Every Machinist Skill From Every Expansion - FFXIV Job Retrospective

[@aiellamori]

I love how the dot was called lead shot, implying you're just giving your target lead poisoning

[@Sad-Lesbian]

I LOVED Lead Shot so much. 490 potency boosted by Gauss Barrel and Hot Shot. It was so nice and I loved the animation.

[@HyouVizer]

You're already shooting at them, why not poison as well before they die 💀

[@Multifridgeman]

Flamethrower was used in stormblood to force overheat going into the burst window because it gave the most heat in a single tick and was an OGCD.

[@ubermaster1]

And it was the one of the worst things ever about the class. Forever glad it's not like that anymore.

[@Ephelle]

You also started a fight by doing 5 ticks of Flamethrower to get up to 50 heat quickly. Ideally you wanted to time your first GCD to cut Flamethrower immediately on the 5th tick, but if you timed it poorly and cut it at 4 ticks instead then the whole rhythm was fucked and it was very sad.

[@novesta9838]

​@liaku25 5 ticks is right but was 100 heat not 50. 50 was the halfway mark :D

[@Ephelle]

@@novesta9838 Oh you're right, they did up it to 20 per tick didn't they? I just remembered the 5 tick part. I remembered only getting 4 ticks sometimes and desperately wanting to call for a wipe.

[@cynderdrakzy6704]

Brings me back to my first savage static. On o7s, Guardian, our MCH would scream “nooooo” because the boss would turn to face them with Mega Beam in the middle of flamethrower, interrupting their ability to burst… hehe, I wish Flamethrower was useful on single target. Like it applying a spicy dot at least or something.

[@Tyberes]

Also, fun Gauss Barrel fact! The Gauss Barrel model was stored as part of the weapons, and any machinist weapons released while it was in the game still have that model as part of them, it's just hidden by a mask that's never removed now!

[@Ephelle]

Sorry for the comment spam, but the reason they had to buff the overheat damage bonus was because they originally didn't intend for you to intentionally overheat. Overheating was supposed to be a penalty, and the damage buff was just a consolation. People discovered that the 10% damage buff during burst windows was slightly worth it, so the playstyle of intentional overheats emerged, but since the reward was slight and the penalty for messing it up was massive, it led to MCH being very niche and intimidating. They finally decided to embrace the overheat playstyle and buffed the damage during overheat in order to make it more forgiving.

[@MrSquigeon]

Thanks, I was racking my brain trying to remember if you wanted to overheat or not. Remember now it was a source of confusion from the playerbase and the devs, I just used to try and stay between 50-95 until a phase change was coming or any other downtime coming so I wouldn't have to worry about the timer. Probably the wrong way to do it but it was a mess back then😂

[@mewfangirl1052]

I don't miss when Machinist's 1-2-3 rotation was rng on whether or not you would get the combo procs.

[@Ephelle]

I liked being able to hold a Clean Shot proc while you fished for a Slug Shot proc so you could use both during movement or burst, but before they brought Quick Reload down to 15 seconds my record for Split Shots in a row with no proc was 9, which is honestly pretty damn impressive. And sad.

[@Nazuiko]

Cant wait for Bard's Straight shot to drop the RNG element in 7.x

[@Ephelle]

Yes you are correct. Barrel Stabilizer was used after each overheat to get back to 50.

[@MakoEyesOfSapphire]

Ah gunmage. I miss old WF. I remember criting so much that when it went off I pull aggro on Alex and everyone got hit by his tb. Good times

[@AllanTheRobot]

You left out a change in mid Endwalker that made me lose my mind when it happened. The queen has targeting now! It attacks the next thing you hit after summoning. It used to pick an enemy AT RANDOM to attack. I first noticed this in TEA, there was a 1/3 chance she would attack Alexander during j waves when it's invulnerable instead of BJ or CC. Drove me crazy cause the phase is long enough to overcap battery. It was even WORSE in titan unreal, because the bomb boulders are targetable and count as enemies. Suddenly in certain phases there was an 8/9 chance that she'd zoom off to attack a bomb that can't be killed.

[@aaronlefebre5060]

Blank in PvP is/was incredibly fun. Get a good angle on a group of people, and you could blast whole groups of ledges, where a lot of objectives and contested points would be. Popping Blank and then seeing several kill messages at once was supremely satisfying!

[@garbagebandit5934]

I have a lot of fun with Dismantle. There's just something satisfying about having an alliance-wide mitigation tool.

[@Ephelle]

There's also something satisfying about just chucking a wrench at the boss.

