Machinist needs some reworking

[MerlinCross]

This is just a me thing, but I would like to see the Ammo gauge (and the Reload skills) return in some capacity. I'm not asking for RNG combos to come back, but I do feel like a lot of potential was lost by canning Ammo entirely.

I think I’m the only one on the forums that liked the RNG proc and more importantly, HW Gauss Barrel.

But yes, SE please bring back ammo or give me back my two or so weeks of PVP grind for Wanderers Revolver. Back when that was really annoying to do so! I liked the flow of managing the bullets. I had someone tell me to try GNB if I liked bullets so much, not the same it’s not the same!

I still have no idea why they pivoted so hard from Stormblood MCH when two of the big complaints back then(if I recall) were... Flamethrower and Wildfire. Which both are still problems it seems. Also kinda funny to see Queen AI issues when that entire idea was pulled out of SMN and how Fray on DRK works as basically a dot, how do you mess Queen up?

[SJWhat]

I still have no idea why they pivoted so hard from Stormblood MCH when two of the big complaints back then(if I recall) were... Flamethrower and Wildfire. Which both are still problems it seems. Also kinda funny to see Queen AI issues when that entire idea was pulled out of SMN and how Fray on DRK works as basically a dot, how do you mess Queen up?

There are a couple of reasons to why. One of the biggest complaints people had then was that they felt that the job didn't look anything like a Final Fantasy MCH in terms of how the job is represented in other games. People claimed it was more gunner than MCH. Funny as there is a vocal crowd who wants to go back to that. Second was that of every job in the game at the time, it had the highest skill floor, and lowest skill ceiling. That coupled with how heat worked then, you were either playing the job exactly right, or were playing it wrong and it showed in how big your wildfire was, which at the time was big enough to sometimes yank enmity off the tank. Sure it felt good when everything came together, but it didn't often do that for a lot of players due to how much had to be crammed into that Wildfire window. All of it entirely dependent on ping as well. Strange how that problem still persists, but everything around it has been both nerfed to the ground, and simplified. Speaking of simplified, It ran up against Bard at the time. Many people consider Stormblood Bard to be the best that job has ever been. It was strong, it had useful utility, it was much easier to pick up and play right while still having room to play the job well. On a side note there was so much hate for Gauss Barrel then visually. Maybe if it was a sometimes thing you had on in a fight, but you always had it on, and it made most guns look stupid.

I will agree that it is very strange how Flamethrower, an attack that has been pretty universally hated since it was added has remain untouched. Especially since it lost the only use it had in Stormblood.

[Aiscence]

The biggest problem on mch's from SB was the latency due to rapidfire, wildfire and overheat, there has been a lot of feedback on those: make Rapidfire a charge system, make wildfire and overheat 1 second longer (and the downtime 9 second) or up the damage saved but only count x gcds. The second problem was it's rigidity due to how it was built on a strict 60 sec rotation but giving one charge to all your ogcds would have solved it 100%.

It sure wasn't a job for everyone: medium skill floor, and a skill ceiling that wasn't much higher than the floor, very strict and a rotation with barely any randomness (You will see a lot of people talking about how random it was but it wasn't that random due to ammos, like WAY LESS than the actual dnc), but because of all the parrot effect and people not playing it complaining, it got a wash down treatment, making the whole job revolving around one of the biggest problem (rapidfire becoming hypercharge) and becoming ... dull, same as drk losing it's unique gameplay mechanic and now smn becoming more "fitting" but at what cost.

[Jirah]

Plenty of threads for MCH please stick to one thanksw

[MerlinCross]

Plenty of threads for MCH please stick to one thanksw

Fair but what I want to address is listed here and trying to move to another topic is messy.

There are a couple of reasons to why. One of the biggest complaints people had then was that they felt that the job didn't look anything like a Final Fantasy MCH in terms of how the job is represented in other games. People claimed it was more gunner than MCH. Funny as there is a vocal crowd who wants to go back to that. Second was that of every job in the game at the time, it had the highest skill floor, and lowest skill ceiling. That coupled with how heat worked then, you were either playing the job exactly right, or were playing it wrong and it showed in how big your wildfire was, which at the time was big enough to sometimes yank enmity off the tank. Sure it felt good when everything came together, but it didn't often do that for a lot of players due to how much had to be crammed into that Wildfire window. All of it entirely dependent on ping as well. Strange how that problem still persists, but everything around it has been both nerfed to the ground, and simplified. Speaking of simplified, It ran up against Bard at the time. Many people consider Stormblood Bard to be the best that job has ever been. It was strong, it had useful utility, it was much easier to pick up and play right while still having room to play the job well. On a side note there was so much hate for Gauss Barrel then visually. Maybe if it was a sometimes thing you had on in a fight, but you always had it on, and it made most guns look stupid.

