Machinist is the sharpshooter of Eorzea—pure, selfish ranged DPS built around tight burst windows, relentless oGCD weaving, and a wind-up robot that unloads on command. In Dawntrail, Machinist feels snappier than ever: Drill now has charges, Double Check and Checkmate replace the old Gauss Round/Ricochet pair, Excavator joins the tool suite, and the level 100 capstone, Full Metal Field, detonates like a shaped charge in your party’s buff windows. The rhythm is simple to describe but satisfying to master: fire your heavy tools on cooldown, keep Heat and Battery from overcapping, weave Double Check/Checkmate cleanly, and time Wildfire, Hypercharge, Automaton Queen, and Full Metal Field around two-minute party buffs. That’s the spine of Machinist in FFXIV 7.3.
What Changed in FFXIV 7.3
Dawntrail’s kit adds more “real” buttons to your bursts and trims downtime filler. Enhanced Multiweapon grants two shared charges on Drill and Bioblaster, tightening their availability. Double Check and Checkmate are direct upgrades over Gauss Round/Ricochet and interact with Blazing Shot’s cooldown reduction, so every Hypercharge string floods you with oGCDs to weave. Excavator arrives as a new tool that pairs naturally with Chainsaw, and at level 100 Full Metal Field becomes the keystone: a guaranteed critical-direct hit weaponskill that’s expressly built to sit inside raid buffs. Subsequent balance patches have raised Full Metal Field’s potency and eased AoE falloff on several actions, cementing it as a highlight of the two-minute window.
Machinist Gauges and Priorities
Two gauges rule everything: Heat and Battery. Heat is spent on Hypercharge, which transforms your GCD into Blazing Shot and rapidly refunds charges of Double Check/Checkmate while you machine-gun weave. Battery summons Automaton Queen, whose damage scales linearly with the Battery spent and culminates in Pile Bunker into Crowned Collider at fixed timings. Regardless of fight length, aim to end encounters with both gauges near zero—resources that die in your bar never dealt damage. Overcapping either gauge is the most common—and most costly—Machinist mistake.
Machinist Stat and Gear Philosophy in FFXIV 7.3
Machinist thrives on flat damage and crit math. In current 7.3 gearing, Critical Hit remains king, Direct Hit is close behind, and Determination provides stable value. Skill Speed sits comfortably at the 2.50s GCD tier; going faster complicates weaving, adds clip risk during Hypercharge, and doesn’t meaningfully increase tool throughput. Take the highest-item-level ranged gear you can equip, then meld toward Crit > DH > Det while maintaining the 2.50 feel. For raid progression and BiS detail, Icy Vein sets remain anchored around 2.50 and prioritize high Crit relic/ultimate weapons when available.
Single-Target Rotation: The 2-Minute Heartbeat
At its core, Machinist alternates heavy tools and combo filler while preparing for synchronized bursts. Drill, Air Anchor, Chainsaw, and Excavator are the big four, with Air Anchor slightly elevated because it injects 20 Battery every use. Weave Reassemble on a high-potency tool during buffs—typically Chainsaw or Drill, sometimes Excavator depending on the timeline—to funnel guaranteed crit value into the window. Between tools, maintain the three-step Heated combo; its only hard rule is not letting its timer drop or breaking it with Scattergun.
Hypercharge and Weaving
Hypercharge converts your GCD into Blazing Shot for a rapid-fire string. During that string, weave your Double Check/Checkmate charges as cleanly as your ping allows. The goal in 7.3 is to stuff as many of these upgraded oGCDs under raid buffs as possible without clipping your Blazing Shots. That means double-weaving on low ping, single-weaving on higher ping, and being realistic about your connection: clipping a Blazing Shot cancels the point of Hypercharge.
Automaton Queen
Queen is the most potent “spend” in your kit. Her damage scales linearly with Battery—266 potency per 10 Battery at current tuning, with Pile Bunker and Crowned Collider scaling alongside. She lasts 12 seconds regardless of Battery, which makes placement predictable. In practice, that means summoning at or near 100 Battery inside raid buffs whenever fight flow allows, then avoiding awkward overlaps with downtime or target immunity.
The Standard Dawntrail Opener (Concept, Not a Script)
Openers shift slightly by encounter, but the modern pattern does three things: front-load Air Anchor for Battery, snap Wildfire early in buffs, and thread Full Metal Field plus a Hypercharge string through the team’s two-minute window. The Balance’s current openers place Wildfire before Full Metal Field so the capstone lands inside buffs and Wildfire’s timer fills with Blazing Shot spam. Air Anchor remains first-priority among tools in the opener thanks to Battery injection. Your second Reassemble is intentionally held for the buff window and can land on Excavator or the next Drill—choose the one that remains fully inside buffs for the specific fight.
