1. #1

    Curious why many people think Machinist is one of the harder jobs to play?

    I've been playing around with it in search of main job to stick with. I don't find the job to be that difficult at all. For me, it's easier to play than Bard.

    From how I understand how to play Machinist; Use Ricochet and Gauss Round on cooldown (Use Hypercharge/Heat Blast to reset them back to 2 stacks) Use Drill/Air Anchor on cool down (Use Reassemble with these whenever it's available) Use Wildfire, weapon skills increase the damage when you use them. I haven't reached max level to unlock Queen, but I assume you just cast Queen at 50 battery pack (Blue bar?) level same as the Auto-turret thingy? Then when you have nothing else to do, just use your normal 1-2-3 combo with Split Shot/Slug Shot/Clean Shot.

    Seems straight forward. Was Machinist reworked or something? Or is the above completely wrong on how to play it?

  2. #2
    It was completely reworked at the start of Shadowbringers in order to streamline it.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Lahkesis View Post
    It was completely reworked at the start of Shadowbringers in order to streamline it.
    Oh okay. I guess that makes sense then. Yeah, for me Machinist feels much easier to play than Bard and even Dancer. Granted Dancer is simple to play, it just has a ton of buttons. =D

  4. #4
    I main bard and play VERY casually, so I haven't tried Machinist yet simply because I don't have any job at max level yet (I am close at 78 on Bard). I don't really care for Bard that much but didn't want to start over. It's good to hear Machinist might be more fun as I've been eyeing that and Red Mage or Black Mage for my next job.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Lahkesis View Post
    I main bard and play VERY casually, so I haven't tried Machinist yet simply because I don't have any job at max level yet (I am close at 78 on Bard). I don't really care for Bard that much but didn't want to start over. It's good to hear Machinist might be more fun as I've been eyeing that and Red Mage or Black Mage for my next job.
    I don't mind Bard. It's got some cool spell animations and all, but for me it's just overloaded with buttons that you need to pay attention to and it can be overwhelming and easy to forget about things like your songs/refreshing DoTs. That's just my opinion though

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by OBM View Post
    Oh okay. I guess that makes sense then. Yeah, for me Machinist feels much easier to play than Bard and even Dancer. Granted Dancer is simple to play, it just has a ton of buttons. =D
    afaik bard and dancer are the only two more reactive jobs being proc based instead of highly scripted. Other dps jobs are fairly straightforward with scripted rotations were you just press the next button down the line.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Baconeggcheese View Post
    afaik bard and dancer are the only two more reactive jobs being proc based instead of highly scripted. Other dps jobs are fairly straightforward with scripted rotations were you just press the next button down the line.
    I guess my biggest complaint is just the amount of buttons. I'm so used to only having up to 5 buttons for offensive spells (WoW) then 2 to 3 buttons for buffs. If I had 10 fingers on one hand, I wouldn't mind so much. =D

    I'm just getting into FF though so it's going to take some time getting used to.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by OBM View Post
    I guess my biggest complaint is just the amount of buttons. I'm so used to only having up to 5 buttons for offensive spells (WoW) then 2 to 3 buttons for buffs. If I had 10 fingers on one hand, I wouldn't mind so much. =D

    I'm just getting into FF though so it's going to take some time getting used to.
    Its not so bad when you get used to it. Where in WoW you have a handful of buttons but have to consider what to use when depending on encounter, in FF14 you mostly just press the next glowing button in the chain and keep CD's on cooldown. The hardest part is probably just finding buttons on your bars for everything.

    I set up my bars the exact same way in FF14 as I do in WoW and I haven't even filled them up yet.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Baconeggcheese View Post
    Its not so bad when you get used to it. Where in WoW you have a handful of buttons but have to consider what to use when depending on encounter, in FF14 you mostly just press the next glowing button in the chain and keep CD's on cooldown. The hardest part is probably just finding buttons on your bars for everything.

    I set up my bars the exact same way in FF14 as I do in WoW and I haven't even filled them up yet.
    I wonder if using a controller would be more easy.

