Just a Disgruntled Old Machinist Main Complaining

[Ravenecroft]

So... I may be making this mainly to vent the annoyance somewhere, as very few from what i see, share my opinion. I REALLY dislike the machinist rework. The class went from an absurd skill-cap, albeit clunky job; to a clunky job that has very little area for optimization. Though clunky for a different reason. It is still lag dependent mind you, the 1.5 gcd weaving without clipping is an issue for many. So the main reason for the class being restrictive is still there.

But now we come to the meat of the issue. The class went from a tight and satisfying rotation, that rewarded perfect execution and punished mess ups, to a class that lacks any rotation outside of the 123 combo and a priority system that forces you to glue your eyes to the hotbar less you miss something coming off of cooldown. And hell you cant even memorize when those things come off of cooldown since drill and anchor are affected by skill speed, and delaying either for any reason, is a dps loss so if you have drill or anchor coming off in less than 2 seconds, you gotta drop a gcd and just sit there awkwardly waiting for that to come off of cooldown to not delay it. Its so immensely clunky. And to add to that the 123 combo is a travesty because youre constantly interrupted and often do other stuff for long enough to drop combo anyways despite your other skills not breaking combo. I mean this could have been remedied by keeping the old proc system and ammo so you could pool it for times you dont have anything else to do. Sorry went on a rant there. But then we come down to the fact that the class now feels like a bunch of mechanics slapped together awkwardly and forced to be a class. And while the new multi tool abilities look nice they are just brainless dps gcds they add nothing but clutter for you to press, and awkward clutter mind you. The automaton queen is a gauge for no real reason. I mean yes the gauge is there so you can line it up with raid cool downs... but it has zero interaction with anything else in your kit. And the new overheat... first 50 times its ok. But the thing is you're hypercharging vastly too often so you spend around 50% of your time mashing heatblast and an ogcd, which is just "carpal tunnel inducer" the class. There is very little of a cooldown period like with the old machinist that had the *confused screaming* period of overheat and the cooldown period. Here you just roll your face across the keyboard. Oh and flamethrower is wierd... you have to time 3 ticks of it only or its a dps loss on aoe.

Overall sorry for venting, i just feel betrayed having my favorite class turned into something i barely feel like leveling because im just so bleeding bored of it. Just throwing this out here to see if any other of the 7 old machinist mains are out here sharing my feelings about the new incarnation lol.

[Raldo]

I can't call myself a MCH main, but I did make a MCH Eureka relic, so it's up there on the list of jobs I enjoyed using. I'd like to think I was decent at the job, but I can't claim to be anywhere near the best. I always had trouble getting the most out of combining Overheat and Wildfire. Toward the end of SB, I was about 50/50 split on BRD/MCH.

I agree with you for the most part, though I am still enjoying the job.

Changes I like:
- I like the fact that they took away the turret placement. I hate this game's ground-targeting system, and having to remember to pull it back out after I blew it up.
- I like the fact that the heat system is no longer as clunky. Trying to get overheat and wildfire to pair together always felt clunky, especially when you needed to involve Flamethrower.
- I like the fact that Hot Shot is no longer just some button you have to press once every minute for a damage buff. That's not interesting.
- Personally, I like Drill / Bio-Blaster / Air Anchor, but I can understand some peoples' frustration at its ability to feel offset in the rotation at certain levels of skill speed. That doesn't really bother me much though.
- I'm glad Reassemble works on our AOE skills. BRD's Barrage doesn't.
- Gauss Barrel. Good riddance.

Things I think could be improved:
- Queen/Turret now just being a glorified DoT you throw out every so often isn't particularly interesting. If it applied a buff to the MCH or a debuff to the target, it would be more interesting. I would say the same thing for DRK and NIN's shadow pets as well.
- I miss the ammo system and the ability to do 1-2-1 to setup a 2-3-2 combo during WildFire. It was an interesting twist on the combo system, and I'm sad to see it go.
- Flamethrower is in a weird place. I have two conflicting ideas for it. 1) Make it into an AOE turret (maybe it could spin around for a 360º flame). It's weird not having an AOE turret. I never know whether I should bring Queen out during dungeon trash. 2) Simply make it have some sort of interaction with our heat gauge. It's called FLAMETHROWER! Why doesn't it tick up our HEAT gauge?
- I'm not a huge fan of SE's move toward "Push this button to spam one action several times in a row" that we see with Hypercharge (and WAR/DRK). I think it could be made slightly more interesting if it simply reduced the recast of our 1-2-3 combo and Spread Shot. Maybe they could also only use the Heated animations during that period. I also think it's weird that Auto-Crossbow doesn't reduce the recast of Ricochet.
- Most jobs got a 1-2 AOE combo. Why do we just spam Spread Shot? I have lots of spare MCH bar space. Give me an AOE combo, please.
- I miss throwing my wrench. Was Dismantle really such a balancing issue that it had to be removed?
- Why was Blank not replaced with anything? I mean, it was never important, but BRD still has Repelling Shot. DNC has En Avant. Couldn't we get some kind of mobility action? I've always thought that they could change Blank to Rocket Jump or something, where we shoot the ground and knock ourselves backwards (or forward, I don't care).

