Man & Machine: a MCH Thread

[EtherRose]

Personally, MCH is decent as it is. The rotations are simple. Everything weaves together seamlessly. Everyone seems to be asking for more complexity. If i were to give my 2 cents on the job it would be as follow~

1. Wildfire - Don't see the problem behind this skill other than reducing it to 90 second cool down from 120. And it does have a purpose beyond Hypercharge for those saying there's no interactivity, etc. You are supposed to use it with the Automaton Queen AND Hypercharge. The Queen's Roller Dash and Arm Punch count as weaponskills. So with 5 Heated Blasts, 1 Heated Split Shot, 1 Roller Dash and 2-3 Arm Punches - you are looking at a potency of 1800-2000. That's some big damage. It would be a nice touch if this skill could crit though.

2. Flamethrower - This skill is boring. Instead of a flamethrower they should have made a flame turret that does the job while you can still use other AOE's.

3. BioBlaster - Remove shared cooldown with Drill. This way MCH have an actual DoT they can place on bosses without sacrificing damage from Drill.

4. Battery OverCharge Mechanic or Heat Transfer - There should be something along the lines of overcharging your battery to 120. This would increase the damage of your Queen and atk speed. Or if you can transfer the heat gauge to your Queen to increase damage and atk speed.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

You are supposed to use it with the Automaton Queen AND Hypercharge. The Queen's Roller Dash and Arm Punch count as weaponskills. So with 5 Heated Blasts, 1 Heated Split Shot, 1 Roller Dash and 2-3 Arm Punches - you are looking at a potency of 1800-2000. That's some big damage.

This is incorrect, it only works with weapon skills that come from the Machinist themselves, not the Queen, feel free to test it yourself, the Queen doesn't contribute to the Wildfire in any way, I did see a suggestion that it should be able to crit, or perhaps its like Reassemble so it always ends as a Direct/Crit, I can't really see them doing any meaningful rework to the skill other than that, it would be cool if the Queen did affect Wildfire, but alas, they really don't seem keen on making pets/turrets/robots anything more than fancy DoTs.

[CKNovel]

1. Wildfire

Queen doesn't impact Wildfire, it has been tested. You can also test it by throwing Wildfire to a dummy and summon the queen to do damage.
You'll be welcomed with a nice "0".

But the main problem with Wildfire is the lack of interactions.
For example during HW/SB, you have to prepare a wombo combo for Wildfire.
Today, Wildfire is a delayed 1200 potency skill, nothing else at it has no interaction, you only place it, press Hypercharge and continue your rotation.

2. Flamethrower

Summoning a fire-spitting turret/automaton would be an okay idea. I don't like it because we would still have no interaction over the flamethrower but it's better than current Flamethrower.

3. BioBlaster

Having one shared cooldown is not a problem. It's interesting on cooldowns.
The problem is that both are 20s cooldown and Bio Blaster isn't as impactful on a lone target. (60 + (60*5)) * Targets, on a lone target it's a weak 360 potency. On two targets, 720 potency, barely better than Drill.

4. Battery OverCharge Mechanic or Heat Transfer

The problem would remain the same, if not worse.
Battery gauge is designed to be flexible, at any battery spent you have the same damages overrall. Overcharging it to 120 would remove that flexibility. And you'd say goodbye to Queen during every Trick Attacks.
Plus, it wouldn't correct the Automaton that feels like a glorified dot.

With the heat gauge transfer, you worsen the state of the glorified dot. You make the queen a more glorified dot and your heat gauge is also a glorified dot!
I really don't like this idea as you loose more and more interactions. I don't want the job to play itself.

The main problem with MCH is that you're limited to 1 2 3, Drill, Air Anchor, DR/Ricochet, Summon Queen and Hypercharge (Including WF into Hypercharges) phases when it comes to damage.
Sam, for exemple has 3 different combo, Midare, Tsubamegaeshi, Sen'ei, Shôha, Shinten, Seigan and it's still one of the easiest Melee DPS.

Combo is uninteresting, there's too few cooldowns and little to no utility. It's the void compared to SB/HW utility.

[AvenoMatt]

So I've been thinking this over and for the most part I think the way Mch plays is fine but I understand how the job can feel boring or simple with it's 123 combo and heat spam.

This is my idea on how to change it.

123 combo still remains but we get 2 proc'd weapons skills. Split shot would have a 50% to proc Lead Shot; lv54, Lead shot making a return, and Clean Shot would have a 50% to proc a new weaponskill, I call it Mercury Shot; lv60.

Hypercharge just lowers the gcd on weapons skills down to 1.5 seconds and gives 100% chance to proc Lead and Mercury. We still have to get 5 hit minimum into Wildfire but instead of Heat Spam we do 12345 or 12435 rotation however you wanna look at it.
I'm also thinking that the heated variants are only accessed during Hypercharge with the 123 being unlocked at lv68 and the 45 unlocked at lv 78.

