansion, it mostly had things added and slightly tweaked, so they had a more concrete vision they could deliver, they likely had trouble with MCH because they had to rework it from SB MCH, which restricted them on what they could rework overall if they had to keep in old skills like Flamethrower, hence the lack of interaction. My point wasn't to say Bard or Dancer are bad, I enjoy them just as much as MCH and hold them mostly to the same standard.
Also your point about "its a dps loss to Overdrive too early unless its a phase change or the boss is dying" is literally my point, you can summon it early to push a phase, summon it to take advantage of raid buffs and if the boss is gonna jump/die, you can force it to use its finisher faster, this is what I mean by interactivity.
As for Heat Blast, the thing is, outside of Hypercharge, it effectively has little use, its the same potency as Split Shot, but Heat Blast has a lower recast timer and resets GCDs, not to mention Hypercharge itself adds 20 potency so you are firing off for higher damage at an increased speed, the same applies for Auto Crossbow, you are firing it much faster, I agree you could probably bump up Heat Blast/Auto numbers a bit to make them stand out a little more, but otherwise it makes perfect sense.

Popularity doesn't mean its good, true, yet don't you think its popular for a reason? If we are talking strictly dps, all the ranged are on the lower end of the spectrum and MCH doesn't even have party buffs to set it apart, yet its still played much more than before, saying its played just for its dps is nonsense, people clearly enjoy playing it, for all its problems, there are a lot of people who are happy with MCH as it is now, people wouldn't be happy with it if it was all the things you say it is.

I only bring in BRD/DNC because you have, basically saying Dancer is less mindless and comparing MCH unfavorably to Bard in your OP, so should I just ignore portions of your points? Also we have already talked about Wildfire in this thread and page already, practically everyone agrees they should do something with it, what's your point here?
"this small debate proved to be underwhelming" yeah, tell me about it, well I've said my piece and argued my points, with the key takeaway being that I greatly disagree with your views on ShB MCH, aside from the points we have already gone over (AoE, Flamethrower, Wildfire, Latency) and am unconvinced that it is even half as bad as you say it is, or that its design is vastly inferior to other jobs.

They already fixed 4.0 MCH, the result is ShB MCH, if they started from the ground up or perhaps used HW MCH as its base, it might have been better, the point is, MCH's right now now is the result of salvaging SB MCH into a more playable state, it worked, I'm not sure what you mean about 5.0 not being intuitive and I've already said this isn't the best incarnation of MCH, for me, its very cleanly HW > ShB > SB.

[reivaxe]

I only bring in BRD/DNC because you have, basically saying Dancer is less mindless and comparing MCH unfavorably to Bard in your OP, so should I just ignore portions of your points?

As someone who has all 3 ranged maxed ...

I have to say, current Mch is the most braindead job in the game.

I use to think Dnc was the braindead easiest until played more DPS jobs and I noticed that not everyone plays like me. I'm a recovering clicker who mained tanks until this expac, I'm use to just looking at my hotbar for most of the fight. Dnc's RNG actually requires you pay attention to different procs, it's got a lite "rotation" based around RNG, much of what you do is priority based decision making in nature. Brd also requires you pay attention to DoTs and RNG procs and buff timers so that you can snap shot dots for more DPS.

I think the divide here is thinking that pressing a 1-2-3 over and over inherently requires more thought than actually engaging in a RNG system that demands a certain amount of your attention.

I didn't play any other version of Mch but as it is, at lvl 80 it requires the least amount of thought of any DPS imo based on what the job ask of the player. No Procs to think about, full freedom of movement, no dots or self/ party buffs to think about ontop of a rigid rotation.

It's cool if people enjoy it though, I'd never say people shouldn't like XYZ job. But personally I feel Dnc is in a GREAT spot design wise/ Brd isn't the best but not a hard thing to fix/ Mch needs more things to do and think about ... and less reliance on spamy BS as a cover up for it's design shortcomings.