Machinist class is dead

[Cyd3l]

So if MCH is better than Bard and Dancer, please explain why you'd ever want those classes then? Simply changing which phys Ranged DPS is the lowest won't fix the problem that someone has to be at the bottom. So lets put the classes that already take tons of personal DPS penalties, require near-perfect execution of teamates performance during buff windows and make them lowest in group situations too? How does that make sense? Not to mention you're only comparing clear data. During actual progression DNC and BRD perform much worse because people aren't optimizing, people are dying, MCH can actually outperform BRD and DNC here, its only after the prog when everyone is executing well that it starts to shift to the buff classes pulling ahead. And what's wrong with that?

[HyoMinPark]

So if MCH is better than Bard and Dancer, please explain why you'd ever want those classes then?

Raid buffs. The same reason why buff comps take NIN and DRG over SAM, or AST and SCH over SGE and WHM.

If MCH does less than Bard and Dancer, please explain why you’d ever want to bring it to a party. What is it offering? Even if it does the same damage as BRD/DNC give, what is it offering the party?

Simply changing which phys Ranged DPS is the lowest won't fix the problem that someone has to be at the bottom. So lets put the classes that already take tons of personal DPS penalties, require near-perfect execution of teamates performance during buff windows and make them lowest in group situations too? How does that make sense?

Because you don’t balance around that. You balance jobs around other jobs within their role performing at the same level. You wouldn’t balance MCH against a BRD or DNC that is in a group of grey-level parsers. That is an unfair comparison. About as unfair as balancing a grey-level DNC player with an orange-tier MCH.

Not to mention you're only comparing clear data. During actual progression DNC and BRD perform much worse because people aren't optimizing, people are dying, MCH can actually outperform BRD and DNC here, its only after the prog when everyone is executing well that it starts to shift to the buff classes pulling ahead. And what's wrong with that?

You don’t balance around progression either. WHM used to be the best progression healer, but it has never been in the healer meta. That has always been AST/SCH. AST, WHM’s direct competitor, has always brought more than WHM when it comes to a party. WHM at least had personal damage and recovery going for it in the past, so it wasn’t entirely griefing to bring them. But right now, if you bring a MCH over a BRD or DNC to your group of the same skill, you are actively hurting them.

EDIT because daily post limit—haven’t hit that in a while.

Is this your opinion, or did SE literally say this somewhere? I find it unlikely the company feels gameplay should only be balanced for the top 5% of players in content less than 10% of the player base even participates in and only for clears with no consideration taken on what it takes to get there? And again i am not denying that MCH is in a bad spot and does need buffs. Making DNC or BRD take their spot isn't the solution tho.

Okay first of all: most content in this game doesn’t require any thought to it whatsoever. You don’t need to parse 99th percentile to clear dungeons; you can literally clear them auto-attacking with an AFK healer and a tank that only does their 1-2-3. Hence why most balance discussions center around the high end and how each job performs there and what they bring to the table.

But the premise of this thread and MCH’s problems comes from a high-end level. You do need to balance jobs around the high end because that’s when what they do and what they bring to a party actually matters. rDPS and aDPS does not matter outside of the high-end. Raid buffs do not matter outside of the high end. You can complete dungeons with barely a pulse, hence why you generally shouldn’t consider balancing around them. I usually pick 95th percentile because it shows high level play without getting into min-maxed territory or crit-fishing territory. Lower percentiles generally have rotational issues that affect performance, which therefore affects balancing. It’s necessary to eliminate these to get an understanding of true job performance at a high level.

You certainly do not balance around the low end. That is what causes balancing issues and job design issues. If you are implying that that is how things should be done, I’m sorry but you are wrong. Balancing around the lowest common denominator is never the route to go. The developers do not have a good track record when it comes to job balance. Considering they outright admitted back in SB that they did just balance BRD and MCH around piercing resistance down, and then couldn’t fathom why both wanted DRGs in their party. Or why both did so much more damage than expected when a DRG was around.

It’s also a huge issue with healers. Since the developers said they replaced a healer with EX experience because they were “too good” to fit into their “bare minimum” dungeon tuning metric. And, as a result, healers are mind-numbing boring to play at any level that isn’t “drooling on keyboard” levels.

[Cyd3l]

Raid buffs. The same reason why buff comps take NIN and DRG over SAM, or AST and SCH over SGE and WHM.

If MCH does less than Bard and Dancer, please explain why you’d ever want to bring it to a party. What is it offering? Even if it does the same damage as BRD/DNC give, what is it offering the party?