Heat Blast is now just an ability to dump Heat if you aren't gonna be able to to Hyperchage before the enemies dies. Also Trait that gives Clean Shot a chance to proc Heat Blast without cost.

No more Heat Blast spam means no more bouncing between Ricochet and Gauss instead Lead resets the recast of Gause and Mercury; Ricochet

Lead is still places a dot and my thinking is that if if you get a Lead proc and your enemies is still taking dmg from a previous Lead Shot then it works like Thundercloud on BLM

Auto Crossbow is just a combos off of Spread or it can also be a proc.

Flamethrower is just a turret that shoots flames in a cone before you. Only cost 20 battery.

The return of Dismantle cause I miss it.

[EtherRose]

This is incorrect, it only works with weapon skills that come from the Machinist themselves, not the Queen, feel free to test it yourself, the Queen doesn't contribute to the Wildfire in any way, I did see a suggestion that it should be able to crit, or perhaps its like Reassemble so it always ends as a Direct/Crit, I can't really see them doing any meaningful rework to the skill other than that, it would be cool if the Queen did affect Wildfire, but alas, they really don't seem keen on making pets/turrets/robots anything more than fancy DoTs.

I stand corrected. Sorry about that. I completely forgot that i did run a test on this and it had no affect. Was a few months back and just started MCH again this week.

[RocciaSolida]

I'd like some AoE tools for the queen or an additional AoE robot that you can summon in scenarios where multiple targets are on screen (of course this robot would deal less single target damage).
We had the bishop turret in SB and even just a reskin of that would be better than not having anything at all.
I'm also a fan of DoTs so a meaningful single target one would please me a lot, I'd be fine with Bioblaster not sharing CDs with Drill or it being an oGCD

[Adventica6]

I don't agree with anything here, it could use a slight buff and that is it.

Always amazed by the amount of people trying to redesign the job, don't like, then quit.

It isn't constructive feedback when all you talk about is what you don't like and having a fit. later.

[ty_taurus]

I don't agree with anything here, it could use a slight buff and that is it.

Always amazed by the amount of people trying to redesign the job, don't like, then quit.

It isn't constructive feedback when all you talk about is what you don't like and having a fit. later.

Hi, not really a MCH player here (only recently started leveling it on my goal to get everything to 80 and am at 68 so far). Just wanted to chime in and say this mentality not healthy for game design. Telling players if they don't like things "then don't play it" is not very conductive to actually seeing genuine improvement in game design. Now, there is something to be said about always wanting to reinvent the wheel, but people should be allowed and encouraged to voice their concerns, because if we don't, then the jobs just forever stay the same and almost all the jobs do need at least a little fine tuning. I don't know enough about MCH yet to have any meaningful contribution to this conversation, but I just wanted to call this out because we have to stop destroying each other over these kinds of things.

Criticism does need to be constructive, however, and we can certainly talk about, debate, and even argue over whether things are good, bad, broken, or perfect, but just shutting the conversation down does no one any favors.

[CKNovel]

I don't agree with anything here, it could use a slight buff and that is it.

Always amazed by the amount of people trying to redesign the job, don't like, then quit.

It isn't constructive feedback when all you talk about is what you don't like and having a fit. later.

Can you say you are happy with Flamethrower current state?
Press the button and wait 10 seconds, are you truly happy with it? If that's the case, I recommend you to try idle games. If not, you agree with this topic.
In my case, I can get up to grab some coffee, before it's finished.

There is only criticism, feedback and concerns about the job. We don't want to redesign the job, only to make the next iteration better while keeping the current iteration.

I allowed myself to look at your profile to try to understand where you come from.
Can you claim to be able to fully appreciate, evaluate the job based on your experience? Based on your profile, you are either casual or an alt. The first is not a problem, not at all.
Every opinion matters, no matter where they come from.

But is someone cooking pasta and fries able to fully understand cooking aswell as a chef?
My point is: If you lack experience, you want to open your mind about criticisms and feedback.
Having an open mind is a rule that must applies to everyone. Anyone, even with decades of experience, can still learn or forget the basics.

Flamethrower is the pure basic of it.
It's a relic from Stormblood, it has no interaction, no fun to use.
Wildfire suffers the same problem, you press it and do as usual. It could be a 120s 1200 potency cooldown with a 10s delay, there would be no differences.
Automaton Queen is a glorified dot.

All of those above are not opinion, those are facts.

[Wyakin]

I don't agree with anything here, it could use a slight buff and that is it.

Always amazed by the amount of people trying to redesign the job, don't like, then quit.

It isn't constructive feedback when all you talk about is what you don't like and having a fit. later.

Christ I agree with this. I make a suggestion that I’d like to see WF crit in another thread and it got churned out into “you don’t know what mch really need” bla bla bla. I’m sat here thinking. I enjoy mch as it is, I just wanna see a big Number for no other reason than that. A big number