Machinist class is dead

[gamerseb]

I rather have a skilled MCH than a player who barely knows their job because they swap for the meta. This game isn't that strict to choices.

Then I'd rather choose a class that is actually competitive which I can become better on - ranged dps or whatever - and play that. Meta is part of the game for some players. BRD and DNC are wanted in PF. MCH are being frowned upon in high-level content - I've had several instances of this myself.

Let me rephrase what you said. I rather have a game where all classes can be somewhat competitive and bring damage to the group, with some differences. If you look at logs, the reality seems far from that. Not asking for an OP class - but let us at least be as good as our ranged peers.

[D6Damager]

If you enjoy the gameplay of a class, just play it and have fun. Why let numbers determine whether you're having fun playing or not?
Does having slightly higher numbers make the gameplay more fun?

Not that its wrong to complain or give feedback and want your class to get the same treatment as others. But wouldn't you be happier if you just stop worrying about the numbers and just play the class you enjoy to the best of your ability?

It's the fear of not being wanted in groups because they would rather have any other job than yours.

[EdwinLi]

I mean I could understand hitting a wall creativity wise if it wasn't for the number of different fixes that I have seen others and myself post that could be done flavor wise and in a lot of cases function wise. I think the MCH started more like an engineer or gadgeteer that used a gun and then in ShB they kind of switched it to a gunner class and that's where they ran into issues. Which a gunner class could work if it had been built that way from the beginning.

I believe to fix the creativity problems and some of the issues they should go back more towards the gadgeteer side of mch. Give us our turrets back and give the support thats needed and move away from the "selfish dps" because they havent figured out how to balance it and ranged tax. Create skills and abilities that dont revolve around the gun. A gap closer that functions like a grappling hook or "rocket boots" that launch us to the side, a party or personal shield that is created by a smaller turret thats thrown in the air and lasts for so many seconds, turn flamethrower into a turret that you throw out and does a 360 aoe, tie the heat and battery gauges together and make them more synergistic and useful.
This post has some great ideas on how to tie the heat and battery gauges together. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Machinist-post.
I think they need to bring an actual Gunner job in and have it focus on being a pure dps with skills and abilities that tie into that instead of shoehorning mch into it and let mch be the counter support job to brd and dnc. I like to think of the balance for r-phys like pre-EW healers. WHMs were regen, sch were shields and ast were the balance in between. Brds are all about buffing dmg and heals, dnc seems like a good balance of buffs and mitigation, let mch be the damage mitigators, let us be the shields of r-phys. which would fit more flavor wise. MCH dont use magic, but we do use machinery; energy and mechanical shields exist in the game already so it wouldnt be taking things any farther into sci-fi

Well part of the doubt with where MCH should go maybe the result of how it was originally meant to be designed as a combination of FF series Gunner jobs and Machinist jobs. Thus trying to constantly fill the roles and needs of two types of Jobs from the FF series but maybe conflicting with each other with due to the focus of these two jobs in past FF series games. However, this also does open up potential to make the job go far more creative direction if the developers wanted to that past FF games never took.

Still we can't know what are on the minds of the developers beyond just speculating at this point.

[WiccaP]

Well part of the doubt with where MCH should go maybe the result of how it was originally meant to be designed as a combination of FF series Gunner jobs and Machinist jobs. Thus trying to constantly fill the roles and needs of two types of Jobs from the FF series but maybe conflicting with each other with due to the focus of these two jobs in past FF series games. However, this also does open up potential to make the job go far more creative direction if the developers wanted to that past FF games never took.

Still we can't know what are on the minds of the developers beyond just speculating at this point.

I probably view the jobs with a different mentality than. While I know and acknowledge the Jobs in past games, i tend to think of each as a stand alone. I don't typically view mch as a mix of these 2 classes or astro as a mix of those 2. I find doing that leads to too many expectations and negative feelings toward a job because it doesn't work like the nostalgia

[Malpercios]

While I get it's nice to have references to other machinists in the series like Edgar, I wish they explored other ones as well as gunslingers and such. Not to mention, the 14's team can do some amazing original ideas. Sage and RPR for instance are both very fun visually and in terms of gameplay while being simple. I wish they had more of their own take when it comes to tools and machinery. Also will post bullet points (hah) I've been posting in other threads.


