Hot Shot is Ability Bloat

[Elnidfse]

If the goal is fun. And it's not fun to use it. That's a valid reason enough. I'm fine with maintenance skills. I love maintenance skills. But currently we have two of those built in our kit. Hotshot and our heat gauge. To say hotshot is outdated is an understatement. It has no special extra interactions. It's not built into a combo. It's just another maintenance ability that's not intuitive and has no special interactions. And it clashes with everything. It adding heat makes it even worse now than it was in 3.0 when juggling 80-90 range heat.

[Chiraisu]

I don't mind if they merge it with the old Lead Shot, or give it more of a utility that makes sustaining it more worthwhile. But calling it an ability bloat and wanting it gone purely for dislike of it is hardly valid reason for change.

Perhaps my title was a bit.. misleading. I merely meant that it was bloat in it's current form. If I had thought more of the title, rather than the contents of my original post, I'd likely not have titled the thread as such. Something more akin to "Possible Suggestions to make Hot Shot more fun", or something along those lines.

I fully believed it should be kept in, but at "least" changed up a bit. Make it more fun to press.

[Shurrikhan]

I wanted to highlight this first. You don't main it, yet you say one of the most basic skills, just like BRD's Straight Shot and DRG's Heavy Thrust - both of which increase your damage - is an ability bloat?

Technically a skill so strong and consistently useful that must always be used, without delay, nuance, or direct connection to any other skill, yet lacks any interesting mechanic of its own, is one most likely to be bloat. If SE is to be trusted in their alleged desire to reduce artificial difficulty and necessary status effect tracking, Hot Shot remains in order to be able to waste ammunition. That is its mechanic—to make you think about your ammunition. With the removal of Lead Shot, Cleaner Shot and now Cooldown are the only other contributors to this, and the latter probably ought to be combined with Hot Shot as in PvP.

It's not that it's difficult to keep up Hot Shot.

It's not that Hot Shot doesn't contribute immense amounts of damage.

It's that it could as easily be removed (or changed from its current form) and the surrounding toolkit refit and fewer would likely feel their engagement with the class reduced than increased.

[Inosaska]

Come play Samurai and have fun keeping up 2 buffs that could have easily been built into the job itself but are not and most of the time you don't even finish the full combo as you need to keep those 2 buffs up constantly in order to maximize your damage on the job. That is my only gripe with my job otherwise I like everything about it.

[MiruWest]

Come play Samurai and have fun keeping up 2 buffs that could have easily been built into the job itself but are not and most of the time you don't even finish the full combo as you need to keep those 2 buffs up constantly in order to maximize your damage on the job. That is my only gripe with my job otherwise I like everything about it.

It is nowhere near as hard as you're making it out to be lol

[Inosaska]

It is nowhere near as hard as you're making it out to be lol

It's not hard at all that's the thing but its just annoying that it was done this way lol

[Shurrikhan]

If they remove Hot Shot, then why not get rid of any DPS boosting skills that must be kept refreshed on all jobs?

This would depend on those skills' windows of interactions with other abilities. If you have an option for trade-off between its uptime (usually by clipping early) and getting more into your rotation, it becomes interesting. Sadly, these considerations are usually liminal, lasting only so long as, say, Skill Speed takes to devalue on the way to 70, or until Lance Mastery II. At best, there's oGCD weight in determining whether to clip early or reapply late. But at least there's generally something there to come into consideration. When that fails to be the case, as with Hot Shot, then the skill becomes especially uninteresting. The dull parts are often what make the interesting parts as interesting as they are, but that's do to exact, whether designed or coincidental, interaction between each, usually through resultant windows of trade-off that can lead to a potential divergence or adaptation in rotation.

One could argue, from the same coin, that Hot Shot is simply too easy to manage. One can, and should in the long run, simply shift other skills over by the GCD in order to prevent ever having to decide between its uptime and its use in order to maximize its effect within one's rotation. It is used before either Reload as not to consume ammo. Ammo waste is the threat, but it's essentially a null one. As such, it becomes purely rotational. It becomes stale. (Before you ask rhetorically whether should all fixed rotations then be scrapped allow for more variation, I'll just say yes.)

[Chiraisu]

It's not hard at all that's the thing but its just annoying that it was done this way lol

The primary outlier difference here is that your buffs are still within your main rotation. Whether or not one should argue that those buffs have a long enough duration is what you should really be asking.

Hot shot has trivial play into mechanics. It's basically a heavy thrust.