My Eulogy for Machinist

[CKNovel]

Looking at the numbers, the majority of players thinks that way. That kind of ingame metric is what the devs look at, not the forums, thankfully.

It's so much the majority Yoshida had to mention complexity and reassure players that Reaper wasn't a easy job.
Jobs should be balanced for high-end content players, not dungeon players.

Reason is simple, if you play your job like crap, no one will care in dungeons.
You can get through the MSQ by binding 1 GCD to your hotbar and spamming it. Which is how I picture casuals scared about a few extra buttons.

BLM and GNB wouldn't exist if they only listened to casuals.
Even then, you can just play Ice Mage if BLM is too complex for you.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

...GNB wouldn't exist...

Gunbreaker is complex? Since when?
I believe you picked the wrong example here, if you tried to demonstrate complexity.

The assumption that a job needs to be balanced around raiding doesn't seem to hold much water, since they've been following the in-game metrics aka player numbers.
There's also room for both more and less complex jobs, options are always a good thing.

I don't know where this mindset comes from that demands a high skill floor.
Machinist has some real issues, like its ping dependency, or the boring wildfire burst, but that's not what people complain about. They complain because they wanted to be special and play a job "only they understand", but that's not going to happen in a game with millions of players.

[CKNovel]

Gunbreaker is complex? Since when?
I believe you picked the wrong example here, if you tried to demonstrate complexity.

GNB is much more complex than MCH. That's why I picked this example, but it's true for almost any jobs.
And if by your opinion GNB is not complex with its additional tank responsibilities, then MCH is truly at the lowest.

Which is not normal.

I don't know where this mindset comes from that demands a high skill floor.
Machinist has some real issues, like its ping dependency, or the boring wildfire burst, but that's not what people complain about. They complain because they wanted to be special and play a job "only they understand", but that's not going to happen in a game with millions of players.

I don't claim knowing everything about the game.
But when I started the game in HW, the peak of job complexity, it was always fun to discover a job and exploit its gimmick.
I had good company, my Raidlead who knew little of MCH tried to guide me and eventually led me to guides and such. It's a bit like when you try to learn a complex topic, you go little by little and when at the end you compile and assemble everything you learned... It's a beautiful thing.

Now today the puzzle is much simpler. I still need to learn many things and lack pieces, it always feels good when I get a new piece that completes further my knowledge of the game. But we get less pieces.

HW MCH was not complex, SB MCH was not complex either. It's just that they had frustrating abilities.
We're not asking for extremely complex and convoluted rotation, just for a job kit that feels complete.

Here's the list of feedback I can personally remember:
-Wildfire is boring and needs to change. Easier change would be to make it a cooldown that consume X heat to throw a sticky bomb.
-Flamethrower feels like watering a garden. It's current use for tick fishing is ironically complex and convoluted, it needs to be reworked.
-1 2 3 during downtime is boring, we wants something to complete that.
-Heatblast spam gets tiring, we want something new around heat such as a heat consumer. Also a bunshin treatment could work.
-The Queen is completely automated and has no interaction. In short it's a glorified dot.

Contrary to your belief, those changes actually eases the rotation by simplifying limiting tools and gives more control to the MCH.
If you think they listen to casuals, ask yourself why MCH is the only job with the same Heatblast, unfriendly to lag?

[Caitlyn]

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.

[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.

[Nyarlha]

It's so much the majority Yoshida had to mention complexity and reassure players that Reaper wasn't a easy job.
Jobs should be balanced for high-end content players, not dungeon players.

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.

[CKNovel]

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.

Oops forgot something.
Yes, you don't want 3.0 "difficulty". Believe me it was a massive amount of crap. Most ppl that wants this design are nostalgic.

For example MCH had to cast and weave 3 buffs back to back. A pushback was part of their rotation so in dungeon pull they would push back a mob.
DRK MP management was terrible.
AST balance was crap, it literally had a card that would increases damages by crazy amounts.

Almost every jobs had a dot, it was ridiculous in 24 man raid because bosses had a limitation of debuff they could get. If you had too much summoners, 3 dots back then, oboi.

I'm not asking for 3.X design, I'd rather take SB MCH.
EDIT: To give you an example, 3.X design is SMN. Clunky, revolves around dot(s) and abilities that don't make sense. Minus a dmg buff you had to maintain for some jobs.

[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.