Issues with Machinist design

[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.

[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.

[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.

[CKNovel]

My biggest gripe with MCH? ShB Wildfire

Yep, that skill had a satisfying role but too much impact on MCH DPS on top of rng being too impactful.
Now it's an additionnal button with no satisfaction and little impact on MCH DPS.
Honestly they could halve its cooldown for more presence.

The heat gauge, in my opinion, is still a mess. High skillspeed is fun but not when it comes to spamming the same button.

[Kalise]

Yep, that skill had a satisfying role but too much impact on MCH DPS on top of rng being too impactful.
Now it's an additionnal button with no satisfaction and little impact on MCH DPS.
Honestly they could halve its cooldown for more presence.

To be fair, I've always wondered why they don't just bundle it in with Hypercharge. Given the way Wildfire works, you always want to use it with Hypercharge to get the most GCD's off in its duration.

Honestly, I also wonder why they don't simply make Wildfire into Hypercharge, so it boosts your damage (And/or fire rate) for the duration, then you eject your now overheated magazine and throw it at the enemy for the explosion. For not only a thematic approach, but also to consolidate the 2 burst CD's that typically get used together.

The heat gauge, in my opinion, is still a mess. High skillspeed is fun but not when it comes to spamming the same button.

Not to mention how it also makes the actual SkS stat really bad for MCH, meaning you're only allowed shorter GCD's during Hypercharge and nowhere else...