6.1 Machinist potency increases follow-up

[Malpercios]

Greetings,

while I know a lot of threads have been made about the subject already, it feels like the subject needs to be brought up multiple times just to be heard. The overall buffs MCH got this patch, while in the right direction, are too small still. Before 6.1 MCH was about 5-6% behind its physical range peers in terms of damage brought to a raid. Whilst their personal damage is obviously higher than the other two, they simply still do not hit hard enough in raid buffs, even in an optimal composition. The buffs given to them in 6.1 roughly amounts to a 2.4% increase, lower than what was needed to push them.

If you were to double the potency increase we have gotten this patch and some more, MCH would be in a better spot. Increase the potency on every tool to 600, increase the potency of heatblast to 190 or even 200 and further increase the damage of Wildfire. As it stands, Wildfire is still one of the weakest damaging 2min CD in the game as it cannot crit or direct hit and only scales off skill speed and determination. This further emphasizes the lack of synergy MCH has with buffing jobs such as DRG, SCH, BRD and DNC that provide crit and direct hit. Wildfire would have to be 1800 potency + in its current state to even feel remotely potent. I understand allowing the spell to crit and direct hit might cause issue with damage variance, but it then require further raw power to compensate. These changes might not even be enough to close the gap mind you.

While FF14 is very well balanced all things considered, it's sad that the mantra of bring the player not the job the team has taken upon them since Stormblood has fallen short when it comes to MCH.

There also still no mention about fixing hypercharge for higher ping players. In the past Yoship has mentioned that no feedback on the subject has been given yet has been posted numerous time on the NA forums. It feels disheartening to see complaints from members of the community to be ignored on the subject, especially when they have given multiple ways of fixing the issue.

Overall these are bullet points I want to share:
- Flamethrower is still barely worth using over the rest of our kit for aoe
- Queen's AI is still very lacking yet so much of our damage in put into her. Not to mention there is barely any interaction with her. This kinda goes against he jobs design to control machines.
- Hypercharge/Heatblast should work on a stack system but also needs have it's animation lock reduced to prevent ping related issues.
- Same as above, Gauss round and ricochet need to have their animation lock looked at.
- Auto Crossbow should at the very least reduce the cooldown on Ricochet. As it stands MCH's AoE is quite subpar.
- Potency increases on tools (again), as well as buffing Heatblast more. As it stands, outside of the reset mechanic with Gauss Round / Ricochet, Heatblast is barely a damage increase over our basic combo due to battery generation being calculated in it.
- Wildfire is still too weak of a 2 min Cooldown, even after the increase. Wildfire is about 2-3% of our total damage. This buffs it to not even 4% while scalling poorly and has little synergy with party buffs.
- Reassemble has the same issue as the Samurai changes. Allowing spells to autocrit/DH makes them worse in some team composition, namely with scholars and dragoons.
- The PvP rework for MCH seems more fun and thought out than it's PvE counterpart not to mention that overheat works with a stack mechanic.

[Malpercios]

To add, it just feel in general that MCH and it's player base are put aside. Rarely is MCH brought up when talking bout job balancing and how the community feels about the changes. For instance, in this morning's reading of the patch note, not even a mention was made about MCH. During fanfest, MCH seemed like an afterthought, especially with comments made by Yoship such as "let's talk about MCH anyway" as if they aren't as important as the rest. I get that the job might not be the most popular, especially compared to the likes of BRD, SAM, RPR, etc. but it just feels downright saddening that its plights keep constantly being ignored or pushed aside.

I get that our mobility should come at the expense of some damage but even so it is too much at this time. A bard or a dancer in a good raid setting are pretty much on par with the rest of the DPS whilst MCH still struggle.

[gamerseb]

Indeed.

In today's stream, MCH was practically skipped, even though the job is in a terrible state, and Yoshi P stopped to explain other jobs for a long while. It almost feels as though devs are making fun of us at this point.

[WiccaP]

Indeed.

In today's stream, MCH was practically skipped, even though the job is in a terrible state, and Yoshi P stopped to explain other jobs for a long while. It almost feels as though devs are making fun of us at this point.

In all honesty its one of the reasons I dont watch the streams anymore. Its clear what the devs like and dont like and sadly, I like what they dont. Here's my take:
the MCH buffs account for roughly a 2.4% potency buff, on average Mch have been roughly 5-6% behind other ranged physical while also not providing any raid/party support. The range tax is no longer a valid reason for less dps, positionals in melee are constantly being removed or adjusted, most fight mechanics lately do not affect melee uptime much and even a competent blm can be as mobile as a machinist in EW. MCH is like the only job without a gap closer or jump back. they are one of, if not the only, jobs to not have a self heal or dmg mitigation outside of a role ability. Even the other "selfish DPS" bring more in terms of self utility/support than the machinist. The two main abilities of mch are disjointed and anticlimactic. wildfire/heatblast can not crit or direct hit & the burst window is extremely ping dependent and unforgiving. the AQ attacks random targets, not what you're targeting and is pretty much a glorified DoT. Removing the old style turrets was a huge mistake in my opinion. I understand the developers dont like "pet classes" but a large portion of the players do and want them. Mch and Smn should be able to have a "pet" that actually does something, even if its just a auto basic attack, considering Scholars get a fairy that can auto heal. Flamethrower is a throw away ability, because it stops all movement and even rotating in place cancels the action, which goes against mch supposedly being a super mobile job. The Devs need to decide if they want MCH to be a selfish dps or a support job and need to retool it to fit whichever that is. They stripped away a lot of what made the mch class feel unique and special with ShB and while somethings have been changed for the better rotation wise, there is a lot that leaves much to be desired. From a Machinist main point of view at least.

[Pidgeon]

Indeed.

In today's stream, MCH was practically skipped, even though the job is in a terrible state, and Yoshi P stopped to explain other jobs for a long while. It almost feels as though devs are making fun of us at this point.

All I can assume is their refusal to speak at this time is because they know they have a bad or nonexistent justification for their current balancing of Machinist. I don't know if this is because they're still mistakenly balancing around median damage / median (rDPS) for endgame content or if they're still afraid of a double ranged meta, but it does get more insulting every patch. It only looks sillier when casters get more and more mobility and melee are losing more positional requirements. This is on top of certain melee and casters being able to flat out ignore standard rotations. (Dragon Kick Monk and Paradox Black Mage anyone?).

[WiccaP]

[QUOTE=Malpercios;5891940]Greetings,

There also still no mention about fixing hypercharge for higher ping players. In the past Yoship has mentioned that no feedback on the subject has been given yet has been posted numerous time on the NA forums. It feels disheartening to see complaints from members of the community to be ignored on the subject, especially when they have given multiple ways of fixing the issue.

That's the thing that bothers me the most. There have been several instances where problems and questions about specifically mch were brought up in QAs to Yoshi P directly. MrHappy straight up asked about potential fixes to bloodweapon, hypercharge and wildfire. They have gotten tons of feedback. I have sent multiple in game messages to devs regarding issues, there are and have been tons of threads, videos, tweet etc about problems with MCH and for tgem to turn around and say they have gotten no feedback. It's a bold face lie that is easily disproven and they still refuse to acknowledge it.