gazel7424: As I am not a MCH, all I can say for sure is that I hope one day Auto Crossbow will shorten the cooldowns of Gauss Round and Ricochet, similar to Heat Blast.

honeydarlinggaming9156: As a machinst main of going on 4 years. We are machinenough

propagate8619: Something that isn't mentioned is how MCH performs in conjunction with downtime in an ultimate scenario, where it struggles greatly. Even looking at individual phases where the MCH has the opportunity to pool gauge prior, it still gets gapped by superior combos like VPR/RPR DNC or BRD simply existing. On the flipside, DNC can prep dances during downtime and BRD is still gaining gauge by rolling songs. In addition, the extra mitigation brought by the MCH will never actually be relevant as Square wants all jobs to be able to clear regardless of comp.

grip7777: I like mch but I haven’t played in a good while. We’ve dealt with the kinds of problems you are describing in WoW however. Feral Druid was considered inferior for a long time even though it was actually pretty strong, even if it wasn’t the best. Blizzard actually pointed out that feral didn’t really need buffs in several interviews but the players still weren’t getting invited to pugs. The perception of a class/job seems to be more important than it’s actual dps, at least for the low/midcore audience.

LazyJesse: Ah bloody hell, I've said it before, I'll say it again. By starting as Dragoon and then switching to Machinist I went from one meme to another.

alexhaupt2134: I actually think the points of it being good at alternative scenarios/not fitting the 2 minute burst are interesting because it seems like this is precisely what a lot of players want when talking about how similar jobs feel to one another. I think it's kind of telling how centralizing raiding is for most players, even if they don't actually do savage raids; dungeons or deep dungeons or field operations or FATEs or what have you are simply "alternative". Although various jobs may be better or worse in these scenarios (raid buffs are weaker in light parties, certain jobs are significantly better at aoe, etc), it's either considered so easy that these don't actually matter (though yes, this could be said even for most Savage fights) or they are simply considered niche enough that many players would be annoyed if jobs were balanced with these things specifically in mind.

I've seen people suggest that, in a game where you can play any job, it should be fine if some jobs are effectively pushed out of content because you can always play the ones that actually work--which is why jobs should be more dissimilar, even if it means that you only ever see Black Mage in serious raid teams, for example. I don't exactly agree with this sentiment, and I think it's a good point because you can feel how this (relatively niche) opinion clashes against jobs being made "simpler" or "more similar"--personal opinion aside, I can see why the dev team has moved things in this direction if players want the freedom to play what they want. It was all but explicitly the reason for various job changes in late Endwalker up to now, for jobs to have some friction removed to make space for more interesting fight design, so players could continue playing the jobs they like.

cryamistellimek9184: I think a nice change besides letting auto crossbow recharge the two skills, is giving wildfire a damage vulnerability like ninja. That gives it some raid support to buff damage like the other two ranged physicals.

tciddados: Fun fact, in Q40, MCH is the top of the physrange jobs. Raidbuff jobs have a hidden buff in there to accomodate for the 4-man structure, which means the RDPS calculations are broken, but even in the speedkill rankings (which wouldn't be affected by that inaccuracy), they represent like 80% of the physrange jobs in the top 50 fastest kills.

Edit: Sorry, this was outdated info. MCH now comprises of 100% of the physrange jobs in the top 50 speedkills.

eggled1566: Conceptually, I don't see how you can have a job with heat buildup as a mechanic and a move called flamethrower but they don't interact at all. They could sell it either way. Fire is hot, causes heat buildup or maybe the flames are being generated by the release of built up heat.

Ugouka12: My biggest beef with Flamethrower is that the damage numbers don't read like other abilities. The text is different and always makes me paranoid that it's not actually doing

dianethepunk6149: Machinist captures the feeling of juggling broken beer bottles while occasionally throwing power tools at your enemies and regardless of how the job is balanced in the future, I hope that NEVER changes.

ThatHomestar: i have an east coast US friend who loves machinist but still can't play it at high levels due to latency issues. compounded with all this other stuff, it really demoralized him. he's currently unsubbed and is playing destiny 2 instead.

ClairvoyantLastrus: As someone that mainly plays casual content, MCH being bad is not really a thing I see to often, when I play MCH I'm top DPS most of the time and when I see other MCH they are usually also higher on the dps list then what you would think.

Honestly the biggest thing they could do is improve the AOE aspects of the job, I firmly believe what Mr. Happy has said multiple times already: there are two people designing MCH, one for single target and one for aoe and they don't talk to each other.

Flamethrower needs to be modernized by simply being a Ogcd that is a aoe dot, and auto crossbow NEEDS to refund the cooldown of of the check Ogcds. I think simply doing that would put MCH in a munch better spot from not only a in game perspective but from a social one too.

mfbuxton: One thing I often forget about as an avid player is that while I am often reading reddit posts and patch notes and watching videos, even a large part of the raider scene is here for the new raid or msq and then unsubs until next tier.

