Thread: 5.0 Machinist Launch Feedback

Now that I'm finally 80, it's time for me to give my 2 cents on machinist.

The good:
From a marketing standpoint I think I like the revamp. The new 700p gcds are fun to use, and the job is visually more appealing than it was in HW and SB.
Would be nice to have the option to continue using the rook autoturret at 80 though, or perhaps a glamour system similar to the one summoners have. Some people have said the robot looks out of place in the game's aesthetic and I kinda agree. I'd rather have a faust from the alexander raids.

The heat and battery gauges being usable at 50 but capping at 100 is nice from a gameplay standpoint. Gives some flexibility as to when you want to overheat/summon automaton. It's very valuable for quality of life when in places like dungeons or fights with random combat timings. I'm enjoying this way more than the super scripted stormblood rotation where you had to time your heat to reach 100 at the same time wildfire came off cooldown, 50 gauge is much easier to plan around.

Improvements:
Wildfire feels like it doesn't do enough damage for a 2 minute cooldown? It's strange that it can no longer crit or direct hit too. The reason old wildfire couldn't do so was because it scaled directly from damage you did; so if it took in a crit, and the final number could crit as well, it would have basically double crit which mean it could double dip from crit/dh. The current version that just deals flat potency increments doesn't have this issue, there's no reason why it shouldn't be able to crit or direct hit.

Air anchor and drill are integral to keep on cooldown in the current rotation, and as others have said the cooldown isn't easy to track from the small icon. I think giving both 2 charges would be an easy fix. It would make the job slightly easier to play yes, but I don't think anyone will argue mch isn't one of the hardest jobs to play optimally right now - definitely way more so than bard and dancer.

Flamethrower is still a very underwhelming level 70 skill. While it's true that at 250p per gcd for 4 gcds it's our strongest aoe after bioblaster, losing autoattacks and heat from other skills cut into those gains slightly. It feels like it needs to do something else to distinguish itself. In the first place it's kind of weird that a move called flamethrower doesn't interact with your heat gauge at all too.

Would it hurt to have autocrossbow reset the cooldown on gauss round/ricochet as well? MCH's niche is more burst aoe compared to bard that excels at sustained multidotting, they should at least excel at that. Even though autocrossbow is a dps increase over spread shot and heat blast in aoe situations, knowing you're losing the cd resets on those ogcds feels bad.

They could stand to do a bit more dps in general too. As the numbers look currently, it looks like they are behind monk and dragoon in certain fights right now. As the 3rd 'selfish' dps, they should be at the very least the 3rd highest dps only behind blm and sam. And before you tell me about 'ranged tax', this is from real fights already; monk and dragoon are losing uptime to mechanics and still doing more damage than mch.

Random:
I think barrel stablizer could be more interesting too. It's very useful to ensure you can wildfire quickly at the start of a fight of course, but I feel it could do a bit more.
What if worked in two ways: if below 50 heat, it works as normal and gives you another 50 heat, but if you were at 50 or more heat, it drains 50 heat and gives you 50 battery instead? It's a stablizer after all, it's more thematic if it works in both ways.

Currently there seems to be an issue where you actually generate more heat than you need from weaponskills, and when the time comes to wildfire you need to use barrel stablizer afterwards instead of before it, which is kind of weird and out of sync. It might alleviate that issue somewhat and give it more flexibility.
For people complaining about hypercharge ping dependency, if it was a dps gain to trade 1 hypercharge window for 1 extra automaton summon, it would at least reduce the incidence of hypercharge in the rotation a little when used like that.