[Machinist] What is going on?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

MCH does need potency buffs to start with. It's not a "short term" solution, it's a baseline step. MCH is supposed to be the 'selfish' phys ranged dps, yet is still far, far behind BRD and DNC.

At a minimum it needs a potency increase to it's main combo and Wildfire. It already has a half-decent burst.


It terms of group support, I'd say stick with the 'selfish' dps aspect as far as raid buffs go so it's still dealing all of it's own damage, but grant it non-dmg utility.
Something like a party shield or something, considering DNC has Curing Waltz and Improvised Finish, while BRD has single target buffs like Wardens Peaen and Natures Minne.
Another option could be an Expedience style speed buff, considering it has no mobility skill like the other two.

The selfish-dps type was something MCH got shoehorned into with 5.0 after difficulty keeping the rivalry between BRD and MCH damage buffs roughly the same, when the solution of a third party (Dancer) being introduced was already on its way.

Selfish-DPS MCH can go away for all I care, I don't miss it.

[Seraphor]

The selfish-dps type was something MCH got shoehorned into with 5.0 after difficulty keeping the rivalry between BRD and MCH damage buffs roughly the same, when the solution of a third party (Dancer) being introduced was already on its way.

Selfish-DPS MCH can go away for all I care, I don't miss it.

Completely disagree. Each role should have different options within it.

Melee Have Samurai as the selfish DPS, and then Monk/Dragoon/Reaper have a range of utility options, and then Ninja comes out as the most utility oriented melee job.
Casters have BLM as the selfish DPS, and then Summoner and Red Mage provide varying levels of party support and raid buffs.

Physical ranged should be no different. Machinist is our selfish DPS, make it right.

[xAFROx]

MCH does need potency buffs to start with. It's not a "short term" solution, it's a baseline step. MCH is supposed to be the 'selfish' phys ranged dps, yet is still far, far behind BRD and DNC.

At a minimum it needs a potency increase to it's main combo and Wildfire. It already has a half-decent burst.


It terms of group support, I'd say stick with the 'selfish' dps aspect as far as raid buffs go so it's still dealing all of it's own damage, but grant it non-dmg utility.
Something like a party shield or something, considering DNC has Curing Waltz and Improvised Finish, while BRD has single target buffs like Wardens Peaen and Natures Minne.
Another option could be an Expedience style speed buff, considering it has no mobility skill like the other two.

Doesn't Tactician reduce damage taken by a percent? I know it cancels out dancer's shield samba and bard's whatever it was called. But folks saying it needs to have something for the party, the most common thing I'm seeing already exists, doesn't it?

[jrollins89]

Doesn't Tactician reduce damage taken by a percent? I know it cancels out dancer's shield samba and bard's whatever it was called. But folks saying it needs to have something for the party, the most common thing I'm seeing already exists, doesn't it?

Tactician is, for all intents and purposes, a "Role Action". It has the exact same effect as Shield Samba and Troubadour and you can only be affected by one at a time, the only difference being name and which level they're obtained at. So claiming that MCH brings party utility/isn't a selfish DPS because of Tactician would be the same as saying that BLM isn't a selfish DPS because it has Addle. Or Samurai because it has Feint. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it?

[xAFROx]

Tactician is, for all intents and purposes, a "Role Action". It has the exact same effect as Shield Samba and Troubadour and you can only be affected by one at a time, the only difference being name and which level they're obtained at. So claiming that MCH brings party utility/isn't a selfish DPS because of Tactician would be the same as saying that BLM isn't a selfish DPS because it has Addle. Or Samurai because it has Feint. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it?

Fair. I only comment that because I've seen about 3 threads now where folks mentioned mch should have a raidwide damage reduction, that's all.