I will agree that it is very strange how Flamethrower, an attack that has been pretty universally hated since it was added has remain untouched. Especially since it lost the only use it had in Stormblood.

And this is what I want to address cause there's a LOT here for me to dig into. I'll dig into the "Doesn't look like an FF MCH" argument cause that's probably the one that makes me the most angry.

As for highest skill floor, and lowest skill ceiling; I'll not argue against that, I agree. We just differ on where. I believe Wildfire was largely the problem of the job as I remember not having issues with Heat when I just forgot about that ability but having to make sure every Overheat lined up nicely with a Wildfire state was so annoying and gimmicky. In fact, most discussions I recall would usually bring it up as an issue. We couldn't get buffs either because as you mentioned, when it all came together through the nonsense and ping, we could do stupid damage in a burst that could rip hate. Any actual buffs or changes would amplify the issue with Wildfire. Some will point to Wildfire as the clear example of why were were High Floor, low Ceiling. I believe it was the lynchpin that prevented that from changing.

But hey the problem has been solved now.... no wait we still have the problem of cramming stuff into Wildfire. It's just that now we barely have to worry about anything as we can just largely Unga Bunga slam our oGCDs into it.

Bard didn't have this problem and thus was free to skate away(They also at the time basically decided MCH would be the 'full damage' Ranged at this time so any utility was ripped away from us). Also balance between jobs is hard to debate, more so when looking at history. Bard being overcorrected in Stormblood made sense given they got killed in Heavensward, though that was maybe a 50/50 chance of happening considering their entire track record.

I.... can't fault you for Gauss Barrel, considering one of the reasons I quit the job was due to losing the Reload animation on guns. I'll not mourn the stupid disk, but I liked the idea of the stance back in Heavenward. Honestly they could have just turned it into an Aiming Stance of some kind, pitched the disk, and avoided that whole side of the complaints.

And now we get to the big one. That "OH MCH doesn't play like MCH". Oh, no. MCH doesn't feel like other games MCHs...., wait other games MCHs? What other game MCHs?

No, people didn't complain that MCH wasn't like other MCHs, they complained that MCH wasn't Edgar. MCH's only been in a couple games and with no real defining set up to them besides Gun. But Edgar is the poster boy of the Job so why shouldn't we make him into the job, we want Edgar even though all the Jobs largely feel like their own version or take on their own job. And the devs just went through this form of franchise key jingling in shadowbringers.

"Look we put in the reference you wanted, it's the thing you like, from the guy you know! See, see? Are you happy now?" Jingle Jingle and people eat it up.

And..., well I would think it rather rude of me to make that comparison considering FF14 is basically an entire game of nods, references, quips, cameos, and just a celbration of the entire history of Final Fantasy. But, to try and do my homework here;
-No one seems to be asking for Dolphin Blow on Monk.
-No one seems to want for Mog's Dances on Dancer
-No one cares that Eye of the Dragon is way more thematic and core to DRG's identity in this game than Jumps actually are.
-No one's asking for Shadow Ninja

....Oh but melee Chainsaw channel was a missed opportunity on MCH. Hmmm. I wonder why.

(Okay see there was supposed to be an image of Edgar using his chainsaw here BUT I can't seem to get images to work but I think you can get the idea)

Honestly if people wanted Edgar MCH..., geeze I would have loved to see a Tank version of that

[SJWhat]

snip

There will always be vocal groups who will have visions for the jobs they play, and they will clash. People will whine that the job isn't Edgar enough. People will complain that they don't use their gun enough. People will rant about how we are still stuck with the aetherometer (the Lunchbox) while the Bard and SAM have different addons to their weapons. Can't please everyone all the time. People probably have an axe to grind with Chainsaw because it feels like a lazy copout to what it could have been, and people are begging for more job depth for the MCH. It could have been so much more than Air Anchor 2, or as I like to call it, Ranged Fell Cleave. Same with Automaton Queen, and people begging for exosuits. I'm not a fan of that idea but the MCH community seems willing to throw anything at the wall in hopes that it sticks, or gets noticed, because for a lot of players there is more wrong with the job right now than there has ever been. It's frustrating because visually a lot of people like it now. A problem with Ranged Physical DPS in general, but especially noticeable with the MCH which doesn't even excel at it's own role of ranged physical selfish DPS.

