What is wrong about making machinist good?

[Shurrikhan]

This has been the most neglected job for 8 years. Autocrossbow still has no interaction with check or checkmate. There is still no aoe battery spender.

Neither of these are inherently bad. You just need Auto-crossbow to deal enough damage in itself to compete with {HB focus damage + the CDR on DC/CM given both their focus and splash damage}, ideally outpacing HB/BS despite its DC/CM-CDR after 4 targets or so (not counting said DC/CM perhaps being bankable for raidbuffs or the like), while AoE would just have to be sufficient regardless of Battery, which in turns allow you to focus down a key mob if you like or to all the easier save it for bosses. I'd be fine with Queen gaining some splash on its finisher (and would love a bit of that on Wildfire's explosion), but I honestly don't want to see another AoE mirror like Bioblaster opposite Drill.

Meanwhile, MCH's throughput problems are less about a lack of raid buffs than just that Physical Ranged as a whole tend to be undertuned despite that their innate positioning advantages are mostly irrelevant now that casters and melee can each have full uptime. Otherwise, there'd be little to no issue with their damage scaling entirely with themselves while BRD's scaling is spread around the full party and DNC's a mix of the party (including themselves) and some Best-in-SlotSelfish DPS.

Frankly, though, if that parity takes Physical Ranged gaining some actions that reduce their relative mobility a bit without them losing any damage compared to now when avoiding said new actions, or by whatever other means adding on cognitive load (if mostly enjoyably) to "deserve" that extra DPS, I'd be fine with that.

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Accordant Suggestions:

• Just for the fun of tangibly seeing/setting up bigger bombs, have Wildfire splash deal 40% splash damage, and have Detonator detonate Wildfire's applied stacks without necessarily losing the ability to apply more, which would then go off automatically at the effect's end if not likewise actively Detonated. Remove any animation lock (truly-global ICD period, in this case of ~0.5 seconds + roundtrip ping) from Detonator and allow it to be used even during another animation, clipping or even skipping its own animation if necessary (adding about 288 AoE potency per minute)
  
  
• Have Pile Bunker and Crowned Collider deal 40% splash damage (adding about 530 AoE potency per minute).
  
  
• Return Double-Check to single-target only, like its ancestor in Gauss Round (costing up about 800 AoE potency per minute).
  
  
• (Altogether, this would be the faintest of buffs.)
  
  
• Increase Auto-crossbow's damage each time the damage of HB, GS, Rico, or their upgrades are increased, including their AoE damage, tuned against their contribution at 4 targets, to keep parity at each level between Auto-crossbow and its single-target mirror (including bonus effects) at 4 targets. (At present, no change to Auto-crossbow's AoE damage would be necessary due to Double-Check returning to single-target.)
  
  
• Increase Scatter Gun potency back to 150 or even 160 (or 200, with 30% falloff after the first for 140 AoE potency), now that the Battery from the ST combo has a bit of AoE value (~20 AoE potency/gcd).
  
  
• Hypercharge should at least itself be replaceable with Heat Blast (Blazing Shot) via the optional Action Change settings.

[Valence]

I disagree having one of the two charges be single target while the other is AoE with the same potency. In terms of design, this makes zero sense. Either differentiate them enough that they have different enough purposes if one has to be AoE and the other not AoE, or keep them identical for the sake of APM spamm.
In the case of the former, what I would have envisioned for both charges would have been something similar to Fan Dance, where heat blast regens gauss round as normal, and using gauss round has a chance to proc ricochet, for example.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree having one of the two charges be single target while the other is AoE with the same potency.

And yet that's what we had from the class's start in Heavensward all the way up until Dawntrail without issue?

One is meant to be situationally but objectively better than the other. Just as Chainsaw is situationally and objectively better than Drill even in terms of direct damage alone. They do not share cooldowns, so what would be the harm in that?

what I would have envisioned for both charges would have been something similar to Fan Dance, where heat blast regens gauss round as normal, and using gauss round has a chance to proc ricochet, for example.

I feel like 90% of the point of Heat Blast is just to enforce a 1213121312 rhythm between it and alternatingly Gauss Round and Ricochet. Is that a button-flow you dislike, or...?

[Valence]

And yet that's what we had from the class's start in Heavensward all the way up until Dawntrail without issue?

One is meant to be situationally but objectively better than the other. Just as Chainsaw is situationally and objectively better than Drill even in terms of direct damage alone. They do not share cooldowns, so what would be the harm in that?

