Can someone help me understand the heat gauge?

[Greedalox]

I'm on my phone so excuse typos!
The heat gauge is something that at 60-63 you want to try and align with overheating your wildfires. Your 62 skill Cooldown will help this by reducing heat by 25. The magic occurs at 64 with a new trait that turns your 1-2-3 into heated shots that are MUCH more powerful than before! But these only occur over 50 heat and the 10 seconds of over heating. That is why you have so much heat reduction, to keep you between 50-95 heat. You are consistently strongest at this point.

As for asking if you should spam hot shot to get heat- no. It's a potency loss to hit hot shot that many times instead of just 1-2-3 your way back up if Barrel Stablizer and Flamethrower aren't available. Also avoid Quick Reload til 60 heat in this situation.