【Suggestion】MCH "Pure DPS"

[CVXIV]

They should give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP which will dramatically increase its damage output, and then give it a grappling hook, and rocket jump as movement abilities.

It'd be such a nice detail for the aiming jobs to actually walk slowly and aim as they do in PvP
I believe in the mobile version of the game the bard's songs also behave kind of like mini rhythm games, where you have to press the skills at certain times so that could be cool

or it's just a way to visually show the bar filling up and when you can use the skill, but it'd still be nice
press at the right time to deal max damage, else do reduced damage

for the topic though, I wish Machinist did more damage
It's meant to be top of the aiming jobs but it feels pretty underwhelming
I like the shotgun skill, they should keep it
I want the sniper rifle from pvp

[Valence]

Hello, I wish to hear feedback from the community about the idea.
I want to play MCH, but it is considered very weak right now as a pure DPS.
This makes me uncomfortable and many recruitments exclude MCH (FRU)
There is a lot discussion about the firepower from MCH and the handling of gauge.
Because I am not a very smart thinker, I may be wrong in my suggestion.
Please feel free to share your ideas/thoughts and if I am wrong correct me.
(Please be kind to each other in the comments)

My idea of thinking for suggestion is:
Would it make a difference if MCH changes from "Pure DPS" to "Raid support DPS"?
Meaning, it receives a raid buff and it no longer is pure DPS, so it supports the rDPS?
For example, Bard is not meant to be "high firepower driven job" but it balances by song.
I wonder if this could help out the MCH? Because I do not know how balance works,
I could be imagining something unrealistic, so please let me know in the comments.

It wouldn't change anything much, this is a problem of job balance. If they make potencies higher, a job will hit for higher damage, that's about it. The only thing that raid buffs bring to jobs like bard and dancer is that raid buffs scale naturally with big damage dealers firepower, where mch selfish dps doesn't scale as much with raid buffs over time since its theoretical cap is lower (for example, if your total damage is 100, and over the span of the expansion it goes up to 120, then raid buffs coming from your bard or dancer will benefit naturally from this 20% increase... meanwhile if your total mch damage in comparison is 90 and ramps up to 110 over the span of the expansion, then your raid buffers will benefit less from your contribution, and you will more likely than not not even have a bard or a dancer to feed into their buffs because you're already occupying a rphys spot).

Anyway they tend to buff jobs that lag too much behind over the span of expansions and it's been the case since ShB and EW where some jobs started with crazy discrepancies like that (BRD over 10% in SHB, MCH in EW and now DT...), and got buffed until the gap lowered to about 5%. Why they do not learn from this and keep repeating the pattern at release and during the first tiers of expansions, I do not know. Anyway, this just goes to show that if they want to buff numbers, they can, but they won't.

As for myself I'd really like raid buffs to come back to MCH, because that's what the job used to be, and that's also literally what's written in the job role description on the guide page...

The debate whether MCH should be selfish or buff dps is more a question of flavor than an actual damage balance consideration in my opinion. Much like me saying I'd want pre ShB MCH back because what we have today is absolutely bland and boring to me is mostly a question of taste. If anything ironically, MCH used to be the highest burst job in the game back then (with close to half its damage concentrated within a 10-15s burst every minute or 90s depending of the expansion). It would have fared a lot better in ultimates within its old form.

[Azurarok]

Haven’t those fail states all but gone for the majority of classes though? I’ve seen the esoteric secrets of 100% instant cast BLM rotations.

There's less of it, but I still find it easier to maintain MCH's rotation than the majority of jobs. I do think its numbers are way too undertuned/the others are overtuned right now, but I don't think its current design justifies it doing as much damage as BLM/SAM either. It's also not like I'm okay with them sanding away more and more complexity from all the jobs anyways.

I mean, does it really need to be so all-or-nothing? Like couldn’t Machinist have a satisfyingly complex rotation and more (or just any lol) support capabilities? Does a ‘complex rotation’ necessarily need to output mathematically superior dps? To me it wouldn’t really matter what the actual output was as long as it was fun, interesting, and had its own distinct identity other than ‘does what BLM/SAM do but worse but you can jump while attacking’.

I think it depends on how much people want the job to play differently from how it does now. The subject of whether WHM, SGE, and MCH should get raid buffs or not's been a pretty common topic in their threads in the JP forums, but I've only really seen it be brought up as an alternative to adding more complexity to their kits, so I usually take that as people not wanting those jobs to feel any harder to use.

[LilaIronman]

No dev will ever read this

[brinn12]

This has to happen. A physical ranged job without a raid buff is fated to be at the very bottom, with little incentive to be picked in a decent group. Considering how RPR and PCT were at release, it is obvious that the next physical ranged is going to make current MCH irrelevant for an entire expansion.

