The State of Machinist in DT - Let's talk about it (again).

[Valence]

If we want to talk hard numbers, technically autocrossbow even with those double check and checkmate buffs, still benefits from its own buff and it has slightly decreased the number of targets required for it to be gain. We're now down to 6+ targets in a vacuum instead of 8, and I think it was 5+ before the last patch in 7.2. It also seems to decrease even more if you can't hit all the targets with it, but good luck ascertaining this without any UI to actually show you the radius of the hit in real time before making your decision...

Now though I've always found the ShB change to ricochet and gauss round to be dumb and uninspired and having one not doing AoE versus the other doing AoE has always made zero sense to me. Now that they are both essentially the same beyond a different button and a different visual, it goes to show how having both serves literally no purpose in the current state of the job beyond button bloat and APM bloat, and I'm pretty sure the only reason both are still distinct is precisely because that's how they want to keep the APM high on the job and they're using it for this specific purpose only.

[bundythenoob]

Why would every Ranger have to be based around party utility, though? For my part, I like the available variations of buffs --raidwide, targeted, and none. While I wouldn't mind MCH getting a target debuff (say, Wildfire causing the target to emit bonus damage to self and all nearby enemies), it hardly seems vital to homogenize jobs across a role in any way

I suppose this boils down to personal differences. In my opinion, having access to party utility is what makes Ranged DPS different from Melee DPS. The way I see it, MCH receiving a debuff (whether a "party contribution" or "personal-damage only" debuff) would not be a step towards homogenisation, but rather a step towards further differentiating the roles from each other. I'm pretty sure MCH receiving a debuff would have avoided creating the mess that Valence pointed out regarding the potency changes. I would imagine that its easier (and more cost effective) for the devs to buff potencies than to balance out how those 2 potential debuffs would interact, but that leads back to the whole job being a disjointed mess since its ShB iteration. I won't bore you guys by bringing this topic up again since its been discussed to death. thanks for the food for thought! [:

[Carighan]

I suppose this boils down to personal differences. In my opinion, having access to party utility is what makes Ranged DPS different from Melee DPS.

This doesn't really mirror the game as-is right now, does it? Melees have a lot of party buffs, and even defensive ones (look at Monk!). They also have a damage debuff as a role action, further hinting at having a fair amount of support. Plus out of 6 melee jobs, 4 bring damage buffs, which is the same ratio as for PRanged where it is 2 out of 3.

So I dunno, at present the game doesn't support the idea that PRanged should be "utility centric" or so. I mean that's a way to develop them, sure, but there's little indication that's where the devs see them right now.

(Plus I'd rather have them add rezz to Machinist then, tbh)

[Stasya]

MCH receiving a debuff (whether a "party contribution" or "personal-damage only" debuff) would not be a step towards homogenisation

It will be a bandaid and homogenisation. Since indie devs also have trouble to balance sam/blm sometimes, why not give them buff too?

Mch needs a rework to be something like "high adps but gives not much in buffs" so it will be balanced versus other ranges and not lose pure dps identity.

But ofc people will beg square for buff solution, because same individuals probably like braindead unimaginative +20 drill potency every other patches.

[brinn12]

If we want to talk hard numbers, technically autocrossbow even with those double check and checkmate buffs, still benefits from its own buff and it has slightly decreased the number of targets required for it to be gain. We're now down to 6+ targets in a vacuum instead of 8, and I think it was 5+ before the last patch in 7.2. It also seems to decrease even more if you can't hit all the targets with it, but good luck ascertaining this without any UI to actually show you the radius of the hit in real time before making your decision...

Now though I've always found the ShB change to ricochet and gauss round to be dumb and uninspired and having one not doing AoE versus the other doing AoE has always made zero sense to me. Now that they are both essentially the same beyond a different button and a different visual, it goes to show how having both serves literally no purpose in the current state of the job beyond button bloat and APM bloat, and I'm pretty sure the only reason both are still distinct is precisely because that's how they want to keep the APM high on the job and they're using it for this specific purpose only.

They decided to delay some of the buffs to 7.3 for reasons unknown. The 7.25 changes were an obvious, disjointed "here's something for your AoE damage: half of what you need", because there's no way CBU3 would reasonably think counting to 8 mobs just to change the overheated GCDs is a fun experience.

The job is basically back to where it was before in terms of AoE rotation. They do the same with single-target (spread necessary buffs across a billion patches), which is why it takes them more than two Savage tiers to fix the job. It's just less obvious because the single-target rotation doesn't change.

[Connor]

snip

‘Utility’ / ‘support’ is how they’ve designed physical ranged though; it literally says so in their own job guide. The purpose of physical ranged is ‘sustained damage’ and ‘providing support’. Until Dancer came out Machinist had (almost) just as much support capabilities as a Bard, they just gave it up entirely because they wanted everyone to play Dancer (and they tried to do the same to Bard but got heavy backlash). Hell Machinist initially even used MP to support the party the exact same way a Bard did.

