Thread: 5.0 Machinist Launch Feedback

I played stormblood as a high ping mch the entire expansion and could still optimize and parse well.

Shadowbringers is FAR more punishing to high ping players than Stormblood ever was.

1.5s recast times have been a complaint about machinist for as long as they have been a thing and a pretty universal ones at that, they really have to go if they dont want to force people off the job.

To any low ping players saying that they would leave the job if they slowed it down: Id rather you had a CHOICE to leave the job due to not liking it than others being FORCED off the job due to their latency. Its not fair to people who live on the other side of america to design a job like this in a game with instances which are so inconsistent. Not to mention they put their servers on the very west edge of america which just destroys anyone on east coast.

Very unfun to just be told "its our class now go find something else to play" after 4 years.

Originally Posted by Ayanumi

I played stormblood as a high ping mch the entire expansion and could still optimize and parse well.

Shadowbringers is FAR more punishing to high ping players than Stormblood ever was.

1.5s recast times have been a complaint about machinist for as long as they have been a thing and a pretty universal ones at that, they really have to go if they dont want to force people off the job.

To any low ping players saying that they would leave the job if they slowed it down: Id rather you had a CHOICE to leave the job due to not liking it than others being FORCED off the job due to their latency. Its not fair to people who live on the other side of america to design a job like this in a game with instances which are so inconsistent. Not to mention they put their servers on the very west edge of america which just destroys anyone on east coast.

Very unfun to just be told "its our class now go find something else to play" after 4 years.

With this view, should we not just eliminate MCH? Give bard the visual ability to equip a gun. Because they will be exactly the same if you remove APM. I guess with the removal of that is just glamour since they will play exactly the same. That's boring.

Originally Posted by Mistyregions

With this view, should we not just eliminate MCH? Give bard the visual ability to equip a gun. Because they will be exactly the same if you remove APM. I guess with the removal of that is just glamour since they will play exactly the same. That's boring.

In no way would the removal of 1.5s recast times make MCH the same as BRD, we dont have any procs in our rotation anymore and we also dont have any DoT abilities, were you even thinking before you said this?
In your mind what are the difference that make MCH and BRD different? If the answer is only 1.5s recast times then you have a very surface layer view of the class in my opinion.

Not a day goes by that I don't see someone ask about how much ping you need to play this job and not a day goes by that someone isn't disappointed when I'm forced to say that this class is still ping gated and unplayable for them after 2 years. Putting all other annoyances aside, I just can't understand how SE could've ignored the number one complaint through the whole of Stormblood and doubled down on the things that caused problems. Rapid Fire weaving was a problem with just 3 gcds and a couple of weaves. What do they do? Now you have 4 times more Rapid Fire in the form of Heat Blast and the same amount of ogcd weaves but why on earth would it be a problem!? What, the buff window is slightly more lenient? The core problem is still exactly the same and just as bad for higher ping players! Extremely frustrating that feedback is straight up ignored. They could've fixed this job in so many ways, even kept up the exciting speed aspect in many ways, but they decide to do it in the worst way possible, in way that was already given negative feedback about. But hey, at least everybody so busy pressing a million buttons and roleplaying with their cool robot that they won't have time to notice the problems.

I've been playing FFXIV since the Beta (although just for a while) and then returned after Heavensward was announced. What got me so much into the game until now was the Machinist job. Being able to play the job one of my favourite characters from Final Fantasy Tactics (Mustadio).

After being a MCH main for a good while, over the course of the last 2 expansions (HW and StB) and experiencing the joy of raiding with it despite its shortcomings, I can't help but come to these forums and type down my frustration with the job right now...
For starters I'm Mexican and as such, having slightly high ping has been an issue while playing the game since forever, its a factor when deciding what jobs to play when bringing them to raids (like Ninja, for example). While I could feel the great disadvantages of playing MCH back in Heavensward and Stormblood, it has never felt as punishing as it does right now.

