A question regarding MCH and post-opener CD management

[Aeliott]

-As I understand it:
Always save Hawk's Eye and Blood for Blood for Wildfire. In fact these two are great signals to start preparing for Wildfire due to their similar cooldowns to it. B4B is 10 seconds shorter, so when that's ready you know you have about 10 seconds to think about prepping your next one - with all buffs applying before you refresh Lead Shot and go into the rest. Rapid Fire falls into this category too, being the same cooldown. You'll always have it up shortly after applying Wildfire.


Gauss Round, Blank, and Head Graze are short enough to use freely on Wildfire-downtime, but if you're very close to a Wildfire "phase" you'll want to hold them. Gauss Round is a bit more expendable with the shorter cooldown, but naturally you need to use it at least 6 seconds prior to applying Wildfire for it to be up again in its duration.

Reload you generally don't hold on to, so it will be down for every other Wildfire. Naturally make sure Hot and Lead are freshly up before applying. Reassemble should only be used on Clean Shot + Ammo. It always seems to neatly line up anyway, assuming no serious disruption to your rotation.

Ricochet use on CD.

Raging Strikes will line up for every other Wildfire after the first (it basically alternates between All Buffs WF -> half buffed WF -> All buffs WF etc).

Hypercharge is one I'm not entirely sure on, and it has the most awkward cooldown for lining up neatly when used at every earliest opportunity. I *believe* you just use it whenever it's up, generally. Though in the last stretch of a fight for example, if it's up and you're still waiting on Wildfire - and you'll only get one more WF in the whole fight, naturally keep it to use with WF. This is just my speculation however, correct me if I'm wrong. In a static setting you could also perhaps coincide it with Trick Attack and other group buffs. If a fight is short enough that you'll see 3 WFs in the whole duration, then holding onto Hypercharge for the 3rd and final one will of course be a bigger gain. And of course there's the variable of potentially needing very fast MP/TP regen though that'll be rare, and a chunk of potential raid dps lost.

So in summary:
*B4B and Hawk's - always save for Wildfire in a single target fight
*Rapid Fire - will always be up for Wildfire
*Raging Strikes - every use of it will line up with every other Wildfire, so use on CD in an ideal rotation
*Reload - on cooldown, just don't use if you'd have to waste ammo refreshing Hot / Lead
*Ricochet on cooldown
*Reassemble - should always line up nicely with a Clean Shot during your Reload phase (and only use it for this)
*Gauss Round, Blank, Head Graze - use freely, don't really need to think about them, just don't use them too soon before WF or they won't be up again when it's active
*Hypercharge - to your discretion :P (i.e. I'm not sure) This is pretty much the only one that doesn't line up well, though I highly doubt holding onto it for up to a full minute is a good idea unless the next WF is your last. Considering it buffs group DPS as well as your own, I say use it whenever it's up.