Even their role skills are largely geared towards crowd control and a party movement buff; hardly an indicator of them being heavily dps oriented with little support. RIP Palisade, Refresh, Tactician. Shame we only kept the useless ones but that’s another issue lol

The problem isn’t that Machinist ‘has no precedent or design intention to provide’ support. It’s that the game so braindead now that support and utility has been homogenised, simplified into dust then distributed evenly across roles for absolutely no reason thus creating a situation where effectively every job is a ‘support’ job unless you’re a Machinist lol (or BLM/SAM/VIP).


Machinists having support/utility capabilities was never a problem in the past; it’s just the devs absolutely awful ‘balancing’ decisions completely messing up party roles. I mean, look at tanks and healers lol. Just because the game is currently badly designed for role responsibility doesn’t mean we should encourage them to double down on those awful choice. Let Machinist be something more than a TEMU melee with even less support than the real ones.

And I mean, it’s literally always going to be inferior to melee and non-Raise casters because it’s a phys ranged, so it’s not like the dream of ‘top dps output’ MCH will ever amount to anything. Outside of having its own support/utility the best it can ever be really be is useless? Why bring a job that gets outdone by BRD and DNC once you account for rDPS (cDPS?), is inherently inferior to other roles, and has no support or utility capabilities. Isn’t that just asking for Machinist to die? And what if they add a new phys ranged? If it’s support like BRD/DNC then Machinist looks out even more out of place. If it’s pure dps like Machinist then you have the Pictomancer problem where the job balance is potentially thrown entirely out of whack. Because either the ‘pure dps’ is stronger than all 3 and thus invalidates them or it’s own personal dps falls so short of rDPS contributions that it stops being an advantage.

Tl;dr it’s not that ‘phys ranged was never about support’ - it always was, the devs just stopped giving a shit. Just like how they stopped caring about the healing role being about healing, tanks about tanking. They don’t seem to give a shit about basically anything that isn’t ’just DEEEEPS (on a 120s cool-down, of course)’

[Carighan]

(something)

Did you reply to the wrong post? I never said 'phys ranged was never about support' or Machinist 'having no precedent' or so.

[Stasya]

RIP Palisade, Refresh, Tactician.

Good. Lol, the more i read about this .... how people can call this "support". You like support bad toilet paper system?

[Connor]

Did you reply to the wrong post? I never said 'phys ranged was never about support' or Machinist 'having no precedent' or so.

I checked again just in case but it was lol.

I guess what I was trying to reply to was that while it’s true ‘the game doesn’t reflect currently’ the idea that phys ranged are differentiated from melee etc by party support / utility but that, but it can and has in the past and so I don’t think the current situation speaks to the devs’ intentionality as much as it does their inexhaustible complacency in creating interesting and unique job designs. Like as dumb as it sounds I think they genuinely think they look at phys ranged and say, ‘yes this a support role’

Basically I’d argue the devs do see physical ranged in that capacity, they’ve just let combat and unique/interesting design fall so short in recent expansions that it’s barely expressed in actual gameplay?

And to clarify I’m not saying they should like, just give MCH some copy/paste raid buffs then announce ‘looks everyone it’s a support now!’. But at the same time I don’t think being ‘offensively oriented’ precludes it from having utility; the game already lacks a ‘debuffer’ class. Like I’d say even something like giving it stuff that increases enemy damage taken or whatever, that would already have it fit more within the intended ‘phys range’ role. And it’d still be differentiated from Bard and Dancer which are slightly more defensive/healing focused support, plus party vs single target oriented respectively

Lastly that’s not intended to ‘accuse’ you or anyone else despite the ranting lol. More using it as a prompt to add my own thoughts I guess. I just think that unfortunately, the reality is even more dumb than we thought really lol. I bet they’d be like ‘wait, people don’t think Machinist is a support? But Dismantle and Peloton .’ lol

Good. Lol, the more i read about this .... how people can call this "support". You like support bad toilet paper system?

Last I checked it was the devs’ constant removal of crappy/boring/‘hard to balance’/‘complex’ abilities instead of making them actually interesting and engaging that got us into this design mess in the first place. I mean, if you want to celebrate how much they’ve simplified jobs then that’s fair, but I have to disagree personally. I think they should’ve actually improved what they already had instead of throwing it all away and giving nothing in return. They can and have done better.

[Carighan]

Lastly that’s not intended to ‘accuse’ you or anyone else despite the ranting lol. More using it as a prompt to add my own thoughts I guess. I just think that unfortunately, the reality is even more dumb than we thought really lol. I bet they’d be like ‘wait, people don’t think Machinist is a support? But Dismantle and Peloton .’ lol

No worries, it was just barely off-sounding enough that I genuinely thought maybe you had just accidentally quoted the wrong post.

I get the sentiment, and it'd be an interesting niche. If that happens I'd prefer if each role had their niche, but PRanged being "damage enhancing" makes sense, and would be easy enough to differentiate:

* Dancer augments one person (if it's a problem make it somehow 2 in an 8P group or so!).
* Bard augments the entire group.
* Machinist debuffs the enemy.

All ultimately do the same thing, cause X extra DPS via augmenting the damage of others. But their "flavor" is different.