Can someone help me understand the heat gauge?

[Cabalabob]

So just picked up MCH and this heat gauge is a weird mechanic to me.

First off the description. It says when overheated it increases damage by 10%. Is this 10% on top of the 5% from gauss barrel? Or does it replace the 5% from gauss barrel, in other words, is overheated, in total, a 15% damage increase or a 10% damage increase?

Next, do I want to overheat it? Overheat seems to be a bonus and, at least right now at 60, there seem to be no advantages to not overheating it. Yet all my skills want to stop me overheating it. Ammo stops the heat increase, quick reload reduces the heat and I just got cooldown which greatly reduces the heat for an attack that's weaker than clean shot.

[Muziko]

Looking over the skills I think the idea is to overheat during wildfire and get as many host potency attacks in while you can then stay between 50 abs 95 while you wait for your next wildfire rotation. As for the percent buff I'm not sure. Still leveling my mch.

[Cabalabob]

That was my first thought, but then ammo stopping and reducing the heat gauge seems really counter intuitive. Do I just not use ammo until I'm overheated? Do I just spam hot shot for the extra 5 heat gauge per GCD to get there faster? That's what I'm finding weird about it, it seems like we want to overheat but everything wants to stop that happening.

[Greedalox]

I'm on my phone so excuse typos!
The heat gauge is something that at 60-63 you want to try and align with overheating your wildfires. Your 62 skill Cooldown will help this by reducing heat by 25. The magic occurs at 64 with a new trait that turns your 1-2-3 into heated shots that are MUCH more powerful than before! But these only occur over 50 heat and the 10 seconds of over heating. That is why you have so much heat reduction, to keep you between 50-95 heat. You are consistently strongest at this point.

As for asking if you should spam hot shot to get heat- no. It's a potency loss to hit hot shot that many times instead of just 1-2-3 your way back up if Barrel Stablizer and Flamethrower aren't available. Also avoid Quick Reload til 60 heat in this situation.

[Georashi]

As for asking if you should spam hot shot to get heat- no. It's a potency loss to hit hot shot that many times instead of just 1-2-3 your way back up if Barrel Stablizer and Flamethrower aren't available. Also avoid Quick Reload til 60 heat in this situation.

And that's the part where it feels like the ammo and heat mechanic are working against one another. Without ammo, you can't efficiently 1-2-3 because of the RNG limiting the way our 1-2-3 works. But if you do use ammo, you don't get any heat.

[Greedalox]

And that's the part where it feels like the ammo and heat mechanic are working against one another. Without ammo, you can't efficiently 1-2-3 because of the RNG limiting the way our 1-2-3 works. But if you do use ammo, you don't get any heat.

It stops working against you and works only for you once you get Barrel Stablizer/Flame Thrower and stop accidentally overheating a lot. Quick Reload is a god send for not having to use Cooldown a lot- it reduces your heat by 10 and makes the next shot not give heat so it's effective at not going overboard on heat.

[Georashi]

It stops working against you and works only for you once you get Barrel Stablizer/Flame Thrower and stop accidentally overheating a lot. Quick Reload is a god send for not having to use Cooldown a lot- it reduces your heat by 10 and makes the next shot not give heat so it's effective at not going overboard on heat.

Yet flamethrower means getting close and standing still, not something you want or can do at any time during an encounter. I recall many times of frustration withy the old gauss barrel. Machinist is not a class build to stand still! The other is on a two minute cooldown. There will be times in an encounter where you will need to rely on 1-2-3ing your way up to 50 again, but we can't really do that without a DPS decrease of some sort.

It just seems counter intuitive. I'd say it'd be a lot easier if the 50 heat requirement was removed and you just had to manage the heat gauge in its entirety. Double the heat without a non-working downtime would make it far more efficient to get the ammo rotations in without having it work against you for half the gauge which means it also removes the wind up time when going from overheat to cooldown and back to gauss barrel.

[Muziko]

That was my first thought, but then ammo stopping and reducing the heat gauge seems really counter intuitive. Do I just not use ammo until I'm overheated? Do I just spam hot shot for the extra 5 heat gauge per GCD to get there faster? That's what I'm finding weird about it, it seems like we want to overheat but everything wants to stop that happening.

Take this with a grain of salt since I'm still leveling mine. My wildfire rotation will be something like this at 70 (tweaks to be had I'm sure)

http://ffxivrotations.com/s7v

The idea is to get close to overheat > setup ammo and buffs > let flamethrower take me into overheat > wildfire > use as many ogcd and GCD as I can fit in 10s

[Greedalox]

Take this with a grain of salt since I'm still leveling mine. My wildfire rotation will be something like this at 70 (tweaks to be had I'm sure)

http://ffxivrotations.com/s7v

The idea is to get close to overheat > setup ammo and buffs > let flamethrower take me into overheat > wildfire > use as many ogcd and GCD as I can fit in 10s

Your Wildfire will be big but your overall damage will go through the floor because after wildfire pops you had already used both of your best means of getting heat back to 50 after the 10 second delay on your Gauss Barrel.

[Muziko]

Your Wildfire will be big but your overall damage will go through the floor because after wildfire pops you had already used both of your best means of getting heat back to 50 after the 10 second delay on your Gauss Barrel.

That's a great point. I'll look into a better way to optimize it. Thanks =3
-keyo