Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I think the issue with Machinist is its damage output, despite kinda being The Physical-Ranged "Selfish DPS"
But I think Ive been hearing Ranger Jobs all have this issue, a "tax" or something, Im forgetting what it was called.
So get rid of this 'Tax' and better damage and BAM, problem solved.

Frankly, what you said here is what never sits right in my mind about the entire role. From what I understood they shipped Physical Ranged DPS to be geared more as a 'support'. This holds true for BRD and DNC so far, but not MCH whose kits are almost entirely selfish outside Tactician.

It's just... odd. Kinda like SE is trying to achieve too much but accomplishing nothing, if it makes any sense at all...

[Knot_D]

Also...Bring back Stormblood Machinist.
I miss that.

No thank you, that is the reason why I main BRD instead of MCH on SB, because the heated opener is so annoying to use and the RNG is so bad and mostly relying on the bullets.

I prefer HW's Gun Mage though

[Rokke]

I prefer HW's Gun Mage though

Gunmage was best MCH era.

[Ranaku]

Over the Top Hyperbole such as: "The Devs hate MCH"
Is not constructive or help anything.

I think the issue with Machinist is its damage output, despite kinda being The Physical-Ranged "Selfish DPS"
But I think Ive been hearing Ranger Jobs all have this issue, a "tax" or something, Im forgetting what it was called.
So get rid of this 'Tax' and better damage and BAM, problem solved.

Also...Bring back Stormblood Machinist.
I miss that.

Over the top hyberbole is tho what gets people to talk!

And it is true nonetheless, MCH is still full of anti player and toxic game designs while all other jobs got their "problems" more or less fixed. Like why is MCH one of the only jobs that still has to deal with cone aoes? Or not being able to cast flamethrower while moving? Or the job being barely playable with bad ping, which i don't have but i heard many people complain about that.

And the results of that neglect stand also, MCH is one of the least played jobs and mostly just picked for obviously personal preferences and not cause it is rewarding in any way. SE basically punishes MCH with bad damage and a harder rotation while other jobs do more damage, are easier to play and bring more utility to the table. So it's no wonder that players pick other jobs rather than MCH.

And when players already get frequently kicked out of groups for playing MCH or get told to pick dancer instead well then i think it is fair to say that the devs actually despise MCH cause their only answer is always a subtle increase to potency and for that weirdly always wildfire. And then you see other jobs get overhauled, pushed to the top like monk and MCH suffers from expansion to expansion without any end in sight.

Regarding the ranged tax, for other ranged dps this is mitigated by utility which MCH has absolutely none to give. So MCH should deal actually as much as the other selfish dps jobs but for whatever reason MCH deals sometimes even less damage than jobs that aren't selfish dps jobs.

[MikkoAkure]

I had been wanting to play the class since we were told in the 1.0 beta that Musketeer wasn't going to be in the beta, but it was totally going to be in the release version of the game. And then after that we were told that it was going to be out in a patch. And then it along with Arcanist were put on indefinite hold as the original game fell apart. This seems to have been foreshadowing for everything else to come with the class and its future incarnation.

ARR is released and Musketeer is nowhere to be seen while Arcanist gets a complete makeover with the weird rod things replaced by books and traps replaced by Carbuncle. Marauder moved from the pirate ship and was placed in the Coral Tower, Musketeer's 1.0 guild building, though the Musketeer symbol remained so there was hope. But finally in HW the class was released in Ishgard! with my favorite 1.0 NPC in the story! I immediately set the MSQ aside after unlocking MCH and excitedly leveled it up but ended up not being impressed.


I don't know where a lot of people find love for HW and SB MCH though. The standard rotation was super RNG and it didn't feel fun to have to press 1 over and over because the Twelve hate you. The NA servers at the time had my traffic go through Level 3 and I had slow connections immediately at 7pm every day which made the issues with wildfire even worse. BRD could do everything better and with less effort and there seemed to be no place for MCH.

SB came around and introduced the heating mechanic that didn't seem intuitive at all and the best rotation somehow involved using flamethrower for part of its cycle for heat? And there were also certain times when and when not to use the gauss barrel? I tried it for a little bit and ended up not liking it at all and went back to other classes.


