Question about MCH after 4.06

I've been getting into MCH lately and I really love the concept of guns and technology in fantasy stuff so I really want to get into it. The main thing that concerns me is Overheating and Wildfire. I get that the most optimal thing is to Overheat your Wildfire combo's to get the biggest amount out of it possible.

What I'm wondering is, after 4.06, how much more DPS is that than just not Overheating? I personally really don't like the concept of Overheating on purpose and I just don't like the 10s of downtime (it just feels bad and not fun to do that).

I know that before 4.06, before we got the current 20% Overheat, it used to be only about a 2-5% total DPS increase so it was fairly negligible. But now that it's at 20%, I'm not sure how much I would enjoy it. If it's like a 10-15% DPS loss then idk if it'll be worth it.

I don't plan on doing any majorly difficult content (like savage or anything), so as a Tl;dr, basically do you still do a good enough amount of DPS if you just focus on staying between 50-95 heat for casual play (normal Deltascape, normal/EX trials, dungeons)?

I'm not looking for being absolutely optimal and I'm not looking to min/max or anything, I'm just wondering if it does good enough to where I'm still able to pull my weight in relatively casual content.

You're probably losing around 5% of your total dps if you don't oh for wildfire.
But honestly there's really no reason not to oh. You'll always have barrel stabilizer after the penalty ends which reduces to 4 shots and one of those will be a hot shot. But yes, you can achieve decent dps even if you decide not to oh.

Its just kind of in our psychology to think of overheating as "bad." Like we aren't supposed to do it. If they called it something like "Overdrive" or "Overclock" I'm sure it would do a bit better to wash away those fears from newcomers. Overheating is good, as long as you are doing your best to squeeze in every drop of damage you can in your overheat window. You can get away with avoiding it if you want, its just not optimal. I would practice on a dummy or two however, once you get used to the overheat mechanic it isn't so scary, i just wish it were a bit more forgiving at times.

Thanks for the responses. In terms of gameplay, I just really like the concept of balancing your heat and keeping it between 50-95 to keep your heated shots going. That's why I was hoping it wouldn't be that much of a loss to do so.

Honestly, my dream setup for MCH would be:
-Put the individual shot heat increase back to 10 per shot
-Make Hot Shot generate 15-25 heat. Put the 8% damage from it just as a 8-10% trait since it's boring to use atm and feels arbitrary.
-Make Heated Shots be the main focus of damage. Make it so the damage increase of Gauss Barrel increases to 15% when between the 50-99 range.
-Make Overheating be either a small penalty, or make it lower your damage until you use Cooldown. Just make it shut down your gauge for 3-5s and it'll return on its own afterwards. Either that, or just make it so we lose the Gauss Barrel damage buff if we reach 100 heat until we use Cooldown to get back below 50.
-Either keep or remove Wildfire. The big numbers are cool but it's still just a semi-fancy version of "Increase your damage by 25% against the target for 10 seconds". It can be cool but I really don't like any class that's "all-in and if you mess up then too bad". I don't see it going anywhere and it's fine as a maybe 80-90 second CD since it's similar to Raging Strikes for Bard, but I really don't like it currently.
-Make Gauss Round either generate 10-15 heat, or make it deal more damage when above 50 heat.
-Make Spread Shot generate 15-20 heat, and possibly make Ricochet have no CD, but it can only be used above 50 heat and reduces your heat by like 35-50. (This is just to make AoE more interesting since it's literally just Spread Shot spam with the occasional FT at the end of Overheating currently).
-Make FT apply a stacking DoT that's strong enough for it to not be a total DPS loss in single-target and to increase it's oomph in AoE. Make it so you can at least turn with it and not have it get cancelled. Also reduce it's heat gen back to 10 per tick and make it so you have to cancel it and not accidentally overheat with it.

These are just some things off the top of my head. I really wish the focus of MCH was on the heat now and not on Wildfire, but with the increase to 20% in Overheat, it's clear SE wants Wildfire and Overheat to be used in conjunction so the whole class is going to be built around that concept and just dumping all-in on one ability and then having nothing for 60 seconds. Unless they decide to go in a different direction in 4.1 in which case I would be very happy.

