Machinist needs help.

[Burningskull]

I think MCH needs a lot of love. Granted these are just personal opinions but:

MCH doesn't really get anything except one ability this expansion. Sure you get Scatter Gun but that's basically just a potency and animation increase. But a lot of jobs got that so ... moving on. You also get an attack for your Queen but odds are you are paying more attention to your abilities and fight mechanics and will never see it. So really you only get Chainsaw at 90.

The addition of Reaper to make makes Hypercharge need a rework. Granted I've never liked it but what if Hypercharge upgraded your Shot Weaponskill to their Heated variates, gave you 6 charges at a 1.5s GCD, and upon doing those 6 Heated Shots you get a really big Heat Blast attack. This way all the heated variants could give Battery Guage. Sure it's a lot like Reaper but it's be much more interesting that spamming Heat Blast or Rapid Crossbow 5 times in a row. Speaking of which....

It's AoE needs work. Only having Spread Shot and Bioblaster is just kina atrocious. You also have Flamethrower but I have no idea how often it does damage while you are channeling it or if it's even worth using so... /shrug. I feel like Spread Shot needs to combo into something and then in your Hypercharge phase Spread Shot upgrades to Auto Crossbow? and the other attack would upgrade into Scatter Gun? Maybe make Heat Blast a Single Target with AoE fall off or make Auto Crossbow the Heat Blast equivalent or something.

I've always hated Wildfire and I still say it should be a DoT you place on the boss that deals damage over time and then explodes for the Total damage it dealt.

I think Gauss Round and Ricochet should share timers and if Hypercharge got the above changes remove the effect it has on Gauss and Ricochet. This would also help those with ping issues and the such. (Yes I'm one of them)

The Queen. I think you either need go give the Queen some AoE fall off damage to make it worth using during your AoE phases or give a AoE summon.

[Lumaro]

It honestly baffles me how Reaper just does the Hypercharge mechanic with Enshroud better than Machinist.
Just add 5 stacks to Hypercharge that can be spend on Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow and while we're at it, a finisher similar to Communio for Hypercharge would be nice.

Also Flamethrower definitely needs a rework, who wants to not play their game for 10 seconds?

[CKNovel]

Wildfire could become the "communio". In two ways possible, either put it on a "Confiteor" to conclude the phase.
Either as a Primal Rend, making Hypercharge 3 stacks to be used with heatblast, but Hypercharge also giving the primal rend buff.
Visually, I'd like if a single Target Auto cross bow could be used instead of the gun that spews.. Fireballs.

I'm glad we agree that Flamethrower and AQ are terrible designs. In a future expansion, I wish Flamethrower would be another Hypercharge phase but with a 1 min cooldown.
As for the Automaton Queen, reworking it into a Phoenix/Bahamut that updates buttons would be cool.

In the end MCH would become a job that swaps between different phases like SMN, but while keeping the many tools that are on GCDs. Drill, Air Anchor, Chainsaw.
It wouldn't actually change much, it would simply replace most Hypercharge phases with something more interesting.

[Riszyn]

Flamethrower should be a spawnable turret that uses the same animation as the player does now, except from the turret that way a player can continue actually playing the game while the ability goes off.

Hypercharge should also be able to effect Wildfire, activating Wildfire with hypercharge active consumes all 50 heat but makes Wildfire an AoE explosion that functions the same way wildfire does, just... AoE.

Heatblast is bizarre. It should be able to crit, first off, since it not critting makes zero sense in our kit. The alternation of Gauss and Ricochet does seem pointless, even though at times it can be fun.

Personally I don't care if the class has more focus on the gun, or the gadgets/tools, but it would be nice if we had abilities that didn't feel so clunky or punishing for using/not using for even a few seconds.

[CKNovel]

Flamethrower should be a spawnable turret that uses the same animation as the player does now, except from the turret that way a player can continue actually playing the game while the ability goes off.

Hypercharge should also be able to effect Wildfire, activating Wildfire with hypercharge active consumes all 50 heat but makes Wildfire an AoE explosion that functions the same way wildfire does, just... AoE.

Heatblast is bizarre. It should be able to crit, first off, since it not critting makes zero sense in our kit. The alternation of Gauss and Ricochet does seem pointless, even though at times it can be fun.

Personally I don't care if the class has more focus on the gun, or the gadgets/tools, but it would be nice if we had abilities that didn't feel so clunky or punishing for using/not using for even a few seconds.

Flamethrower
Placing a turret involves ground targeting which is already a bad idea of its own and SQEX thankfully tries to stay away from it.
Plus, if I follow exactly what you say, you want a turret to place once every 60 seconds that attacks in a frontal cone?

Picture the same problems as Dotons:
You place your turret, it starts attacking. Tank moves, turret can't attack or only a portion of the group.
This will lead to more problems than QoLs.

Hypercharge
I'm confused, you want the button that makes MCH enters overheat phase to also detonate wildfire...? You will always pair Hypercharge and Wildfire.
At that point, why not make Wildfire AoE damage per default and consuming heat?

Heatblast I understand the animation is special but why should it be able to auto crit? And why it doesn't make sense that it doesn't auto crit?
So far only Warriors have auto crit GCDs, MCH and DRG to an extend through their abilities.

[Triggers]

Welp, no potency tuning. Meh.

[Keiisuke]

I was expecting a slight buff but we got nothing, it's kinda sad.

[Kolsykol]

I don't think they want to change much for Savage but see how things work there and change it later.
Would kinda suck if they changed things more drastically and then on day 1 the balance is way different.

I understand the disappointment tho ( sad NIN noises ).

[Riszyn]

Flamethrower being a turret would make it function the same way we do now when we activate the skill, It would just be more of a "balance" thing so that it doesn't alter the ability too much, and I mean if a tank moves now, you're already not hitting anything with it, and not hitting the enemies with anything else since flamethrower is silly and locks you out of doing anything else.

And I never said that heatblast should auto crit, I said it should BE ABLE to crit in general. I don't know what it would do to our overall dps but it would have to be better than not being able to crit with the ability at all.

[jrollins89]

Why even bother trying with this job anymore? SQEX sure as hell doesn't