[@compscienthusiast]

I remember trying Machinist before taking a 2 year hiatus from the game for school. It was definitely a wild time, it felt more like a musketeer vs a gunslinger.

[@cparle87]

Agree with you on the lack of overlap between single target and aoe. Dancer does it splendidly. Besides the 1-2 combo at the very beginning of their combos you can switch from single target to aoe and back on a dime.

[@stephenoss196]

i just remember that Tactician always lined up with the Relativity casts in e12s p2 and it made my brain feel huge

[@scoobiusmaximus9508]

Back at the start of Stormblood people actually didn't know if Square even intended for people to overheat or to avoid overheating. The damage buff was often worth less than the damage you would lose afterwards and the differences in rotation. I remember Machinists arguing about whether or not it was even worth doing until it got buffed.

[@daanroelofs119]

I actually really liked both mch and brd in heavensward, the short cast time and the bigger weaponskill hits really was cool. I really think most people hated on it just to hate on it. It was fun, it was a cool idea

[@Throrface]

Hey there Mrhappy, there's a typo in your thumbnail in the word Retrospective.

[@willowwisp2420]

Im ready. Ive been so curious about the history od this job for a long while now, and your comprehensive research will finally put it to rest.

[@AirTails]

Re: Stormblood MCH. So on launch many people were put off by how different skills added different heat values. A strange minority were fine with it, but for most it was really confusing on-the-spot maths and, like its HW launch, was a tonne of effort for a job with a low ceiling. I remember going into Susano EX with my static once we'd all finished 4.0 and I just could not focus on anything to do with the fight from job tunnel vision (and I loved and worship HW MCH). Eventually they made it more uniform I believe so every skill added 10 heat. Stabilizer was usually double weaved alongside Gauss Barrel after your bad-feeling overheat barrel lockout mode ended and you could re-equip it to go straight back to the heated shot range. Flamethrower was widely panned, as it would increase your heat gauge in 1 second increments which was really unintuitive to get a feel for, as it was server-tick-ish?? but...1 second...I dunno it was so weird. And ideally when burst phase was ready you'd weave Flamethrower (it was an OGCD) to overheat, yet because of its strange ticks _sometimes_ you'd overheat before your GCD ends, _sometimes_ you wouldn't, and it'd be so easy to accidentally trigger your next GCD before you overheat. Which meant you just activated wildfire and you're not overheating and thus can't spam Cooldown, your strongest skill in overheat. Sometimes you'd wait too long and end up clipping your last GCD in overheat. It was so horribly clunky, and while they eventually boosted the heat it provided per tick you were _stuck_ with depending on that server tick RNG for it for the entire expansion. In the opener you had to stand still channeling it for 5 seconds so that you could overheat for the first burst which was awful in some fights (and that was after it added 20 gauge per tick!). Rotationally it did become more streamlined in the end, essentially you hot shot and stabilize after a burst, then just 123 with ammo - using cooldown before you hit 100 heat, then when burst is up weave Flamethrower to trigger overheat, spam Cooldown, cry during the lockout phase, repeat.

[@Ephelle]

"Oops, only got 4 ticks in the opener. Guess I'll just fucking die now."

[@Kazgrel]

Also not helping SB MCH was how absolutely cracked SB BRD was in comparison Also miss the shit out of Grenado Shot (and Wide Volley). Wild that Spread Shot and Quick Nock didn't get an upgrade until EW

[@Memyx]

Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one who really liked semi-caster MCH. I feel like they could bring that back for just MCH, and it'd be delightful. Edit: I remember dropping MCH in SB for SMN due to how intimidating MCH had become.. But then, at the end of SB, I learned how to properly play MCH and fell in love with it again. I'd still take caster gauss over overheat gauss, though.

[@YUXKE]

PvP machinist is sort of like his now actually but in a different way

[@EllDavis]

Semi-Caster MCH was the most disgusting thing for me.

[@ich3730]

@@YUXKE PvP MCH is a really cool design with a creative idea ( the slow walk cast ). Sad that SE is not capable of implementing these creative designs into the actual game and relegates them into pointless side content

[@Memyx]

@ich3730 The PvP style could also be a testing ground of sorts, though? Not 100% of the designs, of course, but the walk casting is something I could actually see come into main content. It's just not something they'd fully implement in the middle of an expansion, I think.

