Man & Machine: a MCH Thread

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

but ignore all this and have fun with your job, but its lacking alot being more mindless than DNC but less fun and is only getting a pass due to its DPS

Come now, you think people are happy with MCH purely because of its dps? Have you forgotten that even after they heavily buffed SB MCH, that still no one played it because it was so bad that the devs had to apologies for its state and promise a rework because not only was it borderline unplayable for some people, it wasn't fun either, it was an incredibly clumsy and overly punishing job I played quite a bit of SB MCH and as someone who has also played since HW, I would argue that its SB incarnation is still the worst by far, which was so bad that its poor design bled into ShB MCH and is the cause of most of its issues, using flamethrower to slip into overheat never felt good, reapplying the gauss barrel never felt good, losing GCD uptime because the heated shots reverted back to the normal ones at the wrong time never felt good, it was a disjointed, poorly cobbled together mess that wasn't even fun to level due to its pathetically poor skill spread, I will agree that HW MCH was its best incarnation, but not that ShB is its worst, you think ShB MCH is a ghastly mockery of the true job? No, that dishonor goes firmly to SB MCH, the ultimate blemish on MCHs legacy that almost killed the job due to its woeful design and peak unpopularity.

ShB MCH takes MCH in a more focused direction, it focuses on GCD optimization and speed/cooldown resets, you constantly keep an eye on your timings and try to ensure there is no overlap/overcapping when you use hypercharge, you are given some wiggle room to work with, this gives the job a strong sense of flow, you try to argue that things flow unnaturally with each other, but this is objectively untrue, everything falls into place as you play, you are always building resources to spend, resources you can either spend immediately or keep for raid buffs, this is why I actually like the Queen, since you have the choice of when to summon them and even the choice to use pile bunker early, thus giving you interactivity that you can summon Queen to take advantage of raid buffs or to push a phase early, this is unlike almost any other summon in the game, would you argue this is "mindless" MCH play? I will admit, I think we should give Queen an extra layer of interactivity with another button or two, I think its fine in its implementation, its hardly any less engaging then the drop and forget turrets, which I liked. I would really struggle to say its way more mindless than DNC, hell I'd put it on par with BRD for the most part, I don't think 1-2-3-1-2-3 is inherently worse than 1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-2-1-1-1-2, even when you say Heat Blast is "mundane" or "spammy" its still a high cut above any other of its type due to its speed and oGCD resets, making your hypercharge phase very active in comparison to any other phase of its type.

Do I think the job is perfect? Not quite, but I think a solid foundation has been set to expand upon, one that has proven popular, fun and functional. I think they can give Flamethrower and Wildfire a look over, I wish they developed MCH's debuffer skills like Dismantle and stuff further instead of homogenizing the ranged role, do I think they could have added a few more buttons and an extra layer of complexity? Sure, but given what they had to work with, essentially having to reverse engineer a disjointed, cluttered mess of a job (SB MCH) into one that's actually functional, I'd say they did more than a good job, in my opinion, it doesn't need another rework, I hope we get more as we go forward, instead of going through another set of streamlining. I understand not liking the direction a job has taken, but I think you are exaggerating its problems, I genuinely dislike the direction the healing role has taken this expansion, but I don't think the jobs are mockeries of their older incarnations, merely that I hope they seek to improve them as the game moves forward, because I understand what they tried to do, but their implementation just didn't work well with the games design (when you can beat E4S without a healer, you know something went wrong)

[Jirah]

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Unplayable? im glad they fixed that all good and no one thinks that nowadays..Is there a link to this apology? I dont wanna say "I highly doubt it" but i dont think a single job in SB was worth a apology not even Monk. The way your wording this is very hyperbolic as the absolute worst case scenario for any job is that its clunky or unfun idk why your wording with such disdain.

and of course its not the only factor but since BRD and DNC does a helluva lot more, it needs to compensate by doing more damage. that 1-2 complaint is rubbish when both have a chance to flourish and have a fan flourish to flourish ontop of saber dances, and finishes and main flourishes giving you all its procs. while MCH has a static 1-2-3 and nothing else besides the two GCD skills that interrupt it every 40/20 seconds,the turret (which btw is a DPS lose if you use Overdrive too early unless its a phase change or the boss is dieing) and the 5 spam shot your doing along with the pointless stackables. Charges are done worse when in DPS as the best way to utilize them is to spend them all unless ur Heat blasting then u can use them to death and wait until 1 or 2 restores manually. Heat blast being locked behind heat rather than replacing a skill is also odd since under no circumstances are you advised to press anything else besides heat blast and Rico/guass during heat blast phase. and why? why not just have it be the rotation? rather than a singular boring skill with the same potency as Split shot. and why have it refuel every 15 seconds when the CD is 30? why not a whole skill and why even tie it down to Heat blast why not have it as a trait or somthing?

also popularity means nothing a popular job doesn't mean a good job which i stated earlier. Skill spread in 4.0 wasnt the best but did they spread out the main rotation through 10 levels due to what i assume a lack of skills? lv54 you get Heated split and dont get Heated clean until the 60s hows that for crappy spread.

this small debate if i can even call it that proved to be underwhelming and i remained unconvinced of 5.0 worth, ur examples arent daily occurrences like the queen argument and dragging DNC and BRD superior designs is laughable to say the least. also funny you left out wildfire but it is inconsequential after all

Id argue fixing 4.0 is easier than making 5.0 intuitive and 5.0 is not nor is it the best incarnation of MCH.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

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I will look for the apology, I believe it was during one of the fanfests before ShB in 2018-2019 in a panel/Q&A, but old archives aren't all that easy to find and they tend to be very long, but I will try comb through old footage if I can find it.

