[Machinist] What is going on?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

The Job site says "Physical ranged DPS attack foes from a distance. They excel at inflicting sustained damage, and also provide support for companions." So if this is what a Phys ranged is, then what is mch? Must be a limited job for deep dungeons lol.

Not the most popular opinion, but I have been thinking for a while now that the "greedy dps" archetype does not work for a job in a role based around free mobility and providing party buffs (damage, mitigation, healing, diverse).

I currently see scenarios:

1.) Everything stays or buffs are insignificant, asking yourself "why should I bring Machinist FULLSTOP?"
2.) Machinist gets buffed damage to compete if not have a slight edge over BRD / DNC, "why bring DNC / BRD?"
3.) Machinist gets buffed damage to reach close to BLM / SAM - "why bring SAM / BLM if MCH does almost as much without any restrictions?"

Personal suggestion: Machinist needs to go back to the days of Stormblood / Heavensward in terms of being a Ranged DPS that will provide support abilities to keep them competitive with other Ranged DPS and keeping the damage in similar ranges.

Suggested abilities:

Palisade - 90s CD, provides -20% physical reduction taken to target (alternative -10% generic reduction) [Eq. to Minne + Curing Waltz]

"Hypercharge"* - 120s, buff / debuff enhancing damage dealt (on target) or a different stat [Eq. to Battle Voice + Tech. Step]
* = placeholder name, not necessarily the same ability

Dismantle - same Dismantle from Stormblood and prior, essentially a "Reprisal" of sorts unique to MCH in this case.

Feel free to disagree, but at least in my opinion it is the best to make MCH a utility dps again.

[ChaozK]

3.) Machinist gets buffed damage to reach close to BLM / SAM - "why bring SAM / BLM if MCH does almost as much without any restrictions?"

MCH doesnt really need to out-contribute SAM or even BLM, it does however need to out-contribute at least the ranged dps that bring utility as it itself has none.
Or alternatively give it defensive utility on par with BRD and DNC.

[Tsumdere]

Feel free to disagree, but at least in my opinion it is the best to make MCH a utility dps again.

I do disagree.

I hate this idea that every single job in a role needs to be the same thing. People bitch and moan about other jobs being homogenized but it's always "just make MCH utility job... and homogenize it". This is what people jump to instead of say... giving MCH the PvP Blast Shot as their basic combo.

All buffing MCH higher would do would be legitimize double phys ranged comps and give MCH players reasons to play it outside of aesthetic. DNC and BRD will still be hard lock-ins for speeds/parsing/comfort. Melee will still play melee and prefer to play melee. BLMs will still play BLM and prefer to play BLM.

And it is ALWAYS non-MCH players trying to give their idea on what should happen instead of actual MCH players. I would despise being made yet another support bitch in service of melee and their job fantasy.

No homogenization. Give MCH big DPS.

[SkyEdge1]

So not to hard disagree with you but to be honest the selfish DPS thing is starting to weigh a little stale for me as well. It may not have to be in line with BRD or DNC levels of utility but giving MCH nothing (when it used have a decent kit) makes the DPS gap hurt just so much more, you need to give Selfish DPS SO much more just to keep them in line with support/utility jobs the moment you step into any kind of coordinated content.
I dont want to devalue your stance, but I do belive we are starting to see the cracks show in this type of design philosophy for dps. If it all comes down to potency then the design is fundamentally boring and adding potency will simply keep it boring.

[ty_taurus]

So not to hard disagree with you but to be honest the selfish DPS thing is starting to weigh a little stale for me as well. It may not have to be in line with BRD or DNC levels of utility but giving MCH nothing (when it used have a decent kit) makes the DPS gap hurt just so much more, you need to give Selfish DPS SO much more just to keep them in line with support/utility jobs the moment you step into any kind of coordinated content.
I dont want to devalue your stance, but I do belive we are starting to see the cracks show in this type of design philosophy for dps. If it all comes down to potency then the design is fundamentally boring and adding potency will simply keep it boring.

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.

And so what if MCH becomes slightly advantaged in the few fights where melee uptime drops more than normal? Sometimes having minor advantages that makes certain jobs slightly more effective in occasional encounters is actually interesting. AST was allowed to trivialize Death's Toll in P3S. Didn't stop tons of healers from wanting to play the blatantly inferior WHM.

[Risvertasashi]

MCH doesnt really need to out-contribute SAM or even BLM, it does however need to out-contribute at least the ranged dps that bring utility as it itself has none.
Or alternatively give it defensive utility on par with BRD and DNC.

It does if you look at adps. The only jobs that out-DPS machinists on personal damage are the melees and black mage.

It's buffs where it falls behind.

[Renathras]

It does if you look at adps. The only jobs that out-DPS machinists on personal damage are the melees and black mage.

It's buffs where it falls behind.

I genuinely don't understand why people keep bringing this up in all these discussions. Do people not read the definition of aDPS vs rDPS?

No one is choosing Jobs based on aDPS for raid slots. "Well, you bring a total of 8,000 aDPS but 0 buffs so only 8,000 rDPS while your competitor brings 6,000 aDPS but their buffs add up to another 4,000 so they're bringing 10,000 total DPS to the party to take the boss down and beat enrage..."

What matters is total DPS. If that didn't matter and aDPS is what mattered, no one would bring BRD and DNC.

.

MCH needs...something.

It's in a role with a "tax". So either the tax needs to go away (entirely or at least be waived for MCH) or it has to have a different identity. RDM could do so much less damage than BLM and SMN in ShB and BLM in EW because Verraise. DNC's personal damage can be low because its buff damage is high.

Either MCH needs to be a selfish DPS that actually BRINGS THE DPS and is in the top 5 if not top 3 Jobs for DPS, or it needs to be given SOME kind of serious utility. Whether this is competing directly with BRD and DNC in damage buffs, is given defensive buffs (though those age poorly as a tier goes on) or a combat raise (Defibrilate comes to mind), it either needs one of those or it needs to seriously be top damage. Not that everyone knows the only Jobs that don't have 100% uptime are BLM and RDM, there's zero reason for that tax to continue to exist, and certainly to apply to MCH.