[@SubduedRadical]

I like new MCH. 100% better than the old one. But I REALLY miss the Reload and Quick Reload ANIMATIONS. I wish we still had those animation/sound effects for something, anything really. Made me think of Jean Starwind from Outlaw Star loading his caster gun, you know. (Also, ammo didn't give you instant cast...I don't think? It made the 1-2-3 guaranteed procs since they were NOT guaranteed without the ammo.) Original MCH was...pretty wild, honestly. I didn't play it too much, but I still remember the reload animation to this day. CHCK-CHCK!! At least we have SHOTGUN how. :D

[@YUXKE]

I still miss freeform deployment of turrets and the utilities tied to them. At least Endwalker PvP Machinist sort of recaptures aspects of the older style gameplay in some ways.

[@paragon359]

Yoooo my main! Picked it up in 5.35 and it’s the job I’ve cleared every savage in the game on it. Happy! For this one

[@devanwc23]

I wonder if anyone on the Development team was a fan of Star Wars the old Republic. I can’t help but recall my time playing a Powertech Bounty Hunter with their heat system as you go through this

[@ConnorBailey-i5l]

Imagine if Crossbow was it's own weapon skill and and would reduce cool down of Bioblaster and Flamethrower with each use. Could be fun.

[@compscienthusiast]

Using the Wayback Machine and archived webpages, it's wild to see the changes made to the game over time. I remember when Bard had an instant kill move when an enemy was

[@spriddlez]

Mr. Happy did do a whole video on the BRD changes. I think he felt the same about that skill XD

[@compscienthusiast]

@@spriddlez Oop I must have missed that, I'll check for it and check it out, thanks! I'm also interested in Warrior (I was a maurader until level 15 where there was a cross-class requirement to unlock jobs) and Dragoon from back then.

[@jacobkern2060]

From what I remember about Queen, the effective duration of it was the same as the Rook, it just had an animation lock during the first couple seconds of it being active.

[@lightdragoon88]

Correct. Queen started at 20 seconds and the first 5 seconds was standing up before attacking. Rook meanwhile started at 15 seconds and attacks right away

[@Xenoks01]

Man I almost wish I was playing in 4.X. Stormblood Machinist seems really fun with how much of a focus it had on its gauge management

[@Ephelle]

Just don't make a single mistake or die because once all your cooldowns and heat are out of alignment you are absolutely suffering.

[@RyouEmerald]

I miss heavensward mch. I didnt enjoy needing a drg for every party bit the actual rotation and flow of mch I loved. It was pretty terrible when they changed to the heat system... its okay now but I still miss my button spam opener.

[@mrcool9090]

So I’m heavensward were phys ranged more or less tp casters?

[@absollum]

I absolutely love current machinist, but none of the aoes, except chainsaw, feels good. The feel slapped on because every job has aoes.

[@rd-um4sp]

they changed hipercharge to be like Blood Weapon? interesting. I never really _needed_ it (not a very skilled player) but still felt bad to miss one heat blasts because of ping. 10 seconds is still tight for me but hey, better chances

[@Tyboo]

God I miss the reload mechanic. Spammy MCH nowdays just doesn't have that same oof to it.

[@lillymacgregor-muckart5200]

While I agree that doing a full class retrospective for more recent content would be needless, I would be interested in how they changed the metagame for their role on release. No way can we get an hour long Gunbreaker video, but I want to know how it recontextualized tanks, if at all. I wasn't playing until during Endwalker so I'd still be interested in a video who's script goes "Gunbreaker: It sucked on release and no one cared" before moving on to Dancer.

[@spriddlez]

That made me think a single vid per expansion or heck even a video for all 6 SB-EW jobs might work

[@Nazuiko]

Gunbreaker was dank but the whole thing with Continuation just felt like Square giving themselves a problem to say they fixed something with 6.0. Gnashing Fang et all did not need to occupy 3 buttons. Theres no reason they do, and it was a given theyd be condensed into a morphing button with the level cap increase, which of course they did. Still, it was the worst of the tanks for surviving but the best Offtank for DPS with fewer personal mits and instead getting more damage as its capstone abilities

[@hypersleep9336]

i may be the only one that misses 4.x mch. its still my main job but i constantly miss the clunky mess that it was, it was so much fun

[@miqotesoulia8620]

holy shit PLEASE SE!!!!,make bio blast combo with Flamethrower in a cool way. Douse the enemy in gasoline (bio blast) then light'em up (flamethrower)

[@Nazuiko]

