Machinist Needs Mobility and DPS Mitigation/Helaing Option

[HyoMinPark]

Sure get rid of the mobility tax, just throw in strict tight rotations, positionals, and perhaps a couple cast times.

No need. Mobility tax is only necessary if fights actually make use of ranged mobility. But a lot of fights do not make use of this. E8S would have been a good fight to give ranged an advantage with their mobility by allowing them to bait Light Rampant tethers onto them by positioning themselves appropriately. But it did not.

They shouldn’t be doing as much damage as a melee DPS. But they are currently unfairly taxed.

Damage output has never relied on rotational complexity. However, if you paid attention to some of the arguments from BRD mains, they have been lamenting the loss of their rotational complexity going from Stormblood to Shadowbringers.

Positionals are becoming more and more irrelevant with the additions of bosses that have a solid target ring and True North charges; in addition to the developers “lessening” penalties for missed positionals. They aren’t entirely irrelevant yet, but they’re getting there.

[CKNovel]

No need. Mobility tax is only necessary if fights actually make use of ranged mobility. But a lot of fights do not make use of this. E8S would have been a good fight to give ranged an advantage with their mobility by allowing them to bait Light Rampant tethers onto them by positioning themselves appropriately. But it did not.

They shouldn’t be doing as much damage as a melee DPS. But they are currently unfairly taxed.

Yes and no, I agree that Mobility tax would've been justified in more mobile content, but even in E8S, melee were at disavantage but it was the caster that could benefit the most. Which completely went against mobility tax logic, RDM was stronger than most melees in E8S.
In a previous interview, Yoshi-P mentioned that Melee gameplay would've been simplified with mechanics, that "ranged won't always have the upper hand".

There wasn't a lot of baitable mechanics during this expansion and most of the time, if ranged had to do a specific mechanic in a certain way that only ranged can do while DPSing, it would benefit the melee, not the ranged. In the end it benefits the party but the result remains a illogical for the player.

[KDSilver]

Imagine asking for mobility for one of the most mobile job in the game.

[Colt47]

Machinist isn't perfect, but I like it a lot more than the other ranged DPS.

[Colt47]

With Machinist, the real culprit of complaints is due to the instant cast CDs and feeling as if when you miss it, you lose out on damage. The truth is that is absolutely correct, but there is something to say about perfection in how it is unachievable. It is physically impossible for a human to hit every single cooldown on the mark for a period of 15+ minutes on a machinist. Maybe if someone is really, really well practiced they can do it most of the time, but even the best player is going to slip on this job because the timings on the entire rotation are extremely tight. Drill is a 20 second cooldown and reassemble is a 55 second cooldown. Hypothetically, you can get two or three drills per reassemble, and ideally you want reassemble to be triggered as part of a drill. However, while you are doing this you are juggling hypercharge, air anchor, and wildfire, as well as barrel stabilizer. On top of which, you are also keeping up a three shot combo that you absolutely want to hit for the energy towards your robot gun buddy companion.

And then there is Flamethrower... someday I'll understand why it exists, but it seems like the spread shot + bioblaster with ricochette shot is what someone should use and not flamethrower. But anyway, it's basically impossible to be perfect on it, so it feels naturally messy to someone who wants perfection. That's why you see people pining for heavensward machinist and bard sometimes: The casts make it so you have time to think about what you do next, but that isn't the nature of what ranged DPS is about. Ranged DPS is about creating order from a chaos of instant cast GCD and OGCDs, and accepting that perfection will forever lay beyond ones capabilities.

I do think there are jobs that need legit improvements for quality of life, such as black mage having to keep doing a skill between pulls to prevent losing the stacks they have of whatever element. That isn't challenging, it's a useless choir that adds nothing to the job. And there are other jobs like the Archanist (yes, I don't care what they call it, be it summoner / scholar, you are an archanist with two specs), that naturally are a mess because they were not designed around the type of game system they have now. Archanist is literally this games first blue mage, and haunts the entire dev team to this day.

[CKNovel]

With Machinist, the real culprit of complaints is due to the instant cast CDs and feeling as if when you miss it, you lose out on damage. The truth is that is absolutely correct, but there is something to say about perfection in how it is unachievable. It is physically impossible for a human to hit every single cooldown on the mark for a period of 15+ minutes on a machinist. Maybe if someone is really, really well practiced they can do it most of the time, but even the best player is going to slip on this job because the timings on the entire rotation are extremely tight. Drill is a 20 second cooldown and reassemble is a 55 second cooldown. Hypothetically, you can get two or three drills per reassemble, and ideally you want reassemble to be triggered as part of a drill. However, while you are doing this you are juggling hypercharge, air anchor, and wildfire, as well as barrel stabilizer. On top of which, you are also keeping up a three shot combo that you absolutely want to hit for the energy towards your robot gun buddy companion.

