Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[Shurrikhan]

I think what should especially cost MP is situational abilities like Rescue, Surecast, Swiftcast, Benediction, Divine Benison, Asylum, Afflatus actions, Excogitation, Indomitability and Whispering Dawn, because routine abilities that you use off cooldown for damage like Assize are not really adding anything to the management beyond what spamming the GCD attack and dot is.

That seems a totally solid plan. I'm in.



A follow-up note and a question:

[Note] While it might not seem, then, that anything else needs an MP cost, it's better to think of these costs in terms of (shared) recovery time rather than just whatever cost is pained over the hotkey. If we recharge 400 MP per GCD, for instance, a 400-MP spell is MP-neutral. The difference is simply in the tuning point for rewarding (or reducing the opportunity cost of) downtime; the higher the floor MP cost and MP generation, the less downtime punishes a healer / the more shared resource time a healer recovers during downtime.

I would guess a good tuning point is "High enough an MP floor that some downtime can still be leveraged and, if truly everything went to hell in a handbasket, one could idle a little bit to milk out enough MP for another oGCD and thereby prevent a would-be death, but where there's otherwise/generally no feeling that attacks or other filler spells come at cost."
__________

[Question] How "free" should those abilities be? E.g., about how much oGCD potency per minute should one be able to milk out sustainable? How long, if hitting every possible ability as quickly as possible, should it take to go oom?

(Another small note here - you can allow for a higher maximum sustainable ppm or longer minimum time until oom if you also have some MP-costly attacks that are expected to be cycled on cooldown, since they'd combine to form parity.)

[dspguy]

Tanks and healers always played relative similar.

Even in ARR, WAR and PLD both had tank stance, their Thrill of Battle or Inner Beast/Rampart, Vengeance/Sentinel, Holm Gang/Hallowed Ground, a 1-2-3 enmity combo, Tomhawk/Shield Lob, Beserk/Fight or Flight and a stun.

All 4 tanks play so similarly. I touched on this on another thread. It isn't that difficult to align your hotbars for all 4 tanks to be able to swap from one to the other seamlessly.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Who knows what the PLD changes will bring, but we really just have 1 tank that uses a glamoured weapon of your choice (axe, 2 handed sword, sword and board, etc) and abilities that essentially have a different name but near-identical functionality.

[Ranaku]

All 4 tanks play so similarly. I touched on this on another thread. It isn't that difficult to align your hotbars for all 4 tanks to be able to swap from one to the other seamlessly.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Who knows what the PLD changes will bring, but we really just have 1 tank that uses a glamoured weapon of your choice (axe, 2 handed sword, sword and board, etc) and abilities that essentially have a different name but near-identical functionality.

Their difference was in the stance tho, paladin had build in mitigation. War had more health and increased healing.

[Shurrikhan]

Their difference was in the stance tho, paladin had build in mitigation. War had more health and increased healing.

If we're going as far back as to when any had stances (Stormblood and earlier)... they also had significantly more differences than just their stances.

I'd still have said they could have used yet more differences, largely just by not screwing over their unique tools (see the self-cleanse that could barely cleanse anything, gauge costs tied to Cover... to balance out a fixed mitigation percentage attached to it instead of just using the higher %mitigation of coverer and covered, etc...), but that's a wee bit too tangential.

[Anienai]

I'm about to suck with amazing flair.

My new tanking/healing intro.

[Ranaku]

Accepting bets now, will we get another wildfire potency increase or will SE actually give MCH something substantial this patch?

[Absurdity]

Accepting bets now, will we get another wildfire potency increase or will SE actually give MCH something substantial this patch?

If they're feeling very adventurous you're getting +10 potency on each of your 1-2-3

[Deceptus]

Accepting bets now, will we get another wildfire potency increase or will SE actually give MCH something substantial this patch?

I think if Wildfire was a guaranteed Crit-DH that would help, it's a long CD with a long buildup and takes a bit of skill to properly execute.

It should be rewarded with a big number.

[Darkstride]

Accepting bets now, will we get another wildfire potency increase or will SE actually give MCH something substantial this patch?

I'm so tired of Wildfire being the focal point of Machinist even though it's underwhelming (both in usage and the animation). If they want to hold onto Wildfire so badly then it needs some more interesting interactions. Flamethrower, for instance, is just dying for an actual purpose. Give it a Wildfire interaction.

[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.