One change I didnt see you mention; when did Reassemble get changed to effect AoE skills? It did in ShB I know, so you could use it on Spread/AXB (Didnt matter as theyre identical in potency; Now it has to be Scattergun) and more importantly, on Chain Saw at level 90 for a parade of dank Crits + Direct Hits. Speaking of Chainsaw's addition to AoEing, its sad that Machinist has the exact same AoE toolkit from ARR ... til level 90. Its so sad going from Spread shot and Ricochet spam to ... Still only having those but now Dancer and Bard have so many more tools, Ninja has Hellfrog, monk has Elixir, and of course the casters get their big AoE spells but MCH doesnt get a single new AoE tool til NINETY. 10 potency increase at 82 for Scattergun, Bioblaster on 2 targets, and AXB not interacting with Ricochet in any way, Flamethrower isnt a real skill. So your only genuine upgrade is Chain Saw for AoE. It causes MCH to go from arguably best in slot for trash packs at very low levels to a dedicated single target job after HW

[@naoremonth]

As someone who didn't start until Shadowbringers... ...why the heck haven't we seen more skills that do "X damage distributed among all targets"? Given all the semi-AOE skills they've given us lately where it's % damage falloff, I'm really curious why they didn't use that instead.

[@RockR277]

I've enjoyed every iteration of MCH, but I really kinda miss HW, or even SB MCH.

[@MrSquigeon]

I'm sure the reason you wanted to reduce heat was to avoid overheating but stay above 50 heat, its weird how its hard to remember how it worked before the rework

[@Tyberes]

I kinda wish they'd kept the turrets around instead of going into the aether multitool. As far as you mentioning the anime, I hope that's our next caster. Have like a gun mage where you cast spells to charge bullets, they shoot your gun with various different effects based on charged bullets.

[@ReksNuadiah]

I get you, and wished they'd struck a good middle ground between the older ideas and new. ...But I also appreciate the multitool, because I grew up with 6 (or 3) with vivid memories of my mom constantly naming Edgar after me.

[@Sllandre]

I would say it's probably worth doing the Stormblood ones as well, just to show *why* it's not really worth doing the Shadowbringers ones.

[@carbxncle]

And then do shadowbringers too to really hammer home why doing an endwalker one makes absolutely no sense.

[@Glenningway]

MCH feels very "hard content for first timer" friendly, at least for me. If you can get over the immersion breaking feel of the class it's rather quite solid in all content. They could make WildFire AoE friendly, it's only useful for bosses. Maybe give more support utility or self sustain. We are a selfish phys. ranged DPS so maybe we can get something like a OGCD regen.

[@catboy_on_main]

EW gave us wrench back and thats all I care about

[@Zeet1]

As someone who has played since 2.0 - what are you talking about? They introduced MCH in 6.0 with DNC, after years of only having 1 phys range jobs for 3 expansions. 🤣🤣🤣

[@one_eyeddd473]

Make crossbow reset the ogcd like the single trgt does

[@Nazuiko]

Ideally, since youre not really gonna wanna weave Gauss Blasts during a crossbow spam session anyway, take the "15 seconds on both" from Heat Blast and make it just a full charge on Ricochet, not effecting Gauss' charges at all. So you can dump all 6 of your charges, HC, and then after your Crossbow use youre guaranteed a Ricochet, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and then boom wildfire explodes in an AoE for x(200+80n) where n is the number of targets hit beyond the first and x is the number of Crossbows landed during the duration. Also give us Bishop back, you already gave us back Dismantle

[@Ephelle]

Juggling Gauss Barrel on and off was a nightmare in early Heavensward. Losing auto attacks wasn't worth the damage buff, so you'd put it on just to hit Gauss Round and Ricochet and then take it back off. Ideally you'd have a Slug Shot and Clean Shot proc ready ahead of time as well. It was even worse because Gauss Barrel had a 3s cast time to put it on, but luckily Rapid Fire was bugged at this time and it made everything instant cast while it was active, including Gauss Barrel, Teleport, and Limit Break.

[@Kaylersick]

i have 110 ping can i still not play machinist?

[@LoonMasterFlex]

Stormblood was the only time flamethrower was marginally useful lmao

[@valence686]

Remember when ammo was a simple buff on a timer and it could fall off when not used fast enough? Before they made it permanent for 3.4 On Stormblood MCH since it was my main, they actually changed a humongous amount of things between release and the first patches to come directly after, because the way the job was designed was that barrel stabilized was only every 120s, so you didn't even have it back after odd wildfires and overheat, which meant it was better not to actually overheat for those midfires. They also adjusted heat generation a lot which swung a lot more since a lot of abilities added 10 instead of just 5, and you had to use cooldown a lot. It was very easy to overheat by mistake. On the other hand flamethrower was so crap it generated only 10 heat per tick which meant you'd take ages casting it to overheat during the opener, so they upped it to 20 per tick. Turret overdrive was totally useless at release, and became generally damage neutral after update, so you'd only want to use it within overheat windows for the 20% bonus and the raid buffs. Bishop actually was a bit better than potency neutral since the overload was not affected by AoE falloff, which was actually nuts and one of the nastiest AoEs in the game back then. Fuck new MCH, it's bland.

