The unrewarding state of physical ranged

[Myon88]

I think the job is great and it's the only job I play

My condolences.

Edit: No, in retrospect I'm actually envious there are people whose machinist experiences aren't sullied by memories of Heavensward. For many people who played it then, it's been all downhill from there. SE's anything but stingy when it comes to the job too, summoners have been begging for egi glamours for years, meanwhile here's machinist getting a full rework and shiny new animations two expansions in a row.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

No, in retrospect I'm actually envious there are people whose machinist experiences aren't sullied by memories of Heavensward. For many people who played it then, it's been all downhill from there.

I hated HW's version of MCH. Got it to 60 then never touched it until it was reworked in Stormblood. It was convoluted to play in HW because of HW's version of Wildfire, the one and only ability that made the job feel absolutely vile and repugnant to me. Also hated Hot Shot uptime. (I as well hated the Gauss Barrel attachment on your gun, looked silly and dumb and killed the aesthetic of glamour sets, thank the twelve that's gone. Now all that's left is the lunchbox)

Got it to 70 sometime in Stormblood, because I was bored, hated the heat gauge balancing mechanic because it seemingly, I didn't give it a second chance as it was horrible to me, prevented you from using MCH's full toolkit on a whim and had extremely strict management. Why play MCH's complex "rotation" and do pitiful damage when you could play anything else and do more.

It's too late for this but, if Heat Blast was removed and they gave MCH cast times back on unheated Split, Slug and Clean shot, Hot Shot/Anchor Shot and Drill shot. Changed reassemble to cause the next weaponskill to be instant cast along with what it does now. Give ammo back via a Hypercharge rework and cause ammo to turn Split, Slug and Clean shot to change into their heated forms, it's too late to change their names or visuals, cause them to become instant cast and each would do exactly the same thing Heat Blast does now or increase the 1.5 sec gcd to 2.0 or 2.2 or something to slow things down a bit as you would no longer be using one button during Hypercharge but three. The heated versions of the basic combo rotation would make sense to be instant cast with all the weird gymnastics you do while the unheated versions would make sense to be "aimed" with cast times. Barrel Stabilizer would continue to make sense as your stabilizing your barrel for precision shots via Hypercharge. Cast times either being 1.5 or 2 seconds to allow ample cooldown weaving and Anchor and Drill shot having a 2.2 or 2.5 second cast time.

For flamethrower? Lol, yeah I got nothing other than changing it into Bishop Autoturret that doesn't have a battery gauge cost and when used just plops down right next to whatever enemy you targeted and does old Bishop Turret things. Would still be used on single target enemies as it would just be another free generic 60 second resourceless cooldown. (Which would add another ability to weave during your rotation without adding button bloat as Flamethrower is very likely already on your hotbar)

I personally like current MCH solely because of Heat Blast's animation and hope it isn't removed or changed, and if it must be reworked just make it another cooldown to use.

[EdwinLi]

I think the issue with Range Physical DPS Jobs is that they don't really know what to do with them due to being a job designed for high mobilty and constant attacking with less down time.

Bosses these days are being designed more to mess up player's rotations by either adding a lot of melee AoE attacks around the boss or in specific angles towards messing with Melee DPS and forcing them to stop attacking for a small amount of time

or

using large amount of range DPS to interrupt casters ability to cast since they have to move when their instant cast buffs are down.

Range Physical DPS can ignore most of these things.

This is where I think the developers losses their plans on what they want the Range Physical DPS to be.

Give them DPS equal or greater to that of melee and casters, people will complain these jobs are too easy to play and makes Melee and Casters a waste since they can ignore most of the mechanics designed to stop Melee and Caster jobs attacks.

Give them higher DPS but remove mobility in return makes people complain they wanted to perform the same DPS as Melee and Casters with high mobility.

Give them more support skills that buff damage of the entire party or make enemies/bosses take more damage by everyone but don't improve their own DPS to be equal to Melee and Casters then people start complaining Range Physical DPS is only good in parties because their DPS are still lower than everyone else.

It is a constant cycle of complaints with no real satisfaction becuase the ideal DPS is one that is highly mobile, High DPS, and zero down time with constantly attacking the enemy.

[Dogempire]

It is a constant cycle of complaints with no real satisfaction becuase the ideal DPS is one that is highly mobile, High DPS, and zero down time with constantly attacking the enemy.

So... summoner?

[Lastelli]

So... summoner?

You mean the lowest dps after physical ranged at higher percentiles?

[CKNovel]

So... summoner?

Forgot we didn't mentionned SMN at all due to Melee focus.

