The State of Machinist in DT - Let's talk about it (again).

[Connor]

Did you reply to the wrong post? I never said 'phys ranged was never about support' or Machinist 'having no precedent' or so.

I checked again just in case but it was lol.

I guess what I was trying to reply to was that while it’s true ‘the game doesn’t reflect currently’ the idea that phys ranged are differentiated from melee etc by party support / utility but that, but it can and has in the past and so I don’t think the current situation speaks to the devs’ intentionality as much as it does their inexhaustible complacency in creating interesting and unique job designs. Like as dumb as it sounds I think they genuinely think they look at phys ranged and say, ‘yes this a support role’

Basically I’d argue the devs do see physical ranged in that capacity, they’ve just let combat and unique/interesting design fall so short in recent expansions that it’s barely expressed in actual gameplay?

And to clarify I’m not saying they should like, just give MCH some copy/paste raid buffs then announce ‘looks everyone it’s a support now!’. But at the same time I don’t think being ‘offensively oriented’ precludes it from having utility; the game already lacks a ‘debuffer’ class. Like I’d say even something like giving it stuff that increases enemy damage taken or whatever, that would already have it fit more within the intended ‘phys range’ role. And it’d still be differentiated from Bard and Dancer which are slightly more defensive/healing focused support, plus party vs single target oriented respectively

Lastly that’s not intended to ‘accuse’ you or anyone else despite the ranting lol. More using it as a prompt to add my own thoughts I guess. I just think that unfortunately, the reality is even more dumb than we thought really lol. I bet they’d be like ‘wait, people don’t think Machinist is a support? But Dismantle and Peloton .’ lol

Good. Lol, the more i read about this .... how people can call this "support". You like support bad toilet paper system?

Last I checked it was the devs’ constant removal of crappy/boring/‘hard to balance’/‘complex’ abilities instead of making them actually interesting and engaging that got us into this design mess in the first place. I mean, if you want to celebrate how much they’ve simplified jobs then that’s fair, but I have to disagree personally. I think they should’ve actually improved what they already had instead of throwing it all away and giving nothing in return. They can and have done better.