Thread: Machinist extinction in 4.0?

Personally I don't think MCH was the weakest job in 3.0, it was AST. People just didn't figure out how to play MCH yet back in the day. Even after guides came out for the jobs, people consider MCH to be the most complicated job till today.

Sure all new jobs got buffed at some point and MCH buff made it preferable over BRD (If you guys remember the days when no one wanted a BRD). Then BRD got buffed to balance both ranged roles.

People have cleared A4S with DRK and MCH. AST on the other hand was not necessary. (SCH/WHM) was still optimal over (SCH/AST).

Also MCH is not good for 20s only. A very good MCH can top charts or have very minimal difference to other DPs at their best (100-150 difference).

Personally, I don't want MCH changes to make it a clone of any other job. But changes are welcome

Originally Posted by Yeol

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I actually find Machinist to be the most mind numbingly easiest Job to play in this game as it is more 123 button focused than the other jobs.

Only time a player would have to go off pushing a 1, 12, or 123 combo is every 30 seconds to refill Lead and Hot shot then back to 123 combo while weaving Reload, Quick reload, Guass Round, Ricochet, and damage buffs. Then slap on Wildfire here and there for extra damage.

MCH is certainly a Weaving Heavy Job but it is also one of the most 123 combo focus jobs in this game compared to other jobs.

The charm I find when playing MCH is the weaving because it is like a Dance. Once you get the feeling for that dance you just naturally weave skills together for a easy flow of attacks step by step. It reach a point that eventually you won't even see the Reload and Quick reload animation as you weave together skills during the 1, 12, and 123 combo.

I actually had a few times when people ask me why I don't load ammo using Reload and Quick reload because they could not see the Reload and Quick Reload animation as I was weaving together skills. Of course I told them I have when I am weaving together attacks and they notice the ammo buff right after.

Originally Posted by EdwinLi

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I also find MCH easy and fun because I main it :P but if you ask those who don't main it (As you read from some posts) They find it complicated.
Even if you search about it online you'll find the same results.

It is probably because you go from 2.5 - 1.5 - cast - no cast - instant and stance dancing. I like to keep my hands and mind busy is why I main this job.

Originally Posted by EdwinLi

The charm I find when playing MCH is the weaving because it is like a Dance.

Nice way to put it.
For me,If Monk represents Waltz dance then Mch probably represents Tap dance.

Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

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The Bard and Machinist comparision can partly blamed on how Bard was in 2.0. In 2.0 bard was the most mindless easy class of the game to play as with little to no thought required to play. Of course you could still tell even today which Bard just mindlessly play Bard and those who put thought into their job as bard by if they use their Song or not during certain team setups.

Now Bard requires some thinking into their gameplay since they need to consider the 1.5 second charge for majority of their skills whiel also maintaining their Condition damage.

Machinist suffers less on this with GB on since only 3 skills should be on 1.5 second charge while everything else is still instant cast thus making MCh more mobile than Bard now.

Originally Posted by Kahnom

Nice way to put it.
For me,If Monk represents Waltz dance then Mch probably represents Tap dance.

Basically how I would describe it considering if you put together the 123 skills with weave and reload in between it sounds like a step dance.

Though it gets annoying when the dance reach a "1, weave, 1, weave, 1, weave, Quick Reload, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1" phase due to bad luck during Reload Skill cooldown

Originally Posted by Aamalthea

I want to be like Merlwyb SO BAD.

Think about this now I would have prefered a Gun Mage Job over a Dual Gunner Job or the Machinist. There is just something interesting when you combine Guns and Magic together for a single Job but sadly FF series don't have a Gun Mage Job.

Plenty of Chemical, Tech, and natural Gun Skill Gunner Jobs but no Gun Mage Job yet. FFX-2 Gun Mage does not count since it was just the game's Blue Mage.

Machinist to me feels like a class that requires more technical knowledge than most, a large portion of their damage comes from their opener and burst rotations around their buff timers. Considering we all know by now that the vast majority of the community doesn't know what an opener even is, that shuts off a big portion of the playerbase in terms of accessibility. The RNG just exacerbates that even further.

It also doesn't help that there's a perception that the class is way too similar to Bard mechanically. This was made especially clear during 3.2-3.3, where BRD players were encouraged to swap to MCH to be more effective during that raid tier. When Bard got buffed and we went into 3.4, I imagine many players that played MCH during the previous raid tier simply went back to Bard.

As someone that runs roulettes solo every day, I'm lucky if I run into even ONE Machinist in a week. Hell, the last time I saw one in an EX dungeon run was during the very first day of 3.5 (my very first run of Sohm Al HM - which somehow ended up being a 12 minute speedrun that I've yet to replicate).

First time posting on forums, but I figured I'd throw in my 2 cents as an unfortunate MCH main.

A little back story: I first mained BRD but switched to MCH maybe a year after HW for raiding utility purposes. I tried to level MCH first before any idea of switching for raid utility though. But I had to push myself to level MCH past 53, because looking at the skills, I just told myself, "...Dis is BRD. :I I don't need another one."

Originally Posted by Ghastly

It took me ALL of heavensward to learn how to play machinist............
That's how strict this job is and why it needs more simplifying than any class. If Yoshida thinks black mage became too complex with enochain he should really try out machinist and find out how high the focus one needs to play a machinist is.

Out of all the classes I've played with mch my eyes are 99% of the time on the hotbars. I can't look away from them because the moment I do the rotation and buffs will ruin the dps numbers by a lot. I know that's true for a lot of jobs but for mch it's bad...if you mess up the rotation and end up with dead (no proc) rotations you're in for a bad time.

At the moment I can do a lot of damage and keep up with other dps, but again...it took me 2 years to actually keep up with other dps classes. It needs a lot of simplifying.

Out of my fc/linkshells I can honestly say I only know 3 people that play the class in a real way. It's too rare.
The way to fix mch is just to make it simpler like they did with ARR summoner to HW summoner. Also maybe remove the rng procs or remove hotshot or something. There's just too many things a mch needs to prepare (hotshot, blood for blood, hawk's eye, the dot skill, raging strikes).

Monk has to keep up as many things but they don't deal with rng.......

Also I hope they add a dual gun stance for mch....I want to be like merlwyb T_T
Make it like enochain, a limited time thing where you can use 2 guns

Either way I hope they just make all the preparing for mch simpler and the reloading timer less strict, maybe decrease the reload skill cooldowns.

I pretty much agree with most of what s/he said here. I spend more time watching my hotbar as a MCH than any other job. I have a love/dislike relationship with the job. I love playing it for raiding, but I will never touch it for casual content ever. And after my group has cleared a raid over and over again, I'm just like, "Can I go BRD now?"

I guess it's because of the complexity of it. BRD, to me, is very simple (don't know if I think that way, because I've played it for so long or what). So if I don't want to think as hard, I just don't play MCH.

But to answer OP's question, I don't think MCH will fade away. I think the number of players will practically stay the same. We also don't know what they'll do with the job for SB just yet. As a main, I'm really hoping they give MCH some love. The RNG really doesn't bother me that much; Quick Reload is nice. But the animations are DULL. And yes, there's too many buttons. Numerous times, I've told my group, "Guys. I just hit a button, and I have no idea which one. :D"

Also, MCH suffers from torso/pelvis dislocation and awkwardness just like BRD does. Minor (and hilarious) thing, but it's still awkward.

Forgot to say: Would be cool if MCH actually did more with machines other than just placing a turret down and letting it do its thing. Giant robot buddy, anybody? No? Just me? Okay.