2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Taranok]

BRD and MCH have never been broken in SB, DRG was. BRD and MCH without its piercing debuff were subpar, and even with it they still had that ranged tax already, and were not competitive with melees already (except perhaps bard when it got out of hand from crit itemization in alphascape). HW was a different story due to cast times, but it was counterbalanced by losing damage when MP/TP supporting the party, which could be mandatory.

I do agree that the battle system was better and more intricate and flavorful in SB, but let's not fall into the rose tinted glasses syndrome either.

To be fair, Machinist was literally completely broken, or do we not remember the fiasco that was the heat bar and its extremely technical, extremely limited burst rotation that required a 10ms ping and a ton of finger walking to execute correctly? The joke for MCH was that there were dozens of MCHs playing. DOZENS! It is one of only 3 examples of truly broken classes. AST from HW was also broken (couldn't heal content, literally dead on launch,) and SMN (hw and SB, buff stacking and buff snapshotting let it do so much more damage than intended combined with a rotation so hard for most people to merely approach made it impossible to balance. Esp. since so many skills were shared with Scholar at the time. For SB+, using oGCDs to get more wyrmwaves out of bahamut.)

Also, if I remember correctly, the meta comp for much of stormblood was, actually, drg+mch+brd+smn with war/drk and AST/SCH as the final picks. The buff stacking was actually bonkers, ranged tax or no. And with the buff gods aligned, MCH could put out absolutely ridiculous wildfires due to just how, exactly, it was broken in that expansion.

[Shurrikhan]

Also, if I remember correctly, the meta comp for much of stormblood was, actually, drg+mch+brd+smn with war/drk and AST/SCH as the final picks. The buff stacking was actually bonkers, ranged tax or no.

It was a meta comp because it was the simplest, not necessarily because it had the highest party DPS / clear times. Even in early StB, Monk comps were quite competitive and by the end, every set comp was (Caster-high, 90s, Monk, etc., all alongside Double Ranged).

And even by Stormblood, SMN and SCH spell IDs and balancing were separate. A SMN Bane did not have to be a SCH Bane; a SMN physick did not have to be MND-based any more than a SCH Ruin II would have to be INT-based.

[Valence]

To be fair, Machinist was literally completely broken, or do we not remember the fiasco that was the heat bar and its extremely technical, extremely limited burst rotation that required a 10ms ping and a ton of finger walking to execute correctly? The joke for MCH was that there were dozens of MCHs playing. DOZENS! It is one of only 3 examples of truly broken classes. AST from HW was also broken (couldn't heal content, literally dead on launch,) and SMN (hw and SB, buff stacking and buff snapshotting let it do so much more damage than intended combined with a rotation so hard for most people to merely approach made it impossible to balance. Esp. since so many skills were shared with Scholar at the time. For SB+, using oGCDs to get more wyrmwaves out of bahamut.)

Also, if I remember correctly, the meta comp for much of stormblood was, actually, drg+mch+brd+smn with war/drk and AST/SCH as the final picks. The buff stacking was actually bonkers, ranged tax or no. And with the buff gods aligned, MCH could put out absolutely ridiculous wildfires due to just how, exactly, it was broken in that expansion.

It was not a fiasco and a great, flavorful system, sorry not sorry, and that's coming from a machinist player that used to play on NA with 200 ms ping back then. Yes, the latency sensitivity was bad and a problem, and the flamethrower trick was finicky and badly thought out (because the job wasnt even possibly supposed to overheat in the original design, which tends to show how far they think things out when it comes to that job...). Still, the overall concept was great, and the bursts were actually interesting and unique to execute, and wildfire used to be extremely satisfying to pull off.

They could have fixed the class, but instead chose to demolish it and replace it with something bland, as they always do for everything anyway.

MCH + BRD in SB wasn't meta at all, this was in HW. MCH was lagging behind hard in SB already, and BRD was able to make up for it more or less by having broken itemization. Both were carried by DRG at best.