State of Machinist 7.2

**Carighan** · 22/04/2025 20h26

Envoyé par Absurdity

It isn't anything like hardcasting. There is no period of no movement transitioning into normal speed and Machinist isn't as freeform as BLM, RDM or Picto where you can save instant casts for movement heavy phases.

Interesting how you automatically assume two things:

* It'd be the filler combo that is walking casts (and only that combo, at that?).
* That it'd be all-100%-walking-casts, and no interrim time between walking casts.

Why do you make these assumptions?

**Valence** · 22/04/2025 22h38

Envoyé par mallleable

It's the downtime. Casting mechanics will be represented differently depending on the game type. We can imagine something like a turn based game where you have a scientist character who has an ability where they can analyze an enemy's weakness to create a chemical mixture that is strong against those weakness, but they have to skip their turn to do so, But they can accumulate more, and more data the more turns they skip so their chemical move can get stronger over time, but if they take any other actions, they lose their progress.' There can also be a mage character that also uses a similar mechanic for their strongest spell. There is no movement in combat as it is not a relevant mechanic in this imaginary game.

Let's also imagine a first person fantasy game where fire magic is cast by holding down the right mouse click to charge it up, it fills up a meter to indicate how strong the spell will be, and when you release the right mouse button, it releases the fire ball. but you cannot do any other attacks while casting. You are free to run around at full speed while casting fire magic, but ice magic is cast using a similar process, but your movement speed is slowed while casting, and earth magic requires you stand still while casting. The bow in this game also uses a similar mechanic that is like ice casting.

So to get back to FFXIV, it's the downtime that makes Mudras, and dance steps 'caster' mechanics to me. Only certain actions can be preformed while dancing, and you will get a bunny if you do any else besides your Mudras. This caster like downtime is why it is a popular suggestion to have like a chemist healer use a system like Mudras for mixing potions. Like Life Surge or Reassemble were on the GCD, then the 'casting' comparisons could be made as they would force you to take downtime for their benefits, but they don't incur downtime so they are not related to casting.

Then by your definition actual, normal casted spells aren't casting, since there is no downtime ideally. A cast bar just fills up partially or completely the GCD interval in those.
The only casts I know with a downtime are PCT canvas.

Envoyé par Carighan

Eh, that's no difference than hardcasting.

The skill is in prepositioning so the time between casts is enough to slide-move into position for the next mech, and/or pacing your instant-cast tools to be available and last you through extended movement situations.

/shrug

It's entirely normal to do?

It wouldnt be very different in practice if MCH had tools to turn the filler into insta casts like all casters can with things like swiftcast, triple cast, acceleration, etc, while also having storable abilities like hammer, xenoglossy, paradox, etc, that can be burned to get full mobility and uptime when required.
MCH has none of those, but if your idea is to bring back ammo to MCH and make tools like Drill/etc floatable then yeah I guess? We'd have, in essence, a rphys in a caster trenchcoat.

**Derio** · 23/04/2025 01h25

Problem is you have to be in the top percentile of machinist to be as meaningful to the party while the other phys ranged you could be 50th percentile and be good enough for M2s

**Absurdity** · 23/04/2025 07h17

Envoyé par Carighan

Interesting how you automatically assume two things:

* It'd be the filler combo that is walking casts (and only that combo, at that?).
* That it'd be all-100%-walking-casts, and no interrim time between walking casts.

Why do you make these assumptions?

Because that is literally how pvp Machinist works and we have nothing else to go on when it comes to walking casts.

But even if we're talking about making other abilities a walking cast barely anything changes, because with the way Machinist currently works you barely have any abilities that you can delay in the first place.
Making it entirely up to rng whether the fight screws you over or not.

Like I already said before, it only works in pvp because there no fixed rotation or dps requirement.

**Id_Slayer** · 23/04/2025 07h40

Envoyé par TabrisOmbrelame

I think Machinist, lorewise, should be able to found a target's Weakspot. Their is plenty of room to do stuff with MCH in order to make it far better.

I like this idea alot! It'd be so awesome to get a raid dps buff in the form of making the enemy's defense 'weaker' after a big piercing sniper shot. gives us an excuse to bust out a big sniper rifle every 2 minute burst window, too! lol

I would also personally like to see the queen robot apply a similar effect that makes our dps increase while she's summoned, but make it a selfish dps increase just for the machinist not the whole party. Long term, lots of quality of life changes like differentiating air anchor from drill, making auto cross-bow give us our oGCD recharges for better aoe cleaves etc would be nice but i think the big one is if they're not going to let us be the greedy -and powerful- ranged dps then they need to give us a raid buff.

I think every other class in the game is looking at physical ranged and wondering 'why bring this job at all?' - imagine for a moment if bard and dancer lost their raid dps buffs. their dps is so lack-luster it'd be better to just bring another melee or blm or picto instead. this is exactly what the community is thinking when they look at machinist - its a knee-capped phys ranged dps class without a 'saving grace' raid buff. in a game where DPS is king from all classes, because we don't have more complex mechanics for winning fights other than 'kill it fast' and 'kill it faster'. atleast bard and dancer have raid buffs they can bring to the table to be palletable.

**Aysin** · 23/04/2025 14h40

I will say bowmage and gunmage playstyles were very unpopular in HW SE got a ton of backlash for those changes even with the option to turn them off, you will likely see a lot of people drop MCH altogether if that happens. Double phys range was also the strongest comp back then too and hardly anyone wanted to play them.

I also suspect if people wanted casting they would just play caster and personally I'd be unhappy after they gutted 30% of BLM casts this expac, and just add some to MCH, after they just got done telling us there will be issues with casting due to movement heavy fights. That's some mixed signals.

Castbars on MCH is not the way to add skill expression, it's been tried and failed already. Let's not apply caster standards to phys range, they are not the same, or at least, they shouldn't be.

**CalvinDescoles** · 23/04/2025 19h11

I really like how the flamethrower we use during Cosmic Exploration feels better than the flamethrower in our job action... Feels like a real GCD flamethrower that is not shit to use.

EDIT : i would extend this even to the action of Diadem Ethererial Canon and the Drill of Cosmic Exp...

**Valence** · 23/04/2025 20h02

Envoyé par Absurdity

Because that is literally how pvp Machinist works and we have nothing else to go on when it comes to walking casts.

But even if we're talking about making other abilities a walking cast barely anything changes, because with the way Machinist currently works you barely have any abilities that you can delay in the first place.
Making it entirely up to rng whether the fight screws you over or not.

Like I already said before, it only works in pvp because there no fixed rotation or dps requirement.

In before someone proposes to bring back gauss barrel stance dancing

**ShadowNyx3** · 24/04/2025 00h08

With the release of Cosmic Exploration, it is my belief that SE intends to delete Machinist from the game and repurpose it as the unique class for Mech Ops Ground Support.

Flamethrower has never seen this much use.

Sujet : State of Machinist 7.2

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