Thread: Astrologian 5.0 Discussion

Originally Posted by Allegor

Same with MCH. It had decent numbers, but seeing one was like finding a shiny pokemon - For the majority of players, big numbers don't compensate for poop gameplay.

I went Mach for my static in Stormblood since we needed refresh a ranged and I didn't have bard leveled.

Mach's "poor gameplay" was largely an exaggeration. The issue was it's irreconcilability with high ping. You need only look at Gunbreaker now and you can see Stormblood's Machinist loop, and it's being quite well received.

Originally Posted by Kabooa

I went Mach for my static in Stormblood since we needed refresh a ranged and I didn't have bard leveled.

Mach's "poor gameplay" was largely an exaggeration. The issue was it's irreconcilability with high ping. You need only look at Gunbreaker now and you can see Stormblood's Machinist loop, and it's being quite well received.

Excluding the fact that MCH had its main rotation be RNG and everything had to land during an unforgiving Wildfire burst window (which GNB's window is double the length and twice as often) and also had to work around an awkward buff window which had to be lined up just right since it triggered itself when you hit 100 heat automatically.

Numerically MCH was in a good spot, design wise it was in a terrible spot with a very large range of inconsistency. Hence why it got a rework which has been very well received with only minor complaints and feels powerful to play.

Originally Posted by Kabooa

I went Mach for my static in Stormblood since we needed refresh a ranged and I didn't have bard leveled.

Mach's "poor gameplay" was largely an exaggeration. The issue was it's irreconcilability with high ping. You need only look at Gunbreaker now and you can see Stormblood's Machinist loop, and it's being quite well received.

Stormblood's? The one that was a % chance proc at every stage? That's Dancer now, not Gunbreaker. MCH was heavily based on those procs, its entire rotation was saved or destroyed by it, and it was way easy to run out of shells and be back at the mercy of RNGsus.

ShB's MCH and GNB, those combos and rotations are not chance-based, they are skill and timing based. I love Dancer because it has enough other things to be doing that I can not care if a proc happens or not, but if the RNG is being bad you aren't going to see procs.

Originally Posted by Boomsmash

Stormblood's? The one that was a % chance proc at every stage? That's Dancer now, not Gunbreaker. MCH was heavily based on those procs, its entire rotation was saved or destroyed by it, and it was way easy to run out of shells and be back at the mercy of RNGsus.

ShB's MCH and GNB, those combos and rotations are not chance-based, they are skill and timing based. I love Dancer because it has enough other things to be doing that I can not care if a proc happens or not, but if the RNG is being bad you aren't going to see procs.

The 123 of Machinist wasn't the focus of its gameplay. It was the Wildfire loop, which is effectively no different than Gunbreaker's no Mercy loop. The only difference is that no Mercy is a little more forgiving due to longer duration and the fact that you can space out your OGCDs a bit more because of it.

Originally Posted by Kabooa

The 123 of Machinist wasn't the focus of its gameplay. It was the Wildfire loop, which is effectively no different than Gunbreaker's no Mercy loop. The only difference is that no Mercy is a little more forgiving due to longer duration and the fact that you can space out your OGCDs a bit more because of it.

The No Mercy loop is pathetically easy to do with very little chance for error, while the old MCH wildfire loop required getting very particular procs setup and balancing your heat such that the moment you go into it you were overheating for maximum damage output, which made it unforgiving it you made any mistakes in heat management and if your ping was not ideal. Not to mention that once you were outside that loop RNG dictated your damage output so your overall DPS could wind up taking a nose dive because of how inconsistent the 123 was rendering the burst moot.

MCH was designed away from being wildfire loop centric and inconsistent because overall it made the class easier to balance, less frustrating, and less punishing. Which got its player population to recover.

now back to AST which is the topic at hand...

I feel like the changed made it flow somewhat better. I can actually see celestial opposition DO something.

Other than that I haven't really had the time to sit down and break everything down and i'm sure people have done it for me already.

I'm looking forward to hop into the savage thread to see how healers are performing this tier.

The only reason the cards were not out right removed is because they are an integral part of the job quest and not like the lore was respected anyways, so at least SE should go all the way and make it like your picture, so much more clean and easy to peripheral vision, that's all we currently need to see anyways.

Here we go, built my own gauge.



Not all that pretty, but much easier to know from peripheral vision.