Issues with Machinist design

[Cetek14]

From pure gameplay perspective Machinist is above what we had before (4.x was a disaster), but multiple aspects of current design make absolutely no sense. I will describe what problems i see and try to offer some solutions.
I will also try to offer solution to Hypercharge because this is main complaint of many people about rotation of the job.

Heat Gauge:
1. Why there is no connection between main combo and Heat Gauge? Even if Heat Gauge is at 0, we are able to use Heated Actions. It's even funnier between 54 and 64 because only some actions are Heated. Absolutely no sense.

2. Heated Actions have way too wild animations. It's really silly that everything we do are sideflips, 360 noscope spins, or 720 backflips. And where are the bullets and gunshots? There is no gun in a gun wielding job. I know that Bard can get a little jumpy when you are blessed with good RNG, but basic actions have pretty normal animations.

3. Why Crossbow is related to Hypercharge? Technically it can be explained that Multitool is powered by heat, but its not, only Crossbow needs Hypercharge, everything else has its own cooldown. No sense here.
And while we are at Hypercharge - Flamethrower is not related to it at all. And we magically release flames from our gun, even though we have Multitool.

Battery Gauge:
4. I know it can be explained by gameplay mechanics that main combo and Hot Shot charge Battery Gauge, but i feel like it was slapped to just add something to the job and it can be simply replaced by cooldown on Automaton.
And i also feel like Turret should stay as separate summon, because it appears on all artworks (also Job Guide artwork) and even Deep Dungeon icon. It would add more variety to Machine part of the job.


I think that Machinist deserves something better, after 4 years since its introduction its still not properly designed. It really looks like it was quickly reworked just a moment before Job Action Trailer, because it has plenty of logical flaws. I would even say it deserves a rework from scratch.
But also lets not pretend that current iteration is an absolute disaster, it simply needs some adjustments.

Continuation in reply to this post (word limit).

[Cetek14]

Now i will try to offer some solutions that would, in my opinion, solve the problems while keeping current design. Because i know that many people are afraid of next reworks since it can be turned to something worse.

1. Both original and heated main combo actions are relics that should be already gone. We need set of new well made animations with satisfying gunshots.
Main combo won't be related to Heat Gauge.

2. Crossbow is now trait replacing Spread Shot. Flamethrower is new AoE action during Heat Redirection (look below for explanation).

3. Adjustments to Hypercharge. Action renamed to Heat Redirection. Adds X stacks of Heat Blast and Flamethrower (shared stacks). While stacks are active Gauss Round is changed to Heated Gauss Round.
Flamethrower no longer locks you in place. Shorter duration of one attack, similar to Crossbow. Flamethrower is now Multitool action.

I would say for the sake of proper animation flow animations for Heat Blast (aka Heat Dab) and Gauss Round should be adjusted, it looks pretty weird at the moment. I would also suggest removing Gauss Round and replacing it with something else, its a relic of Gauss Barrel which is already gone.

4. Battery Gauge removed. Hot Shot is now DoT (to be discussed). Turret and Automaton are two separate summons with their own cooldown. Summon ability changes to Overdrive while machine is summoned to avoid ability bloat.

5. For the sake of Gunner part of the job Reload should return, even if it has some simple design like "Increased damage for next X actions".

This is everything i wanted to say, i tried to describe it in points so you can easily point out which ideas you like, and which you don't. From my point of view it would really improve how the job feels like and fix lore issues.

[SamRF]

Imo the job just desperately needs more complexity (and more buttons?). You basically unlock your whole single target rotation at lvl 57 already(!), only addition is a 120s oGCD at lvl 66.

I love the Machinist berserker type flavor with the heat gauge, but everything else beside that is just too simple and easy imo. The skill ceiling seems too low with how much room you have to time your Hypercharge.

[Kalise]

Heat Gauge:
1. Why there is no connection between main combo and Heat Gauge? Even if Heat Gauge is at 0, we are able to use Heated Actions. It's even funnier between 54 and 64 because only some actions are Heated. Absolutely no sense.

Because having to arbitrarily maintain a specific level of heat in order to use your filler combo at full strength is stupid.

That said, there's little excuse for not simply having Hypercharge upgrade your filler combo into "Heated" versions with the same 1.0s GCD as Heated Blast.