If MCH/BLM/SAM/VPR are not topping the median rDPS charts of their roles, there is no reason to pick them. Now this is much worse for MCH than the other jobs, as SE is still overcorrecting the mistake they made in Stormblood by making the physical ranged as irrelevant as possible, so players will never consider having 2 physical ranged in the same party. And also due to the fact that DNC and BRD buff more than any caster/melee.

[Connor]

There's less of it, but I still find it easier to maintain MCH's rotation than the majority of jobs. I do think its numbers are way too undertuned/the others are overtuned right now, but I don't think its current design justifies it doing as much damage as BLM/SAM either. It's also not like I'm okay with them sanding away more and more complexity from all the jobs anyways.

That is true; fail states have been loosened quite a bit, but even then Machinist doesn’t have the same considerations for things like uptime. Like, even though the ‘fail’ bar has went down by a lot, Machinist is still below that lol.

And with that mentioned, I do find it ironic that SE has been sanding down so much complexity from jobs to make them ‘all equally accessible’, but then that removal of said complexity causes so many of its own balancing issues. Like phys ranged struggling because content has (generally) been fairly favourable towards melee with things like giant hit boxes and the Viper simplifications. And of course Pictomancer too lol. So the whole ‘mobility advantage’ thing phys ranged have is much harder to capitalise on.

I think it depends on how much people want the job to play differently from how it does now. The subject of whether WHM, SGE, and MCH should get raid buffs or not's been a pretty common topic in their threads in the JP forums, but I've only really seen it be brought up as an alternative to adding more complexity to their kits, so I usually take that as people not wanting those jobs to feel any harder to use.

I think I get it. For many people adding complexity to the job itself isn’t necessary, so the question is ‘what else can it get to improve things?’. I think Machinist could work with its own type of ‘support’ and/or ‘raid buffs’ or whatever. And, personally I would like to see more abilities/skills that we have (more) control over but aren’t necessarily part of the ‘standard damage rotation’. But I have no idea if that’s like, a ‘hot machinist take’ or not tbh lol

[Azurarok]

I think I get it. For many people adding complexity to the job itself isn’t necessary, so the question is ‘what else can it get to improve things?’. I think Machinist could work with its own type of ‘support’ and/or ‘raid buffs’ or whatever. And, personally I would like to see more abilities/skills that we have (more) control over but aren’t necessarily part of the ‘standard damage rotation’. But I have no idea if that’s like, a ‘hot machinist take’ or not tbh lol

This is kind of where I'm really conflicted on wrt adding a raid buff. They're currently really simple to execute despite adding a considerable boost to rDPS, so to me it often looks like folks wanting them on WHM/SGE/MCH want to increase their damage contribution without making the job any harder. It barely does anything for raising the skill ceiling when it's so close to the floor for these jobs.

[Connor]

This is kind of where I'm really conflicted on wrt adding a raid buff. They're currently really simple to execute despite adding a considerable boost to rDPS, so to me it often looks like folks wanting them on WHM/SGE/MCH want to increase their damage contribution without making the job any harder. It barely does anything for raising the skill ceiling when it's so close to the floor for these jobs.

Yeah I can get that. With how raid buffs usually work it’d just be another ‘press button every 120s’ deal rather than something interesting that develops the job’s gameplay in some way. I guess for some it’s more about the end dps result rather than developing the gameplay of the job in a meaningful way (especially if that result is easy to get to lol).

Plus there’s the whole homogenisation issue which would be made worse if those jobs did get raid buffs, since that’s kind of the main thing separating them from their rivals at the moment (but then also sort-of the cause of the issues lol).

[Azurarok]

Yeah I can get that. With how raid buffs usually work it’d just be another ‘press button every 120s’ deal rather than something interesting that develops the job’s gameplay in some way. I guess for some it’s more about the end dps result rather than developing the gameplay of the job in a meaningful way (especially if that result is easy to get to lol).

Plus there’s the whole homogenisation issue which would be made worse if those jobs did get raid buffs, since that’s kind of the main thing separating them from their rivals at the moment (but then also sort-of the cause of the issues lol).

I'd be more interested in this had raid buffs needed a lot more thought to their usage. Like if this kind of raid buff could be used whenever they like at the cost of ~50 battery, you'd have to weigh when the gains from the buff are worth losing the potency from Queen. It'd be even more challenging if burst timings for every job weren't just every two minutes like they were before EW.

[Zarkovitch]

MCH is the worst job on this game. Like for real, this job current state is close to HW PLD, trash. I'm not saying is mch is unplayable but why pure selfish is so ass on phys range, they need to hit like a truck or something.