You need to have *SOME* high personal DPS classes for DNC and BRD to actually gain benefit from. That's why you would want them. Having those classes like SAM, BLM, MCH are necessary for DNC and BRD to achieve higher RDPS, if you just had a full raid of support DPS their RDPS would be much lower. DNC and BRD can't even hit their medicore RDPS without those high personal DPS classes to buff in the first place. Support classes don't stack well and they are effected by the entire comp of the raid. High Personal DPS classes do stack and literally don't rely on any other class to achieve that. A Dancer dance partnering a MCH is going to do a lot more RDPS than a Dancer dance partnering another Dancer or Bard. Support classes *need* those high personal DPS classes to do well. I want to stress I am not saying MCH doesn't need buffs, it does but its not so simple as just making it out perform DNC and BRD in everything. In regards to what its offering the party, DNC and BRD just offer DPS buffs, MCH has the same defensive CD the whole role has. Personal DPS > DPS from Buffs. DPS from Buffs require coordination, require multiple people to execute properly, there are more variables. Your personal DPS is up to you and only you, this makes it more desirable than DPS from buffs, because there is less that can go wrong.

Because you don’t balance around that. You balance jobs around other jobs within their role performing at the same level. You wouldn’t balance MCH against a BRD or DNC that is in a group of grey-level parsers. That is an unfair comparison. About as unfair as balancing a grey-level DNC player with an orange-tier MCH.



You don’t balance around progression either. WHM used to be the best progression healer, but it has never been in the healer meta. That has always been AST/SCH. AST, WHM’s direct competitor, has always brought more than WHM when it comes to a party. WHM at least had personal damage and recovery going for it in the past, so it wasn’t entirely griefing to bring them. But right now, if you bring a MCH over a BRD or DNC to your group of the same skill, you are actively hurting them.

Is this your opinion, or did SE literally say this somewhere? I find it unlikely the company feels gameplay should only be balanced for the top 5% of players in content less than 10% of the player base even participates in and only for clears with no consideration taken on what it takes to get there? And again i am not denying that MCH is in a bad spot and does need buffs. Making DNC or BRD take their spot isn't the solution tho.

[YukiB]

You need to have *SOME* high personal DPS classes for DNC and BRD to actually gain benefit from. That's why you would want them. Having those classes like SAM, BLM, MCH are necessary for DNC and BRD to achieve higher RDPS, if you just had a full raid of support DPS their RDPS would be much lower. DNC and BRD can't even hit their medicore RDPS without those high personal DPS classes to buff in the first place. Support classes don't stack well and they are effected by the entire comp of the raid. High Personal DPS classes do stack and literally don't rely on any other class to achieve that. A Dancer dance partnering a MCH is going to do a lot more RDPS than a Dancer dance partnering another Dancer or Bard. Support classes *need* those high personal DPS classes to do well. I want to stress I am not saying MCH doesn't need buffs, it does but its not so simple as just making it out perform DNC and BRD in everything. In regards to what its offering the party, DNC and BRD just offer DPS buffs, MCH has the same defensive CD the whole role has. Personal DPS > DPS from Buffs. DPS from Buffs require coordination, require multiple people to execute properly, there are more variables. Your personal DPS is up to you and only you, this makes it more desirable than DPS from buffs, because there is less that can go wrong.

Comparing MCH to SAM or BLM is asinine. It may be a "selfish" DPS but it doesn't do anywhere near as much damage as those two. In fact, its own personal DPS is lower than EVERY melee DPS, even the ones that ALSO bring a raid buff.

No meta comp is going to bring two physical ranged DPS. That's how poorly they're balanced. If you're picking a DNC or BRD, there is no room in the group for MCH. Every melee DPS brings more personal damage, either a LOT more like SAM, or a little more and an additional raid buff MCH doesn't have. Even RDM and SMN are neck and neck with it, while also bringing their own raid buffs and support.

And even if you do bring two physical ranged for the memes, a MCH will still contribute less to their DNC or BRD friend's rDPS than every other NON-selfish DPS in the game.

[Cyd3l]

Comparing MCH to SAM or BLM is asinine. It may be a "selfish" DPS but it doesn't do anywhere near as much damage as those two. In fact, its own personal DPS is lower than EVERY melee DPS, even the ones that ALSO bring a raid buff.

No meta comp is going to bring two physical ranged DPS. That's how poorly they're balanced. If you're picking a DNC or BRD, there is no room in the group for MCH. Every melee DPS brings more personal damage, either a LOT more like SAM, or a little more and an additional raid buff MCH doesn't have. Even RDM and SMN are neck and neck with it, while also bringing their own raid buffs and support.

And even if you do bring two physical ranged for the memes, a MCH will still contribute less to their DNC or BRD friend's rDPS than every other NON-selfish DPS in the game.

