MCH gameplay discussion

[Sighearth]

Hello everyone, its no news how mch is the least popular job in the game. Why so? it is because of how much your ping affects you performance? The lunchbox + gauss barrel that can ruin any glamour? For me as a mch player ( that rly likes this job) the main reason of unpopularity its our rotation. We pretty much press the same buttons every min, in the same order. Always. When we are not in the wildfire windows we just do the proc thing. MCH have little to no space for decision making ( aside from knowing if this target will endure enough for the wildfire window or no). Btw I'm not discussing MCH dps ( which is fine) or utility ( which is also fine) but the gameplay element.

Its pretty clear now how SE wants mch players to overheat every wildfire. how we have to press hot shot every min and how we have to double weave stabilizer with gauss barrel (only God and SE knows why). In my opinion the heat mechanic was a wonderful idea that could be better explored. Since we HAVE to overheat every wildfire, what is even the point of the heat after all? We don't make decisions over the heat value, we always do the same rotation and press flamethrower to overheat and thats it.

My Idea to explore further the heat mechanic and make mch a job with more decision making is as follows: Make every 3rd or so, heated shot increase the heat gain and potency of further shots. As we are handling our procs, the standard heat gain without ammo is 5, after 3 gcd ( or 2) the heat gain will be increased by 5 and the potency by some amount. As the potency of our gcds increased we would use less of our shots and spend more gcd on the "cooldown" skill. In some point we would overheat with 1 shot but we would have to decide the balance between how much cooldown gcd we are using vs the potency gain from the fewer shot. In that way we will slowly walk towards overheating in some point but we would have to actually manage heat. After overheat, the heat gain would reset and we start over. The heat gain can be a number (5,10,15) in our gauge. What you guys think?

Or SE can ignore everything I said and buff overheat to make all gcds be directed crits as inner release and we call it Michael bail wildfire

[Hugowulf]

You can remove the gauss barrel from appearing on your weapon? Also I play MCH on my alt and find it very fun, only issue I really have is switching gauss barrel back on.

[Aeliott]

it is because of how much your ping affects you performance?

This might be hot take territory, but I don't understand why this is suddenly a thing when it wasn't really any different in Heavensward. There was always the case of just squeezing in a Split Shot before Wildfire went off (after manually removing Barrel back then), yet even then there wasn't a big song and dance about it, just "if you can't quite fit it in, oh well". Now suddenly it's s job-playing deal-breaker. If anything Bard is more frustrating to min-max in high ping.

[Zzxy]

...

While I don't disagree that BRD is equally if not more frustrating to min max on high ping with the procs and GCD clippage, I will hazard a guess (at least, from personal experience) and say that there's (potentially) one big change from 3.0 -> 4.0 mchs that amplify the high ping issue with MCH:

Overheat and Heated shots


It's very jarring trying to fit that last heated split shot in 4.0 with the current implementation of overheat. When you try and squeeze that last shot in, and fail as overheat drops, your character will quite literally stop midway through the animation (in midair even) and you kind of get a constant reminder 'Hey you didn't make it' in a very obvious way every 60s.

In 3.0, if your split didn't fit in that last squeeze, it wouldn't be as jarring as the flow still felt smooth and you didn't have animations stopping midway cause wildfire ran out.

It's like you have to anticipate in advance that you have to use Cooldown in place of that last heated shot as to not interrupt your rhythm, which is a fair compromise since you shouldn't be gunning for most optimal if you're not on a decent ping anyway and have to be willing to make concessions.

As for TC, I would like them to experiment on the behaviour of overheat. One of the suggestions that I've seen and would be personally would be keen on is to change overheat to be # of GCDs as opposed to a timer.

[EdwinLi]

Overheat mechanic is a interesting concept but more of a annoyance to manage sometimes since you need to be very picky when to use Overheat while making certain you can reach overheat at the right time of a fight.