Thread: 5.0 Machinist Launch Feedback

I'll add my two cents as well.

The Good
First, the class is entirely changed from the Stormblood build that it was. MCH in Stormblood was a total disaster, and I am happy they changed it entirely. They made MCH far more focused on its own identity rather than trying to copy Bard in most respects.

Another major plus, is that Wildfire is now no longer reliant on using your highest potency weaponskills and abilities to up its damage. It's now a flat gain per weaponskill executed during its cast. This makes optimizing Wildfire a lot more simple as a concept.
Furthermore, we were given new skills outside of Wildfire that have really high potency, making us less reliant on a singular skill for most of our DPS gain. Again, reiterating the point here: This is simply a strong follow up on making MCH more focused on its own identity, not just in theme but also in practice. So well done to Square Enix on that!

MCH as a whole became less about micromanagement as well, making the class easier to play. Priorities within the possible rotations are easy to understand.



The things that need to improve
The first thing which is the most simple problem that I'll cover is Ricochet and Gauss Round. Their potency seem very weak right now, and I don't feel hugely rewarded using these. It's more like a thing I could use between my typical 1-2-3 combo. It feels weak however, and should be buffed.

The other obvious problem is the Ricochet and Gauss Round timers. It sort of baffles me how easy it is to over-cap on these two abilities.
The fact that Heat Blast recovers fifteen seconds on each of these two abilities, per cast, is sort of questionable. Why is the time recovery so highly tuned? I feel this is the core problem regarding the complaints of playing the class with your own ping against the server. It ends up with us having to force a Ricochet and/or Gauss Round every time we use Wildfire and spam Heat Blast, all to avoid over-capping. This is where the clipping issue is.

The solution to me is relatively simple: Don't have Heat Blast give such an enormous recovery timer on Ricochet and Gauss Round. Then, to compensate for... quote-on-quote DPS loss for fewer Ricochets and Gauss Rounds, simply up their potency instead. This will in turn make it feel more rewarding to use outside of the Wildfire window.



As a whole, I am happy with how the class plays. My only major complaint is centered around Ricochet and Gauss Round and its respective timers, and perhaps potency across the board. Other than that, I'm very happy!

Just a few things I've noticed as I've been leveling MCH:

I like the idea of the class, and I enjoy the heavy OGCD nature of it. The new "tools" part of the class look awesome and feel fun to use! I'd def like to see more of that!

Some things I'd like to see changed though:

- Uncouple the job gauges. No reason why battery and heat gauge need to be together at all times.

- Perhaps our job gauge can be used to better help track how many charged actions we have? Or maybe our cooldown on drill/bioblaster and hot shot/air anchor? While I'm fine with having to put a bar in the middle of my screen to track cooldowns, I find myself having to constantly check in with them because I know things are coming off of cooldown soon, or will be capping charges, and I need to use them. Something I hope you all look in to!

- Others have explained the bad clipping that happens during hypercharge phase, I just simply want to show my support for how bad it feels to play with when the ping feels high.

- Animation cancelling during hypercharge phase could be better. Heat blast -> gauss round doesn't look bad, but the ricochet jump looks really awkward during that phase. Maybe during hypercharge phase, instead of the jump, they do the 'throw turret'/'dismantle' animation which launches something that they shoot which then does the ricochet animation on the enemy (the bouncing shot on the 'plates')?

- Flamethrower is cool but it's really hard to know what damage it's doing. Can this be changed to better readability?

Overall, the class is much more fun and I look forward to it being made even better!

I mained MCH in HW. It could be stressful back then due to button presses + wildfire + latency but I enjoyed it. With the changes in SB and some of the new abilities, I dropped it because it was looking too stressful for me with my latency, and I was right. Knowing that I would never be able to use it completely effectively and knowing that I'd clip things, and lose damage because of the strict timings just makes it look unfun for me. And KNOWING that you CAN do better but are held back by your game connection? That's just upsetting.

ShB added some cool ideas but it still looks overly strict and stressful and I have no feelings of wanting to pick it up again anytime soon.

SE obviously has an idea of how they want MCH to work, but they need to realize that it is the least popular DPS for a reason.

Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Let’s be clear, ping dependency is NOT a playstyle. If 2 people are in the same gear and equally skilled pressing the same buttons at the exact same time and one of them does less damage purely because they live further away, that is bad design. This is an MMO and ping issues should really be factored into how they design the game, not just MCH, but the entire game.

And people haven’t “suddenly” started complaining about this, it’s been the biggest complaint about the job since SB and even to a lesser degree in HW. While it’s certainly not as punishing now as it was in SB, it would have been better if the issue was removed entirely and I imagine people were hoping for that.

The playstyle doesn’t have to change at all for ping to not be an issue. If instead of giving us 8 seconds to use 5 heat blasts, they gave us 5 heat canisters, as a type of aetherflow mechanic, ping wouldn’t be an issue anymore. We’d still need to use all 5 as fast as possible to fit them into wildfire and we’d still need to expend oGCDs to prevent overcapping within those canister shots. But we wouldn’t be punished with a heat blast just refusing to activate because we didn’t get it within the 0.5 second window because of a clipped oGCD, throwing out that entire GCD (because the game started the cast but then cancelled it thanks to latency).

