Issues with Machinist design

[Shurrikhan]

Not really. All Dragoons are able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

And all Dragoons are native-born Ishgardians, all of whom are able to exhibit traits of dragonkin if the allow themselves. We don't see random spearmen just saying, "What's 200 ft? I'll just jump and then stab it. Easy."

Who says they have to not fire it from a gun? Especially when aethereal manipulation is allowing them to conjure rockets and missiles out of thin air or shoot out bullets that explode into balls of lightning.

I'm sure there exists some possibilities to allow for them to effectively shoot people with dragons.

Ahhhhh. Okay, I get it now, sorry. Yup. Sounds good.

[Renkei]

What's interesting about them lumping Dragoons and Machinists together is the historical Significance of the Spanish Tercio Formation, in the early 15th Century.
They don't have to shoot out of their gun as proven with this expansion.

Hey us dragoons jump and then we get tired for 60 seconds.

[Cetek14]

You know that Machinist shoots with what is basically magic, right? They don't even use actual bullets. Do you ever wonder what that bulky thing on your waist is for?

Then we might as well move it into magical ranged category and release properly made machine themed job.
I know that in lore they use aether to create bullets, but in the end NPCs shoot these bullets, and it would be nice to do the same, not flip around while magically summon objects with our gun. At this point it's a magical rod, not a gun. This is why some people want Gunner as next physical ranged job, since Machinist currently doesn't fill that niche.

[Vendalwind]

Then we might as well move it into magical ranged category and release properly made machine themed job.
I know that in lore they use aether to create bullets, but in the end NPCs shoot these bullets, and it would be nice to do the same, not flip around while magically summon objects with our gun. At this point it's a magical rod, not a gun. This is why some people want Gunner as next physical ranged job, since Machinist currently doesn't fill that niche.

I feel you personally. There are a number of classes that have struggled with identity fantasy, but it is hard to make everyone happy. I would love a full gunner/engineer class that was all tech.

This discrepency is common. Thus you have the people asking for a thief class, cause rogue->ninja strayed entirely from that and most of our new skills past 30 have been magic based. Its also an issue with bloodbath being weaker for us cause it doesnt work with magic attacks but wrong thread for that discussion.

Then theres the summoners who for a time felt too much like poison mages.

And the bards that would like some actual music magic instead of being snipers.

And the rdm who feel slighted by the exceptionally small amount of time they actively spend fencing

Its unfortunately an ongoing problem, but tbf square enix cant make a class for every single players ideal fantasy.

[Gula]

I feel you personally. There are a number of classes that have struggled with identity fantasy, but it is hard to make everyone happy. I would love a full gunner/engineer class that was all tech.

This discrepency is common. Thus you have the people asking for a thief class, cause rogue->ninja strayed entirely from that and most of our new skills past 30 have been magic based. Its also an issue with bloodbath being weaker for us cause it doesnt work with magic attacks but wrong thread for that discussion.

Then theres the summoners who for a time felt too much like poison mages.

And the bards that would like some actual music magic instead of being snipers.

And the rdm who feel slighted by the exceptionally small amount of time they actively spend fencing

Its unfortunately an ongoing problem, but tbf square enix cant make a class for every single players ideal fantasy.

There is a quote from Minfilia that basically amounts to "can't please everyone" and the whole crux of the Sultana's struggle with helping the poor without pissing off the rich. There will always be something to upset someone else and trying to find a satisfactory medium is the best they can do. And while I may not agree with everything the devs do, I know thousands of other people do.

[Cetek14]

I feel you personally. There are a number of classes that have struggled with identity fantasy, but it is hard to make everyone happy. I would love a full gunner/engineer class that was all tech.

This discrepency is common. Thus you have the people asking for a thief class, cause rogue->ninja strayed entirely from that and most of our new skills past 30 have been magic based. Its also an issue with bloodbath being weaker for us cause it doesnt work with magic attacks but wrong thread for that discussion.

Then theres the summoners who for a time felt too much like poison mages.

And the bards that would like some actual music magic instead of being snipers.

And the rdm who feel slighted by the exceptionally small amount of time they actively spend fencing

Its unfortunately an ongoing problem, but tbf square enix cant make a class for every single players ideal fantasy.

Thats true, but MCH is peak of bad design. Its simply not related to ishgardian Machinists at all. And devs kinda pretend they do. We even have title "Shot heard across worlds" even though at lvl 80 there is not a single action where we shoot our gun (the closest one would be Gauss Round, but its still not how real Machinists usually use their gun).
4.x was a disaster gameplaywise, but at least it was more lorewise accurate than now.
If devs have no idea what to do, i think connecting good parts of each iteration could lead us to something good.

