Machinist needs help.

[Yubie]

Hot take but if machinist is going to continue to be a selfish DPS than it needs to have competitive damage above red mage, summoner, bard, dancer, and maybe even ninja.

Otherwise they need to bite the bullet and give machinist some form of utility bard/dancer dont bring

[Iriemon]

I've been playing the class recently as a newbie, and I'm enjoying it. I do think the Automaton Queen should have some interaction with the machinist. I propose that the AQ should gain a stacking buff every time we use a certain ability. This idea comes from WoW. Specifically, the death knight in WoW had a powerful summon in Legion known as the dark arbiter, which was a winged valkyrie. Once she was summoned you had about 20 seconds to cast as many death coils as you could. Death coils required gaining a resource to use and they could also proc randomly as you did your rotation. With every death coil the arbiter would gain a stacking buff which caused her to hit harder and harder. (She attacked about once every 3 seconds.) If you were lucky, and played correctly her last hit would be devastating, and it was satisfying to see. It's just an idea, but I'd like to see it, or just let us have a beam cannon like gundam, I'd be ok with that too lol.

[Atmaweapon510]

Machinist's Battery and Heat Gauge shouldn't be competing with eachother. You don't build Battery by using Heat, and while Chain Saw increases Battery, it also doesn't generate any heat so you get less Hyper charge phases. A summon is also the absolute worst kind of feedback for a job like Machinist. I don't want build a robot to shoot things, I want to be the one shooting things. Machinist has cannibalized any future gunner class and seeing the job shoehorning more power into the summon that's created on an off-global cooldown ability is incredibly demoralizing for people like me who want more gunner and not tinker.

Take the stupid automaton and put it on a puppeteer class. If Machinist has to build robots, then they should be drones that fire when they do like teeny ships in shoot-em-up games.

[Vatom]

Ha I had that theory back in StB funny seeing it now but I still stand by this. Just make gunner and remove McH gun idk why it’s really there to begin with, other then they needed a gun class at the time

[Myon88]

Machinist is in a rather unfortunate spot all around if you ask me. Not only did it lose the deep and soulful design it originally had, the flavour that was stapled onto it in its Stormblood revamp isn't even coherent anymore.

That's why you have things like a barrel stabilizer that doesn't even stabilize your gauge at 50 like its name implies - it's a just a generic gain resource cooldown. Heat and Battery resources that don't interact with each other, and are often awkwardly tied to skills that have nothing to do with heat or electricity. You have a robot that looks like it came from Overwatch instead of the consistent design the old turrets had. It's the epitome of the post-Heavensward job revamp model - gameplay depth stripped out in favour of pure spectacle, all form and no function.

If Machinist has to build robots, then they should be drones that fire when they do like teeny ships in shoot-em-up games.

Fun fact, the old gauss barrel was almost assuredly a reference to the attachments your ships could get in shmups like R-Type. People hated it for how difficult it was to glam around, but I for one appreciated the thoughtful reference. Just another thing machinist has lost from then.

[CKNovel]

Flamethrower could generate heat but it would remain an AFK button.

By the way, this is the 4th expansion in a row where MCH is underwhelming at the beginning of the expansion!
HW had too little damage and long cooldowns.
SB had overheat at 10% which was a DPS loss.
ShB all ranged could be replaced by a barely good BLM.
EW the just is simply underwhelming and offers no value.

I guess the curse keep on living!

[Rym]

Anyway I've been thinking, what's the point of ranged dps tax when in most encounters everyone is in melee range most of the time or close enough anyway?

[OlanDurai]

When I think Machinist, I think of gadgets and utility. The job is anything but that. Having party utility would make a ton of sense for where it's dmg usually is in each expansion. Probably the best party utility would be 5%/15s vulnerability tied to Wildfire or Chainsaw.

However, after leveling some other job I realized that MCH is the ONLY job that also has ZERO "personal utility".

Self dmg mitigation - none.
Self healing - none.
Move speed increase - none.
Gap closer/opener - none.
Dash - none.

When you look down the list of abilities/weaponskills on the job guide, they're all damage related. That's the only thing MCH can do, and it's not even outstanding at that.

I love machinist as a job, but no one wants to bring to raid progression. Why would you. I'd be holding my group back if I went as MCH.

P.S. Bring back Grenado Shot.

[Dyvid]

Anyway I've been thinking, what's the point of ranged dps tax when in most encounters everyone is in melee range most of the time or close enough anyway?

The ranged dps tax is commonly referred to as movement tax meaning RPDPS have the ability to move about the arena while doing their complete dps rotation. Casters, well most of them, require at some point to stand still and cast but interrupt that cast to dodge AoE. Melee have to stay within the bubble to dps but targets jump away or cast melee range AoE that needs to be dodged.

[Driavna]

Anyway I've been thinking, what's the point of ranged dps tax when in most encounters everyone is in melee range most of the time or close enough anyway?

Why anyone will play any other class if ranged DPS classes in this game did the same damage as everyone else but with better movility and no worries about range?

I know that what I'm about to say is something most players don't want to hear yet current design just make no sense. There is a reason why most other games stick to just ranged vs melee, and most ranged classes (caster or not) have animations that root you in place or some kind of cast bar for certain abilities.

Is either stick to what we have know, rework all physical ranged dps to what I said before o perhaps just prioritise physical ranged DPS for a lot of mechanics that require to move around or bait stuff.