[@DrYeol]

I miss HW MCH.

[@shiznaztm]

Ah yes, the classic... 1 2 3 2 3 Machinist. I miss it so... so much.

[@shiznaztm]

Flamethrower was used to trigger Overheat in Stormblood. You would use around 2 Cooldowns before overheating to line your cooldowns up. The idea behind Stormblood MCH was that you wanted to stay between 50-95 until the burst window, overheat with Flamethrower, do your Wildfire. The cooldown period ends, use Stabilizer to boost yourself back to 50 immediately. "Rumble from League of Legends" was the exact analogy I used to use too lmao. The very beginning of Stormblood, the Heat was very volatile and hard to manage. (And felt more like Rumble from League) It was 10 per shot instead of 5 per shot, and you had to use a LOT more Cooldowns. I believe in the Raid Patch they had to bring it down to 5 per shot. They then changed it again. I remember learning like 3-5 different rotations through Stormblood, the class was a total mess. Was interesting to play, but still not as fun as Heavensward MCH. I just hope they really truly lean into the tools for 7.0. It just feels like 2 classes glued together at this point whereas if they lean into what Machinist should be, it could be a lot more fun.

[@YUXKE]

@@shiznaztm I think the current PvP Machinist would be a good baseline for a design change that evokes a focus on tools.

[@mahrze]

I miss gun-mage and bow-mage. Hot take, I know.

[@EllDavis]

🤢

[@jacobkern2060]

18:13 They still don't share cooldowns, it's just that every Heat Blast or Auto-Crossbow shaves 15 seconds off both cooldowns.

[@ubermaster1]

Only Heat Blast does that.

[@jacobkern2060]

​@@ubermaster1 I get that MCH's kit is allergic to interacting with itself, but goddamn

[@Nazuiko]

@@jacobkern2060 Really dont get why Ricochet doesnt get a full charge off every Crossbow, when you get half a charge for each on HB

[@TheAuron32]

Lamethrower NOT adding Heat makes NO SENSE AT ALL...

[@iPlayOnSpica]

Also not helpful that Auto Crossbow out-dpses it, so it's only useful if you have under 50 heat gauge and the mob is sitting still enough. Otherwise, you still default to Spreadshot/Scattergun.

[@TheAuron32]

@@iPlayOnSpica and if you get that random AoE target you, boom, pretty much have to stop burning things.

[@christhagod]

Flamethrower needs something else then potency it would be so cool if it increased heat or battery maybe even a brand new thing like a damage buff

[@TheAutomedon]

I’m coming back from 3 year break, i just hit 90 and it feels like they dumbed down a ton of jobs… even PVP is way worse now imo

[@bolladragon]

This is exactly what’s happened. Healers got it the worst.

[@jacobkern2060]

They did. A lot of players (especially the top players) really despise the two-minute buff meta that Endwalker shoehorned into existence. That being said, new PvP is way more fun than previous iterations of it. Though it's clearly tuned for CC.

[@iPlayOnSpica]

You really feel it when playing content that isn't a raid or trial. If it isn't a single 6-10 min fight, some of these jobs don't feel right. MCH happens to be a bit of an exception because built-up resources don't expire with time, and Reassemble is pretty flexible to use. DRG is a prime example of the problem, where you only want to use Life Surge mid-combo, managing combo usage between fights feels odd, and the dives that normally are used simply as damage now need to function as gap closers but are often unavailable for that purpose because you just used them last fight and they're still on cd.

[@redbearington3345]

the "lets make range melee into casters" expansion. Also mch has had probably the most reworks and imo has always been terrible. wish I could like it but man... its bad

[@cherrieswaffles4575]

OwO guns

[@StellariumSound]

Not a fan of the unscripted format, but interesting nonetheless.

[@HyouVizer]

Heavensward launch, every single leveling party was DRK, AST, 2 MCH. All of us Is fumbling around like toddlers trying to walk for the 1st time facerolling our actions haha good times Hated caster MCH/BRD, glad its gone.

[@HyouVizer]

38:27 reaction ended me 😂💀