Idea's for Machinist going forward.

[gumas]

MCH needs help, but I think more significant changes are required for Flamethrower before it is a good skill.

Anything that makes you sit still and channel an area is going to feel bad in this game.

I, like many others, think the big issue lies in the Overheat phase.

they should make flamethrower like bio blast, a dot. bio dot + burn dot + scattergun seems like a great mch combo for mobs

i said this on the other mch thread but i think they should remove the 8 seconds overheat and heat blast skill.

instead, now hypercharge give you 5 stack of "overcharge" that make all your weaponskill (and weaponskill only) to have 1.5 gcd and reduce the gauss and ricochet cooldown. basically same effect as heat blast but without the heat blast skill.

not just this has same heat blast playstyle, it also....
1. generate battery because you will be doing 1-2-3 combo during "overcharge" and...
2. overall give more damage than 5 heat blast phase

so its win win for me, i get more damage during "overcharge" and i get battery too

[Atmaweapon510]

What's wrong with the overheat phase? Latency dependence?

[Seraphor]

they should make flamethrower like bio blast, a dot. bio dot + burn dot + scattergun seems like a great mch combo for mobs

i said this on the other mch thread but i think they should remove the 8 seconds overheat and heat blast skill.

instead, now hypercharge give you 5 stack of "overcharge" that make all your weaponskill (and weaponskill only) to have 1.5 gcd and reduce the gauss and ricochet cooldown. basically same effect as heat blast but without the heat blast skill.

not just this has same heat blast playstyle, it also....
1. generate battery because you will be doing 1-2-3 combo during "overcharge" and...
2. overall give more damage than 5 heat blast phase

so its win win for me, i get more damage during "overcharge" and i get battery too

We're not going to be getting another DoT, they're trying to phase them out so each job only applies one constant debuff, as they fall off in large scale encounters.

And I don't see the point of removing Heat Blast, the entire, entire rotation would just be endless 1-2-3, and MCH already has the fewest skills of any job. A break from 1-2-3 for a burst phase is a welcome change of pace.
As is a channelled Flamethrower for that matter. The issue is that there's not enough to be gained from sitting there for 10s, it's barely a dps gain over simply spamming Scattergun once you discount the heat gauge, and you usually don't even get a 10s window between overheats/bioblasts/ricochets to do that. I think Flamethrower should get a small potency buff to maybe 100 or even 110 per second, and share a recast with Air Anchor, generating battery gauge. 10 gauge after 5s, another 10 after a full 10s.

[Sorzai]

Honestly, i think the Heat Blast combo is such a simplistic idea for a finisher, AQ is also boring AF because it doesn't do anything flashy that makes us go "oh wow, or OMG". While i can't think of the small detail like dmg numbers i think it would be great if Machinist had a greater emphasis on its Rook Auto Turrets. What i had in mind is to give Auto Turret 2 charges and allow 2 units on the field, maybe at full heat gauge u can use a skill and give the turrets the ability to copy abilities/weaponskills at a lower potency, move AQ to a finisher.

I pictured in my head how cool it would be having the 2x Auto Turrets on the field and both shooting out a huge ass laser beam or missiles at the boss. Either way, I feel that going this route with a heavier focus on turrets will allow the ability to go into either a Support DPS or a Full DPS roles. it just feels like SE is lacking imagination on their Machinist..