MCH completely useless

[Starkbeaumont]

Actually Bards are screaming at the top of their lungs right now, somehow they are even more vocal than MCH.

as Taban said, i thought Brds were sad over how "useless" WM is, not the overall dmg, especially with the current encounters. but good to know both camps are not satisfied by their dmg output

[Ephier]

as Taban said, i thought Brds were sad over how "useless" WM is, not the overall dmg, especially with the current encounters. but good to know both camps are not satisfied by their dmg output

Most BRD's are indeed complaining about their play style change, but they do have a deficiency in damage as well. They are still 50~80 dps higher than MCN, but that does not mean that their numbers are not low either. Also they do not have a way to instantly put up their wanderers minuet like we can do with rapid fire and gauss barrel.

[LunarEmerald]

Expect big changes with Bard and Machinist in 3.1

[Azostar]

We don't need new skills or a complete overhaul, just tweak the numbers (Lower a few cooldowns, give more potency/strength to certain skills).

I was under the impression that Gauss Barrel was intended to be situational, to be used neither permanently or never at all. Under this pretense, giving skills more potency or lower cooldowns could tip Gauss Barrel into being too strong and always having it on as a neccesity (it is a multiplier after all, not a static increase).

It would make sense from a balance point of view that we have quite low potency skills, simillar to bard. Right now, stat weights aren't known, MCH and BRD weapons have far lower weapon damage than other classes, and with the change to DET it means later game Auto Attacks will be far less weighted in your DPS.

In terms of how the class plays and is intended to feel, it's absolutely fine. The problems are that their debuffs aren't too great (on the surface), and the DPS they dish out doesn't seem be on par (on dummies). Maybe we will see a buff in the future, maybe we haven't gotten far enough into the expansion to realise how much they can actually bring.

Right now though there is a more concerning issue.

The damn hip pack model doesn't change with gear and always stays the same.

[Shhikasan]

well you have to think there are more brds then mch since you know they could of been rolling a brd since the game's relaunch.
for me it kinda of hit me hard because I played brd a lot from 2.1 up till nin and then with HW I leveled Mch and planned on maining it.
and boy am i salty as leveling another dps would be very grindy to play to 60.

BUT I'm willing to stick it out seeing as I've been seeing somewhat that mch in good rng without its gauss can do some nice dps compared to a non WM brd(cause face it brd and mch aren't made to be casters at all unless we start using mp and allowed to us tp to sprint movement is pretty a pain and in real fights leaving wm/Gauss is better only in real fights with ton of movements which is gonna be all of them).

Personally if they wanted to changed something make gauss and WM just a pure dmg buff give us our auto attacks back and no cast times. I'd be just happy with just behind melee dps not Behind tank dps and White mage spamming stone 3.

[SovereignAegis]

Behind tank dps and White mage spamming stone 3.

I actually outdamage the vast majority of MCH in neverreap as a scholar... spamming a 170 potency broil. 170 potency. It's asinine.

White Mages stone is what. 210 potency?

[Sylve]

I actually outdamage the vast majority of MCH in neverreap as a scholar... spamming a 170 potency broil. 170 potency. It's asinine.

White Mages stone is what. 210 potency?

So uhh, a 140 potency shot every 2.5 seconds combined with the Turrets 80 Potency Shot in the same timeframe, a combined 220 Potency ... Fails to outdps you spamming a potency 170 spell? Mathematically, this makes zero sense.

Not to mention Gauss Round for 200 potency every 20 seconds, Head Graze for 100 potency every 25, a 40 potency DoT ticking away the whole time, a flat 5% bonus to all damage dealt and the random occurrences of Slug and Clean Shot procs along with the forced procs while ALSO using RS, BfB, Hawk's Eye, Reassemble, Rapid Fire and Wildfire ....

Starting to lean more into the "They have no idea WTF they're doing as a Machinist".

[RiceisNice]

...

Then you need to factor that machinist's weapon damage stats are in the low values similar to bard; a white mage in cleric stance has better scaling than this with a 170 potency.

Gauss Barrel is a dps loss if you keep it beyond the intial burst. Using round/ricochet off cooldown assumes that you're keeping it on for the entire fight.

Half those buffs aren't exclusive to machinist, nor would any decent one would use it to buff split shot exclusively if that is what you're getting at.

The problem I see is with machinist (aside from me lagging behind compared to other dps classes) is that I always find myself busting my ass (aligning cooldowns, pre pull burst, pots, all of that) just to get under them in dps, and some of our burst straight up does't apply unless you make adjustments (meaning lower it's overall damage) because some vulnerability phases simply do not last long enough for wildfire (neverreap's first boss and bismarack EX come to mind). I never find myself using gauss barrel outside of burst or AoE because the auto attack loss isn't made up with the increased damage or the two skills. And the only time I do use it again after the initial burst is either in combination with my cooldowns (which I'm sure is a bug with rapid fire making GB instant cast), or when there is signifcant downtime where I can't attack the boss...and use it for burst.

[Ephier]

Gauss Barrel is a dps loss if you keep it beyond the intial burst. Using round/ricochet off cooldown assumes that you're keeping it on for the entire fight..

Not quite. MCN can stance dance with rapid fire, and it is indeed an increase to swap gauss barrel on to use those 2 cooldowns then take it off. Also in AoE applications, gauss barrel is definitely more damage.

[Sylve]

Words

The ONLY thing you lose from Gauss Barrel is auto attack.
When you take off GB, you lose access to an entire 200 potency shot which also gains 20% damage from the Barrel, you lose damage on Lead Shot and pointlessly sacrifice 20% bonus damage on Slug and Clean since those are instant under Ammo effects.

Losing 185 damage (at 57 with a HQ54 gun because there is all of one 56 NQ gun on the MBs right now) per 2~ seconds is made up in spades by the boost to damage literally everything else gets, including Wildfire.

Trying to dance back and forth with Gauss Barrel causes you to lose a flat 2 shots due to the 3 second cast as well as any Autos you would have fired just doesn't make sense to me.
In a fight with extended periods of running, I can see dropping Gauss Barrel as a viable tactic to keep DPS up, but i cannot see how wasting 3 seconds every 20 seconds to put on GB for a Gauss Round is more DPS than simply staying in GB until movement gives you reason to take it off.

Also, yes I'm fully aware than the MCH/BRD weapons are a flat -6 compared to like level weapons for all other Jobs including tanks.

PS: Don't go trying to throw those Reddit parses around as "proof", as i pointed out last time, the test was flawed in that he only tested once per mode and for differing duration's.