A representative flow looks like this in plain language: precast potions if fight rules demand it; tag the boss and immediately start spending tools with Air Anchor at the front; weave Wildfire early in the party buff window; execute Full Metal Field inside those buffs; trigger Hypercharge and machine-gun Blazing Shot while alternating Double Check and Checkmate weaves; keep your Drill charges moving and avoid wasting Battery by summoning Queen where Pile Bunker and Crowned Collider won’t miss. The exact GCD-by-GCD script varies, but that priority system produces the damage.
Two-Minute Cycle and Drift Management
After the opener, every two-minute cycle returns to the same melody. Use Air Anchor on cooldown to maintain Battery flow; fire Drill/Chainsaw/Excavator as they come up, but plan around the next party buff window so a Reassemble-buffed tool and Full Metal Field sit inside those buffs. Wildfire remains a 120-second recast, so it naturally aligns with raid windows; hit it early in the window to maximize Blazing Shot count. Barrel Stabilizer feeds a guaranteed Hypercharge every two minutes—pair it with Wildfire windows to keep your burst dense. This is why Machinist feels so “full” in Dawntrail: with two Drill charges, Excavator, and Full Metal Field, your two-minute windows replace almost all filler with high-value actions.
Machinist AoE Priorities and Flamethrower Reality
In multi-target situations, the tools still drive your damage. Chainsaw and Excavator cleave hard and should be used on cooldown. Bioblaster overtakes Drill once multiple targets are present, and Air Anchor remains valuable both for Battery and solid primary-target damage. During Hypercharge, choose between Blazing Shot cleave and Auto Crossbow based on target count and whether your oGCDs can also hit everything; at higher counts, Auto Crossbow takes the lead. Flamethrower remains niche—fun to lay down, but seldom beats pressing your actual tool kit unless the pull is stationary and large for a sustained window. Balance and patch changes in 7.3 have also relaxed falloff penalties on several actions, which helps your real-world AoE feel meatier in dungeons.
Wildfire, Full Metal Field, and Reassemble—How They Interlock
Wildfire counts the weaponskills you land during its timer and explodes at the end; therefore, you aim for one early non-Blazing Shot GCD to anchor the window, then cram the remainder with Blazing Shot spam via Hypercharge. Full Metal Field is guaranteed crit/direct hit and not affected by Reassemble, so use Reassemble on a tool (commonly Chainsaw/Drill) and let Full Metal Field ride the party’s crit/direct hit buffs naturally. Because Full Metal Field delivers outsized value in buffs—and has seen potency bumps in 7.3—time it carefully; losing it to downtime is a huge swing.
Queen Timing in Real Encounters
While “100 Battery in buffs” is the ideal, real fights demand nuance. With Air Anchor supplying Battery on a tight recast, you usually reach 100 before each two-minute burst. If a mechanic would force Queen to idle, dump her slightly early for guaranteed Pile Bunker/Collider before downtime, then rebuild for the next window. Since Queen’s duration is always 12 seconds, you can plot exactly where her finishing hits will land—align them with raid buffs whenever it’s realistic to do so, but avoid greed that makes her whiff.
Machinist Utility, Survivability, and Party Value
Beyond raw damage, Machinist brings Tactician, the shared ranged mitigation, and Dismantle, a unique single-target damage down that matters during tankbusters and heavy raid-wide sequences. These tools win prog pulls and reduce healer stress. Because the job is nearly fully mobile and has no cast bars, it shines on movement-heavy mechanics: keep pressing something every GCD and weave defensives with the same discipline as your damage skills.
High-Ping Considerations and Weaving Discipline
Machinist speed invites clipping on poor connections. The fix isn’t to spam more—weave smarter. On higher ping, favor single weaves inside Hypercharge, prioritize Double Check/Checkmate over greed-weaving everything, and consider drifting an oGCD out of buffs rather than clipping a Blazing Shot. The Balance community explicitly coaches this approach in its rotation notes: clean GCDs beat scuffed double-weaves.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Two habits sink logs. First, overcapping: sitting at 50 Heat or 100 Battery because you’re waiting for the “perfect” moment bleeds damage every second. Spend Heat into Hypercharge before you cap, and convert Battery into Queen proactively when a window is safe. Second, tool drift: delaying Drill/Air Anchor/Chainsaw/Excavator so far that their timelines desync or miss a buff cycle. Use their charges intelligently, but keep them moving. Finally, misplacing Full Metal Field—save it for buffs unless the boss is about to go untargetable, in which case dumping it early is correct.
Putting It All Together
A polished Machinist in Dawntrail plays like a metronome: tools strike on time, Heat converts into crisp Hypercharge strings that shower Double Check and Checkmate under raid buffs, Battery flows into a Queen whose finishers land exactly where the timeline says they should, and Full Metal Field detonates in the heart of the two-minute chorus. The job has no party buffs to babysit, no uptime tax beyond your own discipline, and no excuses—only a clean, mechanical loop that rewards precision. When the boss’s last sliver of HP disappears just as your gauges empty to zero, that’s not luck; that’s the machine doing exactly what it was built to do.
you can also check Gil Making Guide for Patch 7.3