The same Problems were also stated about Ninja and too a extent monk also, OGCDs and faster rotations have always impacted higher Ping Rotations, and your changes would Not work.

1) your fix doesnt fix the DPS Difference between a Low and high Ping.

2) It doesnt deal with Double Weaving which is another thing that impacts people of a high Ping.

Due to how FFXIV Combat works, Fast rotations Dont Work on high Ping at all, because the only way to ramp Speed into Rotations is Simply by OGCDs Faster GCDs and Double Weaving. which all impact a player with high ping, so while no the term "latency problem" isnt a playstyle, the Playstyle Adopted CAUSES "latency problems" and cant be Performed without those flaws existing.

the only way to make FFXIV Entirely high ping friendly, is to all together slow down combat even further and Reduce the Options for players who want fast rotations.

they did CREATE a high ping friendly Machinist,

its Called Bard. i highly Suspect, they also Partly changed Bard into a DPS so they could have a high ping alternative to Machinist as Bard has been created with ALOT less OGCDs and no Reduced GCDs, thus giving players as yourself a Option to be a Pure Ranged Physical DPS Also without taking the possibility of a Fast rotation away from those who want it. this is also another thing i've not understood about these arguments, Most say "we dont need Spammy Low Damage attacks, Combining the damage would perform the same DPS on Slower Rotations" but Bard is exactly that, its a high DPS roughly the same point as Machinist DPS wise. and offers Slower bigger Hits with its abilities, with what can be compared to Just Nukes. yet you all Reject Bard. So clearly, you want the Spammy low damage attacks. because ur prefering it to Bard which is Exactly what your asking for.

Condensing Machinist down will litterally make us a bard Copy, Bards do the same thing as Machinists almost, the differences Lies alot of its Damage comes from its DoTs and Heavy hitting attacks, but its OGCD options are far smaller, with no Weaving, no double weaving, and no bursts of Low GCD moments or Spamming. so if ur Ideal Machinist are these changes, bard should effectively be perfect for you....

Machinist has been Unfriendly to high ping for over 2 years now, Realistically they havent taken anything away from you. to make Machinist high ping friendly and get a high ping player on the same DPS as a Low Ping Player, the Job would have to lose Double weaving capability, Lower GCD Capability, and the quantity of Spam Abilities it has. it'd require a Second overhaul to make work, or they'd just half fix it and leave us in the same state as we were for the entirity of SB.

whats the point in introducing changes. if It still doesnt fix the job for high ping players and to that end, is Removing Fast paced OGCD heavy Playstyles from the game entirely Worth it. Because it will lose them players, theres no reason Something like Machinist cant exist providing theres Alternatives to machinist.

not every job in the game has to be catered to every player in the game, Jobs are options, 90% of the Jobs run on slower Rotations and are made in a way to be high ping friendly, theres nothing wrong with those who do have Low Ping to pull off the Accelerated Gameplay wanting a Choice also.

your fix also causes multiple other problems. if ur able to Pre-use it to Generate 5 charges, it could become Meta to cast it before a fight by so many Seconds to Then get off a Second burst sooner, which could lead into More problems. The last thing we want is to be Another Job that gets wrecked everytime someone immediately pulls the boss. it doesnt fix the problems at all, your problem garuntees a final heatblast.. but your still not going to perform like a Low Ping player, u have no access to the Machinist Double Weaving capability. your still gonbig to be the exact same behind a Low Ping player, ur fixs just make it sound better on paper, but in reality wouldnt change a Dime. if the the fixs were that easy SE would have Implemented them.

the reason these QoLs Dont exist, because they dont work, FFXIV Combat is set up in a Way Ping Affects it, Thats a Inherit flaw of the Systems in itself, but nothing can be perfect. for high ping and low ping players to perform at the same Level, u would have to remove OGCDs, Weaving, Abilities that lower GCDs and Timers all together, because there are people over 400 MS Playing this game, if they're going to cater to u at 200MS why shouldnt they then cater to 400MS.. why not ascend to a point where we have 6 buttons we press in a row continously. to ensure no ones at a disadvantage, while at that Why not Reduce the games Graphical Ability to cater to those with worse PCs.

the list of QoLs to cater to players Problems is ENDLESS, if u start fixing them this will pass to the next problematic Topics, no game provides a World where NO ONES at a advantage. that is why MMORPGS fix the problem by introducing Different Jobs. so if one DOesnt work the Next will, Jobs are not built to cater to everyone, they're built to give People a Option.

Originally Posted by Arkenne

Question tho:
So they ended up being 5 Heat Blast in 1 Hypercharge? not 6?

its defintly 5, i have 26 Ping, and cannot do 6, the animation doesnt work at all even if u try to cast a 6 while the buttons Still glowing, so it should be pretty doable aslong as ur Ping isnt completely wrecked.