Lock and Load: The Reassembled Machinist Guide

Okay so I went back to MCH after 3 patches & found out about a bunch of new openers since ammo isn't timed anymore.

I'm trying to do the MCH from Elsyum's opener, found here http://ffxivrotations.com/5x1 but I barely get that last cleaner shot in before I have 1 second left & I'm supposed to remove gauss & get an entire other gcd in while fishing for AAs & I just can't get that last Split shot. Even in the older openers I wasn't able to get SpS in but I had a good 2 second left, but with this new rotation I have less than 1 second so I rarely even get the AA. It's latency related right? Is there anything I can do?

Also my WFs solo no pot/food hit for 11-12K at ilvl 244(240,45,50 gear with the 240 Augmented Torrent Musketoon)...is that reasonable? The latency issues wreck my WF from reaching its full potential & it's very off putting & makes me wanna quit playing MCH as I can never be as good as those top players and I don't wanna hold people back.

I'm not sure why that opener has 9 weaponskills listed after wildfire, but as a general rule of thumb, getting 7 weaponskills inside wildfire is the normal and baseline amount to expect, and getting an 8th is possible with very good latency. Getting it in at 1s left and not having enough time for the 8th is pretty normal, frankly.

As for why you only have 1s left in this opener vs 2s for others - as long as neither opener is clipping the GCD that shouldn't be happening.

All wildfires are the same duration (15s) and there is nothing special about any openers that make them get to the 8th shot faster or something like that. You have rapid fire which everyone uses, and you are limited by the GCD which is the same for everyone. Barring player error or different latency conditions (e.g maybe your internet was worse only recently), regardless of how fancy the opener is or what sequence of weaponskills they fire, you should get the same number of wildfire weaponskills in any opener.

Hey guys pretty new to mch here and I was wondering what do you guys think about this 5 ammo opener? http://ffxivrotations.com/ji4 It's basically Name's 5 ammo opener except Hypercharge is used later since I saw Myon mention that is shouldn't be used at the start. With the opener I get around a 10-15k Wildfire (highest was 20k with drg) at Ilevel256... Do you guys think that ok or is there something else/another opener that I should/could be using?

It's not bad, but in my opinion it can be improved even more.

Hypercharging just before an instant hot shot is still slightly risky, but if you're getting 7 charged shots then good for you and you don't have to change it. Just saying that the timer is really very tight and sometimes even that 1s of deadtime between you activating hypercharge, and putting yourself into combat with hot shot can be the difference between your turret getting a 7th shot, or the hypercharge buff falling off just before it happens.

If you're doing an opener like this where you fire split/slug shot early on before wildfire is applied, ideally you'd want your first weaponskill inside wildfire to be a clean shot. This lets you do a triple clean wildfire (3 123 123 or 3 121 323) that is 20 potency more than the triple slug wildfire you're doing (23 121 32), and if you're taking the trouble to setup split/slug shot early on, you may as well reap the benefits by starting with clean. If for some reason you're in a hurry to get to wildfire and don't want to spend 4 GCDs instead of 3 setting it up, it's better to do away with the split shot and fire an unprocced clean shot.

One of the issues with popping bfb/he/raging that early is that due to their duration only being 20s, they'll fall off before the end of wildfire and won't cover it completely. If you weave them later in the setup sequence, as close to the start of wildfire as possible, you'll ensure they'll cover all your weaponskills inside wildfire for maximum dps gains.

Something like this is what I would recommend: http://ffxivrotations.com/i5y
http://i.imgur.com/kbejGkv.jpg

You can see it's very similar, you setup the wildfire by firing hot/lead/split/slug while weaving buffs. You can see that the buffs are used as late as possible (but still before important things like lead shot of course) so they have full coverage over the wildfire period. Hypercharge is also used safely only after combat has started and you have hit the boss (not mandatory as I explained above, but just safer). As shown, the second last GCD before the GCD you use wildfire on is the earliest you can pop buffs and still have them cover the entire wildfire sequence. If you pop them any earlier than that, they will fall off before the last weaponskill.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

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Thanks :D But yeah my friend who also plays Machinist said that the opener I was using couldn't fit the triple clean shot in so I wanted to see if there was another rotation.

So my friend and I have been competing for a while on Brd vs Mch DPS. (no foods/pots/dragoon/party buffs). We are the same ilvl 267, different stats ofc. I'm running 1108 crit, ~950 det, 354 Sks (relic i260), while he's at 1280 crit, ~700 sks and some det (zurvanite bow).

With a 6 minute parse, so we can reengage our full opener again, I average about 2180 and he's at 2224. We have been at for about a week or two, i just can't seem to beat him. Is brd just naturally more powerful? I know in a few contents where you have to do mechanic, i out parse him every time, but single target dummy is another story.

Edit: also, what should my parse be at this ilvl?

If this is dummy parses with no party buffs as you said, I wouldn't be too surprised frankly. Contrary to performance in actual raids, MCH actually have the lowest personal DPS of all the jobs (BRD is second worst). Personal DPS being defined as situations like SSS where it's just you and the dummy - and incidentally MCH has the SSS dummy with the lowest HP so it's clear SE knows as much as well.

The reason MCH perform so well in actual fights is not due to their raw potencies or anything, but their toolkit being very flexible and suited for unpredictable boss fights. We have no buffs with huge penalties for dropping like botd/enochian, we aren't immobile like a BLM or BRD. A lot of our damage comes from short windows of burst which means once you get your wildfire off safely - mechanics affect us the least.

Of course it doesn't change the fact that there's always room to improve, but yeah, if you outparse him in raids but lose against a target dummy - that looks normal to me.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

http://i.imgur.com/kbejGkv.jpg

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I tried to do this rotation and have several questions about it (525 skill speed):
1. Second gauss round is not quite ready (when paired with quick reload). Is it better to wait for about 1 second, or swap it with Blank?
2. When doing last Clean Shot, I have one stack of ammo. Is it better to do Clean shot with ammo (losing possible proc), or better do split shot (less wildfire dmg, but proc)

* Better means more dps in a striking dummy scenario, without concerning any mechanics, where procs could be useful for movement.

You can swap it with blank if you want, makes no difference and yes it is very tight there (gauss round comes back barely in time for the 2nd ogcd slot) so I do that myself sometimes.

The second one is a good question and well spotted, you're basically weighing 20 more potency inside wildfire (along with all the other buffs up) against 20 potency outside it along with upgrading the following split shot to a slug. The way it seems to me, upgrading a split to a slug is a 40 potency gain, although since 50% of the time split will proc by itself anyway, I guess you could value it more accurately at 40/2 = 20 potency.

So, 20 potency inside wildfire vs 20+20 potency outside - honestly it's close enough that you could go either way and I don't think it would make a huge difference. Personally I'd opt to just use it inside wildfire.

*If you want to be really nitpicky, using a cooldown like quick reload as soon as it's available is also, in a statistical sense, a very small gain over delaying it one gcd (2.5s), as it gives you a greater chance of ending the fight with one additional use of it in total. Valued at 2.5/15 = 16.7% of the potency value of quick reload.

the new i270 ring :)