The Machinist Thread. With Cerulean Blasters in Hand...

[Tex_Mex]

As far as the bots, I really hope that they do not make more "pets" for us to control. Considering we already have a pet based ranged dps, i really hope that the bots function more like cooldowns with activatable abilities that can only be used once per bot cast. Something like:

1) Artillery Bot - Places a bot on the ground that lasts for 20 seconds and does x damage over time to a single target. Pressing the cast button again fires a barrage of attacks at a targeted area. 90 sec CD
2) Shield bot - Places a bot on the ground that doubles the effectiveness of all shields placed on nearby party members (adlo/stoneskin/succor) for 10 seconds. Pressing the cast button again places a shield on all nearby party members around the same potency as succor. -120 sec CD

[Tex_Mex]

3) Jammer Bot - Places a bot on the ground that slows all enemies within a 20m radius by 20% for 10 seconds. Pressing the cast button again allows the bot owner to teleport one party member to the bot's location instantly. - 120 sec

I like the idea of the bots providing utility in ways that are not present yet, but that are only useful in certain scenarios. No bot should provide anywhere near as much utility as a bard, so that the tradeoff can be higher single target damage.

[Tex_Mex]

Machinist looks amazing, definitely going to play it for a while . Even if it's rubbish, it's got guns & robots!!



Do we know that's what that means yet? Surely it would be a class with no job if you leveled it 1-60...

I think that this means that Machinist IS the job. Also, many people believe that the job will start around lvl 30 or higher, instead of all the way down at lvl 1. Think like the dark knight from WoW. These new classes will likely require that you have one other max level character already, and function more as "hero" classes that start at higher levels.

This way, players still have to go through the traditional roles in order to get access to these other jobs. SQEnix could even go this far.

DRK KNIGHT - Must have a paladin or warrior to lvl 60 in order to have access to the job
ASTROLOGIAN - Must have a scholar or white mage at lvl 60
MACHINIST - Must have another dps class to lvl 60 in order to access

[Sainya]

I have, and always will want, Gaius' gunblade. I've been waiting since 1.0. Pls sir.

[ChazNatlo]

DRK KNIGHT - Must have a paladin or warrior to lvl 60 in order to have access to the job
ASTROLOGIAN - Must have a scholar or white mage at lvl 60
MACHINIST - Must have another dps class to lvl 60 in order to access

Of course this would mean I get access to my two desired classes just by leveling arcanist. Works for me, but I suspect some complaining from... pretty much eveyone else.

[Balipu]

I have, and always will want, Gaius' gunblade. I've been waiting since 1.0. Pls sir.

We might have to wait till 4.0 for that, but gunblades are far too iconic to leave them out of player hands.

[Grayve]

DRK KNIGHT - Must have a paladin or warrior to lvl 60 in order to have access to the job
ASTROLOGIAN - Must have a scholar or white mage at lvl 60
MACHINIST - Must have another dps class to lvl 60 in order to access

Except Yoshi stated at the EU fanfest that we could play the DRK at launch of Heavensward.

[Tex_Mex]

Except Yoshi stated at the EU fanfest that we could play the DRK at launch of Heavensward.

NICE! then the highest the level requirements could be is 50.

[Alberel]

I think a lot of people are missing what the word 'turret' means in the pet description. Turrets are stationary pets, they do not move or follow, they stay where they are deployed and attack at range from that location. If you go and rewatch the Machinist video from FanFest you'll see that the turret is deployed with a ground targeted circle which makes it pretty clear these things do not move (despite flying). This gives them a distinct difference in playstyle to SMN.

Now if we were to use turret based classes from previous MMOs (GW1 Ritualist, GW2 Engineer, WoW Shaman, etc) to get ideas for how they'll work we can guess a few things:

- The player will deploy a turret (or turrets, depends on how many they're allowed at once, most games allow more than one) at a set location and it will stay there until destroyed or picked up by the player.
- Different turrets will have different abilities; some typical examples are a basic ranged attack, a pulsing PBAOE, some kind of crowd control and some kind of PBAOE support effect (such as a regen or refresh effect).
- There will probably be some kind of buff that allows the turrets to temporarily use a more potent version of their basic ability.
- Their playstyle normally focuses on tactical control of the combat area. They do the most damage when the enemy is within range of their turrets and they are usually slow to reposition. In theory this means they should do extremely high damage when positioned well and significantly less when not (this typically makes such classes incredibly good at point defense in PvP). How this will work in a raid scenario remains to be seen; the amount of movement required in some fights does not lend itself well to turret-style gameplay.
- The player them self will likely have an assortment of skills to keep their targets where they want them; i.e. methods of drawing distant targets in and keeping them within range of the turrets. A class like this NEEDS some kind of crowd control to work.

The Machinist may not actually work like this but if YoshiP is being sensible he'll at least look to previous incarnations of this archetype for inspiration so we should see at least a couple of these concepts in play.

[LlenCoram]

I think a lot of people are missing what the word 'turret' means in the pet description. Turrets are stationary pets, they do not move or follow, they stay where they are deployed and attack at range from that location. If you go and rewatch the Machinist video from FanFest you'll see that the turret is deployed with a ground targeted circle which makes it pretty clear these things do not move (despite flying). This gives them a distinct difference in playstyle to SMN.

Now if we were to use turret based classes from previous MMOs (GW1 Ritualist, GW2 Engineer, WoW Shaman, etc) to get ideas for how they'll work we can guess a few things:

- The player will deploy a turret (or turrets, depends on how many they're allowed at once, most games allow more than one) at a set location and it will stay there until destroyed or picked up by the player.
- Different turrets will have different abilities; some typical examples are a basic ranged attack, a pulsing PBAOE, some kind of crowd control and some kind of PBAOE support effect (such as a regen or refresh effect).
- There will probably be some kind of buff that allows the turrets to temporarily use a more potent version of their basic ability.
- Their playstyle normally focuses on tactical control of the combat area. They do the most damage when the enemy is within range of their turrets and they are usually slow to reposition. In theory this means they should do extremely high damage when positioned well and significantly less when not (this typically makes such classes incredibly good at point defense in PvP). How this will work in a raid scenario remains to be seen; the amount of movement required in some fights does not lend itself well to turret-style gameplay.
- The player them self will likely have an assortment of skills to keep their targets where they want them; i.e. methods of drawing distant targets in and keeping them within range of the turrets. A class like this NEEDS some kind of crowd control to work.

The Machinist may not actually work like this but if YoshiP is being sensible he'll at least look to previous incarnations of this archetype for inspiration so we should see at least a couple of these concepts in play.

This. After rewatching the video over and over it finally clicked that the red circly targeting reticule he uses means those turrets are probably not mobile. I started thinking up interesting mechanics given different turrets, like stun turrets I could huck down a hallway or something.