Machinist needs some reworking

[Jirah]

I had an idea to help with MCH's ping issues in regard to Wildfire. Make it an infinite duration debuff that builds up stacks when you hit the target and at 6 stacks it auto-detonates and clears itself. This way regardless of ping it will achieve its maximum damage every time consistently.

Wouldn’t this make the mechanic essentially brain dead to execute? Almost a non-mechanic

[TankHunter678]

Wouldn’t this make the mechanic essentially brain dead to execute? Almost a non-mechanic

The alternative is to extend the timer but that does not fix the ping issue, it just means people with better ping will produce even higher numbers while those with worse pings just scrape by achieving what the skill was originally balanced around.

Also technically the suggested mechanic would mean that Wildfire would not get wasted if the boss retreats and becomes otherwise invulnerable.

Though they could always just get rid of wildfire which gets rid of the main ping issue.

[iiTzSeb]

I wouldn't say it needs a rework so much as specific skills need retooling.

- Reassemble is admittedly lame, but also gives a lot of dopamine when used so it's tricky to get rid of.
- Queen sucks. Yeah she's our largest source of damage when used correctly but her AI is dumb as a bag of bricks.
- Flamethrower sucks. I think I've only ever used it in UWU on Garuda phase because it was an AOE that didn't interrupt my GCD combo so I could get my 10 battery instead of breaking combo to use spread shot and losing the battery.
- Wildfire snapshotting like a DoT makes it feel really weird when taken into consideration with Queen who deals damage like a player would. (thankfully Mug is 20s vs Trick's prior 15s so fitting queen under window is MUCH easier now)

I feel like the gameplay loop of 6.0 MCH feels good (though I'm also following a homebrew rotation/opener as opposed to the Balance's generic one) but I do feel like the most we could ever get as it stands is potency increases or traits to augment skills which will eventually make the job get stale (kinda already is, but I mostly play it cause it's cozy anyways)

I feel like maybe if we retooled MCH to:
- remove reassemble
- remove queen because the summon animation and AI are awful in the same way DRK's evil clone's are
- give us a different battery gauge dump skill that's more instantaneous or triggers a different type of burst similar to overheating
- maybe make every 2nd chainsaw apply a small vuln to the boss (psuedo 2m raidbuff)

Then maybe MCH would see more relevance in raid than it does atm and would be more interesting to play to boot.

[iiTzSeb]

I had an idea to help with MCH's ping issues in regard to Wildfire. Make it an infinite duration debuff that builds up stacks when you hit the target and at 6 stacks it auto-detonates and clears itself. This way regardless of ping it will achieve its maximum damage every time consistently.

Honestly even if they just extend Wildfire and Hypercharge's durations both by 2-3 seconds it would be ample enough time to allow bad ping players to get their weaves in even while clipping and still hit the 6 GCDs. There's a lot of ways to solve it tbh but lately it just feels like SE either doesn't notice our issues or they've already got a rework planned and are being silent and will drop the rework last second like they did last expac with MNK's mini rework.

[Jirah]

I wouldn't say it needs a rework.

Yes it does, it has hit the creative corner hard and any additional from here on unless it’s super remedial (which is somthing MCH doesn’t need or needs bigger changes) will hinder the play style one way or another due to it. Scattershot, a harmless change made flamethrower even worse. It’s kit is a tight unimpressive janga tower. If not a rework it needs its mechanics redesigned …which would require a rework to do.

And I’ll say this a 87th time, increasing the potency will not solve jacksh*t it will play the same and will go no where. I’ll main BLM regardless of numbers if it’s fun not because it does more damage or has the respect of the community. These people need to be weed out immediately living a utopian fantasy that somthing as lukewarm as MCH will ever be as DPS Savy as SAM or RPR with significantly less work

TLDR, yes it dows, numbers don’t mean shit

[CKNovel]

Not everything needs to be scrapped.
A lot of actions can be adjusted but a lot are fine:
-Heatblast, reducing the heatblast spam from 5 to 3 would reduce the monotony, it worked for tanks.
-Gauss round and Ricochet works as they are.
-Drill I, II and III, while being the same actions, works fine and are the main dopamine buttons.
-Reassemble works fine, as far as I can imagine, the second charge will only be truly useful in content where MCH attack speed increases dramatically (see Bozja). It's still a questionable change.
-Tactician is a fine cooldown but not enough on its own.

Some abilities clearly needs a rework:
-Wildfire, simply being an empowered Hypercharge phase isn't great. Can't it simply be a new and original cooldown that consume 50 heat? Putting it on charge and 3 GCDs is fine as well.
-Flamethrower is lame, unengaging and potency confusing. Best use case is as an emote. There's dozens of reasons why it should be reworked.
-Barrel Stabilizer should be changed, either "makes your next Hypercharge free" or something else. Heat is now very rigid.

Some things completely needs to be scrapped:
-Unengaging, frustrating and passive. Automaton Queen being uncontrolable and press&forget is something that should get you straight to "Game design prison".
Who else saw that random dude staying in AoEs and saying to yourself "Who is that idiot?? Oh wait it's an Automaton Queen... And it's mine". That's how forgettable the AQ is.
AQ cannot be saved as more abilities will only make it exponentially "clunkier", difficult to place and fully take advantage of it.

A few extra potency shift that is clearly needed:
-Bio Blaster at least needs a potency upgrade to bump up the MCH AoE game.
-Reduce the Chain saw fall off, MCH barely has any AoEs.
-Potency upgrade in general to make it up for the "Pure DPS aspect".
-Shift power from the Queen/Heatblast to Cooldown abilities. Ironically, MCH is a job that can have full uptime but suffers greatly from downtime.

