Media Tour MCH issues: MCH is now 4 times more punishing

[Hezzlocks]

With the advent of "more adjustments" coming up next week, I'd just like to bump up this thread. While we avoided the absolute disaster of 6 Heat Blast Hypercharges, every bit of feedback in the first post is still valid, just adjusted for 5 Heat Blast windows. Ogcd weaving continues to be a problem at 1.5s gcd, and not just because of Gauss Rounds and Ricochets, sometimes you might want to use Automaton Queen, Barrel Stabilizer or Tactician within the Hypercharge window as well.

Tactician is a possibility, but why would you ever need to use Automaton Queen or Barrel Stabilizer during the Hypercharge window? Neither of them contributes anything to the Hypercharge window. Automaton Queen has no CD and you aren't generating any battery while in the Hypercharge window so there is no loss in not using it. If you are referring to Trick Attack timings, chances are you've timed your Hypercharge window to align with Trick Attack, in which case the loss is on you for not deploying Automaton before engaging the Hypercharge window.

As for Barrel Stabilizer, there is only one possible loss for not using it during a Hypercharge window, and that's just a few seconds worth of cooldown time not running. Considering the cooldown for Hypercharge is 2 seconds longer than the duration, there is absolutely no need for having it ready *immediately* after a Hypercharge window.

You're really reaching with those two. You can already do a Hypercharge wave without weaving a single oGCD and not waste a single thing, I'm fairly certain the odd time when you might want to throw in a Tactician won't hurt at all.

[Kitfox]

snip

It's not reaching at all. It's a common occurrence to have Hypercharge windows very close before your Wildfire window and depending on the amount of battery you have an how you've aligned Wildfire with raid buff windows, you might have to summon it in the middle of Hypercharge to align perfectly for the buff window. Fight mechanics can further force you into weird alignment situations.

Citing aligning Hypercharge with Trick Attack is not a solution in favor of the "job being fine" because then you would have to weave between every Heat Blast to make use of the buff window, not to mention aligning with Hypercharge like that actually doesn't happen that often because you also want to fit in Drill and Air Anchor into those windows with another normal gcd to avoid breaking combos. Sometimes you have half a Hypercharge in the Trick window, sometimes none at all.

Barrel Stabilizer is weird in the way that if you use it on cooldown, you'll overcap heat every 6 minutes, most of the times the first occurrence happening at 2 or 4 minutes in to the fight. If you want to avoid this overcapping issue, you would have to delay Barrel Stabilizer until you've started your Wildfire Hypercharge sequence and to avoid further delays you would pop it as soon as possible inside Hypercharge, though delaying might not cost you extra usages, but that's fight dependent as well.

You can only avoid overcapping Gauss Rounds and Ricochets with no weaves in Hypercharge if they have more than ~20s on their cooldowns, otherwise you start overcapping some of the duration. It's actually a very unlikely scenario if you start mapping it out properly, and again, fight timings and downtime can push you to use ogcds at different times than what you're used to.

Avoiding weaving within Hypercharge is all well and good, but it costs you a lot of flexibility. Not to mention, while leveling you only have 2 charges on Gauss Rounds and Ricochets so the obvious design direction was to intend you to weave them within Hypercharge. Intention is irrelevant though, but it's a thing to consider when we're trying to think where the job is headed and this is not a good direction to head into.


At the Balance Discord we've mapped a lot of the rotations and situations up to 400s, some aspects up to 16 mins while trying to find patterns in the rotations. Flexibility becomes a real issue when avoiding weaving in Hypercharges, overcapping happens a lot, and it's very possible to have conflicts with Queen timings and raid buff windows. Of course, if you don't care about any of the optimization for the class, then none of this matters to you, but then I also don't understand the need to criticize the feedback without knowing the full picture. While they may not be issues to you personally, they're very real issues nonetheless and I think they deserve to be brought up.

[whiskeybravo]

I agree, it feels like there is almost a bit too much natural heat generation. Seems like nearly every fight there's a point where you're at 55 heat and BS/Wildfire is coming off cooldown. A long shot on my part, but it seems like it's mainly due to how you have to delay hypercharge based on Drill/Air Anchor timers, and I wonder if changing those to oGCD (with adjusted potency ofc) would help alleviate that since you could then weave them in to hypercharge windows instead of sitting on heat.

[Guurzak]

I agree, it feels like there is almost a bit too much natural heat generation. Seems like nearly every fight there's a point where you're at 55 heat and BS/Wildfire is coming off cooldown. A long shot on my part, but it seems like it's mainly due to how you have to delay hypercharge based on Drill/Air Anchor timers, and I wonder if changing those to oGCD (with adjusted potency ofc) would help alleviate that since you could then weave them in to hypercharge windows instead of sitting on heat.

