2 question to main machinists

Hello, I'm a black mage main with the goal of lvling all jobs to 60.

I really enjoyed the wanderer's minuet on bard, and was looking forward to gauss barrel on machinists. Hit 52 yesterday and I noticed something. When reload and quick reload are on CD, you have these small windows where you're spamming split shot over and over again for a proc right? But by the time it actually procs I find myself already casting the next split shot..

My question is: Do you, as a machinist main, find yourself finishing that split shot cast, or do you interupt it asap and go to slug shot? Also, are there any ways around this? I always try to do a split shot first before using my clean shot proc, to maintain as much fluidness in the rotation as possible, but it's not nearly enough to keep it as nice and fluid like bard was ;/

2nd question: In an aoe situation with 3+ targets, you have dots ticking on all targets + bishop turret active, but when you're out of tp though (and invigorate is on cd), is it best to keep the bishop turret and sacrifice your own dps, or put down the rook turret instead and use the tp regeneration to boost your own dps?

I don't main MCH (secondary job), but for the first point I think it depends on skill speed / latency. Sometimes I see Slug pop just fine and go straight for it, sometimes I've had to hit Split again before realising the first one actually proc'd. If you weave a skill after the Split shot it's a bit easier to notice since is speeds up the application of your GCD move's effects (like how if you weave something after Clean Shot it won't wait until the flashy bullet delay animation to apply its damage). As for what's best to do if you don't have time to hit the proc in good time I would guess just go straight for another Split to not lose out on GCD time.

For the second point, I would try and avoid getting dry on TP in the first place. If I start getting very low I'll switch to single target while keeping Bishop out. If I am dry though, if Invigorate won't be available for a while then I'd make the switch to get some TP back. It also sort of depends on how much longer you'll need to keep aoe'ing for. Even with Promotion on - aoe skills won't be spammable with low tp, though they are much stronger than a pulse from Bishop turret.

Q1. Depends on how you play and a tiny bit on lag. I take it you keep spamming buttons until you see a cast bar. I do that a lot too, however in doing so you might press the same button a few times too often and the game may misinterpret this, thinking you want your next action to be the same button again. The MCH casts are only 1.5 seconds (base) as opposed to 2.5+ seconds on BLM, so your window to already tell the game which action to use next is really broad. This is also why you should really try to stop spamming and await the proc with MCH since you have about 1 second after proc to decide which action to use next, unlike BLM where you only see Firestarter procs when already casting the next action.

Q2. Pretty much what Aeliott said, avoiding to run out of TP is your priority. You don't want to keep recovering over a prolonged period. TP classes are generally more on the burst AE dps side of things, so you empty your TP a bit and then switch back to single target rotation, but keep everything up that doesn't cost you (Bishop in that case) as long as there are enough targets (usually 3+). As for multidotting, I'd only bother with high HP targets, if your targets don't live for the full dot duration you're better off sticking to single target rotation.

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Originally Posted by Pyroclastic

My question is: Do you, as a machinist main, find yourself finishing that split shot cast, or do you interupt it asap and go to slug shot? Also, are there any ways around this? I always try to do a split shot first before using my clean shot proc, to maintain as much fluidness in the rotation as possible, but it's not nearly enough to keep it as nice and fluid like bard was ;/

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If you don't see the proc before you start casting then don't interrupt your current skill in order to use the proc. The increase from Split to Slug is only 28%, so if you are losing 0.7s or less then it is a DPS loss. You just have to get used to it. Unless you have really bad latency, then you should be seeing the proc just after the skill cast time, roughly a 1 second window. Also if you are weaving your oGCD skills within that window then it will generally activate the proc just like skill weaving on BLM.

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2nd question: In an aoe situation with 3+ targets, you have dots ticking on all targets + bishop turret active, but when you're out of tp though (and invigorate is on cd), is it best to keep the bishop turret and sacrifice your own dps, or put down the rook turret instead and use the tp regeneration to boost your own dps?

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It depends on who you are with. Like if you are with a Dragoon who is doing a ST rotation, then you should be doing ST damage after setting up your Dots, to both get the pierce debuff and to get rid of individual mobs to ease healing demands. If the DRG is AOEing, and you can both benefit from TP, then by all means. In both cases though, I would recommend burning your Reload/Quick Reload ammo with AOE. That wont starve you for TP and is the most efficient use of the Ammo.
Mage AOE, you may as well AOE because the adds will die pretty quick that TP won't be an issue. (after DOT setup of course)