Thread: 5.0 Machinist Launch Feedback

New Machinist is Best Machinist

- Fast gameplay, OGCDs. 1.5Sec GCD.
- Both rapid Hits and Big hits. Offering a Engaging Fast paced experience, while having times of Massive damage numbers.

i know its getting critism and thats fine, Classes arent built with 100% of the playerbase in mind, "Playable uptoo 200MS" is the game itself, not saying the game will be Perfect. OGCDs are possibly the Best part of this Games combat, and Realistically trying classes that dont have them, I cant even see why the hell someone would use it, it feels Slow, Sloggy, Locked down and Without Options. Imho the Ranged physical Role is possibly At the best state its been Ever

- Machinist, highest APM, With OGCDs, Super fast Moments and more.

- Dancer Slower APM outside Burst windows which are OGCD heavy

- Bard Slowest APM. Hard hits Without as many OGCDs.

It litterally caters to everyone and tbh They couldnt of gotten it better with each of these options, Some will complain sure, but its Normal, No one stays with the same main throughout expansions because classes take these sorts of revamps which will cause people to change, thats why your character can be every class, To Prevent that becoming a issue to the playerbase.

I Cant speak for top 99 percentile Fight DPS Differences, but i can say they've basically perfected Each Job within these roles.

Ranged physical are ment to Fast gameplay, thats the concept behind Always being able to shoot, having 0 Downtime and no movement restrictions, the class spells out to attract players Like me that want Something to push me to the Edge of how quickly i can really move my fingers, Its come with a cost of problems in higher Ping, sure. but Imho ripping out a Playstyle from the game entirely is more damaging to the game itself then it is to simply have things people question if they should use due to their Personal Circumstance.

One Actively Denies Players a Option Entirely, offering no compensation.

the other Leaves out Some of the playerbase but leaves 13 other Options for them to choose from.

Ripping it down to a Heavy hit Slower APM Class would make it once again a Lesser Bard Clone. The OGCD and Speedy gameplay of the machinist Is Actually giving us a real difference between the two Jobs.

the only Gripes i could pull for the class is:

Flamethrower, It feels almost useless now, With no reason to really use it, Imho Apply a DoT to it so it has AoE Purpose, Or let it leave patchs of fire on the floor to burn targets for a Duration.

outside of that, every ability feels fantastic.

although i do question one thing, lots of people are now refering to it as "boring and repeatitive".. you are aware u just played MCH at its MOST "boring and repeatitive" last expansion right.. it litterally had a Static Rotation which centered around 10secs of Play every minute. Its Now actually got Choice, Options and Different things to work with, its Waaay more dynamic in use now then it was. IMHO i get the latency arguments.. but they werent Friendly to high ping players in SB Either, so realistically it hasnt really changed.

Playstyles shouldnt Just be outright removed, the other two ranged physical offer Much more ping friendly options and completely different playstyles. we shouldnt be working to Reduce the Options Roles can offer.. Rather encouraging More diversity and Options given to the playerbase.. yes its frustrating. but thats how Class Reworks go. it will cause people to leave it and Others to pick the job up. But i can say now... theres ALOT More Machinists now then there was in SB.. by a LARGE margin.

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.