The fact that you can't play the class on completely braindead autopilot and get 100% of maximum possible DPS out of your abilities doesn't seem like it's a problem. If a reasonably competent player can get reasonably competent performance out of the job, I think it's fine to leave room for custom optimization to each specific fight to get an extra few percent.

[Ayanumi]

Came snooping for a lil nostalgia of ShB release reactions, hope next live letter coming up addresses even 1 of these, another potency tweak and nothing else will really just secure ShB as another expac of ignoring MCH feedback.

[TheHyperFusion]

Took me a bit to re-find this thread. But anyways... Hello! I've been working on MCH lately (got it to 80 a few weeks ago). I remember this thread and the talk about Wildfire (WF), Hypercharge (HC), and Heat Blast (HB), and I decided to try my hand at this.

To start, I have been looking at my normal latency, averaging around 71ms per ping at around 10-11pm EST (or around 2-3am server time, on Balmung/Crystal DC). While I do use a controller, it ought to have pretty well the normal delay that a keyboard would have for input (or so I would assume).

I decided to try to see how many of the HBs I could feasibly weave into WF, or more specifically, how many I could get into the HC window. I was using Striking Dummies available in-game to try this out myself, and I'm heavily estimating the fractions of seconds, as I have no way to actually time it except by watching closely to the cooldown pinwheel and kinda saying "That looks around 1/4 around, so..." But anyway, onwards.

Test 1) Macro of WF, 0.5 seconds, then HC. This works, but there seems to be just over a half-second delay before Heat Blast becomes available, so I could not get the 6th HB in. Changed directions to Test 2.

Test 2) I set HC directly next to HB to minimize time between HC activation and 1st HB. Doing this, I get around probably a quarter to just under half a second delay before 1st HB is usable. I did this test multiple times (15-20, at a guess).

In either case, I've realized that, while using HB, I can press the button when it's a little under 75% through cooldown, and it will register it as being 'good' for the cooldown so it actually fires - too early and it doesn't register at all and therefore causes a delay in the next input. While doing this, I have been doing nothing except focusing solely on making sure my timing for Heat Blast is as good as I can possibly get it.

And yet, no matter how many times I try... I can only get five HBs into the window. When I said I could press HB at 75% and it still register as a good use of the ability, even if I get it while it's still available right near the end of HC, even when I have time-after-time been able to have it register as the use of the ability for the rest of the duration, it seems to pause for a quarter second or so and then gives me the 'Cannot Use Yet' error instead.

I really did try to get the elusive 6th HB, but never could. Of course, I am able to get in a Heated Split/Slug/Clean Shot just before WF is up under these ideal conditions, therefore getting a sixth proc for it - but again, I'm just able to get it with perhaps half a second to spare.

So, if we are to assume that WF is built around a "six proc" window, I would think that either HC needs around another 0.5 to 1 second more on its duration, or WF would need another 0.5 to 1 second more on its duration.

[ReiMakoto]

snip

Macros dont work in .5 intervals, so youre likely losing time with that double weave. In general dont use macros

[Lastelli]

So, if we are to assume that WF is built around a "six proc" window, I would think that either HC needs around another 0.5 to 1 second more on its duration, or WF would need another 0.5 to 1 second more on its duration.

Hypercharge gives you enough time to execute 5 (Five) Heat Blasts.
Wildfire is buily around a 6 hits window where the 6th hit is not a Heat Blast. Wildfire->Air Anchor->Hypercharge->5x Heat Blast is one of the few ways to do it. An alternetive would be double weaving Wildfire+Hypercharge->5x Heat Blast->GCD

[Kitfox]

Time to do some necromancy. Interestingly enough, it seems like MCH is the only class left without a charge system to alleviate ping problems. DRK got a Bloodweapon fix today in 6.1, meanwhile the issues in this thread are still relevant. DRG had their jump animation locks shortened yet again, meanwhile MCH struggles with Gauss Round, Ricochet, and Heat Blast animation locks. Of course, there are many ways MCH ping problems could be improved upon, and the many options collected in the OP are still relevant.

Here's a compilation of some possible fixes:
- Make Heat Blast available outside of Hypercharge at lower potency and without cooldown reduction effect.
- Reduce the effect of cooldown reduction to 10s or less (down from 15s).
- Increase the maximum charges of Gauss Round and Ricochet to 4 (up from 3).
- Increase the recast time of Gauss Round and Ricochet to 40s (up from 30s).
- Increase Heat Blast gcd to 2.0s or to an even slower speed (up from 1.5s).
- Increase Hypercharge duration to 9 seconds (up from 8s).
- Lower the animation locks on Heat Blast, Gauss Round and Ricochet to well below standard levels.

[CelestiCer]

Very interesting thread from 2019 during 5.05 patch changes? Curious, has SE touched upon addressing/fixing MCH much since then in the now late 2022, 6.21 current patch?