They can only take in so much info.

IMO Machinist is fine where it is, its great when you're expecting your team to suck at lining up debuffs and its excellent in 4 man content or solo

People asking for it to change will force the devs to make it like any other job

CmdrJay72: I love my MCH. And since I don’t do savage/extreme content, I’ll keep playing it as I love the feel and gear look. Because as we all know, glamour is the real endgame

thetwintiger: Ive heard someone say that Machinist feels like its designed by two different people who do not communicate: one designs the single target, the other designs the AoE.

I’m going to add my own thought: it feels like Machinist design needs to make a decision on whether it should be a “pew pew” gun attacking focused job, or a tool/mech focused job.

With a new ranged physical on the horizon, it might be the perfect time to move machinists completely into the Tools Job and give the new ranged physical get the gun focus, such as a Sniper or Marksman job. If Viper came about from a supposed desire for dual wielding DPS that wasnt Ninja, why cant Machinist and a Marksman job coexist?

truesoprano2152: MCH is my favorite job but I got bullied out of playing it. I don't even go for week 1 clears but everyone just thinks those statistics apply to everything. My hot take is that a lot of people want everyone else to play the most meta jobs just so they don't have to play their job optimally. (just look at fru on patch where basically every party in pf locked the caster slot to picto and phys ranged to brd/dnc)

stonium69: As someone who plays MCH and SCH in high end content I largely agree with your video especially the upsides and social problems. It is the best take on MCH ive seen on Youtube. For me the main problems I have with MCH are 1. its AOE toolkit (and how bad flamethrower feels to use. it feels bad to be locked in place for that long, and it feels bad to not see damage numbers from it popping up big and obviously because its dot damage). 2. I don't like the ranged tax. I think all 3 phys ranged need to get better equally, and I think the tax need to be cut down to like 1-2% less damage than the melees instead of 9% less.

tanhongyi7180: The only thing I would consider a job's designed flawed, is when it's rotation doesn't make sense. Like Auto Crossbow does not reduce Checkmate/Double Check during Overheat is one of the most confounding contradictions a job ever had.

I never consider damage numbers as a way to label a job "bad". Because in every iteration of job changes, there will always be jobs ranked at the bottom of the barrel.

Karatarari: These are pretty good reasons but I have more on top of that too personally, at least for combat.

- Their Drill/Bio-Blaster/Air Anchor/Chainsaw/Excavator don't scale off of Skillspeed(though unless they changed it, Drill/Bio-Blaster does till it gets its second charge) meaning that if you're forced to use a piece of gear that gives Skillspeed just enough to get 2.49 or lower then your rotation drifts slightly.

- Auto Crossbow not resetting their weaving buttons, even if they make it where its only 10s than 15s which feels inconsistent. I'd rather it drop the CD on Gauss/Ricochet and Checkmate/Double Check than just do more damage personally.

- Its balancing has always seemingly been "Lets add 10p/20p to [Skill] and it will be good enough for folks to use" which feels dry when it feels like there's kit issues that should be changed than keeping it the same.

Only 3 notable issues for me personally, at least on the class combat level. I do love MCH for its thematic edge which is why its a bit of a shame it has a rep issue with how its past has been, but its at least not a horrid class.

Strider_Shinryu: The biggest issue I have with MCH is that I just find it very awkward to actually play, particularly the way that it's single target and AOE components of it's kit interact with each other (or, really, don't). While I do think there are actually some good bones to the job, and i like it's more recent identity as the random weapon/tool user as inspired by Edgar in FF6, I think it could definitely use a once over to make it feel more cohesive and logical to actually play.

As someone who tends to play RDM way more than other jobs, I definitely agree with everything said about perception, "top tier raid performance" and public opinion though. It's not exactly encouraging to play your favourite job when the view is basically "You're just there for the rezzes and once the rezes aren't needed any more you should just play BLM instead cuz MOAR DPS"

m0fn668: the fact MCH didnt get utility like RDM anti magic zone or SCH expedience is wild - this is THE stuff MCH would be suited for - area fields of different utility effects (and debuffs perhaps)

FuriousGunnerKat: I main MCH since day 1 of its release and I aint changing

Dunker401: The only thing I ever wanted for machinist was for auto crossbow to have the same property of lowering the CDs for the two oGCDs like blazing shot does.

GearGrinder480: When I was playing the game on the free trial I started with bard I knew Machinist existed because of my friends telling me about it I finished realm reborn and get to heaven's Ward unlock Machinist and after play with for for a bit I bought the game and ended my free trial. I love Machinist the game wouldn't be the same without it.

Zharf: I never cared about the damage but when my team needed a ranged physical for the line up I chose machinist because dancer is generally pretty boring and I can't stand bard in any aspect... I wasn't really a fan at first since I generally don't really like ranged physical jobs in most games (I wish there was a game that did archery well...) but taking the time to learn how machinist works I can now safely say it's my favourite ranged physical job in the game

Oct 25 2025

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