This is a precursor to playing Machinist well, or at least at a level where it does respectable damage and is not an absolute hindrance to the group you're in.
Support Machinist, like Bard, can regenerate MP and TP as well as apply a Physical Down and Magic Down depending on the Turret being used.
With Rook, Machinist can use Promotion to regenerate TP. With Bishop, Machinist can use Promotion to regenerate MP.
Using Hyper Charge while under the affect of Promotion will double the regenerative effects.
Ideally, you do not want to use Hyper Charge with Promotion unless it's extremely important to do so. Most likely, you'll be using Hyper Charge for Physical Down or Magic Down.
Gauss Barrel This is the Machinist equivalent to Bard's Wanderer's Minuet. This should be on pretty much the entirety of all "boss fights". Take note that I suggest that it has to be on for "boss fights". This is a very important distinction in that in order for you to maximize your damage, you have to know when and where to turn Gauss Barrel on and off.
When taking off Gauss Barrel, it does NOT trigger your cooldown. When turning it on, it WILL trigger your cooldown.
Why would you ever turn Gauss Barrel on and off? Simply put, it is in direct correlation to how much HP your target has and how fast it dies. Generally speaking, you should almost always turn Gauss Barrel off when hitting adds and you turn it on when you're trying to do sustain damage against a boss.
More often than not, you run into the same dilemma that a Black Mage and Summoner would run into, you start to cast on something and then it dies or have such low HP, you take a DPS hit because your abilities never got the opportunity to do maximum damage.
By switching Gauss Barrel off, you remove the cast barrier and simply shoot everything instantly as soon as it becomes available and not have to wait. This also activates your auto-attack so that your DPS loss is minimal.
The same principle applies to Bard. However, I have not played the updated Bard yet, but through theory alone and working with other Bards, it appears that at the very least, my judgments on this is fairly accurate, but I will not say I am the go to guy for Bard related things.
When your combo action occurs, it becomes an instant shot instead of a cast. Generally speaking, the only ability you really cast is Split Shot and then instant cast the procs that come after.
Movement with Gauss Barrel Like every caster in the game, you can move within the last few moments of the cast bar and still have abilities go off.
In addition to that, every "instant" action, such as Head Graze and Gauss Round will put you on cooldown, giving you the chance to move.
If you find that you're having difficulty in movement, using Feint from Lancer's cross class ability, you can use it as filler to assist in movement.
Disclaimer: I'm going to be completely honest about this, anyone complaining about movement on Bard or Machinist need to suck it up and get better at the game. You have a ton of options to mitigate movement downtime with minimal DPS loss.
Damage Introduction Machinist's burst is pretty insane as far as I've experienced. If every buff is up, like Bard previously, they have the single highest burst in the game, beating everyone including Black Mage, Summoner, Dragoon, Monk and Ninja. With a Dragoon in the party, there isn't really a DPS out there that will out class them.
On average, at i180 at the time of writing, against Ravana Ex, I've managed to pull a burst up to the 2000-2200 range with a Dragoon in the party while using Food and Potions.
Without Food, Potions and a Dragoon, I've been able to average between 1200-1500.
Machinist suffers from the same detriments that a Bard has in that after their initial burst has been exhausted, there is no way for them to sustain that damage. While watching a parse, you will most likely see a Machinist burst to insane numbers and then sharply fall off within a matter of seconds. They will remain at the top for a brief moment of time and every other DPS will eventually overtake them.
Main Sources of *Burst* Damage The magic of Machinist comes from two abilities: Hyper Charge and Wildfire.
With a Rook Turret, using Hyper Charge will introduce a Physical Down Debuff on it's target for 10s but is reapplied several times to somewhere up to 20-25s. This is where a lot of damage is done by a Machinist and this also up's the damage of the party. Every person who is a physical attacker will have a slight damage increase.
Wildfire is a Debuff that will record the total damage done to target while it is applied and will explode, causing 25% damage based on what was recorded while it was on. If you do 10000 damage while Wildfire is on, when it explodes, it will do 2500 damage.
You will ALWAYS want to maximize the Physical Down debuff and maximize the amount of damage Wildfire will record with the availability of your current buffs.
Minor Sources of *Burst* Damage In order to do respectable damage on Machinist, one would have to take advantage of Quick Reload and Reassemble.
Ideally, you would always want to Quick Reload Slug Shot, Reassemble during the Global Cooldown, and then auto-crit your Clean Shot.
It's identical to Dragoons in that Life Surge is generally almost always used with Full Thrust to maximize the highest damage throughput as possible.
Because Machinist does not have to rely on a combo to fully commit, they can essentially go off-combo to pull this off.
The damage output is different, but the point is, Machinist does not have to fully commit to their combo, they can Quick Reload any part of it to cause the Combo Action to occur.
