SE's treatment of MCH is a joke

[Hanzz96]

Mch use to have those abilities. Rather than buffing the party, originally Mch would instead Debuff the boss. It didn't last as long, was mainly meant for ever other Wildfire Burst window, if I remember correctly. This is how it got away with being the more DPS Focused Physical Ranged at the time, cause it wasn't doing it as frequently.

Then came the shadow bringers rework and its been downhill since

[Tint]

The real joke is they buffed MCH by 200 potency once every 2 minutes.

And at the same time they buffed WHM DoT by 55 potency. Which runs for 30 seconds. That's 220 potency over 2 minutes.


I know I know the numbers are not that easily compareable - but it's hilarious anyway >.>

[Hanzz96]

The real joke is they buffed MCH by 200 potency once every 2 minutes.

And at the same time they buffed WHM DoT by 55 potency. Which runs for 30 seconds. That's 220 potency over 2 minutes.


I know I know the numbers are not that easily compareable - but it's hilarious anyway >.>

Yeah MCH is a second class citizen in Eorzea

[Vyrerus]

MCH displacing caster in the party meta back in Heavensward until 4.1 must have really rustled Yoshi-P's jimmies.

Ever since they took away OG Hypercharge (20 second damage taken up on the boss), it's been a very cool job but also very middling to just bad, raid comp wise.

Kinda miss OG Wildfire as well. The reason it works like it does now is because it used to be a damage compiling skill. It'd deal 25% of the damage you dealt while it was active when its timer exploded. This allowed MCH to do some really nutty damage with it that was higher than any single skill's damage for a long time, particularly under raid buff aligned burst window.

Can't remember when, but they nerfed it down to what it is now where it gains set potency by number of weaponskills successfully landed during its duration. So it has a maximum allowable potency, and that potency never improves too much over the course of a tier. 1440 potency max but can't crit or D-hit. Essentially making it worse than D-Crit Chainsaw/Drill/Air Anchor because of how D-Crits scale with having more of the substat in a multiplicative fashion.

Imagine they set it back to being 1/4th of the damage you deal during its duration. You could land Drill x2, Chainsaw, Excavator, and Full Metal Field all in the window in addition to several weaves of Checkmate/Double Check and your auto attacks. Of course, that has its drawbacks. But if they really wanted to kick it up a notch, insisting that it doesn't D-crit, they could make it deal 100% of damage dealt during its window, always giving it a a huge number, probably to the point of being situationally OP.

But really all they need to do is just give MCH massive potency increases. Set the big tools to 700 potency+. Full Metal Field should be set to 1440 potency to match Wildfire. The standard combo needs an upkick to be higher potency than tanks. the oGCDs Check and Double Check should be non-diminishing AOE. Auto Crossbow should gain a trait that makes their CDs lower by 15, just like Blazing Shot.

[Zakuyia]

Man imagine if they wanted to make mch support instead of selfish it should have a revive in form of defibulator, or just make mch station that either gives defence or offense for few seconds, or just allow mch to work by lore and create stuff in battle to give better support or offense to your team.

[HyperiusUltima]

*snip*

The only reason they aren't buffing MCH is because they're still kneejerking over Ranged Meta back in Heavensward, when MCH powercreeped Casters out of a job due to DRG's Piercing Debuff. That's gone now, and it's extremely jarring they hadn't just baked the 200 potency into all their damage by now - in 6 years since they got rid of Type Debuffs.

MCH does not deserve to be like this, especially since it is now the de facto WORST DPS in the game. While you have other jobs that may not have that same damage as MCH towards the tip of their logs, you can't discount the raid buffs that all other jobs bring that aren't selfish on their own.

If anything, they need to just get rid of the role designation for Ranged and just compare Ranged as a whole. This means look at Casters and Ranged together. Of course, people are going to say "don't lump them together! Physical Ranged can move whenever without worrying about cast times!" Well, when PCT stops having every god damn utility under the sun plus a Raid Buff? That's when hell will freeze over because XIV Job Design Team loves to power creep things.

