[MCH] 123 Combo Help

[Myon88]

Just to clarify, as far as our openers and wildfire sequences are concerned, I would recommend thinking of it as 123121 instead of 121321. The reason for that is due to the way Rapid Fire fits into our opener and wildfire sequences.

If you consider this opener which is the one I use myself,

(Quick Reload before pull) This is just optional to give Hot Shot an extra 20 potency
Hot Shot, (Hypercharge) + optional potion
Lead Shot, (Reload)
Split, (Wildfire)
Slug, (Gauss Round)(Reassemble)
Clean, (Quick Reload)(Rapid Fire)
Split, (Ricochet)
Slug, (Head Graze)
Split, (Blank)
Clean,
Slug, [Wildfire explodes here]

Note the bolded portion, basically you want Rapid Fire to be used on as many Split Shots as possible, because RF makes shots instant cast. All the Slug and Clean shots you're firing in the opener are already instant due to ammo procs, so the benefit you gain from using Rapid Fire charges on them is very minimal. Split Shot on the other hand must always be manually casted, so making them instant is a much bigger gain. Of course we can't use all 3 charges on split-split-split since we'll overlap procs that way, so the best case scenario is using it on the split-slug-split 1-2-1 sequence so that 2 out of 3 charges are used on Split Shot.

So this dictates where we put rapid fire in the opener, like so: 123 (Rapid Fire) 121 32.

If you arranged it as (Rapid Fire) 121 321 32, you can see that you would have to put Rapid Fire in front which is very awkward, because there simply isn't any space for it at that point in the opener without clipping a GCD.
There's also no way to avoid hardcasting the 1 bolded above, unless you do 121 (Rapid Fire) 321 32, but then you'll be using Rapid Fire on only one Split Shot instead of two which is suboptimal.

Basically if you put all this together you'll see our opener can only really be constructed in a certain specific way.

1. Wildfire has to be used after the first weaponskill
2. The 1-2-3 weaponskills must be used in a specific sequence in the opener
3. You can normally weave 2 ogcds behind instant cast weaponskills, but only 1 ogcd when RF is active (because it shortens the GCD), and only 1 ogcd behind weaponskills that you hardcast
4. There is a specific position for some ogcds (RF must be before the 121 portion, Reassemble must be before Clean Shot)
5. Everything else like Ricochet/Gauss Round/Head Graze/Blank that is just pure damage you can shuffle around to wherever feels more comfortable for you - it's not a big deal.

There are some exotic alternatives to this opener, and we haven't even gotten into openers that preload 5 ammo for example -- but it's a long story and they're not really relevant to the discussion, and in any case Aurily would be the better person to ask (sadly it looks like he's no longer playing).

Edit:
Now if you're asking about the general case for this situation outside of our opener, when you have no cooldowns up and are just cycling through 1-2-3 normally, then point #1 from my previous post applies. You can hold your Clean Shot proc, and take a detour back to Split Shot to try and fish for a Slug Shot if you anticipate movement, but otherwise it's not a big deal. There is no difference in DPS between 123,123,123... and 121... as long as you don't overwrite procs or sit on them for so long that they disappear.