I'm most likely just going to play without Overheating since that's the most fun thing for me to do and it's not that much of a loss at least.

Not overheating on purpose was way more fun at 4.0 when it was more difficult to not screw up. Now i find that way too easy and a bit boring (they might did that so we can get plenty of time to see what happen around instead of being focused too much on the heat system), so you might want to oh anyway to spice things up.

That being said if you dont go into savage and such, not overheating is not gonna be a problem, you can do a decent dps without that.

Yea, I liked it more when the heat was at 10 per shot instead of 5 so we used Cooldown often and it made it really interesting and intense. But it is a bit too easy now to stay in that range. Either way I still much prefer the idea of balancing heat for consistant damage over all-in burst. I've decided that I will Overheat for Wildfire, but then I'm just going to use Rapid Fire and Ricochet (and most likely Gauss Round since it's CD is so short), and spam Cooldown since it's at 230 potency (same as heated comboed slug, plus ammunition damage is there for it as well).

That way I still have Reassemble, Reload, and QR on-demand outside of Wildfires to help make the main rotation interesting outside of burst. I also just lose out on 80~ potency from not doing the 2 Clean Shots, but it's significantly easier, doesn't require any ammo opener at all, and free's up CD's for the rest of the rotation to make it more interesting. I probably will throw Reassemble in during the Cooldown spam as well since I should fit that guaranteed crit in there for the WF.

And thanks for the confirmation about not Overheating being fine. I've never been one to do "Progression" type raiding so if I even do Savage Deltascape or anything, it'll be way later past progression phase when gear is easier to get and most people overgear the content anyways.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noryll

That way I still have Reassemble, Reload, and QR on-demand outside of Wildfires to help make the main rotation interesting outside of burst. I also just lose out on 80~ potency from not doing the 2 Clean Shots, but it's significantly easier, doesn't require any ammo opener at all, and free's up CD's for the rest of the rotation to make it more interesting. I probably will throw Reassemble in during the Cooldown spam as well since I should fit that guaranteed crit in there for the WF.

---

Actually, many mch don't use reload during wildfire (but do use reassemble).
Check this video, maybe you'll like the first opener and rotation shown here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lastelli

Actually, many mch don't use reload during wildfire (but do use reassemble).
Check this video, maybe you'll like the first opener and rotation shown here.

---

Ah, I just kind of assumed they did with the 323cdcd rotation. I assumed they hit Reload at the beginning so that the two Cleans and the Slug got the potency buff on top of the Reassemble for one of the Cleans. I'll take a look at that video and see what they do.

I've always had trouble actually following openers. I usually just wing it and get the desired effect (although most definitely not optimally, but it works for every game I've played, including this and WoW). That's the reason why I've always not cared for the 2 or 5 ammo openers from 3.x, and now the 2 and 3 ammo openers in 4.x. I've never really cared for having to set something up before the fight so that I can hit the optimal order of buttons every time. Like with Monk and it's Chakras and Form Shift. I hate mashing Chakra 5 times, and Form Shifting into Coeurl Form, before every single fight just so it can be perfectly optimal and get like maybe 2-5% more DPS. Getting the ammo for the MCH openers always feels like that. I don't mind it when I'm just running through a dungeon and there's time between packs, but at the start of a trial or something quick, it just feels annoying and not fun to do every time. Like I'm trying to be an efficient machine when I do it and not just playing the game for fun.

So generally I usually just wing it (like I said, I'm pretty casual and don't plan on min/maxing or anything lol) and I'm good at knowing the main intricacies of a class and it's mechanics, but the instant I look at an opener my brain just has a hard time getting down a specific 15-20+ button order. Like with Bard, I pretty much just apply my DoT's, apply Wanderer's Minuet, apply Straight Shot buff, and then just wing it from there with my CD's, occasionally swapping songs as they run out (except I clip Army's Paeon with WM when Mages Ballad has 30 second left on it's CD). Also occasionally using Iron Jaws to make sure the DoTs don't fall off. It's simple and I don't have a specific order other than DoT's into Song into SS then wing the rest of the fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lastelli

Actually, many mch don't use reload during wildfire (but do use reassemble).