  10. #10
    it was super clunky and that made it difficult pre-shadowbringers. now it's one of the easiest to play. a lot of ff14 players have very outdated opinions on classes usually. for example, people still think monk is super difficult when it can ignore positionals for nearly a minute if it wants to and has like 5 ways of keeping up their GL stacks.

    usually better to try the classes for yourself than listen to general community opinion.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by OBM View Post
    I guess my biggest complaint is just the amount of buttons. I'm so used to only having up to 5 buttons for offensive spells (WoW) then 2 to 3 buttons for buffs. If I had 10 fingers on one hand, I wouldn't mind so much. =D

    I'm just getting into FF though so it's going to take some time getting used to.
    That's the reason why I find current Machinist to be unplayable. Too much work to get the rotation done properly due to the amount of different keys you have to press.

    Ricochet and Gauss Round
    Air Anchor and Drill

    being 4 buttons instead of 2 is annoying (for example). My fingers start to hurt after a while, I don't know how to set up keybinds for that class properly.
    Too spamy for the amount of keybinds. It becomes tedious after 30m-1h
    Last edited by KrayZ33; 2019-08-25 at 08:01 AM.

  12. #12
    I'm a bad bard in ffxiv >_>

    I use this macro to consolidate some skills into one button I mash constantly after using songs/applying dots. As bad as using macros is, I'm worse without this one:

    /merror off
    /ft
    /ac "Straight Shot" <t>
    /ac "Bloodletter" <t>
    /ac "Empyreal Arrow" <t>
    /ac "Sidewinder" <t>
    /ac "Heavy Shot" <t>
    /micon "Heavy Shot"

    Thankfully the macro auto adjusts for Refulgent Arrow and Burst Shot if those are available.

  13. #13
    I can't speak for other dps classes, but Summoner seems to be a giant smash your face on the keyboard button frenzy. I primarily group as scholar, but tend to do questing as summoner and especially post-70 it seems like you spend most of your time with instant cast spells and a handful of relative short cd off the gcd abilities.

    I've spent a little bit of time trying to get used to it, but I have problems hitting buttons fast enough and almost feel like I could roll my hands across the keyboard and do about as good a job.

    Where WoW seems to have gone too far with eliminating useless spells, FF14 seems to have taken the opposite route and given people a ton of buttons to take care of. The average rotation seems to be about 20 abilities long, and I don't know how you dps classes keep up with that insanity. I leveled RDM purely to have a more simple class to dps on.
    “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
    ― Lao Tzu

  14. #14
    I'm slowly leveling to 80 on one Job then I plan on leveling other jobs I might be interested in. I heard that once you have a max level character, you get an XP buff for other jobs you want to level. Not sure if true or not.

  15. #15
    Its not so much hard as very spammy and relies on you having a good ping to be able to properly weave your ogcd skills and heat blast to do max dps at least now in shadowbringers.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by OBM View Post
    I'm slowly leveling to 80 on one Job then I plan on leveling other jobs I might be interested in. I heard that once you have a max level character, you get an XP buff for other jobs you want to level. Not sure if true or not.
    Any job lower than your highest job gets an armory bonus. 100% to 70 and 50% from 70 to 80.

  16. #16
    It's punitive on cooldown drifting (although more or less every job is if you want to align those raid burst).

    It's impossible to do well if you don't have a server on the same continent as you. Which is a shame, because I really like it's current iteration. Would love if they added an option to increase Gauss' damage by, say, 90% while making it share cooldown with Ricochet.

    Would allow people with high ping or that don't enjoy spamming that much to play it without neglecting the people that are up for the double weaving.

  17. #17
    Spammy? Absolutely. Hard? No.

    As long as you've got good enough ping to fit the 5 heat blasts + 1 skill into the wildfire window it's really easy imo.

    EDIT: Personally I think it's a lot more fun than their previous system, but I can see why some people are put off by the spammy-ness.
    Last edited by Rexosaurus; 2019-09-04 at 03:42 AM.

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