MCH, still as bad?

[Nirurin]

There's not much guns you can find that look decent with gauss barrel and the lunchbox

Oh. well that sucks.

[Bissani]

I played both in the same encounter with the same setup (PLD-DRK-WHM-SCH-DRG-NIN-BLM), and while ad a BRD i can put out higher personal DPS, with MCH the overall dps increased thanks to hypercharge. (And BLM know very well his job, usually being top dps with foe)
While Foe and battle voice buff 1 DPS and 1/2 healer (depending on the situation) and some DRK skill, hypercharge buff 2 melee dps (hopefully DRG and NIN), yourself and both tanks (thinking of a double/triple buffed fell claeve ) .
Also the duration and the cd of hypercharge are the same as foe while not consuming mp.

certainly MCH can't compete with BRD on personal dps, but i think that with the right setup MCH is preferable to increase the party overall dps.

[RiceisNice]

I played both in the same encounter with the same setup (PLD-DRK-WHM-SCH-DRG-NIN-BLM), and while ad a BRD i can put out higher personal DPS, with MCH the overall dps increased thanks to hypercharge. (And BLM know very well his job, usually being top dps with foe)
While Foe and battle voice buff 1 DPS and 1/2 healer (depending on the situation) and some DRK skill, hypercharge buff 2 melee dps (hopefully DRG and NIN), yourself and both tanks (thinking of a double/triple buffed fell claeve ) .
Also the duration and the cd of hypercharge are the same as foe while not consuming mp.

certainly MCH can't compete with BRD on personal dps, but i think that with the right setup MCH is preferable to increase the party overall dps.

The problem exasperates when you start factoring healer dps combined with the uptime of foe, it simply beats out hypercharge, and barely evens out in a typical 2melee/2range setup. They're most likely re implementing the LB penalty in 3.2 where you get a hefty decrease to LB charge if you overstack beyond 2 of a role (tank/melee/range/healer), so you're going to be losing a lot more with taking 3 melees aside from spacing on the boss and quick-dps on adds in some cases.

There's also the part where hypercharge is more of your personal dps cooldown because of the buffed turret potency. MCH has a lot more to lose out (speakign from purely an personal dps perspective) of hypercharging a regen than a BRD will ever will BV anything that isn't foe requiem.

[RinchanNau]

There's also the part where hypercharge is more of your personal dps cooldown because of the buffed turret potency. MCH has a lot more to lose out (speakign from purely an personal dps perspective) of hypercharging a regen than a BRD will ever will BV anything that isn't foe requiem.

But there are perks to regen as MCH as well. BFB, HE, and RS do not affect your turret autos, for example. Outside of Hypercharge you are able to regen while doing full DPS (minus turret autos) at the same time. It's a much greater loss for a BRD to use their offensive CDs w/ regen up. Unplanned regen uptime hurts MCH a lot less. A BRD will need to decide between delaying the regen, delaying the offensive CDs, or using both at the same time and taking the additional damage hit.

[Velhart]

What buffs we need or don't need will mostly depend on how SE decides to approach content in 3.2. They have already gone out and said they are making ways for tanks to tank more, and healers to heal more. How far they plan on going with that we will have to see.

The biggest issue I believe MCH has is having steady DPS. They shouldn't be higher or lower than BRD, but there is a lot of RNG still involved in MCH rotation and SE could definitely do some reworking to take more of the RNG out. Maybe there is a better way, but I think making Split > Slug > Clean a proper 1 > 2 > 3 combo without needing to proc would work. Of course changing the potency of each to not overpower us. Ammo can still be used as a tool to raise potency on abilities. There is still plenty for MCH to do on rotation with this. I would be interested to hear what others think about this rather if a good idea or bad idea, or have a better idea of their own.

BRD and MCH should definitely play differently, but there definitely needs to be more symmetry in their support functions. This is where they need to be more similar on. Currently, Foe's Requiem takes the winning spot in terms of these skills. I was thinking of maybe having Hypercharge and Foe's Requiem work the same. Have both require no MP, set for a certain amount of time, and it is an overall DPS boost for everyone at a certain advantage that wouldn't be overkill. So both melee and mages can start off strong. Of course balance the content to work around it so it isn't too OP. This also makes things easier for BRD similar to MCH on wasting MP when needing TP/MP. So say that both abilities have say a 2 minute cooldown timer and for 25 seconds you get a 5-10% boost in physical/magical for the whole party.

Again, it could be a good or bad idea, but that would even the playing field in benefit of both BRD and MCH.

[Cromi_Jobly]

Personally, I think the best buff they could give MCH is a new trait. Governor Off: 10% chance to reset Hypercharge timer. So every 3 second tick there's a chance to get your hypercharge back and throw out more DPS or regen.

[RiceisNice]

But there are perks to regen as MCH as well. BFB, HE, and RS do not affect your turret autos, for example. Outside of Hypercharge you are able to regen while doing full DPS (minus turret autos) at the same time. It's a much greater loss for a BRD to use their offensive CDs w/ regen up. Unplanned regen uptime hurts MCH a lot less. A BRD will need to decide between delaying the regen, delaying the offensive CDs, or using both at the same time and taking the additional damage hit.

I think you more or less answered it yourself as well, but that's also cooldowns that aren't affecting part of your dps. And in a scripted (which is almost all) fight, regen can't really be unplanned unless people are (excessively) dying. Otherwise, the toggling of my regen is almost clockwork in regards to the fight.

What buffs we need or don't need will mostly depend on how SE decides to approach content in 3.2. They have already gone out and said they are making ways for tanks to tank more, and healers to heal more. How far they plan on going with that we will have to see.

Each weapon skill could have a different secondary affect when it's used with ammo (hence quick reload for those on spot requirements, versus a normal reload for your next 5 shots), or make the ability itself have a stacking usage that resets refreshes on it's own; each cast uses 1 charge, and 1 charge refreshes every 15 seconds. Sort of like dork arts but you're drawing from cooldowns instead of mp.

Another synergy that might improve the overall desirability of party composition is giving MCH blunt or hybrid (blunt and piercing damage, since the ability animations implies blunt impact and piercing at times), and a means to inflict blunting debuff, that serves as a synergy to MNK's dps if they can use bootshine every 1st hit instead of dragon kick (as well as being applied faster).

[Velhart]

snip

Sounds pretty cool. I think something like that they would have to rework in a level increase/expansion release and not simply an update. I do wish we would get a piercing debuff, but I don't know if that would affect party balance or not.

[RinchanNau]

I think you more or less answered it yourself as well, but that's also cooldowns that aren't affecting part of your dps. And in a scripted (which is almost all) fight, regen can't really be unplanned unless people are (excessively) dying. Otherwise, the toggling of my regen is almost clockwork in regards to the fight.

Even in a scripted fight with everything planned CD management is, imo, a little easier on MCH. With the exception of 22-24s every 2+ min you can regen while making full use of your buffs. 90 second windows for regen with minimal loss. With BRD you often much smaller windows. About 15s at times. Or a maximum of 40s between some buff windows. On top of that you have the 3s cast times for BRD songs.

My response was toward the claim about how difficult MCH has it because of the potential DPS loss of Hypercharging regen. BRD has a lot more to lose using buffs with regen ticking, and more planning is involved to maximize damage output while keeping up with the needs of the raid. That's all this comes down to, imo. This doesn't mean that BRD has it that much harder in regards to buff and MP/regen management. Simply that MCH has some advantage there, not a disadvantage.

[RiceisNice]

A piercing debug wouldn't really do much, esp if they have to balance their dos around having it. Mostly because drg has to do their chaos thrust combo for the dot, which naturally includes disembowel