Idea's for Machinist going forward.

[Rubytoe]

1. Make Flamethrower generate 5 heat per tick, "in-combat only" so that it is a better trash pull tool and during raids/boss fights can be used for downtime, for extra heat just like ability meditate for samurai.

2. Bring this back

Make it function like the astrologian ability Collective Unconscious, generating a dome over a select area giving regen/mitigation.

What changes or additions would you come up with?

[CKNovel]

No, please don't give Flamethrower heat generation.
Heat is already a pain to deal with, because:
-Of how easy you can desynchronize Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire
-It would look absolutely ridiculous to spew fire when there is nothing to target.
-Flamethrower would still be garbage to use (sit and do nothing)
-It would add crap complexity of spending your heat before downtime, considering Hypercharge phases are 9 seconds, you'd need pretty heavy knowledge of the fight timeline and it would still conflict with Drill/Air Anchor.
-Coupled with tick fishing, it would make Flamethrower a nightmare. You'd want to use Flamethrower exactly 9 seconds before Uptime to get maximum heat + a 80 damage tick.

Flamethrower should rather spend that heat, it spews fire not create it from nowhere.
Slapping heat generation would make the job more clunky that anything else.

Bishop comeback? Why not.
I'd rather target a party member to "attach" the bishop to them, ground targeting is terrible.

[Coldbrand]

No, please don't give Flamethrower heat generation.
Heat is already a pain to deal with, because:
-Of how easy you can desynchronize Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire
-It would look absolutely ridiculous to spew fire when there is nothing to target.
-Flamethrower would still be garbage to use (sit and do nothing)
-It would add crap complexity of spending your heat before downtime, considering Hypercharge phases are 9 seconds, you'd need pretty heavy knowledge of the fight timeline and it would still conflict with Drill/Air Anchor.
-Coupled with tick fishing, it would make Flamethrower a nightmare. You'd want to use Flamethrower exactly 9 seconds before Uptime to get maximum heat + a 80 damage tick.

Flamethrower should rather spend that heat, it spews fire not create it from nowhere.
Slapping heat generation would make the job more clunky that anything else.

Bishop comeback? Why not.
I'd rather target a party member to "attach" the bishop to them, ground targeting is terrible.

Especially considering this expansion made a hard push to eliminate as much ground targeting as possible.

[Sylve]

No, please don't give Flamethrower heat generation.
Heat is already a pain to deal with, because:
-Of how easy you can desynchronize Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire
-It would look absolutely ridiculous to spew fire when there is nothing to target.
-Flamethrower would still be garbage to use (sit and do nothing)
-It would add crap complexity of spending your heat before downtime, considering Hypercharge phases are 9 seconds, you'd need pretty heavy knowledge of the fight timeline and it would still conflict with Drill/Air Anchor.
-Coupled with tick fishing, it would make Flamethrower a nightmare. You'd want to use Flamethrower exactly 9 seconds before Uptime to get maximum heat + a 80 damage tick.

Flamethrower should rather spend that heat, it spews fire not create it from nowhere.
Slapping heat generation would make the job more clunky that anything else.

Bishop comeback? Why not.
I'd rather target a party member to "attach" the bishop to them, ground targeting is terrible.

Get rid of Autocrossbow and use Flamethrower as the AoE heat dump, generating Rico charges per cycle.
Make it a proper GCD.

That way we would have Heat Blast launching fireballs for single target with flamethrower being a flamethrower for AoE cycles.

Alternative to just deleting Autocrossbow, turn it into a combo off Scattergun/Spreadshot so we aren't stuck spamming just 1 button for AoE (Yes, I know technically it's Scattergun x5 -> Crossbow x5).
Every other job has a proper combo path for AoE, except MCH.

[Atamis]

I really wouldn't mind it building heat but I also think heat needs reworked greatly. I think, ideally, flamethrower should consume heat for aoe phases and be on a long cooldown as to not make bow irrelevant.
Flamethrower also needs reworked, if it let you move, even at a walking pace, it wouldn't be so terrible.

[Duskane]

Flamethrower really just needs to be turned into Fell cleave for MCH
cost 50 heat,High potency and animation change to be instant

also make heat management a bit better,less heat blast and can add a little bit more brain power lining it up with 60 second and 2 minute windows

[Garnix]

Minor thing, but that is really the only job for which this bothers me : make the battery gauge useful in AoE. Seriously...why is it not?
Flamethrower needs some help, as everyone as been mentioning for years.
Overall DPS should be quite a bit higher, and if they really don't want the job to have utility, then the job should get some animation lock or good ol' HW cast times to balance it out.
Or simply add FF6 Edgar's Debilitator as Machinist's trick attack.

[WiccaP]

I would love the old turret system back and have AQ be something that is built toward. If we arent gonna have the dps to be the selfish ranged phys, I think an ability that throws out a turret for 10-15 secs that puts a party wide shield that stacks with others. A mch wouldnt boost healing magic per say but they could reasonably be able to mitigate some dmg. Also for a class thats supposed to be the most mobile, a personal mobility ability like haste in bozja or a grappling hook pull ability that functions like blms move to target. Even the other "selfish" dps like blm and sam have some personal utility. Its odd that mch is the only job that doesnt.

[gumas]

the core of mch is to spawn turret/automaton and doing heat blast, the thing is these 2 skill is against each other, to generate battery you either do 1-2-3 combo or air anchor, while doing so your gauge on heatblast is wasted (if its on ready), but while doing heat blast is great and all, it didnt generate battery... what gives?

heat blast should generate battery, and some other skill should do so (drill, chainsaw, etc) just make it small like 4 or even 2 battery only, it will add up.

[HyperSMB]

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.