This is why we're seeing 2x Caster be a thing as of late: PCT is actually Ranged DPS with a new coat of paint as a Caster DPS. Even if 15% Damage Reduction is pretty good? PCT outperforms the 1% buff VASTLY in every metric on its own - if anything Savage is probably the only thing keeping it in check because of how they've tuned their outgoing damage. Regardless, people will still go for standard until we get into patch lull when people will be overgeared from Savage raids.

[Connor]

I feel like trying to balance a selfish dps in a subrole specifically designed to ‘support the party’ (as per job guide) was always doomed to fail. Like I don’t understand why they thought this would ever be a good balancing decision lol.

Either the selfish one is so strong you can ignore the support ones, or the support ones are so valuable nobody cares about the selfish one. They’re never going to be properly interchangeable because they serve two completely different functions (one does personal dps two do raid dps), and they’re basically impossible to balance correctly. I mean, even with the actual damage output between jobs being so small it’s still not exactly ‘balanced’ lol. And that’s not even considering balancing with dps outside of the sub-role, with Machinists being classed as ‘selfish dps’ then balanced as if they’re a supporter.

In my opinion they need to do one of two things:

-Either give Machinist actual party support appropriate for the role that’s distinct from what Bard/Dancer offer (i.e enemy debuffs).
- Remove them from the ‘physical ranged’ dps role and balance them as a melee, idk maybe Scouting. If they’re worried it’s not ‘complex enough’ to be balanced thus, then they can easily just add either PvP short cast times, or a ‘sweet spot’ mechanic where damage output is relative to distance from the enemy to the point it requires rapid repositioning (essentially emulating melee ‘uptime’ which according to Yoshi-P is like so super hard they just NEED to be the best jobs in the game lol)

[HyperiusUltima]

I feel like trying to balance a selfish dps in a subrole specifically designed to ‘support the party’ (as per job guide) was always doomed to fail. Like I don’t understand why they thought this would ever be a good balancing decision lol.

Yes, but no. Go take a hard look at Melees - we have MNK, RPR, DRG and NIN who all provide raid buffs while VPR and SAM are your selfish DPS. You can't quantify a DPS by 'support the party' alone. MCH having Dismantle makes sense as a way of being able to fit - but what doesn't match up is the raw potencies they have when you try to have them fight with DNC/BRD. This is because of Songs and Standard Step being a constant raid buff. MCH doesn't have this, and due to the fact that their potencies aren't outright beating their raid contribution, but the inverse(Raid Buffs beating out personal contribution) MCH is in a state where the job is just bad.

[Connor]

Yes, but no. Go take a hard look at Melees - we have MNK, RPR, DRG and NIN who all provide raid buffs while VPR and SAM are your selfish DPS. You can't quantify a DPS by 'support the party' alone. MCH having Dismantle makes sense as a way of being able to fit - but what doesn't match up is the raw potencies they have when you try to have them fight with DNC/BRD. This is because of Songs and Standard Step being a constant raid buff. MCH doesn't have this, and due to the fact that their potencies aren't outright beating their raid contribution, but the inverse(Raid Buffs beating out personal contribution) MCH is in a state where the job is just bad.

That’s what I was trying to say. Machinist is a ‘selfish’ dps compared within the same role to two ‘support’ dps but without being given high enough personal contribution to match the other two. And basically they need to either give it support or give it better dps however that happens

[Alchemii]

I personally think they need to roll Mch all the way back to Heavensward and re-balance from there. Have Wildfire do a percentage of the total damage within a 30 second window, bring back the turrets for a constant extra auto-attack damage, really focus them in as the Burst damage dps. Just every time, or every other time, Wildfire is up have them do so much Damage that over all their DPS makes them worthy of being a Selfish DPS. Seriously if their gonna keep it as a Selfish DPS (which it has been since Stormblood) then it needs to be in the Top 5 if not Top 3 of DPS, but it's not, it's at the bottom of the DPS charts.