Issues with MCH since Stormblood Rework & Ideas on how to fix them

[Popotato]

Personally speaking as a MCH main, I feel like the pre-heated shots animations do contribute a lot to the clunky first impressions of the job, and it does get better at 64. But there's still a lot of clunkiness at max level, mainly tied to overheating.

The first is overheating with Flamethrower. What I've noticed is that the time in which heat starts generating varies greatly, largely due to what I'm guessing is ping. Sometimes heat generation starts instantly, other times it'll eat into the second half of the GCD before it starts. This inconsistency is annoying especially since it's before a WF, where you want to be cutting into overheating time and GCD as little as possible. Another thing, and this is mainly a problem with 2 ammo where you only use one tick to enter WF, is that sometimes the one tick just wouldn't register. After having it happen a few times, I realised it happens when I try to weave in an oGCD, mainly Dismantle, before the 1 tick of FT. So what happens is that the first tick doesn't produce any heat, and you have to wait for the second tick to overheat. This eats greatly into your GCD. Granted, the simple solution is to just not double weave with Flamethrower, but I feel like the option to do it should be available, especially with Dismantle's tight timing.

The other thing is post-overheat. The first is Cooldown not getting the bonus damage despite being cast with OH running. The other is when you return back to the clunky pre-heated shot animations, which creates a really jarring transition from the smooth heated shot animations. The other thing is the fact that Gauss Barrel is still a button. This causes an unnecessary double weave with Barrel Stabiliser, and this also causes huge fuck ups if your ping spikes. Whenever your ping spikes even slightly, the double weave will eat super heavily into your GCD since the game needs to register the Gauss Barrel usage before you can use Stabilizer. The other is that once you use Stabilizer, the game then needs to register that you've hit 50 heat, and will create a situation where you use a non-heated shot despite being at 50 heat, that cancels halfway and you need to press the ability again. This is a ping related issue that can be fixed simply by making Gauss Barrel not a button and instead a trait.

[Kitfox]

The first is overheating with Flamethrower. What I've noticed is that the time in which heat starts generating varies greatly, largely due to what I'm guessing is ping. Sometimes heat generation starts instantly, other times it'll eat into the second half of the GCD before it starts. This inconsistency is annoying especially since it's before a WF, where you want to be cutting into overheating time and GCD as little as possible. Another thing, and this is mainly a problem with 2 ammo where you only use one tick to enter WF, is that sometimes the one tick just wouldn't register. After having it happen a few times, I realised it happens when I try to weave in an oGCD, mainly Dismantle, before the 1 tick of FT. So what happens is that the first tick doesn't produce any heat, and you have to wait for the second tick to overheat. This eats greatly into your GCD. Granted, the simple solution is to just not double weave with Flamethrower, but I feel like the option to do it should be available, especially with Dismantle's tight timing.

Latency fluctuation can be a real issue with Flamethrower. Small hick ups in the connection can, for example, make the heat gauge freeze for 2 seconds after which you instantly get 40 heat, or you cancel the cast too soon because you thought you would already overheat but the due to the lag you didn't. It's actually very annoying that the ability can be canceled in a way that it does absolutely nothing but still goes on cooldown. Due to this you actually have to be very careful when double weaving Flamethrower, because not only can you cancel it without meaning to, it's actually very easy to do so due to its longer activation time. Normally ogcds have an activation time of around 0.70-0.75 sec but Flamethrower ticks are once per second, including the first one, so it's considerably tighter to double weave it between gcds than other abilities, usually it's safer to resort to small gcd clipping in order to make sure it goes off.

Considering that missing the overheat buff is more than 800 potency lost down the drain, I think it's needlessly punishing to have such a timing / canceling sensitive mechanic. Flamethrower already comes with the limitations of having to stand still and if you actually want to hit a target with it (and you should or it's more potency lost again), being nearly in melee range and facing the right direction. The only other equally punishing mechanic I can think of is NIN's Ten Chi Jin, another ability that a lot of players dislike. It would be a very nice quality of life change if we could guarantee overheat even if we missed out on the Flamethrower damage due to canceling.

[Aeliott]

There probably won't be any significant changes till 5.0 now, so there'll probably be new skills and such we won't be able to predict around.

My 2 gil for their current state and realistic changes:
*Make Flamethrower instantly cause overheat. None of this independent 1-second-tick tomfoolery. In aoe situations changes your strat to using it as a finisher, keeping the boosted stream going for the full duration.