2. Heated Actions have way too wild animations. It's really silly that everything we do are sideflips, 360 noscope spins, or 720 backflips. And where are the bullets and gunshots?

It's even worse when you consider the background of MCH lore. A military force that takes little training in order to be effective in combat as an alternative to the years of training to become a good Knight.

Imagine signing up for Machinist training in Ishgard, your first day of ever holding a gun:

Machinist Trainer: "Okay, so I want you to get some practice in. Take this and go do a 1080 triple backflip while hitting the dummy over there with 18 missiles"

New Recruit: "...Uhhh..."

Also, on the topic of jank animations:

Barrel Stabilizer. Consists of you tapping on some holographic screens. Makes your gun overheat.

Try and connect any of those 3 statements with logic.

4. Turret and Automaton are two separate summons with their own cooldown. Summon ability changes to Overdrive while machine is summoned to avoid ability bloat.

I'd point out that there probably should be something done about how they function if this is to be the case. Otherwise, you're just giving MCH a double DPS CD once they hit 80 and get their second summon.

You also have to be careful to not link them, otherwise it could end up feeling too similar to SMN and their Bahamut > Phoenix.

But also lets not pretend that current iteration is an absolute disaster, it simply needs some adjustments.

While we're here, how is it that MCH doesn't have a dragon shot of some kind? Like, for an art developed in Ishgard, that uses fancy tech and aether manipulation... How do they not shoot someone with a Dragon yet?

Continuation in reply to this post (word limit).

P.s. If you edit a post, you can go beyond the word limit (I typically write out my entire post then Cut 90% of it and Paste it back in an edit... As I may be somewhat verbose )

[Cetek14]

Bumping thread.
Machinist really needs adjustments, not in 6.0, as soon as possible.

[Fannah]

Heat Gauge:
1. Why there is no connection between main combo and Heat Gauge? Even if Heat Gauge is at 0, we are able to use Heated Actions. It's even funnier between 54 and 64 because only some actions are Heated. Absolutely no sense.

Certainly because it was the case before and people complained MCH was too complicated, and MCH was not popular. Whatever can be said, they made MCH more popular in the end.

2. Heated Actions have way too wild animations. It's really silly that everything we do are sideflips, 360 noscope spins, or 720 backflips. And where are the bullets and gunshots? There is no gun in a gun wielding job. I know that Bard can get a little jumpy when you are blessed with good RNG, but basic actions have pretty normal animations.

Doesn't affect the gameplay, and it's all about personnal taste, some people will think it's too much, some will think it's really cool and change from more traditional moves other jobs can have.

3. Why Crossbow is related to Hypercharge? Technically it can be explained that Multitool is powered by heat, but its not, only Crossbow needs Hypercharge, everything else has its own cooldown. No sense here.
And while we are at Hypercharge - Flamethrower is not related to it at all. And we magically release flames from our gun, even though we have Multitool.

Talking about gameplay or logic ? We could also ask how the machinist lost magically the ability to do a "Grenado Shot" for Stormblood extension. "Heat Blast" also is related to Hypercharge. I wish Spread Shot could become Autocrossbow during Hypercharge.
We have the battery box to explain whatever magic we can use like Flamethrower. It uses ethereal energy, like everything in this FF world.

Battery Gauge:
4. I know it can be explained by gameplay mechanics that main combo and Hot Shot charge Battery Gauge, but i feel like it was slapped to just add something to the job and it can be simply replaced by cooldown on Automaton.
And i also feel like Turret should stay as separate summon, because it appears on all artworks (also Job Guide artwork) and even Deep Dungeon icon. It would add more variety to Machine part of the job.

I believe you're wrong on this one, it could not be a cooldown while keeping the same advantage, because the purpose is to adjust your use of it with your team buffs (whatever it's with 50 to 100 power). Everything was made to be easy : No more random cooldown, no more Heat to manage and no more Ammunitions to manage anymore, no more complicated combo with Rapid Fire Hypercharge Wildfire, no more cast time (from HW), no more need to be perfect like a 1min clock. It's even not as punishing as it used to be (but still is) to not manage your Skill Speed stat. Now you can just stack Heat and Battery and use them only when your allies use their dmg buffs to automatically use them at the right moment.

[Payotz]

Regarding the animations, personally I'm fine with it. I'd want more "high-tech" like visuals because it is a machinist after all, not a gunner. Besides, if you search around the forums, there are a bunch of threads that MCH was really boring visual wise. I'd say that the over the top animations did well in making MCH "not boring" visual wise.

