I'm One Of The Filthiests Of Casuals And Even I Can See How Dumbdown FF14 Has Become!

[Aravell]

Perhaps a fresh way to look at this is to look at what DNC got for EW.

DNC is a good example of taking away something and replacing it with something else. But if we want an example of a job not evolving whatsoever, we have that too, I direct your attention to MCH. They got Chainsaw, that's it, that's all they got from 80 to 90, everything else is a minor potency increase. One can probably argue that MCH got Dismantle, but that's an old thing that was re-added and it doesn't even do anything to change how MCH plays, so I wouldn't count it.

Given that there does exist an example of the dev team doing a hard reset on a job and then not doing anything more in the following expansion, can any blame really be placed on people who aren't excited for SMN's prospective future?

[Supersnow845]

DNC is a good example of taking away something and replacing it with something else. But if we want an example of a job not evolving whatsoever, we have that too, I direct your attention to MCH. They got Chainsaw, that's it, that's all they got from 80 to 90, everything else is a minor potency increase. One can probably argue that MCH got Dismantle, but that's an old thing that was re-added and it doesn't even do anything to change how MCH plays, so I wouldn't count it.

Given that there does exist an example of the dev team doing a hard reset on a job and then not doing anything more in the following expansion, can any blame really be placed on people who aren't excited for SMN's prospective future?

MCH is also a good example of a job that like SMN has a very rigid rotation so you can’t really do anything with it that is all that meaningful

Your filler is your 1-2-3 with the occasional drill, your burst is basically just wildfire/dump your oGCD’s/summon your (not) DOT/hypercharge window

If they wanted to meaningfully change MCH they would either need to change the hypercharge window or change the 1-2-3 filler, because otherwise you are really just tinkering around the edges with an oGCD or two; this is exactly why I have zero faith in SMN doing anything special because that’s exactly what they did, added chainsaw which you just dump in the wildfire window

[Deceptus]

If they wanted to meaningfully change MCH they would either need to change the hypercharge window or change the 1-2-3 filler, because otherwise you are really just tinkering around the edges with an oGCD or two; this is exactly why I have zero faith in SMN doing anything special because that’s exactly what they did, added chainsaw which you just dump in the wildfire window

Machinist has a lot of areas for improvement.

First and foremost, Auto Crossbow not reflecting Richocet but Head Blast does is really confusing. The single target version should reduce cd on the ST skill, AoE skill should reduce AoE skill. Seems pretty straightforward.

Flamethrower is completely useless in 99.9% of content. Perhaps balance it so it consumes 5 heat charges to put a hefty dot on enemies. That way you can rotate Auto Crossbow and Flamethrower on AoE packs

Need some sort of AoE dump for the Battery Gauge for Dungeons. Battery Discharge lightning or something. IDK.

Wildfire needs to auto crit or DH Crit. It has a hefty CD (120s) and it's damage is laughable for that CD duration.

Second Wind as an ability sucks. Period. A health potion does more healing.. The addition of Hyper potion makes Second Wind's healing amount and CD laughable.

[Supersnow845]

Machinist has a lot of areas for improvement.

First and foremost, Auto Crossbow not reflecting Richocet but Head Blast does is really confusing. The single target version should reduce cd on the ST skill, AoE skill should reduce AoE skill. Seems pretty straightforward.

Flamethrower is completely useless in 99.9% of content. Perhaps balance it so it consumes 5 heat charges to put a hefty dot on enemies. That way you can rotate Auto Crossbow and Flamethrower on AoE packs

Need some sort of AoE dump for the Battery Gauge for Dungeons. Battery Discharge lightning or something. IDK.

Wildfire needs to auto crit or DH Crit. It has a hefty CD (120s) and it's damage is laughable for that CD duration.

Second Wind as an ability sucks. Period. A health potion does more healing.. The addition of Hyper potion makes Second Wind's healing amount and CD laughable.

