Is Gauss Barrel something you want to toggle on and off accordingly?

Disclaimer: I am not a master theorycrafter, or mathematician, in fact, I'm horrible with numbers, and I could totally be off base.

So I've been enjoying MCH recently and just unlocked Gauss Barrel. That absolutely horrible casting animation that makes me puke every time I attack aside, I understand what it does.

But I got to thinking. I went over to a training dummy, and for test purposes, started shooting non-proc Slug Shots at it in succession. With Gauss Barrel off, the Slug Shots generally hit in the 215-230 damage range as a level 52 ilvl 121 MCH. My auto attacks were hitting in the 150-165 range. Keeping in mind that a non proc Slug Shot is 100 potency.

With Gauss on, I lose auto attack and my non proc Slugs start doing 269-287 range. There's no way that alone equates to more than casting with auto attacks on, because Guass increases damage dealt, not direct potency. So it stands to reason that Gauss increases actual dps when the amount of damage you'd be dealing with it on would be high enough to make up for the loss of auto attack damage.

The way I see this happening is if you pop coolies on Gauss Barrel, or hit procs in succession on Gauss (like with ammunition or really luck rng), but not by just doing normal, fishing for procs rotations with no excess of off-GCD abilities to fire off.

So my question becomes, do you turn off Gauss Barrel in the situations that you know your outgoing Gauss damage isn't going to be higher than if it was off? Even if it's for 2 GCD's or whatever, just to put it back on? And I say this in considering your Gauss only skills like Gauss Round and Ricochet are on CD at the time.

It's pretty much you want GB on the whole time except when you have no OGCD's available + Lead shot still has a decent amount of time on it. Even then, stance dancing is generally regarded as a whole lot more effort than the itty bitty amount of DPS it actually gives. Most just keep it up 100% unless it's a high movement phase.

Ahh, I see, thanks ^^ "Gauss" I'll know more as I rise in levels and get the other OGCD's *ba dum tssssh*

Once you get more of the gauss skills there's no reason to ever remove it since gauss barrel has a 15 second recast after activating it and gauss round is a 20 second recast skill there's basically only 5 seconds where you'll not have a gauss skill available where you can take gauss barrel off, it's really not worth it unless you need to move a lot and even then you'd probably be better off popping rapid fire than removing gauss barrel.

Personally the only reason I remove gauss barrel is before a pull so I can get my turret attacking sooner when I use hot shot (since the turret only attacks after you do so no cast time hot shot makes it start attacking quicker than a cast time hot shot), then I put gauss barrel on and keep it on for the rest of the fight.

Even in phases of high movement, you can cross-class Feint as filler (it's not affected by GB/WM)... so moving out of that AOE and you want to quickly shoot out some damage, just hit a Feint

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Personally the only reason I remove gauss barrel is before a pull so I can get my turret attacking sooner when I use hot shot (since the turret only attacks after you do so no cast time hot shot makes it start attacking quicker than a cast time hot shot), then I put gauss barrel on and keep it on for the rest of the fight.

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If you open up with Gauss Round right after the tank tags the target it will be up again during your first wildfire and will let you stay in gauss barrel during the pull, i prefer to do it this way. Plus faster abilities go on cd = more dps.