Because having to arbitrarily maintain a specific level of heat in order to use your filler combo at full strength is stupid.

That said, there's little excuse for not simply having Hypercharge upgrade your filler combo into "Heated" versions with the same 1.0s GCD as Heated Blast.

There's really no point to this change at all. If potencies still remain the same, people will just use Heat Blast since that reduces GR and Ricochet CDs.
If potencies are buffed for the heated combos, HeatBlast as a skill will become redundant, and be useless.

The only way you could justify having both Heated and Non-Heated shots is if Overheat MCH (which I don't really mind; I loved 60 second rot MCH) and Old Wildfire comes back, and for Heatblast to go back to Cooldown.

4. Turret and Automaton are two separate summons with their own cooldown. Summon ability changes to Overdrive while machine is summoned to avoid ability bloat.

Oh god. If you're talking about old turret targetting, then no. That was hell to weave.
If you're talking about current turret summoning, then sure? But you're essentially leaving a large part of MCH's damage to two inconsistent things.
And with how SE handles pet AI, I would rather deal with only one AI.

Adjustments to Hypercharge. Action renamed to Heat Redirection. Adds X stacks of Heat Blast and Flamethrower (shared stacks). While stacks are active Gauss Round is changed to Heated Gauss Round.
Flamethrower no longer locks you in place. Shorter duration of one attack, similar to Crossbow. Flamethrower is now Multitool action.

Why would you buff GR but no Rico? I honestly think Crossbow is fine as a Hypercharge action, and Flamethrower just needs a synergy update with Bio Blaster and Heat Gauge.

---------------------------------------


Honestly though, current MCH isn't something that needs a complete overhaul (looking at you MNK).
What it needs is just a bunch of adjustments to gameplay aspects. Here are my thoughts:

> Bioblaster will apply [Toxic Substance] to enemies hit by it.
> Flamethrower will add 5 to the heat gauge every second. Enemies that have [Toxic Substance] will be inflicted with [Burning], refreshing Bio Blaster duration and inflicting a second separate DoT to the enemies.
> Autocrossbow will reduce Ricochet and Gauss Round cooldown, just like HeatBlast.

Essentially, this will change MCH's AoE rotation to two phases and will probably reduce Carpal Tunnel for the players as well.
A Flamethrower "Rest Mode" and the hypercharge crossbow, Rico GR spam.
Spreadshot will be there just in case you die and need to rebuild Heat Gauge.

> Automaton Queen will ignore all collisions.
> Automaton Queen Roller Dash will instantly refresh its cooldown when MCH switches target.
> Automaton Queen Roller Dash will cast the instant MCH changes target.
> Automaton Queen will receive a buff every 1.5 seconds that will increase the next Arm Punch's potency by 150.
> Automaton Queen will change its target to the MCH's current target without fail, every single time.

This will hopefully fix Queen's janky AI. Of course if SE manages to actually fix Queen AI to be consistent, especially during two target fights, then they wouldn't need to do anything else.

>Wildfire duration changes to 11 seconds.

I keep hearing about Drill and AA being delayed and not being counted in wildfire because it only counts damage until 9.2 seconds currently. So this change will hopefully keep that consistent.

[Some good to haves but will probably be too broken and everyone will hate it]

> Arm punch give the target a phys damage down, similar to old Hypercharge.
> Wildfire will boost GR and Rico damage by 10%
> Hypercharge will grant 5 stacks of HeatBlast or AutoCrossbow. On the last stack, the last GCD will Crit Direct Hit.
> Dismantle added back.
> Refresh added back
> Drill giving a 5% phys vuln up that lasts 10 seconds.

[Fannah]

1. Both original and heated main combo actions are relics that should be already gone. We need set of new well made animations with satisfying gunshots.
Main combo won't be related to Heat Gauge.

Well, it's actually not the case already x) It's not because it's called "Heated" that it's related to Heat Gauge (yes it used to and that's why its name). But it's already a combo on its own now. You actually should make a "Lore rework" part and a "Gameplay rework part", it's actually confusing.

2. Crossbow is now trait replacing Spread Shot.

Crossbow should replace Spread Shot only during Hypercharge, imo. That would be cooler, it feels like it adds another button but nothing new mechanicaly wise (spam of a conic attack 12y 12y in front of you).

