Bring difficulty back to job rotations, not just boss mechanics.

[Valence]

Very heavily agree to disagree. SB MCH was the absolute worst this job has seen. A more interesting thing would be to bring back gun-mage using the mechanics they've introduced in PvP in combination with the Gauss Barrel. Barrel on and we have cast bars but higher DPS, barrel off and we have mobility but lower damage. MCH should play like SAM and BLM in that we have to plan out our rotations and movements in exchange for being the selfish DPS.

Fuck gun mage. I'm sick of this constant push trying to turn the role into a caster. If I want to play a caster, I'll go play a caster. The sad part is that HW gun mage had a lot more actual cast time than most current casters.
Also let's not compare apples to oranges, SAM barely casts anything, HW gun mage casted at least 40-50% of the time if not more. You could have a point and say it was "just 1.5s casts" but what job those days even has full 2.5s + casts remaining at their core anyway?

I can definitely agree to disagree, I just tend to prefer unique job mechanics like actual heat management instead of buttons that don't even talk to each other and a bland, basic gauge that's just a resource spender.

I don't understand why, since everyone is angry at the homogenization, we still get "This class should play similarily to other classes!".
Isn't that the very mindset that leads to homogenization? Why can't MCH have its own playstyle? (Also I liked the HW MCH with the bullets system). Not to mention that Ranged is a group of jobs that benefit from (mostly) complete uptime, how would we plan out the movements when it's so freely given to us?

Not angry or anything, genuinely confused.

Have its own playstyle by making it into another caster? I'm confused but... why?

[RedLolly]

This is wrong, you lost a massive amount of damage by never using Minuet because you could only use Iron Jaws and Empyreal Arrow under it.

The way I recall it was that the 30% damage buff was negated by the cast times and lack of other songs in enough scenarios that it was a genuine concern. Just never getting into Minuet and forgoing those skills were better for the party's total output and eventually the Bard themselves because of their remaining kit. (Minstral's was the MP regen song, my mistake). It's the Alexander trauma coming up again with absurd min-maxing to complete fights, so I may be recalling a niche thing being a bigger deal than it was.

Fuck gun mage. I'm sick of this constant push trying to turn the role into a caster. If I want to play a caster, I'll go play a caster. The sad part is that HW gun mage had a lot more actual cast time than most current casters.
Also let's not compare apples to oranges, SAM barely casts anything, HW gun mage casted at least 40-50% of the time if not more. You could have a point and say it was "just 1.5s casts" but what job those days even has full 2.5s + casts remaining at their core anyway?

I can definitely agree to disagree, I just tend to prefer unique job mechanics like actual heat management instead of buttons that don't even talk to each other and a bland, basic gauge that's just a resource spender.

Have its own playstyle by making it into another caster? I'm confused but... why?

My theory is because it seems different and potentially interesting and MCH has been considered rat-tier for so long that doing anything to bring it up to a standard the general player-base is happy is genuinely discussed. Meanwhile, SE is perfectly content leaving MCH as it is for so long because, I guess, it has an insanely powerful niche position as the absolute best job to take into deep dungeons.

[Valence]

Very few people actually played Machinist in it's HW form, if I recall. It had a lot of issues. (It's a fav now but I refused to touch phys. range until SHB because of the reputation).

In the casual crowd perhaps, beyond the people leveling it in low level dungeons. It had the reputation of being an engineering degree job, which was quite over exaggerated, but it sure was one of the 2 hardest jobs in the game back then: DRK and MCH. Ironically a bad DRK could literally doom a casual party by trying to spin more than they could chew unlike a bad MCH by virtue of one being a tank and the other a DPS.

But at higher level, MCH was literally meta, and was picked consistently in raid groups.

We mustn't forget Bow Mage mode (the original form of Minstral’s Ballad) was actually a DPS LOSS after only a few minutes of being in that mode verses just never using it. I don't think MCH's original form of Gauss Barrel was the same and could be ignored.

You're probably mixing up BRD/MCH at HW release and both immediately after the first hotfixes. Minuet and Gauss were originally a 10 or 15% damage gain (one of the two), which proved barely competitive with turning them off and let autos do the work even if it barred you from having access to Empyreal, IJs, Gauss Round or Ricochet. In typical SE fashion, they had clearly not done the math properly or thought it would allow people to choose between both (lol, guess what people chose... certainly not the caster mode), so the first fix to Gauss and Minuet was to crank it up to 30% so it was a gain to use them, and people turned them off for mobility (or for the infamous WF auto fishing on MCH at the end of the opener).

Bard was just generally more reliable and easier to ignore the bad cast bar balancing.

MCH had an easier time because it was designed and built around the cast times since ammo and procs would negate the cast times, unlike for BRD that had nothing of the sort. Worst, Empyreal was an OGCD weaponskill, which meant it had a cast time but operated outside of the GCD, which meant you'd weave a casted OGCD between your GCD casts, which was frankly very awkward. It was a fun idea, but very weird.

[RedLolly]

You're probably mixing up BRD/MCH at HW release and both immediately after the first hotfixes.

Yep, this is exactly what I was doing.

[Valence]

Precisely. I have all three jobs capped and will swap to MCH when I am learning fights because of the physical ranged moment. The instant you need to plan positions on a physical ranged, it isn't one anymore. Even PVP lets MCH walk while casting.

People have no idea what they're talking about when they bring up pvp walked casts. They are a trap. They're not good design in pvp. They're not cancelable, which makes them inferior to actual casts of similar time. They still make you slow enough that they'll spell your doom the same way they would if they rooted you in place. In PvE it would be the exact same problem: they would not allow you to move faster out of danger, they'd be too slow to dodge anything, and what they would dodge, you could dodge with normal slide casting anyway.

Walking casts are bad, period.

If we had casts that didn't affect movement, that I could potentially support for something unique to rphys actually though.

[Shistar]

If we had casts that didn't affect movement, that I could potentially support for something unique to rphys actually though.

Now, that's something I'd like to see them pull off...

[Valence]

Now, that's something I'd like to see them pull off...

You can even start working around differences in identity between the 3 (soon 4?) rphys:

- MCH: Iajutsu type casts on nukes like tools, channel on flamethrower like today but with the tool being more involved in any rotation.

- BRD: like in pvp on the main filler where you actually have to swallow a crow and use the walked casts in a more involved manner than on pvp MCH (which also has to get close and personal a lot more) because they do reduce significantly important recasts for you, except they wouldn't reduce your movement speed.

- DNC: no casts but some channeled abilities like Honing Dance, please bring over Honing Dance types of moves please yes please thank you.

[Sunhwapark]

- DNC: no casts but some channeled abilities like Honing Dance, please bring over Honing Dance types of moves please yes please thank you.

Yes please, more of this and less of the mch/brd wild west sheriff rp walking. +1

[Azurarok]

People have no idea what they're talking about when they bring up pvp walked casts. They are a trap. They're not good design in pvp. They're not cancelable, which makes them inferior to actual casts of similar time.

Not to defend it but walking casts can be canceled by jumping, last I checked.

[Sunhwapark]

Not to defend it but walking casts can be canceled by jumping, last I checked.

Is there a specific time frame where it can be cancelled ?
From what I have experienced you can bunny hop 24/7 on MCH/BRD and casts won't be cancelled at all. But you can jump cancel other classes casts (WHM/RDM/BLM) etc.
The only way I've been able to cancel the walking casts is by LoSing the enemy behind a rock or wall that I cannot shoot through, which isn't always possible.