MCH Overheat should activate automatically

Definitely fair. Talking it through you're right, it likely wouldn't be as confusing as I had originally though.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

While at max level yes you will never spend it on anything but heat blast and auto crossbow, do keep in mind it’s easy to forget that hypercharge is actually a CD with its own effects.

You obtain hypercharge at level 30 and it increases your weaponskill potencies. You don’t get heat blast until 35 and auto crossbow doesn’t come until 52. This change may help at max level but for the levelling process it would be a nerf to both single target level 30-34 and AoE from 30-52.

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Upgrade Hypercharge to Heat Blast at level 35.

Remove Hypercharge and move Rook Autoturret to level 30.

Remove Hypercharge and move Heat Blast to level 30.

Any of those could work.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Upgrade Hypercharge to Heat Blast at level 35.

Remove Hypercharge and move Rook Autoturret to level 30.

Remove Hypercharge and move Heat Blast to level 30.

Any of those could work.

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Doesn’t fix AoE up to level 52, you want to have to use a single target GCD heat blast to activate overheat instead of an oGCD hypercharge?

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Doesn’t fix AoE up to level 52, you want to have to use a single target GCD heat blast to activate overheat instead of an oGCD hypercharge?

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Hypercharge "releases the energy building in your firearm, causing it to become Overheated, increasing the potency of single-target weaponskills by 20." There is no AoE Hypercharge, regardless, until level 52, at which point Auto Crossbow likewise becomes an activator for the Heated Up window.

Mashing together suggestions from Shurrikhan, CKNovel and Rongway, while adding a bit of my own:

Single target:

(NEW)
Action: Flash Point
Type: Weaponskill
Cast/Recast: Instant / 1.5s
Range/Radius: 25y / 0y
Delivers an attack with a potency of 190, overheating your weapon.
Heat Gauge Cost: 50
Additional Effect: Grants 5 charges of Overheat.
Duration: 15s
Additional Effect: Grants Vent Ready
Duration: 15s
Additional Effect: Reduces the recast time of both Gauss Round and Ricochet by 15s

Action: Heat Blast
Type: Weaponskill
Cast/Recast: Instant / 1.5s
Range/Radius: 25y / 0y
Delivers an attack with a potency of 170.
Overheat cost: 1
Additional Effect: Reduces the recast time of both Gauss Round and Ricochet by 15s
Recast timer cannot be affected by status effects or gear attributes.

(NEW)
Action: Vent
Type: Weaponskill
Cast/Recast: Instant / 2.5s
Range/Radius: 25y / 0y
Consume all Overheat charges and deliver an attack with a potency of 300.
Additional Effect: Increase potency by 30 for each Overheat charge consumed.
Can only be executed while under effect of Vent Ready

AoE:

(NEW)
Action: Pressurize
Type: Weaponskill
Cast/Recast: Instant / 1.5s
Range/Radius: 12y / 12y
Delivers an attack with a potency of 170 to all enemies in a cone before you overheating your weapon.
Heat Gauge Cost: 50
Additional Effect: Grants 5 charges of Overheat.
Duration: 15s
Additional Effect: Grants Eject Ready
Duration: 15s

Action: Auto Crossbow
Type: Weaponskill
Cast/Recast: Instant / 1.5s
Range/Radius: 12y / 12y
Delivers an attack with a potency of 140 to all enemies in a cone before you.
Overheat cost: 1
Recast timer cannot be affected by status effects or gear attributes.

(NEW)
Action: Eject Magazine
Cast/Recast: Instant / 2.5s
Range/Radius: 12y / 12y
Deliver an attack with a potency of 160 to all enemies in a straight line before you.
Additional Effect: Increase potency by 10 for each Overheat charge consumed.
Can only be executed while under effect of Eject Ready.


So in summary:
Single Target = Flash Point > Heat Blast x5 > Vent (Can be activated early)
AoE = Pressurize> Auto Crossbow x5 > Eject Magazine (Can be activated early)

The downside being that while Hypercharge is removed, Vent and Eject Magazine are introduced, alternative would be to have them be swapped in when Overheat charge is at 1 as a finisher, removing the extra potency bonus and removing Vent Ready and Eject Ready.

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Originally Posted by IronIngot

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This seems a bit button-bloated.

It's very rare that AoE vs. ST options constitute a real decision. Such requires both a target count and relative power between the options such that the focus target damage of the pure ST option might outweigh the greater total damage of the AoE option. Given present AoE tuning across the game and how damn near unheard of focus targeting is to this game... it doesn't worth having 3 extra buttons just to attempt a (shabby) illusion of complexity. I'd recommend just turning Flash Point and Vent into AoEs with falloff, having Heat Blast (if not added directly to one's hotbars already) replace Flash Point and Auto-crossbow (if not added directly to one's hotbars already) replace Spread Shot, bringing the button consumption down from 6 to 2 (FP->HB and Vent) or 3 (FP->HB, Vent, and AC not forced over Spread/Scatter) at the player's discretion.

I also don't see why you'd want to, like present models, go out of your way to make Skill Speed even more terrible via the "Recast timer cannot be affected by status effects or gear attributes" clause.

Other than that, looks good.

It indeed is button bloating.

You don't need AoE variant, just makes them AoE per default nothing will change.
WAR primal rend is an AoE but works wonderfully against a single target.

The Overheat starter being the first GCD of the Overheat phase, it should give 4 stacks of Overheat.
Giving it 5 stacks will simply make Overheat phase longer and reduce the MCH flexibility.

As for the finisher, you can even turn Scatter gun into a superior version during Overheat, let's say "Super shotgun".
Straight line AoE, makes Scattergun button relevant in single target situations.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

As for the finisher, you can even turn Scatter gun into a superior version during Overheat, let's say "Super shotgun".
Straight line AoE, makes Scattergun button relevant in single target situations.

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Dragonfire. It's an actual shotgun thing and it'd be very, well, heated. Give it a nice short-and-chunky DoT. Longer-range narrow conal AoE still preferable, though, imo. (We already see tons of different cone-angles conals across the game, from 10 degrees to 180 [well, I suppose that's exactly where it stops being a conal].)

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The Overheat starter being the first GCD of the Overheat phase, it should give 4 stacks of Overheat.

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As long as the starter also gets the reduced GCD, this would be preferable, yeah. The threshold between what feels "significant" and what feels "spammy" can be as little as a 5th GCD.

So removing any button bloating and streamlining the burst would be something like this:

Opener (Grant 4? Overheat) > Heat Blast (x3?) > Finisher with DoT, everything being on the same button.

The combo could be AoE from start or get upgraded at 52 via trait and the Auto Crossbow would be removed or reworked into oGCD?

Overheat starter and Heatblast can be on the same button, but the finisher needs to be on a separate button in the case you want to finish it early.
The dot is fluff at best.