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

[alphagprime]

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.

I think its funny that you are the first person to mention Shaman for WoW. That was the first thing I thought of. The totems that Shaman got seem very similar to what these could do. Shaman had a DPS totem which did damage to mobs in an AoE around the totem. They had a totem that increased attack speed. They had a totem that slowed movement speed of mobs. They had a defense totem. They even had a regen totem. They even had a totem that bound mobs in place. Heck, there was even a tank totem (as dumb as it sounds) that pulled aggro of mobs but had very little HP and didn't attack or do anything else other than basically AoE Provoke.

All of that sounds like something that a lot of people on here are describing. I loved Shaman from WoW and a mix between FF14 Archer and WoW Shaman sounds like a boss idea to me.

[Korilynn]

I'm hoping for a nice variety of weapon skins from the start for all classes, Machinist is no different.

I'm hoping they'll have multiple skins for the turrents, so players don't all look the same. "Hey look what I invented!" Loses it's appeal when everyone has invented the same thing I know the looks will be limited and of course there will be favorites, but they can do a bit to alleviate that problem.

I'm hoping there's at least three ways to use the pet and neither one is better than the other, so there can be some variety amongst the player base as well

[treuhavik]

- 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.

Perhaps the turrets will have high HP/DEF similar to Egis, to allow use in-raid. So, instead of them needing to be destroyed or picked up, they'd have a set duration (30s?).

[Kogasan]

If mechanist plays anything like shaman did in wow i so would main it i loved shaman in wow and was really upset win mop came out in wow and blizzard changed shaman for the worse. I understand that this job probably won't play exactly like shaman in wow being mechanist is a gun job and shaman a magic based job. But if the turrets are anything like the totems in wow I'll be all over it like white on rice.

[Balipu]

If mechanist plays anything like shaman did in wow i so would main it i loved shaman in wow and was really upset win mop came out in wow and blizzard changed shaman for the worse. I understand that this job probably won't play exactly like shaman in wow being mechanist is a gun job and shaman a magic based job. But if the turrets are anything like the totems in wow I'll be all over it like white on rice.

I'm sure elemental turrets will be in but turrets by definition are mounted weapons, so things like healing and buffs aren't really possible. Still, it could be very much like a shaman.

[LlenCoram]

I'm sure elemental turrets will be in but turrets by definition are mounted weapons, so things like healing and buffs aren't really possible. Still, it could be very much like a shaman.

I don't see why they're not possible. You plop down a turret and it pulses an AOE heal every couple of seconds or something. For buffs... Maybe have like a self-destruct button where, when they pop, they release a single buff.

Or something.

[ChaozK]

Technically they arent even turrets to begin with since they fly so they might as well do AOE heals or something.

[Balipu]

Technically they arent even turrets to begin with since they fly so they might as well do AOE heals or something.

Technically they could but that just gets us back to the healing bullets problem many people had with the idea of a gun using healer class. Ehh, designing a class is hard. No wonder the game is still far behind final fantasy tactics.

[Yumi_umi]

Technically they could but that just gets us back to the healing bullets problem many people had with the idea of a gun using healer class. Ehh, designing a class is hard. No wonder the game is still far behind final fantasy tactics.

Its becuase,
- how will the class fair in endgame raid content?
- will it be too op or will it be underwhelming in pvp
This alone creates half the problems

[Puwarh]

I guess it would be extended into an engineer Or some kind of that