What is wrong about making machinist good?

[Shurrikhan]

I grew up with HW/SB MCH where I had to use my brain on proc priorities. 12131213 is brainless spamm that only gives carpal tunnel as far as i'm concerned and the presence of the second ability is just there to pretend that's more interesting than a DRK/GNB burst.

I mean, WH and SB are when I last played MCH the most, but, that unique button flow there is literally the only unique flow to MCH now.

Replacing it now with copy-pasta from another job's design that was not itself stolen from MCH is... well, just as bad as when DNC stole their weaponskills' progression from MCH.

I agree. That's why I feel that the 123 rotations that don't interact with anything else (so not MNK and SAM for example, with their branching paths) should be merged into one single converting button. Like some are even halfway through this. PLD's atonement combo is literally an improved basic combo - fulfills the same role - and yet it's condensed. If people are so keen on having such mindless 123 buttons separate, just allow them with the tech we have already to un-merge some merged actions.

Mostly agreed, though...

But I also don't want this merging just for the sake of it - it should be done to make room for more rotational stuff.

...this would then make the unmerged forms non-options.

But it's boring design either way. The issue is fundamental, FFXIV wants to use class design that, at a very basic level, has always hated actual player agency. Even all the way back in HW or SB what players always bring up as good examples. What they did over the years is remove the "cruft" that was caked on top of the super-simplistic design, and that somewhat hid it. And removing that cruft was the right choice, it didn't add anything, but it also very clearly exposes how utterly banal the underlying design has always been.

Mostly agreed, but let's be honest: some people really do enjoy that movement of their hands over their controller/keyboard/mouse. Most would probably prefer it be for real reasons, but... the tactile element is still an element worth addressing.

MCH is easy btw, but depends on how people would prefer it. I think I could see two ways to make the class "feel right" also have interesting gameplay:

• Static-rotation based: Make us deal absurd amounts of damage with each shot. We use a gun. While others slash you with a sharp piece of rock or shoot a wooden arrow, we have a gun. I'm talking mid-6-figures crits. But, in return, our way to produce that number is arduous, and also this makes the hits very rare: Discard spent round -> Select bullet -> Load -> Aim -> Fire. 5 GCD to produce one instance of damage, and to make it technical enough to be a non-bad static-rotation implementation, each of these ought to be of variable length. No fixed 2.5s GCD or anything, say Discard is 1.0s, select depends on how it is done but could be variable depending on standard round vs special round, load is 2.5s, aim is 4.0s and it's a walking-cast, fire is 1.5s. At least demands something of the player. Bonus points if aim is also variable based on the selected round. Most abilities are now just rounds you can select, the fire ability turns into whatever we need then, including Wildfire being an incendiary round etc. Multitool exists separately, not sure how I'd handle that yet.
  
  
• Resource-based: A "reload" action fills in a "magazine" of "rounds". These are semi-randomly selected, like pulling revolver rounds out of a hobo sack of mixed ammo. You handle what you got dealt, which unlocks or locks abilities on each cyclinder advance. You can "skip" a round if you don't want to induce CD on a specific ability right now, but this'd be a short 0.7s-1.0s GCD to do that, so there's some damage loss when wanting to resist the random hand you were dealt. Overall rotation is somewhat reliable still, the actual main skills get replaced as you got a round enabling, say, Hot Shot use. So most skills now have a CD requirement and need the correct round (althoug multiple rounds might qualify for some skills, maybe even changing the effect slightly). As usual with resource-based jobs, the order and relative amount is randomized, but not the functionality or class-feel overall.

Both of these would directly base the gameplay off of being a gun-wielding job. The Multitool could also be used that way, but I'll be honest the only truly cool way I've ever seen for those was in GW2 with the engineer toolbelt adapting to which skills you had on your hotbar, and since we don't do that here, can't emulate that.

Neither of these sound appealing nor necessary to me, tbh.

A 5-GCD rotation is still a 5-GCD rotation, just as goon as Dragoon, even if it deals all that damage in a single shot. It will feel no different except just before raidbuffs (and even then, only if you have alternative combos) outside of breaking PvP if ever included there as well.

Meanwhile, RNG still devolves to the same sort of rote precedure as a fixed combo unless both interdependent and offering compensatory elements of control. You need to be able to gamble and actively manage what comes of it to optimize a following gamble against a broader context that is shifting (with time, if nothing else).