I'd say current SMN is as mobile as HW MCH/BRD while bringing good support to the team.
The heal provided is not amazing, but it was enough to beat E4S with no healers and some Paladins.
Addle works almost everywhere, I believe.
Res is good for prog but there was always a ton of debate about res that shouldn't be taken in account in job balance.

The SMN is deeply flawed but still gets 40% of unpunishable instant casts. I believe that we spend more than 60% of current savage being static, when bosses are targetable.

You mean the lowest dps after physical ranged at higher percentiles?

Obviously the first reason is the nerf. And all melees received a buff
But I believe this tier is quite melee friendly, allowing melee to have an easier uptime and E11S is harder to gauge due to all the downtime. Jobs like NIN seems to enjoy these to refresh their cooldowns.

Yet, the SMN remains at a healthy spot. SQEX might have nerfed it a bit too much or they should have made a choice between buffing other jobs and nerfing the problematic one.
But it's still healthier than ranged.

[Lastelli]

Forgot we didn't mentionned SMN at all due to Melee focus.

I'd say current SMN is as mobile as HW MCH/BRD while bringing good support to the team.
The heal provided is not amazing, but it was enough to beat E4S with no healers and some Paladins.
Addle works almost everywhere, I believe.
Res is good for prog but there was always a ton of debate about res that shouldn't be taken in account in job balance.

The SMN is deeply flawed but still gets 40% of unpunishable instant casts. I believe that we spend more than 60% of current savage being static, when bosses are targetable.



Obviously the first reason is the nerf. And all melees received a buff
But I believe this tier is quite melee friendly, allowing melee to have an easier uptime and E11S is harder to gauge due to all the downtime. Jobs like NIN seems to enjoy these to refresh their cooldowns.

Yet, the SMN remains at a healthy spot. SQEX might have nerfed it a bit too much or they should have made a choice between buffing other jobs and nerfing the problematic one.
But it's still healthier than ranged.

SMN has approximately 55% of its GCDs instant, but most of these instant cast are fixed because of weaving purposes or they're locked behind the demi-primals. Comparing smn to phys ranged dps in terms of mobility is definitely wrong. I'd say both RDM and SMN are at a very good spot right now and pretty much equivalent both in rdps and mobility. The big elephant in the room is actually BLM, as even with the indirect nerf due to the weird itemization of the last patch, its still quite a bit more powerful in terms of rdps. My point was that metioning SMN as and exemple of perfect job is simply wrong now. It's outshined by all melees and BLM and the only reason it's still so popular is because most casters use it for prog instead of BLM and BLM has a totally different BIS, so casters just stick with what they started with.
Anyway, please don't compare current jobs to old jobs, it's really pointless. HW was also a time where balance was completely out of the window.

As for phys ranged, I still don't get the complain about rdps. Even if all three of them get buffed by 3-4%, nothing would really change. You'd still bring one and only one. Buff them too much, and you bring 2 instead of a melee, which is clearly what the devs don't want to see. I agree on the rest though. Phys ranged dps just feel too shallow, unrewarding, incomplete, as if you still need to unlock some major key skills that give some closure to their rotation. All of them. But rdps is not the reason for it.

[Adventica6]

You know you're part of a vocal minority when there are only 5 of you with tears in your eyes.

[Jirah]

Gameplay
The gameplay of MCH has been revamped due to 5.0 Rework, the job feels much better to play and it could be considered as the best MCH iteration. However, many MCH players claim that the job isn’t finished, that it lacks buttons and has boring gameplay. It mostly feels that the job has been designed for Dungeons due to all the AoE useless against a single target.
.

wouldnt call it revamped, more so its just been cleaved of whole mechs and support to appeal to the broadest audience which is fine if its well structured which MCH is far from it. MCH issues is not only does it lack consistent juxtaposition to its other mechs but its also a job with alot of fat which is very strange for a job with the least amount of skills. You can casually brush off about 5 skills or so and MCH rotations wouldnt lose much which means its heavily padded. any changes to it would inevitably negative since it needs to trim this fat going forward or itll be a boring stagnating job with just a crap ton of CD gcds and Ogcds that dont mesh with its intial mechanics

[Jirah]

Abit Harsh on BRD since it didnt change much in terms of damage, sure it lost its TP/MP regens, palaside Foes, Straight arrow bar (essentially a weaker Slandered finish buff/ Old style Hotshot) and its Troubadour song based defensive buff changed to be more generic, but none of these are horrid deal breakers and the BRD from SB is still here just without a few things to worry about and dots being percentage based rather than criti based. I wouldnt say its the worst every becuase of these changed or the worst ever because you dont button mash like a toddler with MCH, or ur not supporting like a DNC or as easy like DNC

I do agree that they need serious work to make them more fun and less mindless, Ranged DPS shouldnt be easy mode