Lock and Load: The Reassembled Machinist Guide

[Myon88]

How am I supposed to use my Wildfires after the opener? Do I delay some cooldowns and skills for it, like Ammo and Rapidfire?

Just using your cooldowns as they come up is generally fine as a lot of them are common denominators of Wildfire's cooldown, so they will sync up themselves as long as you keep using them together.

As a very rough starting guide, it usually goes like this,

0:00 - Wildfire with everything (opener)
1:30 - Wildfire with everything except Raging Strikes, Hypercharge, and Reload
3:00 - Wildfire with everything except Hypercharge
4:30 - Wildfire with everything except Raging Strikes, Hypercharge, and Reload
6:00 - Wildfire with everything

You can see where this is going, your 1:30 cooldowns like Hawk's Eye will sync up with Wildfire since they have the same cooldown. Blood for Blood is 1:20 but you can generally hold it for 10 seconds and pretend it's a 1:30 cooldown as well. Raging Strikes is a 3:00 cooldown so you will only get it on odd numbered Wildfires.

Reload and Hypercharge don't fit in nicely because they are on a 1:00 and 2:00 cooldown respectively, so if you use them on cooldown they will only sync up with some Wildfires. Generally.. it's better to use them on cooldown instead of holding them just for the sake of Wildfire.

Since Hot Shot and Lead Shot's 30 second duration is a common denominator of Wildfire's 1:30 cooldown, the times when you refresh them will sync up nicely as well. It's usually favourable to refresh them just before you go into another Wildfire sequence so that they don't drop off halfway through. This also has the benefit of you being able to use all the cooldowns you used for that Wildfire to put down a super buffed Lead Shot.

Refresh Hot Shot > Whatever cooldowns you're using for this Wildfire > Refresh Lead Shot > Wildfire
This will end up looking very similar to the opener at the start of the fight, except there is no 'pre-pull' phase so those buffs go after Hot Shot and before Lead Shot instead.

Of course this doesn't take into account how an actual fight will alter your cooldown usage as well. You might have an extremely short fight (like Faust) that requires you to alter your cooldown usage, the fight might have long periods of downtime like A1S, or it could be like A2S or A3S where you want to save certain cooldowns for specific parts of the fight. There's no way you can cover everything in one post, the more experienced you are, the better you will be able to improvise based on the situation.

[VitalSuit]

Hey guys,

I got one quesion: How am I supposed to use my Wildfires after the opener? Do I delay some cooldowns and skills for it, like Ammo and Rapidfire? Im just not sure how to use it infight.

Thanks in advance!

Don't bother delaying rapidfire with wildfire, they're literally on the same cooldown, as soon as WF is up use rapidfire along with it but one of the ones you do want to delay slightly (10 seconds) is blood for blood so it lines up with hawks eye (80s and 90s respectively).

[Griffeth]

I updated the BiS to swap the ESO goggles for the Gordian ones for the final BiS. Eso goggles are still good if you do not have access to the helmet, but the gain in crit is better than the Skill Speed.

[Aiurily]

eh, i'd argue 20 crit and 49 skill speed>>26 det

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RBKR

675 acc
798 crit
554 det
508 sksp

"old" bis with eso helm+pipira
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/R8EA

652 acc
818 crit
528 det
557 sksp

stat difference - +20 crit +49 skillspeed (old bis) vs +26 det (linked "bis)"

the main loss comes from using morel salad vs pipira; but even if we switch to pipira for both sets, the difference ends up being 17 crit vs 58 skillspeed (gordian vs eso). i'd take the skillspeed tbh

--

on another subject, the 2 endgame bis sets atm really are the same sets with same food, but different helmets. 557 sksp with eso, 499 with gordian. at 499 skill speed, the hot shot/lead shot timings are actually really nice; they refresh both at 0.7s~, and hotshot is affected by itself. at 557 you either clip for 0.5s-1s or so, or drop for 1.5s-2s. i wonder what's better in the end..

right now at 658 skill speed, my hotshot/leadshot drop off for 0.5s or so, or clip at 1.5s-2s. dropping it off is probably better, and will only get better as you get more skill speed (+fey wind etc).

i guess what i'm trying to say is, there's 2 skill speed amounts that will give you good lead/hot shot timings; 500 or lower, or 700 and higher. if you're in between you're in an awkward spot; that's most of us right now sadly

[Ephier]

Was practicing stance dance timings today and it dawned on me. This is a lot of work for the DPS increase it gives. Slightly confused as to why full time GB still loses out to stance dancing. From a numerical stand point I understand the autos but from the SE side of things I don't get. So long as all your ogcd CDs are down GB is weaker. That's silly.

[Myon88]

I remember reading a bit of developer commentary on GB/WM somewhere and YoshiP does mention stance dancing as something skilled players of the class can do at high levels of play - they're definitely aware of it as a concept.

However it was made more in context of very obvious situations where something forces you to move for a prolonged period of time. I haven't seen anything like that in Alexander so far though, but who knows what the later turns will bring.

Not to mention we have so many ogcds that depending on how long tricky phases last you may not even have to drop GB at all, it would have to be something realllly long like the A1S jump phase for example (imagine if you had to DPS some adds while kiting the resin bombs).

Stance dancing being a DPS increase standing still I think is more of a mathematical curiousity and an edge case and not something they deliberately intend. I won't argue the math, an increase is an increase, but it's small enough that I'm still too lazy to do it personally, the only time I drop mine is before the last Slug Shot in Wildfire sequences, to get that Slug Shot + auto into the Wildfire instead of GB Slug Shot with no auto.

[girlsimulation]

However it was made more in context of very obvious situations where something forces you to move for a prolonged period of time. I haven't seen anything like that in Alexander so far though, but who knows what the later turns will bring.

You want to drop it during orbs in Ravana...but yeah, that's the only place you need to for movement, really. In Alex I only drop it if I don't have procs during second wash away and to get the last shot in right before phase changes.

[Butcherboy]

So how is dancing really works. Is that when u use up all CD and then get off GB by moving do a few AA and when CD are up stand still to get back on GB?

[Ephier]

So how is dancing really works. Is that when u use up all CD and then get off GB by moving do a few AA and when CD are up stand still to get back on GB?

Essentially, yes. That is how it works.

[Butcherboy]

Ok so what's the rule of thumb here. Do I wait for all CD to 've up under GB or as soon as CD pop for GB stop moving activate that one and get back to dancing again?