3.I would say for the sake of proper animation flow animations for Heat Blast and Gauss Round should be adjusted, it looks pretty weird at the moment. I would also suggest removing Gauss Round and replacing it with something else, its a relic of Gauss Barrel which is already gone.

Gauss Round had nothing to do (gameplay-wise) with Gauss Barrel. It was just an instant oGCD skill to deal dmg. Having to use it during Gauss Barrel is not really relevant. We could call it "Quick Shot" if you want and keep it the way it is. That would change nothing. It would be more logical for newcomers, and it's a fun fact for older machinist players.

4. Battery Gauge removed. Turret and Automaton are two separate summons with their own cooldown. Summon ability changes to Overdrive while machine is summoned to avoid ability bloat.

No for the reason I explained before. Changing them to cooldown type skill would lower their flexibility of use to adapt to allies buffs.

5. For the sake of Gunner part of the job Reload should return, even if it has some simple design like "Increased damage for next X actions".

I liked the Reload/Ammunitions too. But once more, Machinist was clearly unpopular (and I loved them from day 1 during HW, but we were a few to enjoy them). It's one of the mechanic to manage they decided to remove to simplify the job so more people give it a try.

[Gula]

Bumping thread.
Machinist really needs adjustments, not in 6.0, as soon as possible.

I disagree and like it as is. Feels good and I like charring waves of mobs with my flamethrower. It's a magic gun, just like how bards fight with magic arrow harps. Final Fantasy is at its core, a fantasy.

Difficulty should be in the content, not the job itself. I like its simplicity and accessibility.

[Kalise]

no more complicated combo with Rapid Fire Hypercharge Wildfire

To be fair, the combo wasn't really that complicated.

It was a specific sequence of buttons used in the same way every time things were off CD. I actually just made a macro that did the entire combo with a single button press.

Also, interestingly enough, the full "Complicated" combo wasn't actually that much higher damage than simply spamming Heat Blast throughout the Hypercharge duration (You'd just have to weave Gauss/Rico and Reloads in there)

There's really no point to this change at all. If potencies still remain the same, people will just use Heat Blast since that reduces GR and Ricochet CDs.
If potencies are buffed for the heated combos, HeatBlast as a skill will become redundant, and be useless.

You misunderstand. I mean, there's little reason to have Heat Blast as a button when the 123 combo skills could have simply gone from normal versions to "Heated" versions with similar effect.

I liked the Reload/Ammunitions too. But once more, Machinist was clearly unpopular (and I loved them from day 1 during HW, but we were a few to enjoy them). It's one of the mechanic to manage they decided to remove to simplify the job so more people give it a try.

To be fair, it wasn't really the Reload mechanic in of itself that caused issues for most players.

Typically it was the fact that your 123 combo was RNG based unless you used ammo for them, which then also meant that ammo was used ONLY for combo skills as guaranteeing the higher damage shots was worth more than simply getting the baseline potency added to any skill.

Which was another issue with the ammo system, in that all it did was add a bit of potency onto attacks... It would have been far more interesting if it would have altered skills in more exciting ways, similar to how WAR now gets Chaotic Cyclone/Inner Chaos from their Nascent Chaos.

Regarding the animations, personally I'm fine with it. I'd want more "high-tech" like visuals because it is a machinist after all, not a gunner. Besides, if you search around the forums, there are a bunch of threads that MCH was really boring visual wise. I'd say that the over the top animations did well in making MCH "not boring" visual wise.

While I can understand the notion about MCH being boring, since it kind of was before the Heated skills (Though, Clean Shot was always nifty, to jump up and shoot, in the rare circumstances you got to actually use it, which for me was only when Reload was off CD... Darn RNG...)

There's quite a bit that could have been done before resorting to conjuring up giant bullets out of nowhere and whatever Heated Clean Shot is supposed to be. (Also, it still irks me that SE don't know how bullets work... Both for MCH's Heated Slug Shot and also the recent cutscene with Gaius where he empties the chambers of his gunblade and rounds fall out that still have the bullets in the casings...)

Stuff like particle effects coming out of the barrel, particle effects from bullets striking the target, using 2 hands to hold the gun etc.

You know, the kind of things they do to make BRD visually interesting despite it also shooting projectiles at targets.