No disagreement here. Its why i am saying there is a bigger issue with the entire Phys Ranged role not being that desirable than just MCH's performance alone. As it is there is only ever room for 1 phys ranged, (if that). So which ever phys ranged dps is the best is the one people want. How is MCH doing more dmg than Bard and DNC going to fix anything, just shifting which class is the worst. We need solutions that makes the role actually desirable to begin with and not a hinderance to the raid party. I wasn't suggesting Dancer + MCH was actually viable, just explaining how RDPS and buffs work and that a Dancer + MCH combo would do more dps total than a Dancer + Dancer / Bard. Of course no one is going to do that, Melee are king but thats the even bigger issue that really needs to be addressed somehow.

[ForteNightshade]

How is MCH doing more dmg than Bard and DNC going to fix anything, just shifting which class is the worst.

I literally outlined precisely why this isn't happening; a post you've conveniently ignored. Machinist needs to be the Samurai of Prange, where it does monstrously high damage under raid buffs. It isn't. In fact, it's contributing a third the overall contribution of Dancer and Bard.

[Ayche]

I literally outlined precisely why this isn't happening; a post you've conveniently ignored. Machinist needs to be the Samurai of Prange, where it does monstrously high damage under raid buffs. It isn't. In fact, it's contributing a third the overall contribution of Dancer and Bard.

Yeah, but prange tax is not going away with just the facts. You know, everyone knows the amount of noise the Black Mage community is going to make if crit drill is going to be equal to them.
And gun mage is never coming back, it would be insane if it did.

[Cyd3l]

I literally outlined precisely why this isn't happening; a post you've conveniently ignored. Machinist needs to be the Samurai of Prange, where it does monstrously high damage under raid buffs. It isn't. In fact, it's contributing a third the overall contribution of Dancer and Bard.

Im aware it isn't happening. That's why this thread exists? The problem is there can't be a SAM of pranged. If there is it will be the go-to DPS class and melee will be crying next. So it can't do SAM lvl dmg, not unless they redesign the entire role and revamp how ranged are taxed on DPS. Thus we need a whole role re-evaluation or MCH should probably become a support class like DNC and BRD with similar contributions.

Serenaya post was a good analysis on this.

[gamerseb]

Comparing MCH to SAM or BLM is asinine. It may be a "selfish" DPS but it doesn't do anywhere near as much damage as those two. In fact, its own personal DPS is lower than EVERY melee DPS, even the ones that ALSO bring a raid buff.

No meta comp is going to bring two physical ranged DPS. That's how poorly they're balanced. If you're picking a DNC or BRD, there is no room in the group for MCH. Every melee DPS brings more personal damage, either a LOT more like SAM, or a little more and an additional raid buff MCH doesn't have. Even RDM and SMN are neck and neck with it, while also bringing their own raid buffs and support.

And even if you do bring two physical ranged for the memes, a MCH will still contribute less to their DNC or BRD friend's rDPS than every other NON-selfish DPS in the game.

I agree with everything you wrote here 100%.

It almost feels like MCH's damage is balanced with a personal buff in mind that does not yet exist, that gives him the extra 5-10% he needs to be in line with DNC and BRD.

I'm ok with selfish DPS classes being balanced to have highest rDPS in low performing groups, and lowest rDPS in high performing ones - due to how buff dynamics work. In the same way, I find it's ok for buff classes like BRD and DNC to have lower rDPS in low performing groups and higher rDPS in better ones.

However, that is not the reality we have. Both SAM and BLM, two other selfish classes, are placed higher than they should in both cases - they almost always outperform the others in the same role. And MCH is always at the bottom.

It's ok for damage to diverge based on class complexity - BLM is understandably complex, so I'm not against them dealing some more damage. But between BRD, DNC and MCH, there isn't really a huge gap. So why is our damage so low then?

[AnkanV]

You need to have *SOME* high personal DPS classes for DNC and BRD to actually gain benefit from. That's why you would want them. Having those classes like SAM, BLM, MCH are necessary for DNC and BRD to achieve higher RDPS, if you just had a full raid of support DPS their RDPS would be much lower. DNC and BRD can't even hit their medicore RDPS without those high personal DPS classes to buff in the first place. Support classes don't stack well and they are effected by the entire comp of the raid. High Personal DPS classes do stack and literally don't rely on any other class to achieve that. A Dancer dance partnering a MCH is going to do a lot more RDPS than a Dancer dance partnering another Dancer or Bard. Support classes *need* those high personal DPS classes to do well. I want to stress I am not saying MCH doesn't need buffs, it does but its not so simple as just making it out perform DNC and BRD in everything. In regards to what its offering the party, DNC and BRD just offer DPS buffs, MCH has the same defensive CD the whole role has. Personal DPS > DPS from Buffs. DPS from Buffs require coordination, require multiple people to execute properly, there are more variables. Your personal DPS is up to you and only you, this makes it more desirable than DPS from buffs, because there is less that can go wrong.

Outside of DF, when did you ever have 4 physical ranged dps in a party? Or even three, two of which being dnc and one dnc allready snagging the not-phys-ranged dps for their dancepartner?