[SkyEdge1]

Would you see every DPS gain support then? Give every job a 2 minute 5% party wide DPS buff? There's a lot of talk about trimming that down, not increasing that, and MCH being exclusively a selfish DPS is perfectly fine if we can stop treating mobility tax as if mobility is anything other than marginally more convenient than melee. Realistically, it should be BLM > SAM > MCH at the top. BLM is by far the toughest to play as because while they're not nearly as immobile as they once were, it's still a lot of work getting comfortable in each new fight working around their restrictions. MCH does not have utility other than Tactician which is really just a glorified role action, and SAM has Feint so other than being a little bit stronger, Tactician should really not count against MCH. Beyond that SAM is only a tiny bit more complex than MCH. MNK, DRG, RPR, and NIN should all be below MCH because they all offer party buffs. It just doesn't make sense to keep acting like MCH's mobility is some godlike advantage that needs to be counterbalanced by low DPS when melee uptime is nearly 100% in almost every raid these days..

Seems I've been slightly misunderstood, though I agree that forum posting on my phone at work was probably not the best way to get a point in. What I mean by selfish dps struggle is exactly that, having "just high dps" be the end all be all of Jon design compounds a glaring issue (made worse by forced 2 minite timers but that's another topic) by that point DPS should not be the only measure of utility but let's say it was, having placed turret on the ground granting party members inside (ugh) more damage/crit/DH/(tenacity lol) wouldn't be so agregious as to ruin a class. The selfish DPS fantasy falls apart the minute you add more than 1 job in a team for comparison. Why add a SAM in a team slot if an equally well played NIN does comparable DPS in a group AND increases damage for all? This is what I mean, Selfish DPS need to be SO damn far ahead in dps to even matter in group composition that the moment the millisecond they aren't you run into P8S issues where clearing in the first few weeks mandates you remove jobs from selection. And even if that is fixed later with gear. The community mindset of LOL MCH bad in rad can't clear don't bring stays in the collective further harming the identity of a job.
Granted this is ONLY my Point of View, you are welcome to respectfully disagree as this is just a post on the internet and I for sure am no dev.

[Kachou_]

Man just love his job. That's it.

[Shuuli]

I am just waiting for this job to get the Summoner treatment when it becomes easier to play than DNC and then the dmg will be justified

[Cetonis]

overall are performing lower than most bards and dancers

This is false. Machinist is outperforming Bard and Dancer in the vast, vast majority of scenarios.

It's just that the one place they aren't, is in high skill, well optimized 8-man groups. The kinds you seek if you want to week 1 clear Savage, especially *this* Savage, but that don't matter at all for the purposes of legitimately 99+% of players.

That's been Machinist's "problem" ever since late Stormblood. As a job that does not at all scale with group quality, it absolutely cannot be allowed to compete with Bard or Dancer at the highest levels of group play. That would be disastrous for ranged balance, as another pointed out, since there wouldn't be any scenarios where you'd want a Bard or Dancer (unless they were given a res, maybe).


SE has, plainly, long since decided that this is fine. Machinist mains are playing what is easily the most powerful ranged dps class - until you're in the kind of group that is so high-end, they demand all their members be able to flex within their role.

In other words, the players for whom MCH is weak, are by definition also the ones who are already prepared to job swap anyway. It's weird for a job to be perma-singled out to be in that state, but you can imagine SE being fine with it. It's not a wildly unreasonable stance.


The only particular areas of debate are:

(a) Where exactly to draw that group quality "line" for which the other ranged should start to pull ahead - it's actually fairly high now, but it could afford to be a little higher. That's talking about like a 1% buff though, a far cry from warranting the melodrama surrounding the job

(b) Whether the entire ranged (and res caster) bucket should be closer to the melee/blm. This is an obvious "yes" for seemingly everyone besides SE, but that's a much broader conversation and not MCH-specific.

[wyznwyb]

i am genuinely saying this as nicely as i can here: the only possible way i can imagine someone seriously believing that machinist is easier than the other phys range and not, at minimum, basically identical in difficulty, is if they were so spectacularly bad at pressing their buttons on cooldown that their technical step is drifting by thirty seconds by the time they remember to press it.

especially in a meta where their kinds of buffs are the only things that matters anymore, you can basically completely mess up everything else, both before and immediately following the two minute burst window, and be fine, so long as your steps pop on time and your radiant finale comes after three songs. bard and dancer are not black mages, and they're barely even red mages, yet here they are doing more damage than a red mage is.