Barrel Stabilizer and overcapping heat

This is probably a minor issue compared to Hypercharge ping, but it is another Machinist issue that plagues the job's ability to feel good and satisfying.

Currently, in ideal rotations with no downtime, the heat gauge is intended to overcap before each Wildfire, unless Barrel Stabilizer is delayed until after WF and the MCH always pre-plans to have 50 heat and not accidentally spend it. But the whole point of Barrel Stabilizer is to guarantee one Hypercharge use for Wildfire (like how Manaification guarantees a melee combo under Embolden for RDM), so it wouldn't make sense to optimize around using it after Wildfire.

It doesn't feel good to overcap heat and waste it, and there are two fairly simple solutions:

1. Change Barrel Stabilizer from generating +50 heat to a buff that makes the next Hypercharge cost 0 heat.
2. Go the Endwalker RDM route and reduce the heat gauge gain/cost across the board. Go from a factor of 5 to a factor of 4. +4 heat per weaponskill, +40 heat from Barrel Stabilizer and 40 heat to use Hypercharge. This leaves 20 heat points (or 5 weaponskills +4 each) of extra space to gain heat over the old "cap."

Both options feel like they make sense. To be honest, a fair few of the resource gauges could use that treatment, where either the gauge holds slightly more than <minimum usage> + <burst cooldown gain>, or the cooldown instead simply makes the next usage free. With some of them, simply having charges on the generator fixes much of that issue. For example, Reaper has a mini cooldown, Soul Slice, that generates a full half (50) of its red gauge, and all of the abilities that use that red gauge consume the same 50 of its red gauge. But Soul Slice has charges, which gives much greater flexibility about when they are used.

That said, since Barrel Stabilizer is a 120s CD instead of 30s like Soul Slice, and given that the heat gauge is used exclusively for Hypercharge, I feel like option A is more likely to be the route they'd take, if they went this way. It preserves the same gameplay and for the most part the same pooling capacity as now, but alleviates this overcapping issue. Giving it charges might expand the opener burst more than they'd prefer. Mayhap this could be solved by adding an additional mechanism to (some) charged abilities, where there's an overall recharge time per charge, but also a minimum interval between uses, a sort of internal CD that's separate from the charges. That could be used to permit large CDs like Barrel Stabilizer to have charges, granting them flexibility about when they are used (as sitting on the CD for a bit doesn't cost you usages), whilst still limiting how often they can actually be used in combat (say, an internal CD of 30s, with the same 120s recharge, so you couldn't double-tap the 2 charges, and it effectively hard limits to 1 usage during the opener, but you still get the timing flexibility of the second charge).

That said, regarding your reference to RDM, even with the EW changes RDM still has that issue with their mana. Takes 50/50 to use the melee combo (or 60/60 for the AoE one), but Manafication also grants +50/+50, and it still caps at 100/100. So if you hit >50 just as Manafication comes off cooldown, you either have to waste mana or delay Manafication, neither of which are particularly nice options. Unfortunately, Manafication doesn't have as clean a solution. They'd have to give you like 3 stacks of a buff that makes melee abilities free or something. Still, I would certainly not mind such a change.

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Originally Posted by Kaedys

That said, regarding your reference to RDM, even with the EW changes RDM still has that issue with their mana. Takes 50/50 to use the melee combo (or 60/60 for the AoE one), but Manafication also grants +50/+50, and it still caps at 100/100. So if you hit >50 just as Manafication comes off cooldown, you either have to waste mana or delay Manafication, neither of which are particularly nice options. Unfortunately, Manafication doesn't have as clean a solution. They'd have to give you like 3 stacks of a buff that makes melee abilities free or something. Still, I would certainly not mind such a change.

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Yeah that would be a problem, but hopefully one that doesn't appear too terribly often. I wonder how much of a loss to DPS it would be to replace a couple of GCDs with Reprise to keep the mana just under 50/50 before Mana-Embo. The combo is so long now that even more space is needed than before.

The other way to trade off (which I sometimes do don't judge me) is to wait a couple of GCDs and Manaficate after Embo (like in most openers). It's not ideal, of course, but as long as Mana isn't delayed too long it will still fall squarely under the next Embolden. I generally do this when I didn't have 40/40+ mana to get a combo from Manafication, but it could work in this case if there's enough time to complete the combo (Embolden during) and then Manafication at the end without delaying it too much.

Whoops derailed my own topic to talk about RDM. Guess this is a general resource overcap discussion, now!

From my experience I overcap by 10 the first reopener and I’m good going from there, the addition of chainsaw on a 60 second cooldown should reduce that overcap to 0 in a perfect world. The real question is how do we fit chainsaw into the rotation.