To elaborate on my experience so far: The extremely fast pace of the job doesn't take into account people who suffer from moderate to high pings, thus making the loss of resources the most evident culprit when calculating difference in potential DPS and the cause of much distress for players, I would imagine. For example having to sit on 3 charges of Ricochet and Gauss Round, because sometimes that is the only way you can get a proper 5x 1.5gcd "Rapid Fires" + 1x Regular GCD Wildfire (You would only be using Heat Blast in this scenario, without weaving at all between GCDs). Even after switching ISPs to improve my experience, it still remains the issue that sometimes I won't be able to play the job as its intended.

After experimenting for a while I noticed that Ricochet animation lock is the longest out of our predilect ogcd's and, in my case at least, the main reason I'm super scared to weave during Hypercharge + Wildfire windows. During such windows I've begun to only weave 1-2 Ricochets only as a means to bypass this issue. I'd imagine shortening the animation lock for this ability would solve most of my issues. I don't think I have the ammount of insight right now to propose any other kind of improvements, either that or slightly reworking the way Hypercharge works to make it better.

Regarding other job issues I've encountered so far its the weird Reassemble and Drill timers, although not as bad as the apparent Wildfire potency losses.

MCH I think is going to be needing a DPS buff with all this talk of SMN/RDM buffs going around. If it doesn't then it will likely be pushed to the sidelines in end game for double caster meta. For MCH a couple of things should change.
1) Queen needs to work with Wildfire. Its attacks should be treated the same as your own to stack up wildfire, the fact that it doesn't just bewilders me.
2)Reassemble should have an instant animation. Many times do I find myself ending a hypercharge with a drill ready and reassemble but no matter how fast I hit my buttons there is always a delay on the drill. The problem is 100% reassemble because without it I can get off an Air Anchor or a Drill after a hypercharge fairly easy.
3) Guass/Ritchotet feel like they need the buff. I don't think Heatblast needs the potency but guass/ritchotet do. 150 potency doesn't feel impactful enough to make me want to use them outside of hyperdrive simply because you spam them in between heatblasts. They don't feel like an important core. I think changing them to 200 potency would be perfectly reasonable.
4) What is really the point of flamethrower? Sure its a DPS gain if you let it run on two targets for 3 ticks but I mean who really does that?

I've noticed that Drill also has a weird animation lock that sometimes clips the GCD, is there any way to fix this? Playing MCH right now is causing me severe depression, lol

On the way MCH plays:
I really struggle to comment on this. I honestly love the way it plays right now, but I understand the frustration about latency and MCH. My ping to the servers is 82, and yet I have to play through a VPN in a mode that emulates 0 ping in order to be able to squeeze all my oGCDs into heat blast and still get off a full wildfire. Even then, there are times when I can't do this and miss a GCD in wildfire. I can't begin to imagine what it's like for people with substantially higher ping.


On MCH's position relative to other jobs:
MCH needs a bit of a buff right now. It's supposed to be a "selfish" DPS, but it does much less damage than SAM and BLM (with SAM also being a bit underpowered compared to BLM), and also does less personal (not just raid) damage than DRG and MNK. This problem goes a bit deeper than this simple statement, so I'd like to include a bit more:

- What MCH has that SAM and BLM do not have is tactician, but SAM has feint and BLM has addle. Feint and addle may cover only physical and magical damage, respectively, but the impact is stronger and it has half the cooldown of tactician. There is no reason that MCH should be anything more than a small (1-1.5%) amount behind these two jobs. Mobility on MCH is a helpful advantage, but Savage optimization is such that SAM and BLM don't lose more than a very small handful (if any, in some fights) of GCDs to mechanics.

- All 3 aiming jobs are not in the greatest place right now. The 1% role buff is giving us a spot in preferred compositions, but it's dangerously close to not being worth bringing an aiming job. When I say MCH needs a buff, I really mean that all three aiming jobs do. This is a MCH thread, however, so I'm mainly focusing on MCH's plight.