- Higher potency buffs overall. 600 on every tool, 200 on heatblast, 1800+ on Wildfire for instance would bring its DPS up to par with the rest. Wildfire still cannot crit or DH, making it one of the weakest 2mins in the game. It needs higher potency to compensate and feel like it does something. As it stands even with the buffs we just received it's just a measly 3.5% of our total damage.
- Fixing the ping issues that has plagued it for year. Some MCH mains have to resort to 3rd party tools to just be able to play at a fair level. While I know the game was meant to be played at a higher ping, this isn't really applicable to hypercharge. Giving it a stack system, while helpful, would not fit it's main issue. Heatblast, Gauss Round and Ricochet all need their animation lock to be lowered. Adding a 4th stack to the oGCDs would also help a lot.
- Flamethrower is weak. As we can see from PvP, a lot of channeled abilities can be used while moving. Applying this tech to flamethrower would help it, along side buffing it to feel like a legitimate 1min AoE burst.
- Most our AoE spells could use a bump as well in terms of damage.
- Queen's AI is finicky on multi target and doesn't prioritize the MCH's target even when a lot of conditions are met.
- Queen is a huge part of our damage but at the end of the day is just a glorified dot. We barely interact with her or command her when we are, at the end of the day, a person who should command machines.
- all of our tools feel all samey. They aren't diverse. I get it's easier on the balance side of things but it's a little disappointing in terms of gameplay.

[Serenaya]

I can only hope that summaries like that make it easier for the devs to one day pick out the key points we're hitting on over and over. Keep it up.

[Kitfox]

A lot of the problems could be forgiven to some degree if the job balance was better, but there's nothing MCH excels at when compared to other Ranged DPS. It's just not worth playing at the moment.

-Lowest damage
-Worst utility
-Bad synergy with buffs
-Lowest mobility
-Ping problems
-Has a 2660 potency attack that can do zero damage based on bad AI decisions

[gamerseb]

Going deeper into the high-level reasoning of why its damage is so low, assuming devs don't want to add any utility to MCH and keep it a selfish class...

-Is MCH damage low because it's a selfish dps?
I don't think so. SAM and BLM's rDPS is still as high as other non-selfish classes, even without buffs.

-Is MCH damage low because it's a ranged dps, and they're supposed to have low damage due to high mobility and movement tax?
Yes and no. It seems to be that way, but it still doesn't explain why MCH is much lower than BRD and DNC, when they all have almost the same freedom.

-Is MCH damage low because it's a class that's low in complexity?
Not completely. Somewhat understandably, other classes with more to do and have more restrictions, like SAM and BLM, can somewhat be optimized further, and do more damage in the long run and at high skill levels. But Bard and Dancer are arguably of similar complexity to Machinist, and they still do more damage, so this logic doesn't stand. SMN and RPR are also fairly easy to play, but since they're "new", I'm not mentioning them here, since they're buffed. Moreover, the gap between classes is just too big at high skill levels. As a MCH at 72% parse, I'm still out-damaged by a NIN at 42% (log).

-Is MCH damage low because devs don't take into account party buffs into the equation?
Also no. BLM and SAM are balanced with these in mind - even if they don't have buffs, their damage is in line with other roles.

-Then why is MCH damage so low and is not being adjusted correctly?
I believe it's because MCH (like SMN and RPR) are in a process of being turned into the easiest, lowest-complexity, lowest-damage classes for each role - easy for anyone to pick up and play, even at high skill level content. SMN and RPR are temporarily buffed, since they're "new", but I don't doubt that they may follow a similar route to MCH if this is the reasoning behind it.

"The MCH cannot have higher damage because it has high mobility and low complexity". This is what I imagine the devs thinking when they balanced MCH for 6.1.

If this was true, the outcome of this would be that these classes are useful for prog, but will never be competitive with other classes on same roles, since they're the "easy" classes. I really hope this isn't the truth, but this is the only option I see - if we think that the devs are smart and have some reasoning behind changes.

[Jagick]

Going deeper into the high-level reasoning of why its damage is so low, assuming devs don't want to add any utility to MCH and keep it a selfish class...

"The MCH cannot have higher damage because it has high mobility and low complexity". This is what I imagine the devs thinking when they balanced MCH for 6.1.

.

I actually worry this is true even though it makes no sense. We don't even have an ability to put distance between us and the enemy like Bard does. We're even less mobile than they are. As for complexity? Sure we may not have party buffs like songs to manage or DoTs to keep up and running but we do have to time certain heavy hitters appropriately, keep that heat gauge and battery gauge charging, time the wildfire chain appropriately. While not complex, machinist has a lot of busy work. Simple, but busy. I feel that both bard and machinist are both as easy as each other, they both just have specific tasks and machinist's are more repetitive.

I feel like at this point they just need to split machinist into two classes if this is going to remain the status quo. Give Machinist a bit more mobility and utility, turn it into a more supportive class like bard. Shrink the guns into more proper pistol sizes. Then revive the canned "Musketeer" class and turn it into a less mobile heavy hitting selfish ranged DPS. Arm it with rifles and carbines. Anything would be better than their tendency to ignore the class or give it soggy bandaids for its severed arteries.

[Serenaya]

I think a rework would be the only way to address simplicity + phys-ranged mobility vs. damage output, but we don't even know if that's what they're balancing around anymore. MCH is just... a class that makes no sense for its apparent purpose.