MCH wildfire is a mess

[Daws]

I'm still leveling MCH but so far the only complaint I have with Wildfire is the animation. Does it have an animation? Idk. It's a freakin' 2 min cd bomb. Crank that puppy up to BLM levels of explosiveness! You know how people complain about Holy spam? I want people to complain that Wildfire blew out their retinas.

[Nerfworthy]

I'm still leveling MCH but so far the only complaint I have with Wildfire is the animation. Does it have an animation? Idk. It's a freakin' 2 min cd bomb. Crank that puppy up to BLM levels of explosiveness! You know how people complain about Holy spam? I want people to complain that Wildfire blew out their retinas.

Pretty much this, as it stands right now Wildfire is barely noticeable amongst the other animations. It's pretty sad when our 1-2-3 combo outshines a 2min CD, lol.

[Orbus]

I'm still leveling MCH but so far the only complaint I have with Wildfire is the animation. Does it have an animation? Idk. It's a freakin' 2 min cd bomb. Crank that puppy up to BLM levels of explosiveness! You know how people complain about Holy spam? I want people to complain that Wildfire blew out their retinas.

Absolutely
A 1200 potency attack should feel like it.
I can't even tell when it blows half the time based on visual cues because the effect is so lackluster.

You know what fire 4 looks like?
A spell with around half the potency of wildfire after taking astral and enochian into account.

[Thamorian]

I for one welcome the changed to mechanics for MCH. I really liked the aesthetics of MCH but hated it's rotation that all for the sake of lining up everything up for a wildfire window that if you messed up, would kill your DPS. I'm willing to play MCH now in its current states. I will agree WF could use a better animation though.

[Taranok]

I would agree with you, except then you desync Reassemble from Drill/Air Anchor and that will frustrate the rotation there as well. If the goal was to spice up Wildfire while still keeping Wildfire, there's really a couple ways to reliably do it:

You can merge Wildfire directly into Overheat or summoning a pet, or you can make Wildfire just always crit/direct hit without needing an extra button that desyncs other parts of the rotation. Merging Wildfire into Overheat is probably the better option, and then just balancing around. Just add a unique animation to the end of Overheated to signify you shooting a fireball or something and the issue will be done.

I'm still leveling MCH but so far the only complaint I have with Wildfire is the animation. Does it have an animation? Idk. It's a freakin' 2 min cd bomb. Crank that puppy up to BLM levels of explosiveness! You know how people complain about Holy spam? I want people to complain that Wildfire blew out their retinas.

You should have seen it back in HW when it was just a wimpy explosion out of nowhere accompanied with an 18-25k damage hit, which was the single largest individual attack in the entire game at the time. The current version adds a model to it, so it's always been bad.

[IchiExorz]

I would agree with you, except then you desync Reassemble from Drill/Air Anchor and that will frustrate the rotation there as well. If the goal was to spice up Wildfire while still keeping Wildfire, there's really a couple ways to reliably do it:

You can merge Wildfire directly into Overheat or summoning a pet, or you can make Wildfire just always crit/direct hit without needing an extra button that desyncs other parts of the rotation. Merging Wildfire into Overheat is probably the better option, and then just balancing around. Just add a unique animation to the end of Overheated to signify you shooting a fireball or something and the issue will be done.

I personally find Wildfire a bit boring to use (it's literally just a Hypercharge window that does more damage.) Which is why I'd prefer to have something added to the Wildfire window. Not only to make it stronger but to emphasize on the Machinists fast playstyle.
But maybe this is just me.

Either way, I doubt SE would change too much anyway mid expansion.
I do wish it was a stronger ability with a more explosive animation though. Maybe that would make the ability feel more satisfying to pull off without doing anything to the rotation.

[Taranok]

I personally find Wildfire a bit boring to use (it's literally just a Hypercharge window that does more damage.) Which is why I'd prefer to have something added to the Wildfire window. Not only to make it stronger but to emphasize on the Machinists fast playstyle.
But maybe this is just me.

Either way, I doubt SE would change too much anyway mid expansion.
I do wish it was a stronger ability with a more explosive animation though. Maybe that would make the ability feel more satisfying to pull off without doing anything to the rotation.

My only point of contention with emphasizing on Machinist's fast playstyle is that the class should be playable on pings higher than 100 with a mildly unstable connection and not feel like garbage. Wildfire could have a million things done to it, but I'd honestly just rather see it removed as it's no longer a core part of what defines Machinist, and 1200 potency of an underwhelming oGCD wouldn't be missed if you just shifted it into other things.

[Orbus]

On paper 1200 certainly sounds like a big number, but divided by 48, the amount of global cooldowns in two minutes on the base 2.5 timer, it's 25.
Meaning that you could up the potency of the three standard combo skills by 25 and nix wildfire altogether and you'd have roughly the same effect, except skill speed reduces the gcd so reduce that to 20 and it's probably about even.

That's right, wildfire is worth a paltry 20 potency per gcd.

Air anchor and drill are both so much more significant to overall damage than wildfire that it's kind of jarring seeing as it's supposed to be the jobs signature big damage attack.
And technically it is the hardest hitting attack.
But it sure doesn't feel like it.

[Seraphor]

I never really saw Wildfire as MCH's 'hardest hitting attack', rather than it being a buff, like it's own version of Balance with a unique execution.
You hardly notice the attack itself, the animation is literally a damp squib.

It's big attacks should be machinery, and that's what seems to be going on, even if the Anchor spam phase is a little odd.