The tragic state of Machinist

[Bloonz]

I literally registered for a forums account so that I could hopefully post feedback somewhere where devs might see it (if you know of elsewhere, feel free to let me know!) but I'm here to complain about the current state of Machinist;

Machinist has been done dirty this expansion, arguably the lowest damage out of ALL DPS jobs and they're supposed to be the "selfish" of the physical range DPS jobs. They really need to boost Machinist's damage by a decent bit, especially since Machinist has NO movement! Dawntrail has brought us content more challenging than before (which is great), but the more demanding the content is the more painful the reality is for Machinist to not have any sort of in-combat movement action besides sprint.

Before Endwalker, this could be arguably balanced since Machinist could hold its own with DPS but now it's just sad to not have any movement buttons and therefore be clutching your pearls, praying sprint is not still on cooldown, WHILE also not keeping up with every other DPS in damage. Feelsbadman. Machinist does not even have the party buffs/utility that Dancer and Bard both bring to the table, dancer also has charges of movement ability...

It's in a rough spot I'm really hoping Machinist can be balanced this upcoming patch.

[OliverQ]

I thought people really like the changes to Machinist? I mean, it's not like they're the only job suffering from damage issues. Look at Black Mage.

[Connor]

It’s wild to me that they’ve spent since Shadowbringers trying to force square Machinist into the circle hole for melee. Like it doesn’t matter how many bits you cut off it’s never going to fit properly.

Yet they insist on making it ‘pure selfish dps’ as if it’s somehow ever going to compete with the likes of Samurai, Black Mage (if properly balanced) or probably even Pictomancer. So it can’t compete in its own sub role because literally 0 support (Dismantle barely counts lol), can’t compete in other sub roles because of the ranged dps tax.

They desperately need to commit to either giving Machinists dps commensurate to the ‘pure selfish dps’ title, or give it support to compete with Bard and Dancer within its own role. Because otherwise it just kind of fails at everything lol, similar to Bard

[E4EO]

I thought people really like the changes to Machinist? I mean, it's not like they're the only job suffering from damage issues. Look at Black Mage.

People do, but as you say, OP is mainly concerned with MCH's subpar damage. Go look at logs from the current extremes and you'll see MCH at the bottom or close to the bottom.
The nail in the coffin imo is that MCH was lacking in damage in EW, and instead of buffing it, it's still the same low damage, of course a balance patch will be coming soon but only time will tell if it actually helps MCH out, the DT patch didn't.

I'm not sure MCH needs a mobility skill though, it is Phys ranged and can move freely, but I definitely agree it's damage needs to be looked at.

[Darkpaw]

Hard not to like the changes to MCH.. since it... really didn't change at all. It got.. another 600 potency skill that grants 20 battery, that has 65% fall off damage.. basically chainsaw.. with a different aoe shape.. could have given us a second stack of chainsaw for.. the exact same skill.. they took gauss round and ricochet and made it the exact same skill with different animations which breaks the aoe rotation, because again.. you ACB doesn't reset the cd's on GR or Ricochet, so it's actually a dps gain to single target, for the ogcd resets... battery is still only used by robot and even easier to have a full charge every minute..

and your big giant flashy, new two min cd.. is only 100 potency more than 4 of your other skills you use 5 times (counting stacks) and can't actually gain any buff from reassemble on.. and.. that's it. It is still the exact same as it was in ShB, in EW with the same exact problems it's had since Stormblood... and to top it all off it's bottom tier damage. It's legitimately a laughing stock job at this point.. They have no clue what to do with it or how to make it interesting or viable to play.

[Ruminous]

Pretty sure the dev in charge of machinist was told "make the new skills worse versions of what samurai already has". That was the general gist of what I got from it.

Before Endwalker, this could be arguably balanced since Machinist could hold its own with DPS but now it's just sad to not have any movement buttons and therefore be clutching your pearls, praying sprint is not still on cooldown, WHILE also not keeping up with every other DPS in damage. Feelsbadman. Machinist does not even have the party buffs/utility that Dancer and Bard both bring to the table, dancer also has charges of movement ability...