Required DPS Actions Nearly every DPS class has some sort of required action in terms of dealing damage at the maximum level. I'm not talking about DoTs like Phlebotomize or Fracture. I'm talking about abilities where it is literally the end of the world for your DPS if it's NOT used for what ever reason and these abilities generally augment the rest of your kit and are reapplied at every opportunity.
Example: Bard: Venomous Bite, Windbite Ninja: Huton, Dancing Edge Monk: Dragon Kick, (Grease Lightning) Dragoon: Heavy Thrust Black Mage: Thunder Summoner: Pet (Any)
Machinist requires Hot Shot. This increases your damage by 5% and it is a requirement.
Combos Machinist is slightly more combo heavy than Bard. While you certainly can treat Machinist like a Bard in many aspects down to the original 2.0 rotation, there is an order of operations that need to be followed to maximize damage.
The bread and butter is Machinist's main combo: Split Shot -> Slug Shot -> Clean Shot
The issue with this is that there is only a 50% chance that any of these abilities will proc an action into the next. You can literally spend an entire fight using only Split Shot because it never procs Slug Shot.
This further adds to the complexity of Machinist when combined with Gauss Barrel in that you will cast every Split Shot with the chance of never seeing Slug Shot.
There are ways to mitigate this issue. Quick Reload: Automatically changes proc % to 100% with damage increase. Reload: Automatically changes proc % to 100% with damage increase. Rapid Fire: Changes your weapon recast to 1.5s. Also removes the cast from Gauss Barrel.
Rapid Fire will give you the chance to force a proc if you don't have other abilities available, but it has a better use when you put everything together.
With Gauss Barrel on, a general rotation you would use is the following: Rapid Fire -> Split Shot
If you proc Slug Shot: Quick Reload -> Slug Shot -> Reassemble -> Clean Shot -> Reload
If you notice, I change my rotation a bit depending on what procs. While this is as general as it gets in terms of a rotation, I don't always follow this entirely. However, I do always make sure I manage to pull off at least 3 fully buffed Clean Shots while Hyper Charge and Wildfire are available.
Rotation 2 was built with the idea that you will get 2 to 3 Clean Shots off while Wildfire is still up. This rotation was also setup with less monitoring in mind. You can, in the beginning, start over from Split Shot if you don't feel like dropping a Combo Action. The difference is 80 Potency if you have the Combo Action. The second rotation is the easiest possible rotation to use to get better at MCH.
There are several other rotations you can build, simply speaking… you just want to maximize Wildfire the best you can. In a single hit, I don't think anyone else can do 7000+ damage besides maybe WAR.
At i180 against Ravana, if done correctly, in either scenario, you will see Wildfire do between 5800 and 7200 damage.
In a brief 15-20s window, you should be doing between 20,000 and 40,000 damage.
The biggest caveat to this is how you use Rapid Fire. Because you want as little down time as possible with the maximum chance of procs, always ensure you force a proc to start your combo so you don't have to cast and you use Rapid Fire to extend the duration in which you don't cast.
The only time you should be casting is at the tail end of the rotation when you've exhausted all of your options.
If done correctly, there should be less than 5s left on Wild Fire when you have to start casting.
Disclaimer This guide isn't mean to be the end all be all guide for Machinist, but a general startup for those who are looking to do better on Machinist and want to do more damage overall.
I find that not every Machinist really understands how the rotation works or how the class is played.
Thus far, the above has manage to allow me to do significantly high numbers and it does have room for improvement.
Gauss Round - This is kind of a filler to make sure Rapid Fire is registered and you don't end up casting Split Shot. If done correctly, there shouldn't be any down time, but just in case, this will force you to always Rapid Fire Split Shot no matter what happens.
Quick Reload - I place Quick Reload here really to force a proc on my 3rd round of combos. You can also Split Shot to see if you proc, then Quick Reload Slug Shot into Clean Shot. This will ensure a higher number on Wildfire, but again, the timing on it is still extremely iffy, which will leave you with a 50% chance that Wildfire will record the damage with that tight of a margin. By most standards, it will be far safer to Quick Reload the Split Shot so that you're consistent.
Clean Shot/Lead Shot - Proc dependent. If no Proc, use Lead Shot in hopes that it applies while Physical Down is still on the Hyper Charge so it'll snapshot at a stronger tick. If Clean Shot procs, you -may- be able to hit it right before it drops off.
Alternatively, you can place Hyper Charge where you would use a Potion to ensure you have some damage available after your burst since you won't have anything for a couple of seconds.
What really matters is if you can get the 3rd Clean Shot off before Wildfire goes off, which is really hit or miss. The timing is extremely tight. Literally as Clean Shot comes up, Wildfire has 1s left, so whether it records the Clean Shot damage or not is 50%.
Essentially, what I'm getting at is, the damage difference is slight, as long as your Wildfire procs for over 6k (6-8.5k averages) and you blow all of your cooldowns and buffs prior to Hyper Charge wearing off, you'll be fine.
Shi Admin replied
532 weeks ago