BS is clearly intended to be synchronized with wildfire and... That's not the case.
What grinds my mind is that they gave Reassemble a second charge but not BS.

IMO, both of your solutions are great and add a lot of flexibility. On top of an already flexible job so it's watering water but in a "right way".
If I had to pick, I'd chose N#2

But in my opinion, again, it's also a great opportunity to rework Wildfire.
Wildfire is a cooldown you use before Hypercharge, never otherwise, you always use those two.
The problem is that it's not a "Wildfire phase" anymore but it's an empowered Hypercharge. Problem being we already have too much Hypercharge phases.

Wildfire could be an ability on a cooldown consuming heat.
Remove the weaponskill stack, make it a sticky bomb that explodes after 3 seconds or so. This way twe can keep the animation.
This way Wildfire is independent from Hypercharge, allowing more flexibility with Drill, AA and Buzzsaw. It'll also make heat much more interesting compared to now.

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Originally Posted by Eclipse12187

From my experience I overcap by 10 the first reopener and I’m good going from there, the addition of chainsaw on a 60 second cooldown should reduce that overcap to 0 in a perfect world. The real question is how do we fit chainsaw into the rotation.

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I'm hearing from many sources that combos last up to 30s without dropping now, so it's probably safe to do a rotation with Drill/AA/Chain Saw back-to-back or at least close enough to each other to easily fit Hypercharges between.

Maybe Drill → filler → AA → Chain Saw so WF window can still end with Drill → filler to not lose the last GCD to weird delayed damage.

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

I wonder how much of a loss to DPS it would be to replace a couple of GCDs with Reprise to keep the mana just under 50/50 before Mana-Embo.

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Not to continue the derail (...ok, maybe to continue it >.>), but it's worth noting that Reprise is substantially worse than it was in ShB. It still costs 5/5, and its potency was only altered from 300 to 330 (and unlike melee, our potencies didn't go down by more than about ~10 in most cases), but 5 mana is the equivalent of what 8 was previously. So in effect, they increased the damage of Reprise by ~10%, but increased its effective cost by 60%. Unless they reduce the cost down to 3/3, Reprise is going to be a very bad button to hit in EW. And that's not even accounting for the fact that the melee combo got an additional even higher potency spell added to the end of the sequence.

The math is a bit involved, but currently, your average GCD during the "generator" phase is worth ~335 potency, and then the melee combo deals 2,280 potency over a smidge more than 4 GCDs, or ~570 per GCD. Thus 80 paired mana grants an effective gain of ~940 potency over the generator rotation for those 4 GCDs, or ~12 potency per (paired) mana. Reprise is ~30 potency less than the average generator GCD, and also costs 5/5 mana, for a net loss per use of ~90 potency.

In EW (and assuming the potencies haven't changed from the media tour, which they might have), your average generator GCD is ~350 potency, and the melee combo deals 2,990 potency over ~5 GCDs, or ~598 per GCD. 50 paired mana = 1,240 potency gain, so ~25 potency per mana. Reprise is now only a ~20 potency loss over the average generate GCD, but still costs 5/5 mana, so net loss per use is ~145 potency.

Ouch.

(And at 3/3, it's 95 potency loss, essentially equivalent to current)

I'd rather bump up the potency a bunch than reduce the cost. I think I like the 5/5.

Maybe talk about those problems in the MCH needs help thread, or we'll divide again all the attention and it will lead nowhere, as someone literally 2 days ago said they only look at megathread/very long ones.

(interesting discussion though!, just trying to have a big thread with all the mch discussion, if having a big thread actually helps)

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Originally Posted by Aiscence

Maybe talk about those problems in the MCH needs help thread, or we'll divide again all the attention and it will lead nowhere, as someone literally 2 days ago said they only look at megathread/very long ones.

(interesting discussion though!, just trying to have a big thread with all the mch discussion, if having a big thread actually helps)

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Yes! Let’s centralize the topics as the devs are in fantasy land thinking MCH is perfect

If the intent of Barrel stabilizer is to be able to ensure uptime would not the better course of action be to replace it with a wildfire trait that puts you into Hyperdrive (Essentially adding heat) not only improving action economy but reducing button bloat all while preventing it from ever over capping

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

Change Barrel Stabilizer from generating +50 heat to a buff that makes the next Hypercharge cost 0 heat.

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I agree with this change. This will fix those weird times where Barrel Stabilizer is ready, but you're at 50, or more, heat with drill and/or air anchor being less than 8 seconds on cooldown so now Barrel Stabilizer will drift or you'll overcap on heat gauge. (i know it happens to me at least once a fight with 2.45 GCD with full augmented cryptlurker gear)