[Endariel]

1) you do not drop a gcd in favour of not delaying the drill or anchor as it will reduce the dps. Moreover it naturally aligns with your gcds. Sure hypercharge slightly offsets from time to time, but no more than .5 secs.

2) the only way to drop a combo is to drill anchor and hypercharge at the same time. Delay 1 and boom, no more combo breaking.

3) proc system was weird. You could spam 1 for 30 seconds without a single proc and it was unsatisfying.

4) literally everything works together. 123 generates heat. Heat used for overcharg. 1.5cd on heatblast is used to pump up wildifre. Airanchor for automaton.
Also, old turrets had mostly zero interaction as well outside of damage buff.

5) in order for flamethrower to be effective you either keep if for 3 seconds or for the full duration

[odym82]

I’m new to Machinists but I’ve noticed an extremely high level of suckage in the form of the Rook

[Rufalus]

I liked HW mch and SB mch and ShB mch. Each had merits but I think the current iteration is the best so I daren't ask for another rework. It got easy and more consistent, but still busy enough to stop it from being a boring job in my opinion so that's probably the best one can hope for.

[Aeliott]

As someone who got into it for the complexity and burst it's...quite a rollercoaster staying dedicated to it. While at this point I am very commited to the job from an aesthetic and "role play" perspective, it is strange being thrown in different directions every expansion so far.

While HW is still my favourite incarnation so far, I do think ShB did something important in bringing it up in play numbers by a huge margin. You could be cynical and say "oh they just want the robot", but whatever the reason machinist has been way below the other jobs in terms of most played jobs.

I would be lying if I said I was completely happy with the job now though. As I said, I liked the burst and complexity; with the former Wildfire is overshadowed by Drill/AA (doesn't help that it's flying text is tiny), with the latter...it's still got complexity, every job does but it's more or less entirely just minimizing lost drills and anchors. Which isn't always easy, but it's not satisfying either. There's no big money shot as my friend calls it. Wildfire doesn't feel fulfilling in that way, and while Queen feels awesome the first few times it's still just a set and forget thing. Instead of intelligently aligning and pulling off burst it more feels like I'm just throwing a constant barrage of 3/4 unrelated things with no particular climax. Which is fine; that works for monk for example. But it's a reversal of its prior identity.

I like the lower skill floor, I think a large reason it was unpopular till now is it's perceived high entry barrier. But it does feel like it's missing something more defining. Ammo probably didn't need to go. Wildfire could've been more exciting.

I think it's too gratuitous to the point it quickly feels plain. Main combo is crazy unnecessary parkour , drill is satisfying but every 20s every fight ...hm. HW was low spectacle high substance, this is the opposite. Don't get me wrong I still love it, but it's changing identity so much.

Edit: Just to clarify I do think the changes were for the better health of both the game and getting people to actually play the job. It's just a shame a lot of the things that worked well before were lost in the process.

[Atamis]

I rather like the new MCH redesign myself. Yea i think some things should of been kept that wasn't but it is what it is. I didn't really like the old wildfire design, it had some good numbers and was a gateway to a good or bad mch, but it just didn't feel good to me when something happened that would stop the wildfire, be it mechanics, or someone else in the group dropping aoe in the wrong spot and now you run one way and the tank goes the other.

I think the ammo system should of been kept for the combo, it was a bit more interesting than just 1-2-3 and the reload animation was pretty neat, especially on guns like Ferdinand that had a special animation.
I do not miss the turrets particularly, the current one feels alright, and coming from a summoner its far better than the Egis. Though admittedly it feels lack luster and I am constantly missing the overload from being distracted (Thankfully you can pop it off with 0 seconds left quiet often, something that Bahamut and Pheonix refuse to do)
I still detest the hip mounted lunchbox but I am glad gauss barrel is gone. I didn't mind casting, but it felt like a terrible skill to use after getting used to not having it.

Thinks I would like to see kept going forward but improved:
Flamethrower should build heat, It should also allow movement, albiet slowed as well as be manually aimed. I don't see how shooting flames out of your gun wouldn't build heat, and standing still while you flail around just feels like an arbitrary restriction. I think flamethrower would have a particularly good spot as an AoE opener to quickly build heat to transition into crossbow, and also as a damage boost when used with overheat on. (make it blue high-pressure flames) - This could only be used after the initial pull as flamethrower would still be on cooldown obviously.
Autocrossbow spamming the button and the animation resetting so soon looks and feels rather jarring. I think it would be better if this was a long cast thing like flamethrower that just continually fires until overheat is over or you override it with another ability. See Monster Hunter Heavy Bowgun Wyvernheart ability for inspiration. I also feel it should also provide the cooldown reduction heat blast does, atleast for Ricochet.
Bioblaster should be available at the same time as Drill. AoE low level feels terrible as all you can do is spam Spread Shot and with how much power creep there is most content devolves into AoE slug fests.