[MerlinCross]

There will always be vocal groups who will have visions for the jobs they play, and they will clash. People will whine that the job isn't Edgar enough. People will complain that they don't use their gun enough. People will rant about how we are still stuck with the aetherometer (the Lunchbox) while the Bard and SAM have different addons to their weapons. Can't please everyone all the time. People probably have an axe to grind with Chainsaw because it feels like a lazy copout to what it could have been, and people are begging for more job depth for the MCH. It could have been so much more than Air Anchor 2, or as I like to call it, Ranged Fell Cleave. Same with Automaton Queen, and people begging for exosuits. I'm not a fan of that idea but the MCH community seems willing to throw anything at the wall in hopes that it sticks, or gets noticed, because for a lot of players there is more wrong with the job right now than there has ever been. It's frustrating because visually a lot of people like it now. A problem with Ranged Physical DPS in general, but especially noticeable with the MCH which doesn't even excel at it's own role of ranged physical selfish DPS.

I do agree that MCH is probably the job that has the most split factiosn because there's no real... core to draw from. Not without taking the Edgar path and that seems to be what they're doing.

It's why I hold up HW MCH as the best version because the designers went in with what seemed to be a clear idea and now it's just all over the place due to both the design team and the fanbase not knowing what they bloody want, or how to design for that. They gave us the "Selfish DPS" role and now can't seem to figure out how to pull that off even.

Maybe I'm bitter, maybe I do have an ax to grind and I do. But Shadowbringers killed 4 of my 6 jobs off and MCH was probably at the time my favorite or second favorite. And now I just see it reduced to "OH look flashy thing I know, I hope we get MORE Flashy thing I know" ....

Well I guess I'm glad people like the Edgar job, I just wanted MCH to be fixed.

[Brownondorf]

- Completely change Bioblaster to something else like a grenade toss maybe? (why are we using a bio weapon in the first place? We alchemist?)
- Make Flamethrower the DOT instead of Bioblaster, and make this ability share cooldown with Air anchor (so we're not tempted to use air anchor anymore during our AOE phase)
- Make Wildfire an AOE. Why is this thing single target? a pack of dynamite should be powerfull enough to hit multiple target.
-The heatgauge system/hypercharge needs to be change to something like inner release, no more short timer to use heatblast. Bring back the ammo system and have one cartridge = one heat blast for exemple.

[MerlinCross]

- Completely change Bioblaster to something else like a grenade toss maybe? (why are we using a bio weapon in the first place? We alchemist?)
- Make Flamethrower the DOT instead of Bioblaster, and make this ability share cooldown with Air anchor (so we're not tempted to use air anchor anymore during our AOE phase)
- Make Wildfire an AOE. Why is this thing single target? a pack of dynamite should be powerfull enough to hit multiple target.
-The heatgauge system/hypercharge needs to be change to something like inner release, no more short timer to use heatblast. Bring back the ammo system and have one cartridge = one heat blast for exemple.

-Why'd we lose Grenado in the first place? Like holy why's our AoE just so weird? ..., Okay we have AoE but it's usually cone/cleave based. On a Ranged job. Thanks SE. As for Bio Weapons.... well, Edgar has it.
-I can buy this change.
-While Wildfire an AoE might help, I think the big problem is trying to fit everything into the window is a problem that's going to remain hovering over the job.
-Maybe I don't get it but isn't Hypercharge basically Inner Release? We get limited time to spam a man focus damage skill. The only real difference is outright damage but I don't think they're gonna let Hypercharge give us Drill for free. Also I'm against the idea of making more Inner Release style skills. I'd rather have to work Up to the burst/damage window than hitting it and having to rush to take advantage of this.

Basically I'd rather have something akin to Blood of the Dragon, where to me feels like "Oh cool time to get my Damage out" or Samurai's "Oh time to dump Setsugekka, Kaeshi: Setsugekka and Shoa into this twit."

I'd rather have to work for my damage/burst than push a button that says "Time to burst" if that makes sense. The bullets were a good way of doing that, slamming them when I wanted to for more prolonged damage and then rigging them up in a row for the burst window when heat triggered. I dunno, it's hard for me to put into words, someone probably gets the giest of it though, hopefully. I'm babbling now.

[WiccaP]

-Why'd we lose Grenado in the first place? Like holy why's our AoE just so weird? ..., Okay we have AoE but it's usually cone/cleave based. On a Ranged job

Man I completely forgot about grenado shot. I really do miss hw machinist sometimes