---

Wait, that's how people are doing it? They use Reload to set up the 323 for Wildfire, instead of during it for the potency bonus? I was wondering how people had the procs set up properly every Wildfire without using Reload so they had Reload up for the Wildfire. That makes far more sense. I should've thought of that on my own, but ever since I started playing as MCH it was "Make sure you have Reload up for Wildfire", so in my mind I was trying to make sure I was getting the 323CDCD while still having Reload to bump up Wildfire damage.

I suppose I may as well ask the other question I've been trying to find an answer to. With Reload, how does one usually treat it if you have procs to skills? For example, let's say you have a Slug Shot that just proc'd off of a Split Shot, but Reload has just come off of cooldown. Do you reload anyway, knowing that you have a Slug Shot proc, so one of the ammo from Reload will only be used for a potency boost, or do you hold Reload until all procs are gone so all 3 ammo cause a proc? I suspect that you just use Reload anyway since holding it throws off your cooldowns somewhat, but I'm not sure if that's the case.

Basically there's two rotations, 2 ammo opener that leads to reloading before WF and quick reloads in WF, and 3 ammo that quick reloads before WF and reloads in WF. Both rotations have around the same potency so it doesn't really matter which one you use. Never hold any CDs back though, including reloads, because doing so misaligns them or delays your WF.

The reason why learning an opener is so beneficial for MCH is that all following WFs are basically the same as the opener (slight gcd changes for proc optimization). As long as your opener is on point, you can just hit all CDs as they come up and they'll line up perfectly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spiriel_Basanda

Wait, that's how people are doing it? They use Reload to set up the 323 for Wildfire, instead of during it for the potency bonus?

---

More or less. You can also double weave reload and wf for a higher potency wf (18.75 more potency), but doing so makes cd alignment a little tricky. If you opt for the 2 ammo opener with reload before wildfire you'll notice that cd alignment will be much nicer. You can still set up a perfect wf using reload during wf though, you only need to fish for a enhanced slug shot before you force overheat with flamethrower, but cd alignment will be slightly annoying in that case.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lastelli

More or less. You can also double weave reload and wf for a higher potency wf (18.75 more potency), but doing so makes cd alignment a little tricky. If you opt for the 2 ammo opener with reload before wildfire you'll notice that cd alignment will be much nicer. You can still set up a perfect wf using reload during wf though, you only need to fish for a enhanced slug shot before you force overheat with flamethrower, but cd alignment will be slightly annoying in that case.

---

Imo, it's better to just use QR for a proc before WF if you're reloading in WF. There's nothing really tricky about the timings.

3 ammo mid-fight line-up: (QR) 1 (FT2) CD (RL+WF) CD (RF+Rico) 2 (REA) 3 (GR) CD CD (QR) 1 2 1 HS (GB+BS).
2 ammo mid-fight line-up: (RL) 1 2 1 (FT1-2) CD (REA+WF) 3 (QR+RF) 2 (Rico) 3 (GR) CD CD 1 1 HS (QR) 1 (GB+BS) 2 (GR+RL).

Both rotations flow nicely enough with no fishing, and have less than 1% potency difference.

Alright, thanks guys!

I believe that this bit of info with everything else I've seen scattered around on the forums and that opener on Youtube, I've gotten everything I need to know to do well with MCH now. I've already started seeing my Wildfire explosions jump up by about 1.5-2k on average(I was shocked when I hit that Wildfire for 17k solo. I highly suspect I hit a lot of direct crits. I tend to hit somewhere around 13.5k Wildfires on a dummy) from incorporating Overheat and the 323CDCD thing into my Wildfire. Now I just need to get used to it and the opener, then I'm probably set.