Playing the Melee DPS role quest made me realize how much I want an actual Gun Class.

[JMadFour]

Yes, Machinist uses Rifles as their weapon.

But their entire class fantasy is about being an Engineer that summons/uses gadgets in battle. Not necessarily about the Guns themselves.

Watching Merlwyb in the Melee DPS role quest made me realize just how much I really want to see a Gun class that is all about the Guns and Ammo.

Hell, if you wanna give it a twist, make it a Magical Ranged DPS where instead of Ammo you shoot various aspected Aether. Magic Guns.

[Jeeqbit]

We used to have a Gun class (which was advertised by Merlwyb in ARR). It was called Machinist and it was all about guns, loading your ammo rounds and shooting. It was boring compared to Bard which danced around doing arrows from various angles, especially in Stormblood after the cast times were removed from both. Machinist went extinct, while Bards were everywhere and extremely popular.

So SE decided to revisit Machinist and change them from being about guns to being about a variety of machines and gadgets, as their job name implies. Their rare heated combo was made permanent because its animations were more fun. And after the change, it was extremely fun and it's one of the main DPS I've used this expansion along with Summoner.

[Poporito_Popoto]

I use a gun as a machinist.

[Tlachtga]

technically we already shoot magic bullets. that's what the lunchbox is for on your hip. you're converting your aether into bullets.

We used to have a Gun class (which was advertised by Merlwyb in ARR). It was called Machinist and it was all about guns, loading your ammo rounds and shooting. It was boring compared to Bard which danced around doing arrows from various angles, especially in Stormblood after the cast times were removed from both. Machinist went extinct, while Bards were everywhere and extremely popular.

So SE decided to revisit Machinist and change them from being about guns to being about a variety of machines and gadgets, as their job name implies. Their rare heated combo was made permanent because its animations were more fun. And after the change, it was extremely fun and it's one of the main DPS I've used this expansion along with Summoner.

SB MCH (and HW MCH) weren't changed because they were boring, they were changed because they were way too hard and/or punishing for the general playerbase.

[Jeeqbit]

SB MCH (and HW MCH) weren't changed because they were boring, they were changed because they were way too hard and/or punishing for the general playerbase.

In Stormblood, yes, the overheat system was too confusing for players. They didn't really know whether overheating was meant to be a good thing or a bad thing. But let's be honest, they could have changed the overheat system to make that simpler and clearer without overhauling the whole concept of the job. Everything like ammo and recharging could have remained and just made the overheat system braindead simple so you just spend it when a gauge caps.

Which brings us to why they overhauled the whole concept of the job to move away from ammo and recharging... because it was boring compared to Bard that everyone was playing instead of it.

[CidHeiral]

SB MCH (and HW MCH) weren't changed because they were boring, they were changed because they were way too hard and/or punishing for the general playerbase.

I'm sure I don't have the full picture but I just looked up a video of SB MCH and it looks quite a bit more fun and engaging than what we have now.

[Tlachtga]

In Stormblood, yes, the overheat system was too confusing for players. They didn't really know whether overheating was meant to be a good thing or a bad thing. But let's be honest, they could have changed the overheat system to make that simpler and clearer without overhauling the whole concept of the job. Everything like ammo and recharging could have remained and just made the overheat system braindead simple so you just spend it when a gauge caps.

Which brings us to why they overhauled the whole concept of the job to move away from ammo and recharging... because it was boring compared to Bard that everyone was playing instead of it.

you keep saying they changed it cos it was boring, i don't remember the devs saying that at all.

i remember the devs reworking MCH out of the blue, saying something along the lines of the focus moving away from ammo and reloading and to gadgets is because Gunbreaker was dropping and GNB had ammo and reloading, and they didn't want the job theme to overlap. nothing about the job being boring though.

[LilimoLimomo]

you keep saying they changed it cos it was boring, i don't remember the devs saying that at all.

i remember the devs reworking MCH out of the blue, saying something along the lines of the focus moving away from ammo and reloading and to gadgets is because Gunbreaker was dropping and GNB had ammo and reloading, and they didn't want the job theme to overlap. nothing about the job being boring though.

I don't have a horse in this race, but from a development standpoint, a well-run studio wouldn't go through the massive effort of reworking a class if there wasn't something fundamental they felt they needed to address with it. Such a change results in frustration from players who liked the old design, and it also costs a bunch of money (dev time) instead of none. My best guess is that they may have said something about being considerate of overlapping themes due to the upcoming Gunbreaker, but it's incredibly unlikely that Mechanist would have been changed because of Gunbreaker. People have a variety of opinions about Yoshi-P, but his project management skills are well-documented, making it hard to imagine that he would have green-lit a rework without a much more salient reason.

[Jeeqbit]

you keep saying they changed it cos it was boring, i don't remember the devs saying that at all.

They didn't. But as I said, nobody was hardly playing it and the change moved away from something like...
shot1... (RNG chance at) shot2... (RNG chance at) shot3... click reload... repeat
...to all this exciting stuff that wowed everyone in the Job Actions trailer.

I even just went back to check survey data on fan websites from Stormblood and it was the least played DPS of all, while Bard was the most played.

i remember the devs reworking MCH out of the blue

It wasn't entirely out of the blue. Everyone was playing BRD over it. It seemed like they needed to do something.

https://youtu.be/jaGxC7wnBDo?t=685 (one of the most replayed moments, too, proving how well the changes were received)

saying something along the lines of the focus moving away from ammo and reloading and to gadgets is because Gunbreaker was dropping

I don't remember that but it is true they would want to differentiate. However, the ammo system on Gunbreaker is really for melee explosions so it's not quite the same and the only real gunshot is their ranged Lightning Shot.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Personally, I would not be opposed to them making a ranged physical DPS with cast times, but the HW BRD/MCH were kind of the wrong way to go about it as they basically just took movement away from them, and in exchange they didn't even get much in return as both only got one OGCD attack (Empyreal Arrow for BRD and Gauss Round for MCH)... Pretty sure they were just about bottom tier DPS that were absolutely needed as MP batteries even when they removed movement in exchange for more damage.


If they want to make a physical caster, they can make one. But they need to build it from the ground up to be a caster, and not just add cast times to the existing ranged phys classes.