I am not one of those people, obviously; I’ve stuck with the job from launch until now. So now that we’ve seen the job actually play out through all of the various updates (with, admittedly, one more patch for potential minor tweaks), it’s safe to say that Machinist has gotten at least some of the adjustments it needs and enough buffs to be more competitive. It’s just still not going to be what some of the people looking for the job have wanted.
As shameful as I find it to have two physical DPS jobs occupying my “main” slots, Ninja and Machinist make up the majority of my playtime in FFXIV simply for roleplaying purposes. This makes for an interesting experience by way of comparison, especially since it’s quite easy for both of them to be at… well, not the same level of gear, but definitely keeping a smaller gap thanks to shared accessories. And it also means getting a solid perspective on lots of fights from both the melee side of mechanics and the ranged side.
There are always mechanics that ranged DPS can ignore that melee just can’t. Ranged damage doesn’t have to move out of range of the boss during the last boss of Xelphatol or when Alexander Prime is prepping Sacrament. With careful timing, Machinist can keep firing while dodging eruptions on the Living Flame in Great Gubal Library (Hard). And pretty much since launch, the trade has been that ranged damage just plain doesn’t hit as hard.
So that’s fair. What was hampering Machinist early on was the sheer amount of reliance on Wildfire and the utter randomness of a lot of its abilities. Randomness isn’t a great mechanic for dealing damage; even critical hits, which are usually vital, have an element of controlling their frequency, and the lack doesn’t prevent you from using core skills.
Ammo changes have helped Machinist a lot in the randomness department. There is still randomness, of course, but Quick Reload and the lack of an ammo timer means that relying on random chance is your equivalent of a down cycle. Smart play involves unloading everything for a hard Wildfire burst, then dealing with a slower pace until Wildfire recycles; it’s about timing, but it’s not hair-thin and it’s something you can usually understand pretty easily.
It still does feel a bit counter-intuitive at times to be hitting Quick Reload outside of combat, but being able to load up and stay loaded until the next pull can make a significant difference.
Meanwhile, Wildfire hasn’t changed much… except that the environment around it has changed. It’s now far easier to understand what a given boss is going to be doing for invulnerable phases, and I can’t think of a boss that goes into invulnerable status without a good 30 seconds or so after the pull; there’s plenty of time for a Machinist to get off an opening burst without a problem, and from there it’s a matter of knowing the fight. Wildfire still can get stymied by bad timing, of course, but that’s the case for lots of class abilities; having to learn the fight and know when to use your tricks is a part of gameplay.
So it’s all good. I don’t think I’m a great Machinist, but I know that I can wring out solid DPS from it, enough that my additional abilities like occasional damage cuts are actually welcome rather than just being marginal add-ons. And yet it’s still not the class some people are going to want out of it thanks to one little ability.
Gauss Barrel isn’t just disliked because of its ugly graphic (although the fact that we can only turn it off for our own display is kind of silly). It’s also a major sea change to the way that the job plays as a whole; you go from being able to move freely to being a caster-type character. I’ve seen a number of suggestions to “redeem” it, including adding the option to move at half-speed while casting (which would break the class horribly during any fight with movement, which is pretty much all of them) or making it a passive buff that activates when you’re standing still.
Except I think that’s kind of missing the point; Gauss Barrel isn’t really there to buff Machinist so much as it’s balancing it against the game’s casters.
Ranged DPS has an advantage over caster DPS in a lot of fights at level 50 not because it has a better innate damage profile, but because its damage is entirely mobile. Your auto-attack is still going, your weapon skills are usable, and that means that you can in some ways get the best of both world. You aren’t rooted in place like a caster when doing damage, but you also aren’t subject to the irritations of being in melee. Gauss Barrel, meanwhile, forces you into staying put and forces a big rethink to your playstyle.
Except – and this is important – Gauss Barrel is not actually something you’re locked into forever. You can, in fact, turn it off in situations where you need to be highly mobile and that damage cut is significant.
This is one of many things that I think gets missed a lot when talking about Machinist balancing, that Machinist is still pretty darn mobile. Between Rapid Fire, two instant-use abilities, and the no-cast-time effect of combo weapon skills, most movement phases do not necessarily leave Machinist unable to fire while keeping on the move. In the event that it does, you can pretty easily turn off Gauss Barrel and turn it back on when it’s safe to park once again. It’s not always going to be a net DPS gain, but it’s an option that you have for movement.
And that has always been a core part of the job, right down to one of our first patch changes being an easier process of swapping between having Gauss Barrel on or off. Treating it as if it’s a static buff to always keep up is ultimately as counterproductive as a tank treating tank stances as hard-and-fast restrictions; a good tank knows when to drop tank stance because there’s not much incoming damage and when to have it up for threat, damage cut, and allowing the healer to get in some DPS.
Ultimately, Machinist is in a good place, and it’s carved out a niche for itself. It’s still a very unpopular job, at least from my anecdotal experience; I see far more people playing Bard than I do Machinists, and the people I see playing Machinist are frequently doing so poorly. But with practice, it does a good job being exactly what it’s always been meant to be. You deal damage, you swap modes, you provide support, and you’re no longer reliant on dumb luck to make your class work.
It’s just not ever going to be a Marksmanship Hunter. (Or Ranger, or Corsair, or any number of other ranged damage jobs that high like a 747 in a crash dive from half a world away.) That’s not what it does. And some people aren’t going to enjoy that fact, but it’s not really the job’s fault at that point.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I’m going to start doing year-in-review stuff a little bit early, just because we’ve got the Japanese fan festival coming later and there will be plenty of timely stuff to chew on then. I promise, it’s all a planned series of motions.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
