State of Machinist 7.2

[SoraNewleaf]

A simple understanding of Final Fantasy and raiding will be needed here as a heads up.

Machinist at the moment is unplayable or lets word it as, a "fine" option in party finder due to players not performing at their best.

But looking at machinist from a General View as a longer term machinist player, we just do not get what we want whatsoever. Not just Serenaya tried reaching the understanding of SE but many more. And I think I speak for all Machinist players here.

Problem: To begin with the first issue, Machinist personal damage is not really what you would expect from a selfish dps, it's too low. Sure we may get a potency adjustment here and there (or another 600 potency skill), but the general fact will stay that machinist will never be a good dps unless its changed in some way. And if its not good at selfish dps, give it a raid tool.

Suggestion: My Idea for a **Possible** solution is a mini rework for dismantle in a way. Dismantle is a very under used skill in my opinion, yeah sure some may say "I use it this much, wah wah" but with tact being 90 seconds and having the whole team ready with mitigations most of the time it just doesn't show as much value. My Idea here is reworking it into a Dokumori like skill, giving the raid 5% more damage to the target for like 20 seconds or so.
Not only would it clear up some issues Machinist has with damage, but it would make it be somewhat on par with Dancer and Bard which outperform it completely at the moment.


Other issues being, Wildfire.
My idea for Wildfire would be tweaking the Potency numbers a bit and making a crit skill so it profits from skills like Battle Litany or Chain Stratagem. Which would again, result in machinist being able to keep up better with the other 2 ranged dps jobs.
On top of that give Wildfire an AoE drop off and not just a single target skill.
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Besides that I still think machinist is a great and well designed job (for the fun in the gameplay) with its own ups and downs. Like any other job. The kit is fun and gameplay overall is very proactive.

[ExileOmnisoul]

I just wanted to give your thread some more visibility. MCH is the most overlooked job in the game! Please adjust area attacks skills into the MCH into the overcharge combos. It appears like one person worked on single target, and another person worked on group targets. Flamethrower and Bioblaster barely matter. Auto crossbow doesn't look or feel good. The single target rotation is fun. Just give a mild amount of potency please.

[Valence]

List of major contribution/balance grievances (may not be exhaustive):

1. Damage is too low, party contribution feels bad.
2. Ranged physical is in the website description a buffing and support job, where MCH is sorely lacking. The loss of party raid buff is especially felt strongly on a job that is afflicted by the ranged tax, preventing it to either 1) fully take advantage of other raid buffs in the party or 2) fully take advantage of the big selfish DPS jobs like BLM/SAM or just any melees with its own raid buffs that it doesn't have.
3. WF should deal AoE damage like in pvp.
4. Autocrossbow should recharge double check and checkmate.
5. Battery has no AoE option, while battery generators like Chainsaw are AoE. Give AoE at least on Crown Collider.
6. Dismantle isn't as strong as it used to be for two reasons: all jobs have way more mitigation than in HW, and it stacks badly with diminishing result in a sea of mitigation on big attacks.

List of identity grievances (may not be exhaustive):

1. Decap the total Wildfire amount of compiled weaponskills. It is currently capped at 6 for no reason, where you can imagine interesting techs like double Hypercharges back to back with no intermediary filler GCD, which could allow to reach 7 GCD WFs and make room for more skilled play. Or just bring back old Wildfire and make it work like it used to by compiling every damage done under it (like current pvp Death Warrant), this would allow for very interesting theorycraft of what to put inside, and not just stupidly tie it to hypercharges.
2. The job could get access back to raid buffs, which can be tied to various ideas like dismantle (acting like old hypercharge/ninja).
3. The job lacks interesting filler and relies too much on hypercharge mindless spamm. Reintroduce older heat management, and/or bring back ammo to manage.
4. Flamethrower has been buffed to be viable, but it's really not interesting to use and doesn't interact well with the kit still.
5. Bring back bishop autoturret to make up for the loss of dismantle on party support. Make it work like in pvp with the pulsating shield.
6. Introduce more flavor to differentiate all tools between each other (Drill, Anchor, etc).
7. Introduce more flavor to differentiate between checkmate and double check.

