Issues with Machinist design

[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 )

[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.

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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.

[MerlinCross]

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?

I would kill for a Mini Dragon Killer Turret.

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.

That's fine and all but did we have to really lose our Ammo animations.

I scoured the guns to find out which ones had animations to go with the reloads and used those. Now? Meh.

Also I dislike the animations we got because it really feels more like "Look at this call back Oooooooooooooooooh" more than trying to make MCH stand on it's own. Like trying to fix Monk by giving it moves based of Sabin, ignore the issues or if it's good or bad, just look it's Sabin Animations. Or giving Ninja Shadow/Yuffie animations. Or Gunbreaker Squall/Leon.... oh wait.

[Shurrikhan]

Like, for an art developed in Ishgard, that uses fancy tech and aether manipulation... How do they not shoot someone with a Dragon yet?

I thought the art was formed to shoot dragons, not... shoot dragons?... Hmm.

I'd love to see them summon one of those dragon-killer ballistae, though.

[Kabooa]

I thought the art was formed to shoot dragons, not... shoot dragons?... Hmm.

I'd love to see them summon one of those dragon-killer ballistae, though.

What if it was a ballistae that killed dragons by shooting dragons at dragons?