Low level mech gameplay?

[Kitfox]

snip

That is a very confusing way to think about the shot potencies and ammo. You should never hold Quick Reload or Reload, purely because of rotational reasons but I believe this to be true also for potency reasons.

Here's a simpler way to look at the potencies. The average potency of the shot combo is (160 x 4 + 200x 2 + 240) / 7 = ~183 (or 213 heated shots). Ammo increases the potency of the shot by 30 and the chance to get a proc by 50%. A proc increases the potency of the next shot by 40. Therefore Quick Reload is worth 30 + 40 x 0.5 = 50 potency, as long as it's used on Split Shot or Slug Shot to gain a proc. The reason why the proc gain is only 40 potency regardless if ammo is used on either of them, is because there is a base chance to get a proc anyway, so it's not really fair to compare the gains strictly to Split Shot. While it's true that the gain from Slug Shot to Clean Shot is greater than Split Shot to Slug Shot, there's a 50% opportunity cost associated with fishing for the Slug Shot so while the gain is twice as big, the opportunity cost of the initial Slug proc mitigates it completely. So when looking at the gain on average, it doesn't matter which one is used, and delaying the usage makes it a definite loss.

Delaying Quick Reload to fish for a Slug→Clean combination would cause a loss of at least one usage within the 60s loop when avoiding delaying other cooldowns and it would have to be worth more than completely missing out on that one usage. I really doubt this to be the case although I gave up trying to make a more accurate model out of the RNG trees.

Reload is worth three times that, but only if used without procs, in reality it's a bit less. The chance of having no procs loaded is 4 / 7 = ~57% as per the RNG distribution of the shots in vacuum, so 43% of the time when Reload becomes ready you will lose out on the proc potency on one of the ammos. All other proc scenarios besides the no-procs one lead to ammo being spent on Clean Shot. So the real worth of Reload is around 2 x 50 + 40 x 0.5 x 4 / 7 = ~141.

The reason why you can't delay Reload for a no-procs situation is again rotational, because you want to align all buffs for the Wildfire window and there's a very big chance that Reload would be delayed for multiple gcds, again delaying the burst window and the rest of the ogcds. This isn't worth it due to losing usages over the fight and missing the benefits of raid buff windows.

I'm sure it's possible make better and more accurate models for shots potencies, but I doubt it would change the optimal usage of the abilities simply because the timers align perfectly with burst windows only when used strictly on cooldown.

TL;DR: For general ammo usage outside of Wildfire sequence: Use Quick Reload ammo on either Split Shot or procced Slug Shot whenever the cooldown is ready. Use Reload ammo on Split Shot or procced Slug Shot when possible whenever the cooldown is ready and regardless of proc scenario. Only use ammo on Clean Shot if both procs are already loaded, it's the highest potency option when procs can't be gained.