[Xieldras]

Not a MCH main, but just adding that the Ammo system was a lot of fun back in HW/SB. I wish they'd kept it.

[xbahax92]

While I had no issue clearing Recollection extreme as a MCH, the job still is neglected by the devs.
It seems to be worse in the JP DC's. They're basically locking the job from duties and it's a stigma as "weakest DPS". Well that's the hearsay.

It's sad but first rumors appear, MCH DPS is not enough to clear Suzaku Unreal?

[mallleable]

Honestly, just give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP, and let it deal comparable damage to like BLM, SAM, and VPR. No need for a raid buff.

[Absurdity]

Honestly, just give MCH walking casts like it does in PVP, and let it deal comparable damage to like BLM, SAM, and VPR. No need for a raid buff.

While I'm not a machinist main, walking casts sound like an absolute nightmare in PvE.

The main problem with walking casts in XIV is that you can't cancel them which takes away the control you have over your own movement. Now this isn't a problem in pvp because you can just not use your filler if you know you will need to be mobile, since pvp is usually more about setting up and coordinating short bursts of high damage to secure a kill anyway.
PvE on the other hand doesn't work like that, you can't just not use your filler for an extended period.

I'd rather have the old HW caster machinist back than walking casts.

[mallleable]

While I'm not a machinist main, walking casts sound like an absolute nightmare in PvE.

The main problem with walking casts in XIV is that you can't cancel them which takes away the control you have over your own movement. Now this isn't a problem in pvp because you can just not use your filler if you know you will need to be mobile, since pvp is usually more about setting up and coordinating short bursts of high damage to secure a kill anyway.
PvE on the other hand doesn't work like that, you can't just not use your filler for an extended period.

I'd rather have the old HW caster machinist back than walking casts.

Not being able to cancel walking casts would need to be solved, but there are already ways to mitigate the movement restriction. Sprint can almost completely negate the walking part of walking casts so Peloton could be reworked to do the same, especially now that Jog exists for all players. Phys ranged with walking casts could be given more movement abilities like dashes, back steps, or even side steps. Another novel suggestion I've seen is increasing the movement speed while strafing for phys ranged by a little so something like 'strafe casting' becomes a point of skill expression exclusive to phys ranged jobs. Also stats like skill speed can have a direct influence on how mobile a walking cast can be. A lot of stuff can be done.

[Valence]

While I'm not a machinist main, walking casts sound like an absolute nightmare in PvE.

The main problem with walking casts in XIV is that you can't cancel them which takes away the control you have over your own movement. Now this isn't a problem in pvp because you can just not use your filler if you know you will need to be mobile, since pvp is usually more about setting up and coordinating short bursts of high damage to secure a kill anyway.
PvE on the other hand doesn't work like that, you can't just not use your filler for an extended period.

I'd rather have the old HW caster machinist back than walking casts.

It's also a nightmare in pvp that more often than not makes you shoot yourself in the foot by making you essentially immobile (movement being slowed down is almost identical to not being able to move), and those casts are also very hard to cancel: fast enough to complete even when spamming escape and not fast enough to actually root you into doing anything else.
I don't know why people continue to defend that abomination. It just looks cool, that's about it.

Now then, I'll agree however that having walked casts on tools like Drill, etc, much like Sam has casts on Iajutsus? I'm totally fine with this, and it could be cool for tactile flavor to make those tools feel heavier and more satisfying to use, but on the filler? Hell no.

Also, rphys are not casters, else just include them into the caster role and be done with it. After all normal casters are slowly losing cast times as well so...whatever I guess.

[Valence]

Also forgot to add (I knew I forgot something major), MCH's damage profile has been leveled pretty hard in ShB with the rework. 40-50% of its damage used to be crammed inside WF. Just going back to this fundamental core identity that the job had would play a lot better in the current 2min burst meta ironically, and also help the job shine more in downtime fights like ultimates.