Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[ForteNightshade]

Doesn't matter how good you think those 2 jobs' mobility are, the point is MCH is still better. And they also bring support/ultility, that's why you have to make MCH to at least have less mobility then them.

Except that mobility simply doesn't matter. This has been the long standing issue for years with the Phys Range. Their mobility has virtually zero impact yet is continuously treated as a massive balancing component. Between the ten fights of Pandemonium, and Dragonsong, we have only two, two fights where Phys Range movement is widely superior to Casters. And those two fights (P7 and P8p1) are both hilariously simple for Melee. In other words, the Melee have the same "advantage" Phys Range are supposed to have: mobility. Now you can argue Casters have to plan ahead in P4 or Dragonsong but that mild amount of planning doesn't justify pigeonholing an entire role with lackluster damage. Especially not when they've essentially dragged down the Casters to their level.

On the subject of Machinist and Summoner, specifically. It's absurd to even try arguing Machinist needs to be hindered when Summoner has two bloody casts in a minute long rotation; three if you don't Swift Garuda. Samurai "casts" more than Summoner but we aren't seeing its damage penalized. At this point, mobility tax is a dated concept that simply isn't justifiable. At least not to the present extent.

[Raven2014]

Except that mobility simply doesn't matter. This has been the long standing issue for years with the Phys Range.

Uhm, no. It has only become an issue this tier because the massive hitbox the raid boss have, something that are widely acknowledge both by community and developers. And they already said moving forward this will be recetify. There are a reason the community have always come up with "melee uptime" strat that usually carry more risk to the party. Even this tier, certain mechanic still have optional uptime strat (Ruby 5 in P5S, Exchange 1,2, 4 in P6S), but they're often deemed too risky to be adapted in PF.

I'm playing both DRG and a BRD, if you can convince me mobility simply doesn't matter, than you can also try to sell me a bridge.

[Shurrikhan]

Doesn't matter how good you think those 2 jobs' mobility are, the point is MCH is still better. And they also bring support/ultility, that's why you have to make MCH to at least have less mobility then them.

Shouldn't that be the opposite? If, say, MCH, SMN, and RDM were to all have equal mobility and rDPS (MCH gets a new mobility-constraining way of increasing its damage), SMN and RDM (as jobs that bring support/utility atop their reliability/mobility and rDPS) would still be at an advantage over MCH.

To compare the relative advantages of just RDM and MCH briefly:

• Mobility -> MCH (small difference, varied by encounter).
• Ease of Optimization -> MCH (very small difference, varied by player).
  
  
• Utility -> RDM (relatively large difference; RDM has some of the highest levels of utility*, while MCH has only a single raid miti CD held also by all other physical ranged).
• Damage -> RDM (large enough difference that you almost always get 2 casters or melee instead of 2 physical ranged).

MCH is slightly underfunded either way, but if we were to add damage opportunities that would ultimately constrain their mobility, which would likely also bring its skill ceiling of to (reduce ease of optimization down to) RDM's level, MCH would have more than enough budget to match both utility RDM's utility and damage, too, or faintly exceed its damage while offering less utility, etc.

[Raikai]

Shouldn't that be the opposite? If, say, MCH, SMN, and RDM were to all have equal mobility and rDPS (MCH gets a new mobility-constraining way of increasing its damage), SMN and RDM (as jobs that bring support/utility atop their reliability/mobility and rDPS) would still be at an advantage over MCH.

To compare the relative advantages of just RDM and MCH briefly:

• Mobility -> MCH (small difference, varied by encounter).
• Ease of Optimization -> MCH (very small difference, varied by player).
  
  
• Utility -> RDM (relatively large difference; RDM has some of the highest levels of utility*, while MCH has none).
• Damage -> RDM (large enough difference that you almost always get 2 casters or melee instead of 2 physical ranged).

MCH is slightly underfunded either way, but if we were to add elements that constrain their mobility, which would likely also bring its skill ceiling of to (reduce ease of optimization down to) RDM's level, MCH would have more than enough budget to match both utility RDM's utility and damage, too, or faintly exceed its damage while offering less utility, etc.

Machinist could have two extra actions to buff up its utility:
- A physical counterpart of Magic Barrier
- Palisade back

I've seen people toying with a rez concept for MCH as a battery spender, but a rez would probably create more issues than before.

[Raikai]

uh, a bit of a disgenuis statement seeing it's the one job that has received the most number of major make over since it came out. They were changed so often that in one of the live a community rep even asked Yoshi something like "you have been changing MCH every expansions, will this be last time?" and Yoshi laughed and answer "I think we got this right this time, probably?", he even appologied to MCH players that the class had been changed so much so often.

Granted, they haven't done a good job with the change, but they wouldn't have put in as much work as they did if they don't care about it. MCH receiving major change was kind of a meme until THIS expansion.



