MCH wildfire is a mess

When I first tried to relearn MCH I noticed wildfire underperforming, in 4.0 it used to be unleash as many attacks as possible to gain that sweet 20-25k burst

After a few different approaches I found the most efficient method is to spam one move...

Not only that but if you dare to use any other move the Overheat slows to a odd crawl as if your supposed to use just one skill for the entirety of the wildfire buff, which is a oddly long Cooldown and of course it isn’t the best way, I have found a good mix, but man is it a massive far cry to the bombardment that was 4.0 Wildfire

Overheat should act as Old Rapid fire to all skills not just 2 one being Auto cross

Forgot to mention both Guass and Ricochet don’t contribute to WF which...I fail to see why?

Wildfire has always been a mess. By design, the original version is an awful variant of Raging Strikes, which is to say it's a flat damage steroid, but it back-loads the bonus damage instead of streaming it in like Raging does, albeit with the added benefit of critting on the detonation.

SB made the situation worse by reducing how long WF is up for meaning you had to land more mechanics in a shorter amount of time.

ShB made it better, ish, since now it just works like the old ammo system did, but for 5 or 6 GCDs gated by time instead of for everything unleashed so you don't need to master a ridiculously complicated combo to max out its damage, but it's still just kind of an awkward ability that doesn't feel good outside of the big numbers it used to produce, unlike Raging which lasts long enough that you can make a couple mistakes and not cripple your damage because you just fire the mistake slightly later.

It's a classic example of a mechanic that the devs keep around because of tradition but it probably should have just been scrapped in the rework because it's just an awkward ability. It used to be great in HW when you could pull off 18-25k pops when it detonated. Though I find it awkward because the devs kept another mechanic that was awkward about SB machinist (Overheat), and scrapped a promising mechanic that was very poorly implemented but could have been turned into a really good one given enough time (Heat manipulation). Overheat is still redundant with Wildfire in practice and it's just one of those "But why?" moments of the redesign.

I keep forgetting that wildfire has a longer duration than hypercharge and I can tack on at least one more attack after HC ends, which is kind of awkward feeling since it's pretty obviously meant to be activated along with HC.

And I do feel like it has an unusually long cooldown.
It doesn't hit THAT hard, hell the five heat blasts are going to total more potency than six wildfire stacks, and you can store up enough heat to go heat blast spammy two times in a row, and three times with stabilizer, at the same time spamming gauss round and richoche for even more.

5 Hb is 1100 pot
Wildlife with 6 charges 1200 pot

Huh???
I thought it added 150 per stack.

Where'd I get 150 then?

After level 78 it's 200.

Yea, it as a 1200 potency oGCD ability with a 2 min cd. Not as strong as technical finish from dancer, but also doesnt require 4-5 secs to use. I see it as an interactive buff more so than a core mechanic as its only about 4% of your total damage kit that is used to buff up the damage your next hypercharge. I prefer it this way as with it being a smaller portion of our core damage, it doesn't feel like the entire rotation is built around setting up for it. So if you muck it up, your damage will be lower but not garbage.

I agree.
Though I didn't play mch before 5.0 a very common complaint about wildfire back then was that if you fudged it you completely screwed over your damage until the next wildfire.
Maybe square intended for this to create an "exciting moment" when you got rewarded with such big damage, but all that really does is pressure people to do it right every single time with the failure state being a massive drop in damage.

It's like the dragoon disembowel's +10% damage in that it's not a damage gain by having it up, you're expected to always have it up for maximum effectiveness, which in turn makes it a damage loss if you don't keep it up.
Except the natural flow of dragoon skills means the disembowel self buff should very nearly always be up regardless of circumstances.
Achieving the maximum effect of wild fire pre 5.0, not so much.

Honestly, if Wildfire was just a stronger Hypercharge on a 2min cooldown, I don't think I'd mind. Like, if it boosted Heat Blast/Auto-Crossbow by 100 pot while under Wildfire's Hypercharge.