This is appliable to any jobs, not just MCH.
And yes, it's possible to hit every cooldown on the mark. Speedkill parties easily does that, it's the minimum for them.

[Mikey_R]

The casts make it so you have time to think about what you do next....

For machinist at least, there is no RNG in their rotation, you can plan what you are going to do several GCDs in advance, so nothing should come as a shock to you. You should know Drill is coming off cooldown in 2 GCDs, Air Anchor? only just used to, don't need to check for a while, etc. Having a cast time really doesn't help with that planning as you have already planned for that cast time in advance.

For Bard and Dancer, while they do have RNG elements in their rotations, there is also some order as well. For Bards, how long left on the songs and DoTs? When is Empyreal Arrow coming off cooldown etc. Dancer still has a basic 1-2 combo with RNG combos off of them, your steps are still on a timer etc. Both of these jobs, you can plan ahead of time for certain things still, however, adding in a cast time won't suddenly make it easier. Take Bard, you lose out on a weave window if you have a short cast or 2 weave windows if it is a longer cast (longer being 2.5+ seconds). This is just time taken away from getting your blood letter procs or Pitch Perfect procs out to reset them so none go to waste.

The takeaway from this is, forward planning will help you to play your job and reduce the need to 'delay' anything just so you can get your head straight.

[Jirah]

5.0 mains never have good suggestions its always we want to be over powered or we want to be like dancer but also over powered. But let me nitpick each of these erroneous suggestions

Mobility
Are you serious? DNC needs its mobility for its flourishes as some of them are aoe and you need to be close to the enemy, aswell as curing waltz. BRD needs to be close enough to its allies to buff them with songs or Minne and have the busiest rotation of the 3 and needs a esc button for stacks and aoes. MCH has like 5 skills in its kit and no actual concerns what so ever to really ask for more mobility options you can basically do its whole 1-2-3 plus drill blind.

Support
Palaside and Dismantle were harmless and I dont see why they shouldnt get it but thats it. We dont need to muddy the ranged to be too similar

DPS/Mitigation
MCH isnt a healer lets leave that to the actual healers unless FF14 starts focusing on single solo instances. Asking MCH to be as destructive as BLM is ludicrous! Absolutely ludicrous! MCH is the easiest job in the game with the fewest skills in the game and the least punishing job in the game. It wouldnt make sense to also make it the most powerful job in the game with infinite mobility, no cast bars, no positional, and no support or dots. The game doesnt need a "easy mode" job when the whole game has been altered to be as is

[Marxam]

All the jobs are mobile in 5.0, some are better than others but even the BLM (considered the "turret-stationary" DPS) has good mobility with a proper rotation, triplecasts, xenoglossy and procs. Makes me wonder if they actually kept the idea of Gauss Barrel in HW but fixed everything about it. Personally I would like to see MCH with stance buffs. Like a buff that puts your character prone and changes the gun to a sniper and increases Critical hit rate while prone. They could also experiment with the idea of "sweet spots" to increase/decrease potency based on distance from enemy. Either way, the mass homogenization of job roles has ruined and risk/reward and every job is mobile and has tools to support themselves.

[Aiscence]

DPS/Mitigation
MCH isnt a healer lets leave that to the actual healers unless FF14 starts focusing on single solo instances. Asking MCH to be as destructive as BLM is ludicrous! Absolutely ludicrous! MCH is the easiest job in the game with the fewest skills in the game and the least punishing job in the game. It wouldnt make sense to also make it the most powerful job in the game with infinite mobility, no cast bars, no positional, and no support or dots. The game doesnt need a "easy mode" job when the whole game has been altered to be as is

I'll be honest but what is mch supposed to do then? I'm not asking for BLM lvl of damage but... not being the bottom tier of dmg? We have nothing going for us outside of tactician that is 120 sec, vs 90 sec for an addle. We were asking the same during SB and still got nothing. On top of that, people dont complain when warriors are top dps while having the simplest rotation, same for whm when they were the highest dps, they just ask for the other jobs to be put at the same lvl, that's what we ask.

Most high level machinist player stoppped playing it because of how casual it became, but even more, we aren't doing damage. if you have a melee, a ranged and a caster already in your party, ranged will never be your priority for the filling, you can take any other job, even a melee and cuck him to do a ranged mechanic and they will have a higher dps. Especially that jobs like smn or blm now have enough mobility to do whatever you need without much work.

Been years since people say that mobility isn't an excuse and simplicity shouldn't either, looking at others jobs.