Did Machinist just get nerfed?

[Elnidfse]

You can use Quick Reload to guarantee a Slug Shot proc without affecting your heat now (specifically, no loss on use, but no gain on the next shot). You shouldn't need to have to spam Split Shot for that reason.

He's talking about in an optimal rotation. A lul between a slugshot proc to cleanshot used to be ensured by a cooldown in between. Now you can't do that because you need that heat for your overheat.

[Leticro]

I did a lot of math for the overheat mechanic and this is my post for the results. But basically, now that we can overheat every wildfire with barrel stabilizer to recover, I found it is worth it to do so every wildfire as it is a 3-5% damage increase overall. Of course this is assuming your heat is high like 90+ by the time your wildfire is available so you can overheat. If it's 85 or lower, I'd recommend not overheating when wildfire is available.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

This is actually what I started doing, but without the math, ever since the patch dropped. I wasn't sure it was optimal, but the flow of it was what felt right, and the damage consistent or higher assuming no mistakes made. Brick my way up to 95 through the shot combo, reload and prep for Wildfire, refresh Hot Shot into Overheat and perform Wildfire rotation. By the time Gauss Barrel could be re-equipped, Barrel Stabilizer comes off cd within 2 seconds of it.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Overheating is still worthless and I honestly find myself ignoring it all together with no apparent downside stemming from that decision.

I'm going to echo this sentiment. I've had overall higher damage just staying in the heated range, rather than trying to OH for every WF. I'm not sure what it is, but even if I do the exact same thing, I can guarantee my non OH WF deals on average 4k more damage in comparison to my OH WF, while pulling off the exact same GCD's and OCD's. Spent hours working and trying stuff out, and OH never worked out to be a gain in a live fight, just a loss.

ETA: Above WF #'s are at ilvl310, so probably low, but it doesn't change the fact overheating feels less worth it than a haircut for a bald man.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

That's interesting because I've always utilized the overheat and hit the same numbers as the preferred "no-overheat" rotation. Even before 4.05. Plus several good sources have stated that overall the difference between is 3-5%. Might simply just be 2 roads to the same point, but it IS an increase, even if minor. SE may wanna play around with the numbers again and give either Hot Shot or overheating a buff to make it more of a clear increase.

[Guulu]

SE want us to go overheat every WF with BS set to 60s cooldown, but I usually get to 95 heat like 6 second before WF and I just feel bad either not going overheat or use FT to go overheat from like 80 heat. That is a GCD lost and I don't know if the damage gain during WF make up for that. DPS is increased like 150(?) but it is still far from enough. I'm parsing between 3.2k to 3.7k on O1S and O2S, depends on the damage buff from team. But I just feel that for so many times if I'm any other DPS other than poor SMN it would've been an easy clear. That total ~200 dps gained from hypercharge hardly make MCH a okay job for raid now especially you need like DRG and NIN to hit decent damage. Almost all of other job can sustain 3.7k+ damage on its own except for SMN and MCH, this is just sad.

[corey1]

- Change Cooldown to be an oGCD ability instead of a weaponskill. Reduce potency to compensate. Maybe make it only work when above 50 heat.
- Change the 1-2-3 to gain more heat per activation (like 15 or something), to align with the change to Cooldown. Don't change the heat gained with ammo usage.
- Make Flamethrower quicker, or something like allowing me to move while casting it. This would make it a choice between getting to 50 heat for single target or AoE situations. You wouldn't need to double-use them since it'd be fairly quick to get to 100 heat.

This way, MCH gets what it should have had: 1 mechanic acting as 2 mechanics. You Overheat when you want to Wildfire, and you manage heat while WF is on cooldown.

[Fannah]

About Flamethrower, it would be nice to have like an effect of Heavy 40-50% to move very slowly, it would be still role play like the weapon is powerful and dangerous to use. And at least, if they really don't want us to move, we should be able to just turn a bit to aim better.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

You Overheat when you want to Wildfire, and you manage heat while WF is on cooldown.

This was my original understanding of the new systems before SB released. For the most part, it's been my approach all along, and it produces good results. Probably not the best, but I saw the right damage numbers floating up, so I stuck with it.