*...and that's it. I know people rip hairs about 6 gcds inside WF, so they could maybe extend the duration to 11/12s, but I can't see them making overheat last a weird number like that. It'd be nice but other jobs rarely get latency-based bones thrown to them, and the potency loss of getting the last "heated boost" possible isn't as dramatic as everyone makes out. Or maybe they could make it an illusory 11/12s by counting down from 10, but flashing at 0 briefly at the end and still allowing anything during that to be "(over)heated".

[Kitfox]

but I can't see them making overheat last a weird number like that. It'd be nice but other jobs rarely get latency-based bones thrown to them, and the potency loss of getting the last "heated boost" possible isn't as dramatic as everyone makes out. Or maybe they could make it an illusory 11/12s by counting down from 10, but flashing at 0 briefly at the end and still allowing anything during that to be "(over)heated".

There are other ways they could improve overheating besides extending the timer:

1. Make animation locks shorter for all abilities during Rapid Fire. You know, like they've changed animation speeds for Jumps and Shukuchi, now extending similar changes to Plunge, Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines. This would make weaving ogcds much easier and result in more steady overheats without clipping because of latency fluctuations. They did implement mudra changes as a latency fix for NIN before as well, although I don't know how effective they have been since I don't play the class currently.

2. Stop overheat timer from ticking down while Flamethrower is still in progress. This would make it easier to time the first action after starting overheat instead of this thread-the-needle timing to get 6 gcd overheats.

Just with these two changes overheat and Flamethrower would become much, much more user friendly and make the class easier to play for more people with slightly higher latency. These changes shouldn't even require big reworks and the gameplay of the class would remain the same as it is now. Canceling Flamethrower early would still be a problem, but the punishment for canceling it too late would be much smaller. If we wanted to change the canceling problem, that would require an ability similar to MCH's Stun Gun in PvP actions, or redesigning Flamethrower as an instant cast. Given that such instant overheat ability does exists, however, I don't think it would be unreasonable to give a similar ability for PvE to improve playability.

[Rufalus]

MCH was one of my favorite jobs in HW but I just can't get the hang of it now in SB. I still find it fun but I feel that I perform worse on it than I do any other DPS job or at least I can't be consistent with it at all. The timing is tricky and penalty for errors is worse than ever. I do like the concept -- flamethrower and overheating are nice ideas -- it's just the way they are used in gameplay is so fiddly and unrefined.

[Eir_Z]

Just a quick question... why does the flamethrower even tick to begin with? Why isn’t it linear or exponential? Steps of 20 heat doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

[Duskane]

the only thing i would want added to MCH at this point is either a easier way to know when your turret is ready to summon again (even if its like a light that flashes on job bar) the amount of time people forget about there turret is crazy even im guilty of it sometime

[Aeliott]

snip

If the Rapid Fire one would be doable then it would be good. I imagine they'd have to increase the responsiveness of the 3 shots, though they already feel like they have pretty quick casts. But the idea of Flamethrower maintaining the OH timer at maximum is nice. It's a shame they won't make any major reworks till 5.0

[Popotato]

If the Rapid Fire one would be doable then it would be good. I imagine they'd have to increase the responsiveness of the 3 shots, though they already feel like they have pretty quick casts. But the idea of Flamethrower maintaining the OH timer at maximum is nice. It's a shame they won't make any major reworks till 5.0

I think something like the FT change is actually doable in a normal patch. WAR did essentially get a Berserk/IR rework in 4.2. Obviously not anything in 4.3, but there is hope for some decent changes to smooth out some clunkiness in the future.

I really wish 10 heat shots would come back though. It would take some time getting used to it again, but it would be for the better in the long run. I just want some difficulty with the job again.

[Rivxkobe]

I mained MCH in HW. I loved it. But when they revealed changes for SB I was immediately put off. I liked managing my 5 bullets, I liked Gauss Barrel being what it was and that sometimes you would have to remove it if standing still was out of the question for a bit. I dislike the Overheat mechanic, a lot, and I really don't like that they removed or changed some of my favourite abilities. WF was fun, and stressful, but not to the point that you felt cheated every time you used it because of a small amount of lag. Flamethrower is what really threw me off and made me decide I was going to switch mains. I know they are Machinists but I liked the gunplay aspect. I don't like... this. Especially since it ticks weird and doesn't cause a DoT.