As for the future of MCH general gameplay:
-More buttons, except 1 2 3, ACB and scattergun I mentionned everything MCH has in its rotation. 1-2 Utility buttons, reworked Flamethrower being useful in Single Target rotation + 1 New cooldown would make the trick.
-A better, improved Automaton and not so "Automaton" anymore. Make it a controllable summon that upgrades your buttons. If the damn thing can't autopilot itself, let me take the wheel!
-Expanded gauges. A new heat spender or at least a "hypercharge finisher" or something like Primal Rend. We're lv90 and heat is used by only 1 button.
Same thing for the battery gauge, if Automaton Summoning was put on 60s, MCH would suffer less from repeated downtime

It's quite a bit of work, but that's a workload that has been cumulating since 5.0. That's the result from postponing any work on the MCH and shoving all problems under the carpet.

[MegaUltrachicken]

Not everything needs to be scrapped.

Agree with a lot of the points raised in the above post. Never considered letting Queen improve the other abilities and could honestly be a really be a good option. Maybe adding Debilitator from FF6 as a personal dps buff similar to new trick attack for ninja?

Never understood why Flamethrower is still around despite all the feedback about how terrible it is for years. Replacing flamethrower with something like Bishop returning as an AoE battery use could be a good option. This would give the opportunity for an upgraded form next expansion and provide a fix for the AoE issues MCH has.

[Sorzai]

While some people might think otherwise, I personally think that Machinist needs a rework. While some skills are fine as they are but the overall design of Machinist is lacking. It doesn't have the same feeling of building up to its finisher as other jobs does. The only release of dopamine is Reassemble + Drill and seeing that HUGE CRIT number pop up, aside from that Heat blast spam and AQ just doesn't cut it. The only other job that I could think of that has a "similar" spam would be Reaper, during its Enshrouded phase but even that has a Finisher to give that rush of dopamine because soul gauge builds into shroud gauge then you could do your finisher unlike Machinist, battery and heat gauge are independent.

Machinist is clearly having an identity crisis, It's not the heavy hitter, nor is it a utility ranged dps. is the finisher heat blast spam or is it AQ? The way it's currently designed feels like it's split between guns and mechs, where the devs just thought "why not both?" and splits it in the middle here have heatblast and AQ. Speaking of identity, guns are kind of machines? although it's not what people typically think of when about machines but it seems like thats the route SE might be going for with how they changed Machinist in PVP, and everyone loved it especially that big ass sniper rifle LB.

all in all, Machinist's design needs a change, hypercharge, wildfire, heat blast spam, and AQ needs to be removed or reworked, it's detrimental to Machinist gameplay at this point.

[LordMetal7]

Yeah i totally agree Machinist needs a rework and it can be added upon. I feel that it needs to add more something to it's Auto Turrets/Automaton Queen. I think that it would be great if they added charges to Rook Auto Turret and allow min 2 turrets on the field, and can copy some weaponskills (i.e. Drill, flamethrower, etc ?) and make Automaton Queen as a finisher. I find that having the multiple auto turrets on the field will be beneficial because depending on how SE wants to rework MCH (i.e. into more support role, or more damage), the Auto Turrets can be used for support or dmg.

I just pictured it would be cool to have 2 Auto Turrets out, and having them overload and shoot a huge ass laser as a finisher.

Simple more guns, here some examples

LOST ARK BLASTER CLASS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkGS...nmCbC&index=19

LOST ARK SCOUTER CLASS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmsX...unmCbC&index=9

FF dissidia LAGUNA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf5DTFUHPg0

We just need more modern warfare instead of machines, don't get me wrong automaton queen is awesome but we just need that setting, i for one wish Gatling gun and missile launcher for machinist or a new 4th range class based on that.

[elioaiko]

Personally I'd rather them rework the entirety of Phys. Ranged. This restrictive mobility tax is holding them back.

BRD and DNC is the only one that works and even then they compete pretty badly with each other.

I like how in SB, BRD was better than MCH in every way and it's still true even with DNC in the mix. The problem is that the taxes for other dps roles make sense, expect for BLM. Either they get taxed from raid buffs or positionals/cast time. BLM, a caster is consistently on the top, because they have to cast and no raid buffs.

Then why isn't machinist closer to the top 4 dps? Simple they overvalue mobility, especially since they keep making cast times easier with more instacast procs/Triple Cast and reducing the amount of positionals a melee job needs to do.

MCH who has no raid buffs and utility past Tactician, barely does more damage than BRD who provides raid buffs along with the same utlity and a cleanse as well as a ST healing buff.

DNC who has a a strong ST buff and a raid buff and had the weakest personal damage, is still a better pick than MCH because they also have the same one utility and two healing buttons. Not to mention that BRD and DNC have better AoE options.

Why would anyone really pick MCH before these two? They have lower personal damage but make up for group buffing and extra utilities. Doing slightly more damage isn't really enough when Phys. Ranged is often looked at for "support" where MCH only has one.

They pigeonhole MCH into this archetype that they need to be doing less damage than the weakest melee/caster because they can move freely.

Not to mention the ping issues it suffers from.

Get rid of Wildfire, it's bad design. I'd rather they focus on making an engineer-like design with Queen Mech coming down, and piloting it ala RPR Enshroud-style, replacing their combo with gatling guns, laser beams, missiles, etc.

Personally, I would like MCH to be on par with RPR in terms of raw damage. If they have zero raid buffs, then they should be doing tons of damage to justify it's place.