Learning Machinist - Looking for Tips

As stated in the title, I've recently picked up MCH, but am finding it difficult to learn and do consistent damage on, in particular I am struggling with how cooldown and proc-based the class is, coming from BLM which has a very ordered, consistent rotation with few changes.

Let me start out this thread by stating that I am already following the Lock N' Load Machinist guide for 4.0 by Onishi and that I have a fairly basic understanding of what the opener and 1 minute rotations should look like.

Some things I could use advice on;

• Situational Awareness: A major struggle for me while playing MCH, I feel my eyes are constantly on my hotbar and heat gauge to watch procs, hit quick reload and gauss round as they come off CD, and not on what the boss is doing. I've tried various extra hotbars closer to the middle of my screen to keep track of reloads, procs and wildfire.
  
• Mid-Fight Wildfires: This comes back to cooldowns. After my opener I generally use quick reload on CD and reload once if Wildfire is over 30s. GR I also use as it comes up. Obviously I should be wanting to WF with a Slug Shot proc, after overheating and with full ammo off of Reload. I just find myself using QR and then not having it available right as WF comes off cooldown.
  
• AOE Situations: Nothing I do feels very effective on large dungeon pulls so far. The guide says to Flamethrower for the full duration and follow up with ammo'd Spread Shots. Other suggestions I've seen are to Spread Shot into overheating, then snapshot Flamethrower at the last second of the buff. This takes a long time with 5 heat increase and is detrimental to my TP. Also, is Ricochet affected by the overheating damage boost?

I really like the way the class feels, and I'm sure I can improve with it in time, but obviously right now it's very different than the classes I am used to playing, so any extra advice you're willing to give would be greatly appreciated.

Situational Awareness : that maybe just because you are not used to the job yet, or because some people will have some affinity with such gameplay but not with another no matter what they do. I say that because MCH is by far the job where i nearly dont need to look at all at my icons, buffs or the heat jauge, and have plenty of time to look at the boss and mechanics themselves. While if i switch to my BLM (only lvl 30) i will have the same problem as you have with your MCH, looking too much at my mana bar to see when it become too much empty and checking if transpose is up yet. Or how i have a hard time with my 70 RDM in raids, despite the fact that i do 4k dps on training dummies, when i enter savage i drop down to under 3k, because instead of dpsing like mad while looking at what the boss is doing, i check way too much my buffs and jauge, or my team life bars to know when i am must correct a healer screwing up things.

Mid-Fight Wildfires : usually if i begin to get some skills being misaligned, it is because i have screwed up launching them correctly some time ago, for example a key that didn't work or the boss suddenly disappearing while i was in the middle of my wildfire combo.

AOE Situations : if i know that i will be aoeing a lot (dungeons, Uznair's canals) instead of single targeting (raids), i now switch to my RDM XD

I don't do the Youtube "optimal" opener nor the rotation but overall I can put out about 4400-4500 (20-25 sec left) on every attempt at OV4S no pots/food at i339 head to toe Lost Allagan plus weapon. Not the best by any stretch but whatever.

That being said, i don't ever Flamethrower for the purpose of overheating into Wildfire. Rarely. Buffs throw off my CD alignments at times where I may have to.

Where I end up is right at 95 heat as Ricochet, RF, WF and Reload come off CD with no ammo in the clip. You can fill in the rest.

Again, its not optimal but it's a stress free 4400+ DPS rotation. And all I really do is open up with Hotshot-Barrel Stabilizer into the a GR-QR-1-2-1-RF-WF-3-Reload and so on. After building up my first 95 heat, I Cooldown, build it up again, by the time i hit 95 again, QR, RF, and WF are off CD. All my WFs thereafter lines up as such when all i do is quick reload as it comes off CD.

Hit the dummy a lot. MCH rotation works so that after opener you hit all your ogcds and gcd pretty much exactly the same way every rotation, bar some proc adjustments. Having everything line up the same way every time makes for a pretty brain dead rotation once you get it down, so if you hit the dummy a lot, it'll free a lot of attention space for fight mechanics. Midfires are the same way.

I can't give the best advice as about a month ago I had to start re-learning a better burst combo (new one rased my dummy wildfire up by 1K) But can say "Combat Awareness" mostly comes easy once u've completely mussle memoried the class to braindead ease (this works on any class). Midfire's? not fully sure whats ment there but I'm gona quess something stopped u from doing the full burst so now ur cooldowns are off set? only advisable idea's I'd have off the top of my head are eather: a) roll with it & push the best u can or b) wait 1-2sec, or 1 gcd,every so often & throw an extra norm attack in thus delaying u'r burst but still dealing dmg until everythings back to rdy.

As for AoE MCH has... well low AoE options: All I do is drop the turret once Tanks decide on a good spot, Hypercharge/ricochet, ammo/TP-regen role skill (invigorate at 600TP if this skill is on CD) & Spead fire a crap ton blowing up the turret once hyper is done (can't see a benifet to using Flamethrower as tanks might have to shimmy the mobs slightly due to mob AoE's)