MCH: 2-ammo opener?

I've been looking over guides to playing MCH, and this one thing has me feeling like I'm either losing my mind, or incredibly stupid.
The 2-ammo opener makes absolutely zero sense to me, and I have not found a single discussion anywhere in which anyone else has shown this same confusion, nor found an explanation of WHY this is a thing that exists.
Looking at it loosely, I can comprehend how things might line up such that you would want to clip reloads before going through all 3 ammo. Though this in itself seems incredibly strange to me. Maybe it would cause certain cooldowns to line up better.
But the guides recommend actually using Quick Reload twice, rather than just using Reload once.
You don't just use 2 ammo, you literally HAVE only 2 ammo.
This leads me to question if there's something else going on here that somehow makes it bad to use Reload specifically, even though it would still be off cooldown at the start.
At first my mind ran to the logic that maybe the fight would be starting after 15 seconds, thus Reload would otherwise still have 15s of cooldown remaining if used instead.
But Reload should be used well in advance of starting the fight. You don't even need to be AT the boss before using it.
The 3-ammo opener even seems to assume this, suggesting that Reload be used again roughly 18 seconds after the start of the fight.
Could anyone tell me what it is that I'm missing?

It doesn't matter, use whatever to preload the needed ammo and make sure your cooldowns are ready when you need them.

So, you can either QR twice or Reload. It doesn’t matter. For learning the opener, it can be easier to only have two ammo instead of three and reloading over it.

As an aside, the 2 ammo can be easier mid fight as well. There’s a couple ways to do the 2 ammo opener, depending on reloading before or after using Flamethrower. Reloading before FT lines up Reload for recast immediately after the gauss barrel down time and again to setup a 323 wildfire. This makes the rotation super consistent and requires less decision making in the heat of the moment at a minor, though not inconsequential, overall dps loss.

Some people use the "2-ammo" opener with reload (start the fight with 3 ammo but use Reload where you normally would in the 2-ammo opener).

Not entirely sure, but it sounds like maybe you are slightly misinterpreting? You use quick reload twice before the pull, not during your actual opening rotation. Prep the 2 ammo pre-pull, then hot shot > split shot > reload

I've only been using the 2-ammo opener so I can't comment on the 3-ammo (also not a mch main), all I can say is if executed properly everything lines up perfectly for your mid-fight wildfires.

I think what OP's really asking is why you would deliberately only use 2 ammo on the pull when you have the capability to stack up to 3 of them (be it loading only 2 ammo, or using reload then overwriting it with another reload even though it has 1 ammo left). Like, why does a '2 ammo only' opener even exist? The answer likely has to do with how that sets up your ammo cooldown usage for the rest of the fight, as well as your heat gain per 60s cycle. I've been bard for this whole expansion so maybe someone else can fill him in.

It can be a bit counterintuitive because it seems like you're throwing away something for free for no good reason.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

The answer likely has to do with how that sets up your ammo cooldown usage for the rest of the fight, as well as your heat gain per 60s cycle.

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This pretty much. It's known that the 2-ammo is the slightly weaker opener, but the pay-off is a more consistent rotation after the opener. As for the heat gauge, I'm not really sure as I haven't played Mch for all that long so I don't have it down to the GCD. From what I can tell it's really finicky, everything will be very close to coming off cooldown for your wildfire window at 90-95 gauge. Since Flamethrower is available to get into overheat like in the opener I actually try to sneak in a Cooldown attack to lower the gauge and help prevent going into overheat too early. But I'm sure at proper skill speed levels (I think I have a bit too much) and a 100% muscle memory type of perfection it will all line up right.

Being a MCH main, I don't remember ever doing this method but idk I did a lot of experimenting with the job when I reached 70! Nor have I ever seen any MCH do this (the very few I've seen however, majority just Wildfire/Rapid fire/Reload which isn't ideal)