Lock and Load: The Reassembled Machinist Guide

[LinowKitty]

Even for A11s ? I can't really find the info i see a lot of contradictory number on reddit even when looking for BRD ... does the corresponding dummy test you on accuracy too ?

[Myon88]

To my knowledge the dummies do test accuracy, what other numbers are you seeing?

699/700 is for frontal, it's possible some people may be quoting the lower flank cap and being fine with that, but it never hurts to gear for frontal for the few instances you hit from the front. Plus, we have no issues hitting that cap with our gear this tier.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/X2P6
This is what I'm going for this tier, crit and det on everything, zero skillspeed, 699 exactly with food. You couldn't ask for better itemization.

[Dorone]

That sets looks good. Is NQ Shire ring better than Alexandrian tho?

[Myon88]

6dex 7det 42sks vs 45 crit

It comes down to how much you trust our statweights and how much you value skillspeed. In terms of pure weights the 270 alexandrian looks better, but personally I consider skillspeed that low to have a value of zero in practice. There's the issue with skillspeed being tiered and not actually shortening your casttime until you get a certain amount, and then there's also the practical issue that moving your GCD from 2.5 to 2.49 seconds, for example, has almost zero value in reality. For a 0.01 difference in GCD you'd have to be attacking a target for 10 minutes straight in order to move 1 GCD ahead of someone with a 2.5 second GCD, which is simply not practical.

Anyway I won't ramble on, it's frankly close enough that I don't think it matters either way which one you choose, someone could swap your rings while you were asleep and you wouldn't notice any difference.

But at the very least it's good information to know that in this slot the 260 shire ring is very close to the 270 alexandrian ring. It can help you decide what to spend pages on if, for example, you're trying to decide between buying the alex belt or alex ring with pages. Since we know that the 260 ring is a good substitute, you'd probably decide to buy the belt instead since that's a certain upgrade over any other belt item.

[Dorone]

Yeah I was mostly wondering since I already got the ring first kill. SkS has the minor use that it makes sure you get that last shot into WF, does it not? 555 SkS atm already feels like it's on the edge for me

[Myon88]

split (wildfire), slug clean split slug split clean slug

The typical wildfire I do has 7 weaponskills going into it, and you can get the last slug in even with zero additional skillspeed on gear, which is one reason why I try to avoid skillspeed.

I've occasionally heard of people getting an 8th one in there, but I don't believe it's possible consistently with any amount of skillspeed available to us currently. It might be possible with perfect latency, I think Aurily might have had a video of it happening in the past - but I'm not sure and I can't find it right now. I'd certainly be interested in seeing video evidence of it being possible if anyone is able to do it.

[ShinSenpai]

Hey!

There was a dumb question I been wanting to ask. Say you hit the boss with Lead Shot and either a ninja uses Trick Attack or an Astro gives you Balance with 20-25 seconds left of Lead Shot, would you re-apply Lead shot?

[Greedalox]

Hey!

There was a dumb question I been wanting to ask. Say you hit the boss with Lead Shot and either a ninja uses Trick Attack or an Astro gives you Balance with 20-25 seconds left of Lead Shot, would you re-apply Lead shot?

I'd have to off the top of my head say no. You'd get more damage out of maintaining your cooldowns neatly + a split shot would give you more damage than what lead gives you extra over what was lost (20-25 seconds of your last lead shot is lost as well when you reapply that early.)

But I also don't have the numbers to be making bold claims, so hopefully someone could chime in with proof.

[Myon88]

Note: edited this many times, I'd appreciate double checking from someone better at math than me.

As Greed mentioned it's not just the earlier Lead Shot that you overwrite, but also also the opportunity cost involved in using the buff to fire an extra Lead Shot (i.e the opportunity cost of not using that buffed GCD to fire something else like Split Shot). Given that our primary weaponskills are Split, Slug, and Clean Shots which are 140, 180, and 200 potency respectively, let's say that on average a GCD spent casting one of them is worth 173 potency. (Actually slightly more since sometimes we fire them with ammo which adds 20 potency, but let's ignore that to make it easier).

Visualizing the opportunity cost is a bit more difficult that I thought, since even though reapplying Lead Shot early is a GCD that you spend not casting a 1-2-3 weaponskill, if you look at the big picture it means that when someone who didn't refresh early is reapplying Lead Shot later, yours is still ticking and you get to fire a 1-2-3 weaponskill. So the opportunity cost is not the whole potency value of that weaponskill (173 * x), but only the additional damage on that weaponskill due to the buff ((173 * x) - 173).

Example 1.
Assuming a 10% buff, opportunity cost is 17 potency:
A 10% buffed Lead Shot is only 49 extra potency, if you clip 1 dot tick (3s left) you lose 45 potency, so even in the best case where you only clip 1 tick, it's still a DPS loss (45 + 17 > 49).

Example 2.
Assuming a 50% buff, opportunity cost is 87 potency:
A 50% buffed Lead Shot is worth 245 extra potency, 245 - 87 is 158, that's 3 ticks. If Lead Shot has 9s or less remaining, it's a DPS increase.

Example 3.
Assuming a 100% buff, opportunity cost is 173 potency:
A 100% buffed Lead Shot is worth 490 extra potency, 490 - 173 is 317, that's 7 ticks. If Lead Shot has 21s or less remaining, it's a DPS increase.

Fun fact, if you gain a 155% damage buff, overwriting a normal Lead Shot is always a DPS increase, even if your last GCD was also Lead Shot (meaning you waste the whole thing). The reason it gradually gets better to overwrite unbuffed Lead Shots at stronger and stronger levels of buffs is because it's relatively stronger than the average weaponskill (490 vs 173), but as you can see it would need a level of buff that is pretty unfeasible in practice. This is pretty much getting into boss mechanics territory for things to take that much extra damage, still good to know though!

So, given the strength of player buffs it's basically almost never worth it to reapply Lead Shot just for that - and that's not even getting into the problems you'll cause for yourself by unsyncing your Hot Shot and Lead Shot timers from each other.

[raynesu]

Can you guys see what's wrong with my 5 ammo opener, having a hard time getting decent dmg on controller, here's a vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVeCDdMWWiA

By no means do I think I am an amazing MCH, but after watching your video I noticed that your buffs are falling off so your last 2-3 weaponskills are unbuffed. Now I'm not going to do the math, but losing all 3 buffs and losing your dex potion on a few actions may be a reason why you wildfires don't go kaboom. Good Luck!