Patch 4.05 Machinist Rotation: To Overheat or Not to Overheat? Here are my findings.

[Fannah]

I don't see much reason to overheat.

I guess we at least all agree to say it's to get a spike of dmg in a short time when it's needed.
It's more than 300 potency on the moment. Like more than a free mono target Ricochet.

Gun-Cat, isn't it awesome to play machinist and feel like you have to play the engineer yourself to make your rotation works?

[Elnidfse]

I guess we all agree it's to get a spike of dmg in a short time when it's needed.
It's more than 300 potency on the moment. Like more than a free mono target Ricochet.

Gun-Cat, isn't it awesome to play machinist and feel like you have to play the engineer yourself to make your rotation works?

The main problem with trying to pull overheat as a burst cooldown is that it needs to align exactly when you would need to burn something. Somebody like the best MCH in the world will be able to make a fight plan but for the average MCH that's not something that's going to happen. That "burst" isn't on demand either. In an optimal rotation that burst will still require 10 seconds of buildup. If you're counting wildfire that's 21 second of buildup. Our turret does more damage in that time. It'd be easier if we had a button that flat out triggered an overheat but turret overdrive is probably going to still be more useful if you need on demand burst.

[Ossom]

It'd be easier if we had a button that flat out triggered an overheat but turret overdrive is probably going to still be more useful if you need on demand burst.

Yup. This is what I've been thinking. Similar to Stun Gun in PVP. Flamethrower needs to be reworked as an oGCD AoE and immediately send us to Overheat. This way you will always start your Wildfire Rotation by doing.

Wildfire > Flamethrower. The fact that they both include similar words (Flame and Fire) seems to even show that they should work this way.

[Leticro]

The short answer to your question is, unless you're planning on raiding where you could be at risk of a 1% enrage or something, don't even bother. You lose marginal (or do more depending on your execution and ability to make per-fight rotations) for not overheating versus overheating.
So no don't bother.

I just cleared Omega V1S and found myself ending up just using my 3.0 rotation habits and hardly overheating cause the heat never matched up anyway. I overheated a ton at first, but it was a lot of effort to line up the heat and wildfire so I just dropped that effort in the end. Regardless if I overheated or not, I pretty much ended up with around the same DPS.

[Leticro]

I'm lost between all the comment.
My MCH is gonna hit 70 tonight and will not run SO.
For doing Lakshmi and Susaso for fun, should I overheat on every wildfire or not and is the dps increase noticeable?
Being not super good on the timing, if you tell me I gain 0.5% dps for going through the hassle of overheating I simply won't overheat. The DPS loss will be compensated by me not screwing up.

After my Omega V1S run, I would recommend not overheating unless you're really comfortable with doing so, and there are external buffs such as hypercharge, trick attack, DRG tether, etc. As Elnidfse says, it's not worth it, and the penalty is pretty big if you mess up. I noticed the DRG teather lines up with the wildfires though so I did it occasionally when the heat lined up, and I do believe external buffs makes it worth buffing wildfire with overheat, but in most cases, just don't overheat and you'll still get pretty much the same result if you are good at overheating. The heat doesn't line up with the wildfire by a few/several seconds anyway and that down time is a waste.

[Elnidfse]

Coincidentally Leticro we just did V2S in our super casual casual raid.
Anyways on average I didn't overheat at all unless I knew I'd be out of position with his gravity fling up. And even then I didn't bother with it on the winning run. And with that button "press to not die" button I realized I actually hate that thing. Let me tell you the problem with needing to press that stupid thing, do a wildfire combo, and press dismantle and/or refresh! I hate it!

[Petori]

I just don't overheat unless there's downtime or I'm at the end of an encounter if even then. Instead after the cd323cd wildfire, I just use an extra cd at 50 heat and bring myself back up from 25 with BS. Made me want an ability that discharges all heat and does damage based on the heat value, if they are not making overheating beneficial in the future.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I just don't overheat unless there's downtime or I'm at the end of an encounter if even then. Instead after the cd323cd wildfire, I just use an extra cd at 50 heat and bring myself back up from 25 with BS. Made me want an ability that discharges all heat and does damage based on the heat value, if they are not making overheating beneficial in the future.

This would be nice. Have it gain higher potency the closer we are to OH. This would be absolutely amazing, especially with BS.

As it is right now, the only time I want to OH are in dungeons when I'm burning trash for that FT buff, and that's something I actually really enjoy.

IE: Never OHing best for single target, OH best for AoE damage. This actually feels good to me.

[Fannah]

Leti Cro, I've read again your post, and I found some things I believe you would like to change if you're still into the topic of machinists :
1) You changed a 255 potency in 355 for your calculation (see google sheet in D-8).
2) You put 6 GCD in your Wildfire rotation instead of 5. I'm wondering how, and you don't speak about your Skill speed and/or technique to explain it and it's not for nothing people speak about the combo "Cooldown-3-2-3-Cooldown" (so only 5 GCD possible, imo).
3) In K-16 "availible"
4) In D-16 you said Slug Shot + Gauss Barrel + Barrel Stabilizer give a total of 400 potency instead of 200.
5) In H9, numbers with so many decimals like 871,5196875 are irrelevant, it only can make people who dislike numbers but are still interested in the topic to run away. We talk about potency where a single point doesn't change that much, so 871.52 was way enough to still give decimals.
6) You didn't put the Hot Shot multiplier in your calculation, which mislead to see the total potency given by Overheat. I know you said you did it on purpose and thought we would just put it ourselves. It's ok to do so, but it's not really helping for average people to get an accurate number as I guess average people won't bother adding the +8% by themselves to see the difference.
7) In D-3, you changed a 190 potency in 390 potency. So I guess you forgot to write you did a Gauss Round right before Split shot, so you should add a note about why you count it this way in the "Note" part you made.

[Elnidfse]

I've spent several hours hitting a dummy in a situation I'm pretty sure not everybody will find themselves in (my server is in a different region from where I live) but which produces results I should report anyways.

If you're in a rotation, which hotshot is refreshed before BS and GB are put/turned on. Your weapon skills will reset when they change from normal to heated.
If for any reason you make an attack that gets cancelled by the change of your weapon skills from normal to heated version. That weapon skill will drop and you will lose a GCD. In situations like this overheating is strictly a loss.

If you don't want to deal with this, you're going to have to tune your rotation so that hotshot is applied before reload (which may or may not be less than optimal) or simply not overheat at all.