It's in a rough spot I'm really hoping Machinist can be balanced this upcoming patch.

Machinist was not great in Endwalker. It was pretty low on the totem pole and people still tried to pull the "mobility means ranged tax!" card when uptime was never an issue for any other job. Bard and dancer outpaced it, and those tend to scale better with gear than machinist does. The absolutely low potencies on its actions don't translate to damage, who would've thunk it? And by the way, the hardest hitting skill machinist has is still crowned collider. Something that the machinist personally doesn't do. Sure you can argue full metal field is consistently higher due to it always direct critting, but 700 potency vs 780 crowned collider on a queen? Heh.

[elioaiko]

MCH will never be the "selfish" dps of ranged bc if it had the same damage as BLM or SAM then people would play them over DNC or BRD. Sure the party buffs are great but if MCH's personal damage was high enough, then it outweighs the rDPS of the other two.

Plus the devs values the ranged tax too much for MCH to be anywhere close to the top.

[Ruminous]

MCH will never be the "selfish" dps of ranged bc if it had the same damage as BLM or SAM then people would play them over DNC or BRD. Sure the party buffs are great but if MCH's personal damage was high enough, then it outweighs the rDPS of the other two.

Plus the devs values the ranged tax too much for MCH to be anywhere close to the top.

This, very true. But the whole "state of machinist is sad" should be substituted with "state of ranged phys is sad". It really isn't just a machinist problem, it's a problem all phys ranged share now.

[Deejudanne]

This, very true. But the whole "state of machinist is sad" should be substituted with "state of ranged phys is sad". It really isn't just a machinist problem, it's a problem all phys ranged share now.

bard is in a very depressing state

[Valence]

I literally registered for a forums account so that I could hopefully post feedback somewhere where devs might see it (if you know of elsewhere, feel free to let me know!) but I'm here to complain about the current state of Machinist;

Machinist has been done dirty this expansion, arguably the lowest damage out of ALL DPS jobs and they're supposed to be the "selfish" of the physical range DPS jobs. They really need to boost Machinist's damage by a decent bit, especially since Machinist has NO movement! Dawntrail has brought us content more challenging than before (which is great), but the more demanding the content is the more painful the reality is for Machinist to not have any sort of in-combat movement action besides sprint.

Before Endwalker, this could be arguably balanced since Machinist could hold its own with DPS but now it's just sad to not have any movement buttons and therefore be clutching your pearls, praying sprint is not still on cooldown, WHILE also not keeping up with every other DPS in damage. Feelsbadman. Machinist does not even have the party buffs/utility that Dancer and Bard both bring to the table, dancer also has charges of movement ability...

It's in a rough spot I'm really hoping Machinist can be balanced this upcoming patch.

Of all the points one could criticize on MCH, I can't say I expected somebody to actually complain on... mobility.

It’s wild to me that they’ve spent since Shadowbringers trying to force square Machinist into the circle hole for melee. Like it doesn’t matter how many bits you cut off it’s never going to fit properly.

Yet they insist on making it ‘pure selfish dps’ as if it’s somehow ever going to compete with the likes of Samurai, Black Mage (if properly balanced) or probably even Pictomancer. So it can’t compete in its own sub role because literally 0 support (Dismantle barely counts lol), can’t compete in other sub roles because of the ranged dps tax.

They desperately need to commit to either giving Machinists dps commensurate to the ‘pure selfish dps’ title, or give it support to compete with Bard and Dancer within its own role. Because otherwise it just kind of fails at everything lol, similar to Bard

MCH has always been at the bottom since shb relatively consistently, but it's not always been dead last with a gap either. BRD and DNC have always been good companions to it and frankly, the difference in total raid output contribution overall has always been relatively similar, with some swings here and there (I'll agree that MCH has had true low points in EW especially even compared to DNC/BRD). Currently for example, MCH is slightly above DNC even at higher percentiles, so saying it cannot compete within the rphys role sounds a little... over dramatic.

If we want to complain about MCH's damage, it's not a problem of the job, it's a problem of the whole rphys role, which SMN and RDM also share (but they can raise at least).