My Eulogy for Machinist

[Aiscence]

MCH in its current state is neither broken nor unplayable. Its simplyfied, yes. But it still got its flow and far away from being overly punishing.

Remember, when EVERYTHING was punishing you when playing MCH in HW or SB? Even your burst punished you with low dps afterwards.

If Yoshi-P would come to me and ask me to fix or change MCH, I wouldnt have any ideas. The only two things I can think of is to add a AoE combo (instead of having that stupid flamethrower and spreadshot) and a unique utility to it.

That's the problem, you can't really change anything in the current build as... if you do you'll break it, they never thought about the "after". And that's for every job, they just added "finishers" because that's the only thing they can "more or less" safely add. Add more long gcd? that will create weird windows to hypercharge. add more battery? that will create more than 100 battery a minute, which will make weird buff alignment. There's a lot of fun thing you could do, that could work or not, I aint a theorycrafter. People really wanted to enter the queen, have a dot interaction between Bio and FT, make queen interact with Wildfire. Wildfire could even become an Eunochian like spell: Wildfire is on the boss for x seconds, heatblast add x seconds to it everytime it's used. Everytime the boss is damaged by you or your turret it does x potency damage to the boss.

My biggest problem is not having easy jobs in the game, there must be easy ones and hard ones in every roles, my problem is when a role only have jobs with no single drop of complexity, and that's where phys ranged is right now. They are even making dancer easier by removing the need of using their 2 melee skills ?? I wouldnt complain as much if machinist was just the only ranged being easy, like rdm is for the casters, but when they all are, it's a problem. People that likes phys ranged do it because they probably dont like to cast 90% of the time (which is why HW mch was way more loved than the brd one), wants to have extra responsibilities by baiting stuff (LOL at the actual state of that) or whatever other preferences they dont find elsewhere.

Also, SB mch was really not a hard job. 40 seconds of 1-2-3, 10 seconds where you did 1-2-1-hotshot before putting back your barrel, thus you just had to know how to use your procs during the last 10 seconds + learn the timing of flamethrower. Biggest problem was the ping dependency, but ... not like we gave solutions for that for years.

[CKNovel]

That's the problem, you can't really change anything in the current build as... if you do you'll break it, they never thought about the "after".

Add more long gcd? that will create weird windows to hypercharge. add more battery? that will create more than 100 battery a minute, which will make weird buff alignment. There's a lot of fun thing you could do, that could work or not, I aint a theorycrafter. People really wanted to enter the queen, have a dot interaction between Bio and FT, make queen interact with Wildfire.

That's actually the opposite. They met a deadend in SB so they reworked the job in ShB.
SB MCH was rigid and about to throw everything in Wildfire but is now extremely flexible. By adding new heat spender, you would have less Hypercharge phase that can then gives space for extra cooldowns.
There's always the 1 2 3 filler phase that can be... Filled.

Reworking Wildfire was needed for this exact same reason, because it already desynch Barrel Stabilizer at the 2 minutes mark.

Battery, with Buzzsaw disks generating 20, is now completely off.
At the moment you build 90 battery before the 1 minute mark. Now you will build 110 at the minimum. Depending on the cooldown you'll get 130 or 150.

Also, making the Queen interact with Wildfire would be annoying, you gotta times the Queen and Wildfire. Sounds annoying as hell.
Enter the Queen and going full Samus/Megaman mode like Reaper fuses with the Avatar? Why not.
Bio blaster and FT interaction? Damn I hate that cooldown, wish it was a 10s phase where you actually use a flamethrower.

[Aiscence]

That's actually the opposite. They met a deadend in SB so they reworked the job in ShB.
SB MCH was rigid and about to throw everything in Wildfire but is now extremely flexible. By adding new heat spender, you would have less Hypercharge phase that can then gives space for extra cooldowns.
There's always the 1 2 3 filler phase that can be... Filled.

Reworking Wildfire was needed for this exact same reason, because it already desynch Barrel Stabilizer at the 2 minutes mark.

Battery, with Buzzsaw disks generating 20, is now completely off.
At the moment you build 90 battery before the 1 minute mark. Now you will build 110 at the minimum. Depending on the cooldown you'll get 130 or 150.

Also, making the Queen interact with Wildfire would be annoying, you gotta times the Queen and Wildfire. Sounds annoying as hell.
Enter the Queen and going full Samus/Megaman mode like Reaper fuses with the Avatar? Why not.
Bio blaster and FT interaction? Damn I hate that cooldown, wish it was a 10s phase where you actually use a flamethrower.

I mean, for me the old rotation could be expanded as much as the actual one: not much. The barrel stab desynch is annoying af and yeah, I'd rather heatblast going back to a heat spender than having to spam that in hypercharge. The buzzsaw will probably be a drill + rea combo, as there was exactly 20 seconds between those 2, but who knows.

And even if annoying, I'd rather get back some things to manage and trying to time my turret for wildfire (it's in the buffs anyway) than have it just be fire and forget.

In the same LL he deliberately stated they won't ever return to 3.x job design, as much as some people want it, and that instead they'll built upon 5.x design and its ease of access.

People need to start accepting that, and no amount of crying about that on the forums will change that.

And yeah we don't want to go back to HW, we just want things to evolve in a way where the game is not only "you only have one button to press most of the time and the only thing we add are finishers because we can't do much more". I don't care about having tons of dots that does nothing, cleric stance, bowmage without anything like mch's procs, but some jobs are getting more and more complex, with more stuff every expansion (hai BLM) while ... here we are with 24 seconds of heatblast per minute and a turret + wildfire that you forget about.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

They are even making dancer easier by removing the need of using their 2 melee skills ??

Are they? That would be nice. I don't see why a ranged class would gain anything by playing in melee range, or how that adds challenge to its gameplay. It really doesn't, it's just annoying and makes you run around without a need, except to land your finish, which should have the same range as your other skills.
RDM has a complete sword combo in melee, but they also have a pair of movement skills to get there and back, whereas en avant is made for a different purpose. It also fits the design and class fantasy of the RDM, while it's just annoying on a phys ranged job.

I don't know, people are picking very weird angles for criticism. Like in that other thread, where someone was unhappy that Scholar got a run speed buff. Like, they literally get something, and that gets criticized. Not like there were no real points that could use some love, no, it has to be a positive addition that gets the heat.

As for Machinist, it works, it flows, it has its place. If you want a busier job, play Bard. Heck, even Dancer is busy. So busy in fact, you sometimes can't use all your procs before they run out.

[Kabooa]

That's the problem, you can't really change anything in the current build as... .

What?

You can literally change so much about it. The standardized resource (Heat, kinki, ninki, etc) is more flexible with a defined "Well now you have to start spending" point. You only have two cornerstone GCDs to work around, but for the most part, the inflexibility of Mach is based around the relationship between Drill and Overheat. A 20s reoccurring weaponskill and a resource you eventually have to spend.

Everything else can be worked with. Where the robot comes down, where you can fit in non-123 weaponskills, whether it should build heat or not, etc.

Throw a dart on a board full of new GCD actions and it can fit literally anywhere, and if it brings conflict with Overheat, all the better.