[Maeka]

My thoughts about MCH, as I've been leveling it lately, and just freshly got Level 76 with it the other day:

1). The animations I actually very much enjoy. I'm an ex-WoW player and having my character stand there performing the same 1-2 animations and barely moving is boring. 4.x MCH was boring animation-wise. Animation quality in FFXIV is one of the things that makes combat look and feel cool. Please don't take my backflips and things away from me, I love them. As far as "new recruits expected to backflip" um... no? Because you don't do those backflips and such until you're in the high 50s, early 60s. The non-heated versions of these abilities have you using the older animations. They start out basic with you just standing and shooting and then they progressively get more fancy as you get more skilled with a gun.

2). They merely re-used icons and names of skills as far as the Heated moves go. They could perhaps rename the heated versions of the skills, maybe like Trick Slug Shot or something I dunno.

Now onto things that actually matter:

The only beef I have with the class, is the annoyingly small window when you overheat your gun and you have to dump as many Gauss Rounds (I think that's the name of it?) or Auto Crossbows as you can during this time. It's a very small window and it's very heavily dependent upon input lag, and network lag, especially with Gauss Rounds, and before you get that trait that lets you hold 3 charges of those other two skills that Gauss Rounds helps complete faster, it's very annoying to have to weave those two in-between spamming the two oGCD attacks and being half a second off can hurt your DPS and half a second is easily within what lag can do to you or needing to stop and run out of an AoE or something.

Second, I would argue I would remove the 'stand still' requirement for Flamethrower, again, it stinks to have to move because of an AoE right after starting to use Flamethrower and it seems lots of trash packs have AoEs nowadays and it's hard to actually time a Flamethrower cast and get the whole thing out without having to move).

And last, I can't really say I'm a fan of Wildfire, either. Seems like every time I go to use Wildfire, something stupid happens like an AoE I have to get out of, a gaze attack that forces me to stop doing DPS, etc. Then Wildfire goes from doing decent damage down to doing almost nothing because SE expects you to have 10 uninterrupted seconds to line up all of your best DPS skills before using Wildfire and it just seems annoying to make that happen.

All-in-all, I think the class is 1000x better than it was in 4.x but yet there's still annoying little things with it that would prevent me from using it in any max-level content. It's fun to levelup and tick it off the list of things to do in the game but once it's 80 I doubt I will use it much because of how annoying the above three issues (mainly #1 and #3) are to work around.

SE needs to remember that people do get lag now and then and that the game wants you to dodge things every 3 seconds in some fights.

MCH and NIN make me roll my eyes when WoW players whine about the combat being "Too Slow" in FFXIV, because they know nothing about late-game and they see early-game when most jobs only have 1-2 abilities to use, lol.

EDIT: (2020 and we still have the worst forum restrictions I've ever seen on the internet, that everybody circumvents anyhow)

[dinnertime]

Then we might as well move it into magical ranged category and release properly made machine themed job.
I know that in lore they use aether to create bullets, but in the end NPCs shoot these bullets, and it would be nice to do the same, not flip around while magically summon objects with our gun. At this point it's a magical rod, not a gun. This is why some people want Gunner as next physical ranged job, since Machinist currently doesn't fill that niche.

Except practically every job uses magic. The only difference is with the rest of the job and magical ranged is they don't use it as often.
I think you're missing the point of what Machinist is supposed to be. You're assuming it's a gunner, when it is more than that. Why are you exactly so bothered with it magically summoning "objects"? Machinist has always been about using different gadgets to fight with.
This is like thinking Paladin is just a swordsman, or Dragoon is just a lancer.

[Maeka]

Except practically every job uses magic. The only difference is with the rest of the job and magical ranged is they don't use it as often.
I think you're missing the point of what Machinist is supposed to be. You're assuming it's a gunner, when it is more than that. Why are you exactly so bothered with it magically summoning "objects"? Machinist has always been about using different gadgets to fight with.
This is like thinking Paladin is just a swordsman, or Dragoon is just a lancer.

Yeah, the job is called "Machinist". You carry a gun, but that doesn't mean a gun is the only thing a machinist uses. You use various magitek-like machines.

[RocciaSolida]

My biggest gripe with MCH? ShB Wildfire, it’s an absolutely unsatisfying skill: it cannot crit nor direct hit, it’s on a 2 minute cooldown, DEALING THE SAME DAMAGE OF AN AVERAGE DRILL OR SLIGHTLY MORE (drill being a 20 second cooldown GCD) and ping-dependant, get an unfortunate ping spike during WF? Enjoy your 5 GCD WF. It also contributes so little to your overall DPS (if you don’t believe me just look up some records of top machinists on THAT website) that messing it up or missing a GCD for bad ping actually impacts your performance almost 0%, adding more fuel to the “irrelevant skill” argument.