What’s your feelings on Machinist in FFXIV :HW

by Posted on

it feels like machinist was the absolute LEAST important job on the list of priorities with square enix, and it really shows.

ffxiv_hw

I’ve just hit lv60 MCH and honestly…… its disappointing. this isnt coming from me thinking we do too little damage or anything like that (we do have issues with damage, but that will work out in time), its just a general “dude SE Wtf were you thinking”

innate issues with the job

  1. right from the get go, this class is below the power threshold it should be at. all of its damage output is tuned for 40 when it receives its first turret, which is due to their turrets being expected to produce the 20% damage that a bard would loose from songs, hence why they stop dealing damage during MP/TP restoration.
  2. as a result of issue 1, not placing your turrets diligently is absolutely crippling. its quite literally the inverse of a bard forgetting to turn off a song. on the flipside we have to “turn on” our dps, which shouldn’t be a thing.
  3. as a result of issues 1 and 2, from 30-49. machinist is below the power threshold on AOE Damage.
  4. the skills are…. extremely bland in terms of animation.

Problems with Ammunition

  1. its consumed by skills that it provides a marginal/negligible boost to.
  2. its consumed by clean shot which makes the user have to forgo the standard 1-2-3, and do a rotation of 1-2-1-3-2-3-1 in order to maximize their reloads. having to keep track of an abnormal rotation, ontop of buffs, ontop of debuffs, ontop of ammo counters, makes it extremely hard for all but the best of players to not tunnelvision the living crap out of this class.
  3. its consumed by Every single skill that isnt OGCD. they need to remove the ability for ammunition to be consumed by Hotshot, Lead shot, and clean shot. any other skill is fine.

Useless skills

  1. Foot graze 1st issue- most useless skill in the game. the second you use it, your turret is going to plink the target and unbind it due to the AI designed to target the last thing you used a skill on.
  2. Foot Graze 2nd issue: no machinist is ever using this skill when they can leg graze for far longer and still continue dps. this skill has no place in the game for them. this is one of the skills i view as “well we couldn’t think of anything else so we just winged it”
  3. Mind break: No. Flat out no. Remove this from the game. a 5% reduction in magic damage is nifty but it in no way shape or form should be tied to another skill counterpart with a shared cooldown. put in a trait to add a magic reduction effect to dismantle and place a more useful skill in its place (i.e Detonator- Refreshes the duration of Wildfire 3 minute cooldown).
  4. Grenado shot- Most useless skill of them all. its only benefit is that it is long range. the AOE radius is minuscule, and the damage is laughable for the TP used. with the absloutely insane range on spread shot this skill is virtually useless.

Issues with skills

  1. Rapidfire’s buff takes over a second to actually apply the casting timer reduction in gauss barel. it needs to be fixed.
  2. Gauss barrel is instant cast under rapid fire (not that im complaining).
  3. dismantle is so negligible that you could never use it and nobody would ever know/care that it went un used. Mixing it with mind break fixes this a bit, but still largely lack luster for a major post 50 skill.
  4. turret placement is cumbersome for turrets. either this needs to change so that the single target turret drops at your location on use and the aoe drops on your current target on use, or they need to make turrets able to follow you. having to move and adjust my turret every single fight, or 5+ times a fight because they are made out of paper and get destroyed. also the single target turret’s range is too short. it should be massive due to its inability to move and adjust.
  5. Gauss barrel, while more forgiving than WM, it carries the same issues with it. SE should have made a legit gun mage class if they wanted people casting magic with a gun.
  6. Wildfire is penalized by defense calculations twice. the damage you deal to stack up the damage for wildfire is reduced by existing defenses (as per usual), but then defenses also reduce the damage dealt by wildfire. this needs to be changed so that wildfire penetrates defenses (no other skill in the game gets a double hit on defense reductions).
  7. Quicker reload needs to also effect reload. the recast timer is far too long, and does not line up properly with other cooldowns that rely on ammo being ready to make them efficient.

Extremely high effort to very little reward ratio

this class most definately suffers from what summoner used to suffer from. you have to bust ass to not suck. im not saying the class is hard, just that its potencies and cool downs are designed with the player playing at practically the pinnacle of perfection in mind, and playing it any less than so makes you practically dead weight. its why i’m seeing a plethora MCH’s barely able to push 300 on anything post 50 in full I130 or higher. you can practically take any class in the game, apply a single GCD attack to every button on their KB and have them roll their face arround on it, and they would put out more dps than that.

Good points of machinist

  1. its able to retain a decent chunk of its mobility even during gauss barrel, of which bards are seemingly having heartburn over.
  2. the turrets AI while quirky, and counter intuitive to thee use of footgraze, is actually incredibly good
  3. the ease and speed in which you can float between buffing and offensive turrets.
  4. the damage output on turrets is fairly potent- no where near as potent as a summoner pet, but passable (this doesnt abate the issue of our damage being completely hinged on the turret)

TL/DR: Machinist was not given the attention it was due, and both does not live up to expectations, and falls short of the ability to perform at an acceptable level at virtually every phase of the leveling process.

To pre empt all the ERMERGERD YOU NEED TO WAIT FOR IT TO GROW IN ENDGAME!!!!! no. the only reason further changes happen to a job in end game is due to itemization being optimal (or sub optimal, See SMN 2.3-2.5 with insane spell speed being crammed into every piece of gear), or job abilities being tweaked. doesn’t take rocket science to see that its not where it should be.