Because it has an identity crisis. The only way to make the current MCH more competitive is you have to give it a cake and let it eat it too. It's a selfish DPS, so naturally people expect high number. But if its number is too high than you literally taking a spit at the face of SAM and BLM who also selfish DPS but have way more movement restriction. That on top of a relative simple rotation doesn't help the case. I won't say it's among the easiest job to play, but comparing to the other selfish DPS MCH rotation depth is a joke.

If you want MCH number to be higher, its mobility gonna have to be neft at the very least. Like ... maybe bringing back the 3.0 MCH as a semi-caster, then you can at least argue for it to have similar number to say ... RDM or SMN.

The biggest problem of just a dps buff because it's 'selfish' putting way ahead on the rdps rank, it would literally obliterate DNC and BRD's spots in the phys ranged slot.

As it is nowadays, the best thing we can expect is MCH's rpds numbers be buffed to be nearly equal to the other two... But even that is not enough. BRD and DNC have very useful utility actions for prog groups (especially first weeks) in Curing W, Paean, etc... Why bring a MCH that does the same rdps but doesn't bring anything else to help party survivability?

Ideally on top of the damage partiy with DNC and BRD, MCH needs 2 utility actions.

[Ranaku]

snip

I think much of MCH problems come with quality of life issues the job has. Like the weaving which locks half of all players with not optimal ping out anyways cause well you can't double weave with bad ping. I live really close to my datacentre actually and even i can't play MCH correctly on patchdays or when the game is really congested with players.

Also a QoL issue is the aoe actions MCH has, like that you can't move with flamethrower which makes the action almost unusable in most wall to wall pulls. That the queen has no aoe attacks so basically you can't even use your finisher for your aoe rotation. Wildfire also not aoe tho it could be easily. So many mch actions could be just aoe actions to make MCH actually more fun to play in dungeons without even having to change the job design, like it wouldn't even be a major change. Just kinda unfair that we have jobs like summoner who is basically literally all aoe and then you as a MCH have to stand there awkwardly 10s with your flamethrower which is the pinnacle of boredom.

I would be happy if they bring gunmage back and then make you hit as hard as a blackmage maybe when you go into overheat. That would be fun i bet for most of the players. Better than smothering the job constantly patch after patch cause of some ranged dps tax that shouldn't exist anymore.

The reason why i said that it seems that the devs outright hate MCH is cause the solutions and QoL changes MCH could get seem so obvious and easy to everyone who plays the job for some days. Yet SE only response to people begging time and time again for changes are again and again buffs to wildfire and other potency buffs. Which is almost never enough to even compete with other jobs let alone casters. I don't get why they are so scared of seeing a ranged dps for one patch cycle on top, so scared that they have to literally drag MCH everytime to the bottom of the list most times even below the supports. So either they don't know what to do with the job or well they outright despise it by now.

But the worst part is the silence about it, while they talk about buffing other jobs who often do fine. MCH players have to scream and beg while getting kicked from groups for playing the job and then get some small breadcrumbs in form of another wildfire potency buff.

[FireMage]

That relies on the bail-outs of arbitrary sub-role assignments, which in turn essentially means that Physical Ranged are the only sub-role a party is discouraged from taking two of.

And casters. Gee it's like fights are made in mind with 4 melee and 4 ranged

[TheMightyMollusk]

Tying a utility into the battery gauge makes it heavily unreliable. The MCH would have to choose between actually using the Queen to do damage, or holding out on it just in case. You either lose damage or lose the utility, and we all know damage is king in this game.

[Shurrikhan]

Tying a utility into the battery gauge makes it heavily unreliable.

Depends on how sharply the returns on gauge spenders decline when used at less than full gauge.

If a spending 40 gauge at a time between bursts gave as much damage per gauge as spending 100 at a time (so long as one makes sure to have 100 at the ready for the next burst cycle), you'd simply have a base opportunity cost. That'd increase if/when used before too near to raid buffs to regenerate to max gauge, but so long as we're not effectively forced to use our gauge like an inflexible cooldown, it wouldn't outright force any sort of desync.

It'd simply be a utility that comes at cost (likely more than just that of the finisher of uptime it costs RDM or the filler GCD a Swiftcast-Resurrection costs SMN), which then means it needn't be taxed as highly (which means it can be balanced higher for situations that wouldn't make use of it despite retaining that option), much like Ballad/Paeon/Promotion originally.

[WiccaP]

And Raven2014, Id like to know what utility/support mch brings to the party? Tactician? Their one and only buff that can not stack with dancer and bards shield. Your example of SMN, has their carbuncle shields, their phoenix support abilities, rez and physick they have more support/utility than mch. Also with how simplified SMN is now, its almost as mobile as Prang. And while Mch doesnt have to directly get into melee they do have to get just outside of melee range for 3 of their AOEs to hit. The devs pretty much stripped mch of their flavor/identity/and support away.