Should Machinist Be Relocated or Reworked?

[Azurarok]

And therein lies the problem with phys ranged, so long as they continue to design it as the easy role, and what feels like 'the easy role for players who are bad at the game,' it can never be taken seriously. That mindset cannot be brought into 8.0.

yes but I think saying that mobility restrictions are the only justifiable way to make a job difficult is a really narrow view, which you seem to be implying with your attachment to walking casts.

[Reginald_Cain]

I woldn't call phys ranged easy but comfy. The only super mobile one is dancer and they gave them some gauge management to think about this expansion and aren't quite simon says anymore. I miss shadowbringers dancer melee combo but oh well. bard has a lot of room for experimentation from fight to fight and machinist takes a lot more brain power to aoe with efficiently than either bard or dancer because that part of the kit is super jank still. Flamethrower is better now but machinist doesn't have the readily available ranged aoe burst viper has with that broken uncoiled fury ranged aoe nuke.

Honestly I think Melee's get too much credit for being "hard" Ninja is the only melee I think is super challenging and I feel playing caster is the hardest dps role by a mile. You get punished far more than any non caster dps for not knowing a fight. Even summoner gets ruined by a death because your primals are now out of alignment. Ranged didn't have any sort of edge in Endwalker when boss hit boxes where huge and only in this more ddr centric expansion does the free movement of feel remotely advantageous.

If you think ranged is the EaSy role then I firmly believe you follow an outdated mindset because the most dps are a lot easier today than before. Phys ranged are squishy and have terrible defensive cooldowns for solo content. melee's get blood bath in addition to shields, third eye, lots of dashes to avoid damage. Casters get vercure, summoner shields and heals itself, black mage has a long cd fat shield and two teleports with short cds and picto has a two part shield and an aimable dash.

Melee skills that can be used from ranged have gotten stronger and more plentiful with each expansion. Look at how much piercing talon cost in TP in stormblood for the tickle damage it dealt. Nowadays melees can spam that junk for free and the potency is higher and skills like communion, iajutsu, gierskogul, stariver, riddle of wind, riddle of fire, ninjutsu, and uncoiled fudging fury that are all nukes usable from range. This bias against phys ranged movement hold now grounds anymore and should never again. Let them just be strong and let people play whatever they want.

[Shyxx]

Viper is easier than 2/3 of phys ranged and rest of the melee isnt much harder so that argument isnt valid

[Carighan]

Viper is easier than 2/3 of phys ranged and rest of the melee isnt much harder so that argument isnt valid

True, although that's largely on fight designed ~never wanting to challenge melee contact range (either way, disallowing it for multiple GCDs in a row or constantly barraging close targets with damage, both traditional reasons why melee DPS in MMORPGs got more defensive tools and more damage) and also never wanting to challenge positionals either.

In theory, and unlike casters, this would not need changes to the classes to fix. Most bosses just need to put out untelegraphed 360° cleaves (so the more melee DPS, the more your healers have to heal), and also disallowing either specific quadrants or entire melee contact extensively. Casters OTOH need to be fixed class-side, massively increasing the amount of casted spells and their cast times, in return for a moderate~large buff to damage output since so many now have to be aborted or even never started.

[Carighan]

A less-mobile job for variety is a bad thing now?!