Machinist: Will Auto Crossbow ever replenish gauss round and Richochet?

[TakoyakiLala]

Title, plus Flamethrower being a weird stand alone AoE. Give Auto Crossbow the ability to replenish Gauss Round and Richochet, plus a damage boost to make it's damage more impactful.

As for Flamethrower, it just needs to be reworked. If used after Bioblaster, maybe it could change Bioblaster's DoT to "Toxic Burns", restarting the Bioblaster DoT as this completely new DoT and dealing double the damage?

Oh, and the Turret Gauge. It would be nice if Queen Automaton just slammed down on the targeted enemy superhero style for AoE damage and just immediately starts attacking rather than using up however many seconds it takes to spawn, stand up and launch itself at the a targeted enemy. And on that note, it would be nice it both Rook Turret and Queen Automaton had AoE equivalent damage abilities or at least we could get Bishop Turret back along with a new AoE mech for those times we need a Turret/Mech to exclusively deal AoE damage.

Yeah, I know. I know nothing about damage numbers and all that other stuff, but these are just my thoughts that have been paddling in my peanut sized brain for several years now and I thought to just post them here to see what others think. :/

[brinn12]

Standing still for 10 seconds (Flamethrower) isn't feasible in any serious fight design, and both Queen and Wildfire need AoE/splash damage.

MCH can't function without a raid buff and needs another rework, but while we’re not at 8.0, I just hope SE at least buffs its AoE potencies. Being 10 to 15% behind DNC in M6S adds was a bit too much, and it's clear the fight wasn't tested with every job in mind. The balance for this fight wasn't much different from FRU or the first tier.

[Supersnow845]

It’s strange. MCH’s core design isn’t actually flawed (It’s not my favourite job but there is nothing inherently wrong with it). They just for absolutely no reason make 90% of its kit not work in AOE and make it do awful damage for no reason

Make wildfire and queen have cleave potential, make auto crossbow reset check and double check then buff everything by like 3% and the job would be totally fine

[TakoyakiLala]

Standing still for 10 seconds (Flamethrower) isn't feasible in any serious fight design, and both Queen and Wildfire need AoE/splash damage.

MCH can't function without a raid buff and needs another rework, but while we’re not at 8.0, I just hope SE at least buffs its AoE potencies. Being 10 to 15% behind DNC in M6S adds was a bit too much, and it's clear the fight wasn't tested with every job in mind. The balance for this fight wasn't much different from FRU or the first tier.

What if Flamethrower was reworked to just a quick AoE burst, like how Bioblaster performs and it fills the Heat Gauge by 40, 50 or 60% percent?

It's really sad to see how mishandled MCH is in high end content.

[TakoyakiLala]

It’s strange. MCH’s core design isn’t actually flawed (It’s not my favourite job but there is nothing inherently wrong with it). They just for absolutely no reason make 90% of its kit not work in AOE and make it do awful damage for no reason

Make wildfire and queen have cleave potential, make auto crossbow reset check and double check then buff everything by like 3% and the job would be totally fine

Exactly! It's a travesty because it can be so fun to play, but the damage is so poor, even in regular content! And performing AoE damage feels a bit awkward since you gotta use Heat Blast to replenish Check and Double Check.

Wildfire definitely should be an AoE spread ability! PvP did that and it worked beautifully! And absolutely yes to everything else, too!

[mallleable]

Flamethrower should be reworked to be a GCD, and replace Auto Crossbow at this point. -- just reuse the assets from Cosmic Exploration. And then make Auto Crossbow an AOE version of Air Anchor.

[TKMXIV]

So back in Endwalker I was thinking of a few things. The big one was to bring back Bishop Autoturret and give it an upgrade into Automaton King at later levels for AOE.
Plus, that opens the door to doing an Automaton fusion of both Queen and King later on for a big flashy fun attack. Maybe after summoning either one twice the third time will be the fusion.
It could do a powerful attack on a target with good splash damage on the enemies around it.

[VeyaAkemi]

Flamethrower should be reworked to be a GCD, and replace Auto Crossbow at this point. -- just reuse the assets from Cosmic Exploration. And then make Auto Crossbow an AOE version of Air Anchor.

I don't think Cosmic Exploration's flamethrower uses any new assets period, it's literally the MCH skill but cut short, you can make them look identical by starting to channel Flamethrower and interrupt it on the first pass through.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Flamethrower is definitely kind of in a weird spot... I'm pretty sure it's better than Scattergun spam, allowing it some niche use in AoE pulls in dungeons, but it's objectively worse than literally anything else.

[YukioKobayashi]

Flamethrower is niche but at least not entirely useless. Even this raidtier in m6s it has some use cases during addphase on the NW Feather Ray before Jabber spawns. (Assuming your group doesnt need that extra Hypercharge on the Feather Ray.)
If you hold your 2Min and 1Min and only use your Air Anchor on CD you get 7 entire ticks on multiple Mu's, NW Feather Ray and Boss in before you have to move and your Reassemble Air Anchor (for Jabber) comes up again.
On paper its a big gain and does around 500k damage combined on its own in BiS gear. However, everything afterwards will feel awkward af because of the lack of gauge gain.