It was different in HW because both abilities were on different timers and weren't tied to any class mechanic. They were just two different OGCDs that you used on cd. I'm not gonna pretend this was interesting in the slightest, although the way ricochet did AOE sure was exotic. Ricochet wasn't meant to be better than gauss precisely because ricochet had four times the recast and used to also be a lvl60 capstone (weak, but it was a capstone if just visually).

Chainsaw is similarly better than Drill because Chainsaw is on a different, longer recast.

I feel like 90% of the point of Heat Blast is just to enforce a 1213121312 rhythm between it and alternatingly Gauss Round and Ricochet. Is that a button-flow you dislike, or...?

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.

[Carighan]

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.

That's something I fully agree on, and a huge problem of FFXIV class design in general: So many abilities just exist to, well, keep your fingers busy. Mentally, pressing 1213 repeatedly is no more stimulating than... just pressing 1? Or if we desperate, absolutely, have to use more than one button, then you might as well do the Heat Blast be different buttons for say, 3 shots. So you press 1-2-3. Boring either way, but well, people apparently love their carpal-tunnel inducing "design", although if I were a class designer on any MMORPG, I'd be insulted by the stuff the FFXIV devs call their design, being just oGCD weaving with exactly 0 brain engagement.

They couldn't even get themselves to make an actual proc out of the MCH CD-reduction. If at least the -CD was a proc that's not guaranteed, and can randomly affect either, none or both of the oGCDs, we'd at least have to pay attention instead of just marginally change the pacing of the semi-sleep that is playing Machinist.

[Raikai]

That's something I fully agree on, and a huge problem of FFXIV class design in general: So many abilities just exist to, well, keep your fingers busy. Mentally, pressing 1213 repeatedly is no more stimulating than... just pressing 1? Or if we desperate, absolutely, have to use more than one button, then you might as well do the Heat Blast be different buttons for say, 3 shots. So you press 1-2-3. Boring either way, but well, people apparently love their carpal-tunnel inducing "design", although if I were a class designer on any MMORPG, I'd be insulted by the stuff the FFXIV devs call their design, being just oGCD weaving with exactly 0 brain engagement.

They couldn't even get themselves to make an actual proc out of the MCH CD-reduction. If at least the -CD was a proc that's not guaranteed, and can randomly affect either, none or both of the oGCDs, we'd at least have to pay attention instead of just marginally change the pacing of the semi-sleep that is playing Machinist.

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.

I personally don't think pressing 3 separate keys, right next to each other, in a sequence is more interesting than pressing the same key 3 times. 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.

[Valence]

It's interesting that we now regularly have people advocating for combo filler simplification and condensation into a single button, when originally every class with combos had different paths to take. They removed this on many of them, and now we're left with autocombos.

[Raikai]

It's interesting that we now regularly have people advocating for combo filler simplification and condensation into a single button, when originally every class with combos had different paths to take. They removed this on many of them, and now we're left with autocombos.

I mean, if there's no branching or something to make our brains work... why not just condense and make more room into the hotbars?

I feel a bit confused with CBU3 on this... Because it feels as if it's a treatment they started, but stopped halfway (resources? lol) because it makes no sense for some stuff not be condensed.

Why Holy in White and Comet in Black, as well as the chromatic combos, are separate for PCT? You literally do not have the option to use one while the buff that unlocks the other is active. Heck, you can't even right-click the buff to drop it anymore. I know that PCT is a bit lacking in keys right now, but that would only open up for more interesting actions in 8.0 without overloading the hotbars.

[Valence]

I'm not disagreeing with the idea of condensing them. The whole idea of having branches was to offer agency, notably for tanks between aggro generation and damage, and on most melees (including tanks), dot uptime. Now that all of this is gone, the combos retain no purpose beyond tactile feeling, which you'll agree is still different from spamming 1, and I do feel that's the kind of design the devs are left with in the past expansions, the same way that DDR is DDR: it's all about pressing specific keys at certain times like you'd play a music sheet. It's not about agency anymore.

That's why they don't want to consolidate them into a single button, it would ruin the DDR.

[Carighan]

It's interesting that we now regularly have people advocating for combo filler simplification and condensation into a single button, when originally every class with combos had different paths to take. They removed this on many of them, and now we're left with autocombos.

I mean if your "branching" is stuff like what DRGs do or worse Warriors, then that's actually only better by absolutely marginal amounts.

Though, if one wants more than one branching path with 0 player agency (as if Warrior isn't just "roughly every 30 seconds do the other finisher pl0x"), then doing it like Warrior where you could have one autocombo and a special one-off that you can only use when the autocombo is on a particular step and that also cycles the combo, that's alright.

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.

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.