MCH Overheat should activate automatically

[Shurrikhan]

Wait? You didn't like automatically sacrificing an animation-lock's worth of Overheated's 8s duration, dropping it from max 6 (8/1.5) shots to max 5 (slightly under 7.5/1.5)?!

Personally, I'd slightly prefer a different tack, if only because I dislike button-bloat:

• Hypercharge Overheats your next 6 shots; 12s max duration.
• Heat Blast, once acquired, replaces Hypercharge while Overheated.
• Auto Crossbow, once acquired, replaces Spread Shot / Scattergun while Overheated.

[IronIngot]

Wait? You didn't like automatically sacrificing an animation-lock's worth of Overheated's 8s duration, dropping it from max 6 (8/1.5) shots to max 5 (slightly under 7.5/1.5)?!

Personally, I'd slightly prefer a different tack, if only because I dislike button-bloat:

• Hypercharge Overheats your next 6 shots; 12s max duration.
• Heat Blast, once acquired, replaces Hypercharge while Overheated.
• Auto Crossbow, once acquired, replaces Spread Shot / Scattergun while Overheated.

Yeah removing the animation and giving X amount of stacks that last Y time (like WAR Inner Release) to use Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow is also a good idea.

How about this:
- Get to 50 heat
- Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow become available
- When used they consume 50 heat and fire off right away
- You get 5(?) overheat charges lasting ~15s
- Each use of Heat Blast or Auto Crossbow consumes 1 charge
- When you consume all the stacks you can use another 50 heat or continue your rotation

[Shurrikhan]

How about this:
- Get to 50 heat
- Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow become available
- When used they consume 50 heat and fire off right away
- You get 5(?) overheat charges lasting ~15s
- Each use of Heat Blast or Auto Crossbow consumes 1 charge

It's 2 buttons, up from 1, but the added flexibility would definitely be worth it, imo! Definitely add some further audio and visual element though so that you know when you're down to 1-2 shots, though, or else people might accidentally spam into a second round of Overheated that they'd had meant to save for raid buffs. (We see similar protection for stack-based systems already applied to all but Requiescat-Confiteor.)

Now, the harder question, though... could we ever get back some manner of Heat mechanic that gives MCH more to do than just 1-2-3 and hit CDs as they refresh?... >.>

:: Final bit: Let's please let the reduced-GCD of Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow scale with GCD speed.

[Archwizard]

Wait? You didn't like automatically sacrificing an animation-lock's worth of Overheated's 8s duration, dropping it from max 6 (8/1.5) shots to max 5 (slightly under 7.5/1.5)?!

Not to burst that particular bubble, but without the animation, they would probably reduce the duration of Overheated anyway...

[Shurrikhan]

Not to burst that particular bubble, but without the animation, they would probably reduce the duration of Overheated anyway...

They could reduce it down to its current shot count of 5 (and suggestions thus far have followed that line of thought) or retain its initially apparent maximum of 6, since MCH is undertuned anyways. I prefer 5, myself, if only because it starts to feel a bit too long/spammy thereafter for a "burst"-like mechanic.

Then they should have already reduced it by 1s to prevent you fitting in a 6th GCD.

It already does, just not in a way that's obvious to those who forget that the activation animation has an uptime cost of its own. It's fine, and the extra second (putting actual duration at 7.5, instead of 6.5) is probably appreciated by some high-ping players; it's just not as intuitive as it could be.

(That, and roundtrip ping times being added atop animation uptime costs shouldn't be a thing regardless.)

[Archwizard]

It already does, just not in a way that's obvious to those who forget that the activation animation has an uptime cost of its own. It's fine, and the extra second (putting actual duration at 7.5, instead of 6.5) is probably appreciated by some high-ping players; it's just not as intuitive as it could be.

(That, and roundtrip ping times being added atop animation uptime costs shouldn't be a thing regardless.)

The problem is that designing any high APM job is going to be punishing to high ping players -- you cannot eat your cake AND still have it too.
Even if you remove the Overheat window, you'd still have the Wildfire window which was designed with Overheat's APM boost in mind. The ping weight on MCH is reduced, but still exists within the kit -- unless you redesign Wildfire as well, but then you would unravel the necessity of Overheat creating fast action windows in the first place.

I'm all for OP's suggestion to reduce button bloat, but I think trying to make MCH more "ping friendly" might be overstepping a bit, inflating a simple QoL suggestion into a full rework.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is that designing any high APM job is going to be punishing to high ping players -- you cannot eat your cake AND still have it too.

Not really, no. Actions per minute has nothing to do with it. The sole factor there is GCD-in-animations-time, much like the case with setting a good duration for a skill not to feel overly ping-punishing.

Again, though, without XIV's coding costing roundtrip ping atop the .5s animation lock, Overheated's 1.5 second GCDs would be enough to support double-weaving. (See FFXIVAlexander with effective ping set to 0; it can double-weave a Heat Blast GCD.)

I'm all for OP's suggestion to reduce button bloat, but I think trying to make MCH more "ping friendly" might be overstepping a bit, inflating a simple QoL suggestion into a full rework.

That depends entirely on your view of what constitutes a "full" rework. Was Delirium "fully" reworked when it was put on stacks, instead of just getting scaled down to a 5s duration to fit its new 60s CD? Was that change, IR's, Bunshin's, and Requiescat's likewise "overstepping". Should new SMN have gotten a brief duration in which to cast its summon-based spells instead of stacks?

Ultimately it's just a matter of which is more fun for the most players. Durations give urgency, often at little frustration so long as they're not particularly susceptible to ping and are both well past a given GCD threshold at normal SkS and far enough away from their next GCD tier as not to encourage reaching it and thereby making it tight again. Personally, I prefer that for many skills, including even Blood Weapon (i.e., giving it 12s duration [effectively just under 11.5s], still 5 hits, but far more comfortable, over giving 5 stacks of effect). But, stacks come with added flexibility that would well suit MCH's theme, kit, and button-flow (especially since its unavoidable 1-2-3 combo still needlessly uses 3 separate keys and they are not replaced by Heat Blast).