ShB was a very big improvement and made Machinst more of an actual "machinst" instead of a "person with a gun and a robot sometimes". The issue is that with DNC released, I feel like the other existing physical ranged classes went through an identity crisis that I feel like SE hasn't properly addressed since. I wish that SE would revisit these 3 classes before PLD and DRG since it seems to be that they just simply exist and there's no reason to play them unless you really dig the aesthetic. Wildfire and the Queen have steep DPS loss if the boss jumps away while either are active. The class is very boring when not in Wildfire or Overheated mode. My beloved Bishop disco ball is gone, as is Grenado Shot. Flamethrower is still useless.


MCH should be at least as powerful as SMN, which it might be by now, but it also needs more from its abilities. The standard 1-2-3 does nothing except slowly boost your gauge and otherwise has no interaction with any other abilities the class has. Wildfire/Overheated mode unlocks a new rotation for less than 10 seconds. Then there's a couple of random powerful abilities thrown in there that help boost your gauges and a robot pet that does its own thing separate from the rest of your class that you can just throw out whenever your gauge is ready. There's just no unity in it and it feels like a room of people had a lot of ideas and they just threw them all together and made compromises. It also lacks party support like DNC and BRD have, but doesn't bring the DPS boosts you'd expect from losing those abilities.

At this point I think it needs another overhaul or at least some new gimmick to tie its abilities in more. I would not mind losing wildfire or hypercharge tbh. This may be heresy, but if they want it to be the "selfish" physical ranged DPS, they could reintroduce the gauss barrel and give it DPS like BLM at the cost of movement and cast timers. They've already made SMN basically the 4th ranged physical DPS by removing the vast majority of its casting timers so going in the opposite direction has precedence now. And hopefully they either remove flamethrower, change how it works, or make it worthwhile.

[FireMage]

One of the main reasons why i have the feeling that the devs actually despise MCH is that every adjustment or "fix" to the everlasting broken state of that job is just a increase of the wildfire potency. There is no real work done on the job, just always really minor potency increases which keeps MCH still far below most other jobs which are easier to play and reward with more damage. And there is always absolute silence from the devs side until enough people complain so they push out these silly little potency buffs.

I stopped taking you seriously with this paragraph. MCH is the 2nd easiest DPS in the game with only SMN being easier. It DESERVES to be at the bottom rung of the DPS ladder

[Reimmi]

I stopped taking you seriously with this paragraph. MCH is the 2nd easiest DPS in the game with only SMN being easier. It DESERVES to be at the bottom rung of the DPS ladder

No it doesn't.
you repeating it doesn't make it more true, either.

[Renathras]

I stopped taking you seriously with this paragraph. MCH is the 2nd easiest DPS in the game with only SMN being easier. It DESERVES to be at the bottom rung of the DPS ladder

Difficulty is relative, which is why it should never be used for balance. Things like utility should be.

I find MCH harder to play than SMN, RDM, and NIN. (You can call me crazy, but I remember the Mudras super easy with little stories in my head like "The cunning of Man" to know which one lets me cast Trick in combat and knowing that all that matters for Mudras is if they're 2 or 3 long and what the LAST one is - the first 1/2 don't matter - so I just get in a groove on NIN that I can't do as well with MCH). BLM is arguably one of the easiest DPS Jobs in the game in terms of rotation, it's just tricky to work that into boss mechanics that require movement. SAM is also pretty straighforward once you get it, making it pretty easy, too. And let's be real, with giant hitboxes and even omni-directional wall bosses and short CD 2 charge True North, it's not like Melee is starving for uptime or having difficulty with positionals these days. And most of their positionals have been either removed or had the damage loss by missing them minimized.

Difficulty is relative.

The problem is that you can't have a "selfish DPS" in a role that has a damage penalty. MCH should either do as much damage as at least RPR or something, OR is should offer utility more comparable to DNC and BRD.

Imagine if you had a healer that had only Medica and Cure 1, but was a "selfish DPS" and did 500 more dps than the other healers. No one would take it to any raid. You'd be better off bringing a PLD or RDM at that point since they'd do comparable healing and even the PLD would be bringing more damage.

I don't know what it needs, but one of the two - more damage or more utility/buffs. I've seen some people propose a combat raise (which would be a stealth buff to BLM since it would mean if you have a MCH you can possibly pass on a RDM/SMN), but I honestly don't know.

[Midareyukki]

Difficulty is relative

Yes, clearly. When people say "stop feeding the well-known troll", some find it a Savage-tier challenge.

[Azuri]

Yes, clearly. When people say "stop feeding the well-known troll", some find it a Savage-tier challenge.

It's the battle of the trolls. Let them fight.