I'm not sure how to best incorporate the turret/queen better. Playing summoner has already put a stand offish approach to pets as they are very unresponsive

[Ravenecroft]

Yeah you all bring up a lot of good points, its more of a mixed bag than i make it out to be, i suppose they took out so much at one time it really soured my impression of the job making me instantly think in glass half empty terms.

And yeah im also not a big fan of spam one button rotations that Shadowbringers introduced, main reason why new hypercharge annoyed me a fair bit. Same with the dark knight delirium spam. THOUGH its still better than the abomination that was dark arts. Overall yeah i agree with most points ya all brought up. I guess if they build upon it way more in the future machinist might come back to being really fun right now it just feels like they gouged out a bit too many abilities and gave back very little.

Thanks for the answers, makes me realize im not the only one here wearing a tinfoil hat yelling that new machinist is not flawless lol

[Hezzlocks]

Yeah you all bring up a lot of good points, its more of a mixed bag than i make it out to be, i suppose they took out so much at one time it really soured my impression of the job making me instantly think in glass half empty terms.

And yeah im also not a big fan of spam one button rotations that Shadowbringers introduced, main reason why new hypercharge annoyed me a fair bit. Same with the dark knight delirium spam. THOUGH its still better than the abomination that was dark arts. Overall yeah i agree with most points ya all brought up. I guess if they build upon it way more in the future machinist might come back to being really fun right now it just feels like they gouged out a bit too many abilities and gave back very little.

Thanks for the answers, makes me realize im not the only one here wearing a tinfoil hat yelling that new machinist is not flawless lol

Yeah it's far from flawless, though I personally much prefer the current MCH over Stormbloods, though that honestly should go without saying.

Personally I only have issue in 3 spots. First, Rook / Queen feels like they should have more interaction, rather than be fire and forget. Queen also has the issue where if the boss moves at the wrong time, and I don't mean the jump away invulnerability periods, I mean actually just *move*, there's a chance the Queen won't get to use its Pile Bunker attack. Thats a lot of lost damage and quite problematic.

Second, Heat Blast spam, as you said, is quite boring, and is a large part of the MCH rotation. It's also the primary contributor to what ping issues remain, as unless you are completely empty on Ricochet and Gauss Shot charges you need to weave to prevent capping, and with ping that may cause you to lose 1 Heat Blast, especially bad during Wildfire.

Finally, Flamethrower. I like it. I like how it's slightly better than Spread Shot for damage, making it actually usable. But it's not quite there yet. For the cooldown it has, and the clunkiness of using it, it needs more. More damage, more functionality, generate heat, more mobility, cause a debuff on mobs that increases in duration the longer you flame them, multiple of the above options, I don't know. It needs SOMETHING more though. Also, regardless of what it gets, it also absolutely needs more feedback. Those small red numbers are barely noticeable, making it feel like you're doing nothing. If you don't math it out or haven't researched it, you'd think it did nothing. It needs more feedback to let you know you're doing something

[TankHunter678]

I personally find the new MCH to be a lot better then its past incarnation. A lot more fun, a lot less clunky, a lot less frustrating, a lot less punishing. Which is a mentality that has been shared with the huge increase in MCH players. As if we got MCH and Dancer introduced this expansion instead of MCH being introduced in HW.

I prefer the shift over to regular burst windows instead of having to dump everything into one window every 2 minutes. I like that the RNG has been removed, as that made the class feel frustrating to play when you were waiting on ammo cooldowns and the RNG was screwing you over. In fact my most regular thing to say about the old MCH was that it would be a great class if they just got rid of the RNG on the 123. I like that Overcharge is something I have complete control over instead of having to juggle heat to not accidentally waste it. Drill and Air Anchor feel good to use, especially with the ability to force one to be a Direct Hit Crit for huge damage.

Kinda wish we still had the ability to deploy the Bishop turret to give us an AoE Battery Spender. Could have changed it to fire chain lightning given current turret deployment mechanics. Then have it upgrade to a King with mortar launchers and an artillery cannon. I also wish that Grenado Shot came back as an upgrade to spread shot.

Overall I find the new MCH to be very enjoyable. Though I can understand your frustrations as the skill ceiling was dropped.

I do not miss the turrets particularly, the current one feels alright, and coming from a summoner its far better than the Egis. Though admittedly it feels lack luster and I am constantly missing the overload from being distracted (Thankfully you can pop it off with 0 seconds left quiet often, something that Bahamut and Pheonix refuse to do)

The turret and queen are designed to automatically fire off their overload as their last attack when they run out of time. The Overload command is only really there so that you can have them dump their remaining damage when you know the boss is going to leave the field in short order. Unlike SMN Egis MCH Turret/Queen is 100% independent.