Do MCH's oGCD abilities seem unresponsive to anyone else?

[Spiriel_Basanda]

The only bug like thing I've encountered with oGCDs is when I go to a Hunt in the Lochs and engage it. Barrel Stabilizer won't realize I'm in combat or something and I can't use it, even though I'm shooting. I tend to have to sit there with Flamethrower up for awhile just to get to Heated shots

[Kitfox]

snip

Well, I mean you don't have to have a 10 second prep if you choose not to. You can fish for procs before WF comes up and Reload within WF with zero prep time, and I really don't know why you would use FT on single target ever, besides lining up an opener for Trick Attack. I don't raid with a NIN so I don't even use FT on the opener.

10 second window is still better than 20, even if both are clunky in some situations.

[Elnidfse]

fishing for procs

a 12.5% chance you get a wildfire that will still be weaker than a Wildfire that uses prep time. In other words out of 10 wildfires, you'll average 1 wildfire an encounter where dream conditions come off. Unless you mean just procing a first shot and then reloading after that, which is a 50% chance. Versus just using your dag on prep time and getting a max potency wildfire every time.

why you would use FT on single target ever

2 ticks of flamethrower does not eat a GCD (as you weave this) and will probably not eat an AA, and even if it does you make that back up in the use of another cooldown during your wildfire window (85 AA damage versus a 230 cooldown). And if you're timing is on point and lag is not an issue, you can get 3 cooldowns in your WF, using BS after the third one that takes place in the .5 second window before explosion to bring you back up to 50. Even if we're taking your opener into consideration you would either do a later WF to get your CD323CD or you will do a mildfire which starts the WF at second step. In either case you would still burn up 2 ticks between GCDs...

Reloading during Wildfire
And on the assumption that you ever reload in the middle of that wildfire you're potentially throwing a shot away on a cooldown depending on where you get that shot at, assuming you even cooldown at all. And even on the assumption that you WF out of the window your ammo will be married to every WF. To explain: because you used it for your 121, it means that if you don't drop a reload (which you shouldn't) or fish for procs during your opener (which you shouldn't) your reload will be married to the exact same spot in your rotation barring jumps from fight start to fight finish. This includes preloading 2-3 shots to force a 121 after you hotshot. Delaying it by a GCD adds up quickly and doubly so for QR because the more CD's you waste on random chance the more realistic losing the use of one during an entire fight becomes.

Contrast the 90 second wild/mild alternative:
Even if you flub up your ammo you can still afford to wait a GCD or two on your wild or mild and still hit max potency. What's more there's no encounter design where you're going to be able to recoup the pps that HW MCH would be doing in similar gear based solely on the 10 second advantage that is made irrelevant because of current encounter design. Susano will still give you (a) WF pre sword and 0 WF during it. Lakshmi will still give you 0 WF per add and no WF (that uses rDPS increases) pre confusion. Alte Roite does no mechanic which you have to respect. V2S will be flinging you up regardless, and V3S adds die too quickly for use of either WF.

Fishing for a proc for WF is potentially the most disastrous waste of time imaginable. And given the smaller window and smaller cooldown, can lead to use losing a QR usage, a WF usage, or both. Not to mention desyncing you from rDPS increases, including your own hypercharge.


Lastly:

10 second window is still better than 20, even if both are clunky in some situations.

Where are you even getting 20 from. Wildfire was a 15 second cooldown. I initially thought you meant 20 because you hot and lead before it. But that's twice you don't add that (being hot) to the 10 s required for SB WF.

[RichardButte]

You're hitting your oGCDs before the previous animation lock is done, so they don't go off. Pay attention to the timing. You can only hit 2 oGCDs max between your GCDs and only one during Rapid Fire. All abilities have variable lengths of animation lock that prevents using other abilities at the same time. It also depends on your latency how fast the server registers that you've hit an ability so your mileage may vary.

...Then the game needs a timer similar to the current GCD indicator that appears over oGCD abilities to indicate when they're not available.

The entire purpose of the GCD spinner is to show players when pressing a button at that time isn't actually going to do anything. If they can't do this, then they at LEAST need to display an error message and play a sound when we hit an oGCD ability that doesn't activate.

[Kitfox]

snip

It's not nearly as bad of a loss as you think, although I actually had to spreadsheet it out with the setup and one GCD after WF for a 9 GCD segment. My hypothesis was that using your ammo inside WF would be a bigger gain than using it outside of WF because of the 25 potency gain per ammo, but turns out that it's probably a loss.

Fishing can be made more efficient by using QR before the 121 setup while not losing a usage inside WF, giving you 4 different scenarios, best one being 84 potency ahead of "optimal" WF and the worst one being a 75 potency loss. Statistical average comes down to about 20 potency loss against the optimal cd323cd with Reloaded 121 setup. However, this doesn't include carry-over procs from before the 121 setup, which you could technically have and would skew the average towards a smaller loss, but I don't really know how to math that out and I'm too tired to think about it for now. But I concede that fishing is probably a loss.

I admit that I'm probably wrong when I completely ignore FT usage, but I consider it a very minimal gain at best. At 60 potency per tick, and each tick pushing back an AA, results in a 27 potency gain if you don't lose any GCDs (I think AAs are 100 potency / 3 seconds, if I remember correct?). However, I'm fairly sure I only get one tick off between GCDs because of the activation time, though with different latency I imagine your mileage may vary, 2 ticks at most. You also can't just assume the heat gives you a full extra CD to work with. At best that CD would've replaced a Heated Split Shot, resulting in a 40 potency gain, not 230. Gaining an extra CD and the oGCD dmg I would consider FT a 67 potency gain at most, although I don't think you actually need the 1-2 tick of heat to execute the normal cd323cd WF. But I mean, I guess it'd still be a 27-52 potency oGCD?

WF stops registering dmg around 1 sec on the timer so you won't get a 6th GCD in it without 2300+ sks, which admittedly is possible, but not worth it since sks doesn't boost turret damage or Rapid Fire at all.

So yeah, I guess good WFs do come with a 3 GCD setup, 4 if you include Hot Shot, making it a 20 sec burst phase. The 20 sec came from the 15-20 sec suggestion from before in this thread though, I didn't really play HW machinist much so I don't even remember how it was back then.

The way I setup the CD rotation was with this opener (http://ffxivrotations.com/ybh) and basically repeat the same CD order every time only moving Ricochet and Reassemble around to crit a Clean Shot.