Melee's help me out

[Azurarok]

More demanding toolkits and rng/proc triage.
But obviously the only metric for SE is DDR design, so I'm just living in the past.

I hate how much both the devs and the community tend to downplay rotational difficulties when they're not mobility restrictions.

[Azurarok]

Not to say that MCH couldn't use something more to be able to reach higher. It's just that people tend to jump to stuff like cast times, range, positionals and the like before anything else since those are the most obvious.

There's also having a wider array of skills and the depth of their interactions, high apm, rng/procs, gauge management, buff/debuff tracking, and probably others I'm forgetting. Depending on who you ask some may see some of those as bloat or fake difficulty, but I think that's really just a matter of taste.

MCH currently only really has high apm and even that's not too busy compared to some others. Meanwhile its gauge management's been further trivialized by its 7.0 changes so it's even easier than it was in EW imo.

[Valence]

I mean you'd slap a few cast times behind Drill/Anchor and Chainsaw, and suddenly in the eyes of many you'd have the job qualify to be competitive on damage because the job would suddenly qualify for "uptime considerations".

[Reginald_Cain]

MCH dealing competitive damage to melee/BLM/PCT would not be an issue for melee specifically but for the viability of DNC and BRD. This discussion already happened in Abyssos and the conclusion is that either SE gives a raid buff to MCH or they rework the way the combat system and damage profiles work.

Could you explain why machinist would bully out the other phys ranged? I thought buffing machinist would make them a viable pick for the 4th dps slot and make double phys ranged viable again.

[Azurarok]

I mean you'd slap a few cast times behind Drill/Anchor and Chainsaw, and suddenly in the eyes of many you'd have the job qualify to be competitive on damage because the job would suddenly qualify for "uptime considerations".

imo that'd be pretty diabolical given Anchor and Chainsaw's lack of flexibility. Maybe even impossible to keep from drifting without any way to turn them into an instant cast

[Supersnow845]

Could you explain why machinist would bully out the other phys ranged? I thought buffing machinist would make them a viable pick for the 4th dps slot and make double phys ranged viable again.

Because this is what happened in abyssos with the casters, if you make one job within a role much stronger than the other 2 it doesn’t encourage you to run the strong one as a fake melee and the 2 weak ones in the true spot it just encourages you to run the strong one in the true role spot and still run two melee

So in this case if you buffed MCH to BLM levels it wouldn’t encourage you to run 1 melee/1 caster/1 DNC or BRD/1 other strong job (melee/BLM/PCT/MCH) it would just encourage you to run 2 melee or damage caster/1 caster/MCH and not run DNC and BRD as MCH can still give you the physical ranged role 1% with higher damage; just as BLM did in abyssos against RDM and SMN

[Aco505]

Could you explain why machinist would bully out the other phys ranged? I thought buffing machinist would make them a viable pick for the 4th dps slot and make double phys ranged viable again.

Think of the PCT situation before 7.2 due to (poor) caster balance. PCT was mostly locked into the caster slot so the flex slot would either go to a melee or a (rezz) caster. Even more so in FRU.

But it's all explained in the post I link in my message, as well as the Twitter thread referenced there.

[Reginald_Cain]

I appreciate all the insights. I guess the best machinist can hope for is minor buffs due to constraints on how the game and players handle filling party slots. Let's hope it just doesn't get worse.

[Wayfinder3]

BLM should compete with melee damage-wise. As a non-buffer, it should be balanced around this fact.

MCH dealing competitive damage to melee/BLM/PCT would not be an issue for melee specifically but for the viability of DNC and BRD. This discussion already happened in Abyssos and the conclusion is that either SE gives a raid buff to MCH or they rework the way the combat system and damage profiles work.

Just going to point out, buffing and not buffing are just 2 different types of damage profiles, a job like ninja has it's damage out put into it's raid buff as opposed to something like samurai that doesn't. This is all to say that damage utility really doesn't matter, they're 2 different ways of doing the same thing ultimately and people will always apply the best one to a given fight. BLM is screwed not because it doesn't have a raid buff but because it doesn't offer any ACTUAL utility, stuff like Star Prism, Tempura Coat, Magicked Barrier, Raise etc... These are Real raid utility. If SE wanted to, they could cut back BLM's potency and give them a raid buff to compensate and the job would be in the same exact position because that utility isn't really utility. Se bard and dancer for an example or Red Mage and summoner who's damage profiles are so close that they're functionally interchangable at all levels but offer different types of actual utility that may actually influence their contribution. DNC burst heavy contribution, Verraise vs. Swfitcast raise, Bards Team wide contribution, SMNs... Ease of use? idk, smn really doesn't have anything too special.

[Supersnow845]

Raid buffs being “utility” is an old HW holdover when FFlogs didn’t exist so we didn’t really know how much a raid buff contributed so it was kinda considered “free hidden damage” so it was utility

Now that square just balances like “selfish DPS=buffer personal DPS+buffer raid buff” there is no reason to consider it utility

There is no functional difference between NIN/DRG and BLM/SAM/VPR