The 1-2 complaint was directed at Bard, not Dancer, perhaps I should have clarified, one of the key points of your argument is that 1-2-3-1-2-3 with breaks for Drill Air Anchor is boring, yet bard will mostly be doing 1-1-2-1-2-1-1-1-2 with breaks for Apex Arrow and Iron Jaws, MCH will be using Gauss/Richochet which are both on 3 charges each, BRD will be using Emphreal, Pitch Perfects and Blood Letters, the difference being resets for MCH happen in its Hypercharge and use its resets very quickly, for BRD, they happen over time, different flow, but for the most part, deliver a similar experience, I will definitely agree that Bard has a more interactive kit with lots of abilities that work off each other, I enjoy playing it for that reason, but Bard hasn't had a major rework this expansion, it mostly had things added and slightly tweaked, so they had a more concrete vision they could deliver, they likely had trouble with MCH because they had to rework it from SB MCH, which restricted them on what they could rework overall if they had to keep in old skills like Flamethrower, hence the lack of interaction. My point wasn't to say Bard or Dancer are bad, I enjoy them just as much as MCH and hold them mostly to the same standard.
Also your point about "its a dps loss to Overdrive too early unless its a phase change or the boss is dying" is literally my point, you can summon it early to push a phase, summon it to take advantage of raid buffs and if the boss is gonna jump/die, you can force it to use its finisher faster, this is what I mean by interactivity.
As for Heat Blast, the thing is, outside of Hypercharge, it effectively has little use, its the same potency as Split Shot, but Heat Blast has a lower recast timer and resets GCDs, not to mention Hypercharge itself adds 20 potency so you are firing off for higher damage at an increased speed, the same applies for Auto Crossbow, you are firing it much faster, I agree you could probably bump up Heat Blast/Auto numbers a bit to make them stand out a little more, but otherwise it makes perfect sense.

Popularity doesn't mean its good, true, yet don't you think its popular for a reason? If we are talking strictly dps, all the ranged are on the lower end of the spectrum and MCH doesn't even have party buffs to set it apart, yet its still played much more than before, saying its played just for its dps is nonsense, people clearly enjoy playing it, for all its problems, there are a lot of people who are happy with MCH as it is now, people wouldn't be happy with it if it was all the things you say it is.

I only bring in BRD/DNC because you have, basically saying Dancer is less mindless and comparing MCH unfavorably to Bard in your OP, so should I just ignore portions of your points? Also we have already talked about Wildfire in this thread and page already, practically everyone agrees they should do something with it, what's your point here?
"this small debate proved to be underwhelming" yeah, tell me about it, well I've said my piece and argued my points, with the key takeaway being that I greatly disagree with your views on ShB MCH, aside from the points we have already gone over (AoE, Flamethrower, Wildfire, Latency) and am unconvinced that it is even half as bad as you say it is, or that its design is vastly inferior to other jobs.

They already fixed 4.0 MCH, the result is ShB MCH, if they started from the ground up or perhaps used HW MCH as its base, it might have been better, the point is, MCH's right now now is the result of salvaging SB MCH into a more playable state, it worked, I'm not sure what you mean about 5.0 not being intuitive and I've already said this isn't the best incarnation of MCH, for me, its very cleanly HW > ShB > SB.

[reivaxe]

I only bring in BRD/DNC because you have, basically saying Dancer is less mindless and comparing MCH unfavorably to Bard in your OP, so should I just ignore portions of your points?

As someone who has all 3 ranged maxed ...

I have to say, current Mch is the most braindead job in the game.

I use to think Dnc was the braindead easiest until played more DPS jobs and I noticed that not everyone plays like me. I'm a recovering clicker who mained tanks until this expac, I'm use to just looking at my hotbar for most of the fight. Dnc's RNG actually requires you pay attention to different procs, it's got a lite "rotation" based around RNG, much of what you do is priority based decision making in nature. Brd also requires you pay attention to DoTs and RNG procs and buff timers so that you can snap shot dots for more DPS.

I think the divide here is thinking that pressing a 1-2-3 over and over inherently requires more thought than actually engaging in a RNG system that demands a certain amount of your attention.

I didn't play any other version of Mch but as it is, at lvl 80 it requires the least amount of thought of any DPS imo based on what the job ask of the player. No Procs to think about, full freedom of movement, no dots or self/ party buffs to think about ontop of a rigid rotation.

It's cool if people enjoy it though, I'd never say people shouldn't like XYZ job. But personally I feel Dnc is in a GREAT spot design wise/ Brd isn't the best but not a hard thing to fix/ Mch needs more things to do and think about ... and less reliance on spamy BS as a cover up for it's design shortcomings.