Shots Fired: A Machinist Guide

[Ryaz]

The extra turret shots would be nice... If they counted as part of Wildfire. Everything I've read says turrets don't add any damage to Wildfire at all.

[Myon88]

The thing though, is that Wildfire damage is just one component of the more important thing which is total damage done. For example, would you rather have a Wildfire that hits for 100 extra damage, or an extra turret shot for 300 damage?

It's a lose the battle, win the war thing. The boss doesn't care where your damage is coming from.

If you're just comparing Wildfire damage numbers you will certainly get larger numbers with an opener optimized to produce that, but that's not the whole picture.

A better way to compare them would be to compare total damage done by each opener in ACT after the same set period of time (say, 25 seconds each to allow for a full opener to conclude). Ideally you'd run this thousands of times in a simulator to smooth out RNG, but you get the idea.

[ElasmoFan]

Question for you guys. With all the cooldowns / procs I have to keep an eye on, as well as boss mechanics, I'm noticing having trouble keeping an eye on my dots / buffs and letting them run out. Anyone else having this problem? Is there a solution that you guys have found such as moving hotbars or something? I'm trying my best to pay attention to everything but sometimes there's just so much going on I forget about one thing or another.

[Judge_Xero]

Hot Shot is the same timer as Lead Shot.
When you refresh Hot Shot, refresh Lead shot.

[Myon88]

On a related note, I remember people talking about shot damage occasionally not being added to Wildfire if you hit the target too near Wildfire's expiration time (say, the last second or something). Be it due to latency or whatever.

This might be me being superstitious, but I've completely stopped seeing this happening after I started tacking a throwaway ogcd like Leg/Foot Graze to the end of the last Slug Shot. It feels like it gets the game to update the stack better, compared to Slug Shot, [Empty GCD] which just feels iffy to me sometimes. Your other damaging ogcds are on cooldown at this point so you lose nothing by doing it.

It seems similar to that other superstition of hitting a boss with something after stepping out of an AoE, to get the server to update your position promptly.

Again, whether these are nonsense beliefs or have some basis in reality I don't know enough about the game's networking to say. I thought I'd just throw it out, I've not had any 'accidents' with Wildfire since.

[Ryaz]

Anyone else having a problem with some bosses going invincible before Wildfire goes off? I see it mostly in Neverreap on the first and third boss. Especially in a good group when you're killing the boss really fast, you usually don't even get 15 seconds in between invincible phases for Wildfire to be used, much less your entire buff phase. Really kills damage on those fights. Obviously, being dungeons it doesn't matter as much, but it's still really annoying. I know how BLMs feel when they lose Enochian because of it.

[Ephier]

If you're just comparing Wildfire damage numbers you will certainly get larger numbers with an opener optimized to produce that, but that's not the whole picture.

I don't think you understand what I am saying. The opener that is not optimized for wildfire had more burst than the one that was optimized for wildfire.

[Myon88]

Precisely, I agree with you and that is the rationale behind my opener as well.

I was replying to Ryaz up at the top of this page:
"The extra turret shots would be nice... If they counted as part of Wildfire. Everything I've read says turrets don't add any damage to Wildfire at all. "

[Ephier]

Precisely, I agree with you. I was replying to Ryaz up at the top of this page.

Ah okay. Also the reason I do not use gauss round in the pre opener is because rapid fire speeds up the GCD to the point where gauss round won't be back up until after wildfire exploded. So I would have to test both of those openers as well. I already spent a good 6 hours doing openers this morning, then you bring that up. orz

[Myon88]

I've gotten into a similar habit lately as well. I'm pretty much AFK beside the target dummy outside my FC house while I do stuff outside the game, and I'll come back every 3 minutes to practice an opener and get a feel for it.

I'd kill for an area (maybe in that upcoming beginner palace with the in-game parsers) that lets you reset cooldowns on demand. Make it a magic tile on the floor or something that does it when you walk over.

I also wouldn't mind a magic target dummy that nullifies your critrate, so you can compare sequences without RNG too. I hope you're reading this SE!