Complete MCH change…

[Mikey_R]

They do take exactly at best 10s, 1 GCD happens at 0s, 1 at 2.5s, 1 at 5s, 1 at 7.5 and 1 at 10s. A little faster if you're the fastest machinist in the west.

If you want to go that route, Flame Thrower would also get a GCD at 10s.

[Valence]

If you want to go that route, Flame Thrower would also get a GCD at 10s.

It does, it ticks for 11 ticks over 10 full seconds, with a first tick at 0 and a last tick at 10.

Or you can also compare in pps, with FT doing 80 pps and scattergun 60.

[Mikey_R]

It does, it ticks for 11 ticks over 10 full seconds, with a first tick at 0 and a last tick at 10.

Or you can also compare in pps, with FT doing 80 pps and scattergun 60.

You've missed the point, so I will explain it in a bit more detail.

By your initial comparison, you compared 5 GCDs of Scattergun to 1 cast of Flamethrower, with the consideration that the 5 casts of Scattergun only take 10 seconds total to use. This is false as you have to take into account the full GCD time, so 5 casts of Scattergun takes 12.5 seconds (at base GCD). You use the 5th at 10 seconds, but you can only cast again after 12.5. This is why I say Flamethrower should get another GCD, so that the total time for it would be 12.5 seconds, the same as scattergun spam.

So, the fair comparison is as UkcsAlias says.

To further prove the point, imagine, for a second, we wanted to take it over 20 seconds (imagine FT has no cooldown period for the sake of argument). You should be able to, in theory, take the current 10 second result and double it to get a total of 20 seconds. So, Flamethrower is cast 2 times. However, how many GCDs of Scattergun can fit into 20 seconds? At 2.5, dividing it through, you get 8 casts. However, if we take your 5 casts per 10 seconds, you would get 10 casts over 20 seconds, which isn't even remotely possible.

So, 4 casts of Scattergun equals 1 full cast of Flamethrower for a fair comparison.