Shots Fired: A Machinist Guide

[VitalSuit]

1. Looking over my skills, I seem to notice that Slug and Clean Shot have the same base potency of 100, whereas Split has a potency of 140. Is it that much better to use Split Shot for the 140 potency instead of just using Slug and Clean Shot? It feels like I run out of TP too quickly even with my turret up, so would just using Slug -> Clean procs be better for base leveling content?

2. Head Graze. I'm having a bit of difficulty with differentiating the Magic-based attacks over the monster skills, what's a good way to know what can be silenced and what can't, so I know that I'm not wasting my skill on an attack that won't be interrupted?

1. Why would you use a lower potency attack to chain into a slightly higher potency attack when spamming split is just flat out better? Sure the tp is 10 higher but 140 into 180 > 100 into 200. And 140 multiple times is much much better than 100 multiple times.

2. Don't worry about silencing anything, just use it for the dps unless you know for a fact that no one else can silence and it's up to you and even then that's very rare. Only a few enemies I can think of and they're both in WoD.

Also I never played Archer at all so leveling it to get up to quelling strikes is painful. This is like when I had to trudge my way through THM to get swiftcast for my healers.