That’s kinda exactly what I’m saying, let’s say you implemented every change suggested, MCH functionally doesn’t change at all in single target (they just do more damage due to wildfire changes and flamethrower will just get thrown in the wildfire window like chainsaw already did)

AOE I agree MCH is a mess and needs like 019286810491758248 changes to but we know the devs don’t really balance around AOE, but I do like the changes you presented

[Aldath]

That’s kinda exactly what I’m saying, let’s say you implemented every change suggested, MCH functionally doesn’t change at all in single target (they just do more damage due to wildfire changes and flamethrower will just get thrown in the wildfire window like chainsaw already did)

AOE I agree MCH is a mess and needs like 019286810491758248 changes to but we know the devs don’t really balance around AOE, but I do like the changes you presented

Another change I would suggest is getting rid of three buttons for combo. Some classes like SAM and NIN need separate combo presses, not ours. Just make it so 1 turns into 2 then into 3, it's less button bloat, no one uses 2 and 3 on their own.

[Shurrikhan]

Machinist has a lot of areas for improvement.

First and foremost, Auto Crossbow not reflecting Richocet but Head Blast does is really confusing. The single target version should reduce cd on the ST skill, AoE skill should reduce AoE skill. Seems pretty straightforward.

I much prefer it the way it is, leading to the back and forth weaving instead of only weaving on every other Heat Blast reduced-GCD.

Having a purely AoE or purely ST skill can be more "straightforward", sure, but it also means that each key becomes pointless bloat in the opposite situation. Heat Blast having Richochet CDR at least gives it, even if not necessary with sufficient tuning yet, to act as a situational means of focus target damage without necessarily being pointless in AoE.
(Much like Scattergun could, if the value of Heat were greater, Heat's consumption more flexible, and/or uptime were less consistently abundant, see some rare situational use in single-target due to its higher Heat generation.)

Flamethrower is completely useless in 99.9% of content. Perhaps balance it so it consumes 5 heat charges to put a hefty dot on enemies. That way you can rotate Auto Crossbow and Flamethrower on AoE packs

Need some sort of AoE dump for the Battery Gauge for Dungeons. Battery Discharge lightning or something. IDK.

I'd dig these. Sure. Sounds good.

Wildfire needs to auto crit or DH Crit. It has a hefty CD (120s) and it's damage is laughable for that CD duration.

Remember that making it an auto-crit is, in effect, just a higher potency but preventing the skill from critting. Do you really want both of those changes, or do you really just want to siphon potency from elsewhere and towards Wildfire.

And what % of total damage would seem more appropriate to you? It does around 4.5% of your total damage already despite being seeing only one cast per 2 minutes. Despite having double the number of casts, our level 90 capstone (Chainsaw) usually pulls off only 6% or less of total damage. Only Automaton Queen is stronger per-button-press than Wildfire.

Unless you're advocating for outright MCH buffs despite its being the leading Ranger until over the 80th percentile (which, may be a decent-ish indication that it's easier and/or more reliable to get near to its full value out of than Bard or Dancer)... that added Wildfire damage has to come from somewhere. Atop which a skill's damage feeling "laughable" is... generally a relative matter; it's what seems to hit harder.

:: If you just wanted for Wildfire's damage itself to 'look' bigger, one easy solution would be for it to reduce your damage to that target while the debuff is up before doing that much more damage in the final explosion (e.g., as an AoE, so there's an actual mechanical advantage in that gimmick). The total damage would be identical in single-target (and higher if adds spawn before Wildfire goes off), but you'd have a big number on Wildfire's explosion.

Second Wind as an ability sucks. Period. A health potion does more healing.. The addition of Hyper potion makes Second Wind's healing amount and CD laughable.

While this is in no way unique to MCH, so I'm not sure why it's coming up here... What would be your preference here, then? Just to scrap it as button bloat and require people to bring potions instead? To nerf those potions? To buff Second Wind? What's the more fitting state of its use/balance?