5.X Machinist Guide
Introduction
Machinist is a fast-paced ranged dps that specializes in abusing raid buffs with flexible burst timings and maintaining uninterrupted dps through most mechanics thanks to their mobility. This is a guide summarizing how each ability should be used, how the rotation is structured and how to go about evaluating gear sets.
Weaponskills
| Single Target | Potency | Base Recast |
| Heated Split Shot | 200 | 2.50 |
| Heated Slug Shot | 300 | 2.50 |
| Heated Clean Shot | 400 | 2.50 |
| Drill | 700 | 20.00 (8 x 2.50) |
| Air Anchor | 700 | 40.00 (16 x 2.50) |
| Heat Blast | 200 | 1.50 |
| AoE | Potency | Base Recast |
| Spread Shot | 180 | 2.50 |
| Bioblaster | 60 + 300 DoT | 20.00 (8 x 2.50) |
| Flamethrower | 100 x 11 | 60.00 (24 x 2.50) |
| Auto Crossbow | 180 | 1.50 |
Heated Shots / Spread Shot
Heated shots automatically replace the old unheated shots through leveling traits. They generate heat required for Hypercharge and Clean Shot additionally generates 10 battery for Automaton Queen. The combo is 100% guaranteed so it works like a normal 1>2>3 weaponskill combo now without any of the old random procs.
The combo timer is 15s so it’s easy to maintain it through Hypercharge windows and short phase transitions. However, if you try to carry your combo through a combination of Hypercharge, Drill and Air Anchor, you’re likely to break your combo without a lot of skill speed and even then it’s a very tight squeeze. Take care to avoid this alignment unless you’re sure you can finish your combo before it.
Spread Shot is the alternative for AoE and should be used against 3 targets or more.
Drill / Bioblaster
Drill is a powerful new GCD that forms the backbone of our new rotation. It should always be used as close to cooldown as possible, which means every 8th GCD since its recast timer scales with skill speed like all other GCDs. Due to its potency and recast we pair it with Reassemble for a critical direct hit. Drill’s damage registers slowly so it should be avoided as the last GCD in Wildfire. The delay is roughly 0.30s when compared to heated shots.
Bioblaster is an AoE weaponskill that shares recast with Drill and should be used instead of Drill against 2 targets or more.
Air Anchor
Air Anchor is another powerful GCD used every 16th GCD. It generates 20 battery so it should also used as often as possible to allow as many Queen summons as possible. It’s also possible to use Reassemble on Air Anchor for the same potency gain as Drill, but the cooldown doesn’t align for it properly so it should only happen rarely on special occasions. Like Drill, Air Anchor’s damage registers with a delay so it should be avoided as the last GCD in Wildfire.
Heat Blast / Auto Crossbow
Heat Blast is the new spammable GCD unlocked by Hypercharge. Due to having a short recast timer of 1.5 seconds and having the additional effect of reducing the cooldown timers of Gauss Round and Ricochet, we want to spam it exclusively during Hypercharge. The short recast also makes it ideal for pairing Hypercharge with Wildfire. The effective potency of Heat Blast is 20 potency higher than listed because of Hypercharge’s additional effect of +20 potency per single target weaponskill.
Auto Crossbow is similarly an AoE version of Heat Blast but does not affect Gauss Round and Ricochet timers. It should be used instead of Heat Blast against 3 target or more.
Flamethrower
Flamethrower ticks once per second and is used as AoE filler move against 2 targets or more when Bioblaster or Auto Crossbow aren’t available. While it triggers the GCD of weaponskills, it’s actually classified as an ability so it doesn’t count towards Wildfire. It’s more powerful than Spread Shot but weaker than Auto Crossbow so you want to skip using it if the fight is about to end and it would push you out of a Hypercharge window. Otherwise, let it burn full time, or until you have to move out of AoEs.
It’s also possible use Flamethrower during encounter downtime to get a well timed (or lucky) tick of damage before re-engaging a target as they become targetable again before your first GCD. This requires positioning so that your Flamethrower will hit the target as they land back into the battlefield and good (lucky) timing so that your first attack isn’t delayed for the sake of waiting for a damage tick. It’s a very minor optimization but something that can be taken advantage of if there are no other good opportunities for Flamethrower.
Abilities
| Name | Effect | Recast / Cost |
| Gauss Round | 150 potency | 30.00 (3 charges) |
| Ricochet | 150 + 75 potency AoE | 30.00 (3 charges) |
| Hypercharge | Unlocks Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow+20 potency / weaponskill | 50 Heat |
| Barrel Stabilizer | Increases Heat by 50 | 120.00 |
| Wildfire | 200 potency / weaponskill | 120.00 |
| Reassemble | Critical Direct Hit | 55.00 |
| Summon Automaton Queen | Summons Queen | 50-100 Battery |
Gauss Round / Ricochet
Gauss Rounds and Ricochets are now your flexible oGCD damage dump. They can hold up to 3 charges so can you can think of them as a 90 second resource where each usage costs 30 seconds of a timer that recharges overtime. Additionally Heat Blast restores 15 seconds of the timer per usage for both of them.
Most of your charges should be used before Hypercharge to avoid overcapping on the resource. At maximum, you should have 2 of one and 1 of the other charges in store and about 20 seconds left on the cooldown timers to avoid overcapping. This still means that each Heat Blast must be followed by one of the oGCDs. The safer general rule is to have only one of each charge or less. If you enter Hypercharge with no charges left, it’s still possible to overcap depending on how much you have left on your cooldown timers. To make sure overcapping is avoided, at least one Gauss Round and Ricochet must be used. This means the job is still quite ping dependent due to the forced oGCD weaving with 1.5s GCDs.
Hypercharge
Hypercharge is the new overheating function that costs 50 heat to use. It is no longer a damage multiplier but instead it unlocks Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow weaponskills. The cast should be weaved as late as possible into the GCD cycle to allow for as many as possible Heat Blasts or Auto Crossbows under the effect. Has an additional effect of +20 potency per single target weaponskill so it’s still useful while leveling before you’ve learned Heat Blast.
There’s quite a bit of freedom with how you can use your Hypercharge windows but typically you should check for 4 conditions before doing so:
- Drill and Air Anchor have more than 8 seconds on their cooldown.
- You will not break your combo.
- You have no more than 1 Gauss Round and Ricochet charges stored.
- You are using Wildfire or will have enough heat for it later when you need it.
Due to the 1.5s GCD during Hypercharge when using Heat Blast or Auto Crossbow, you can only use one oGCD between each GCD. Do not attempt to double weave as it will delay your next GCD, most likely resulting in significant dps losses due to missing Heat Blasts within the Hypercharge window or GCDs within Wildfire.
Barrel Stabilizer
Increases the heat gauge by 50. It is best used to guarantee enough heat for the Hypercharge window paired with Wildfire. There’s an awkward alignment that happens in most rotation lineups at around 2 minutes and then every 6 minutes where you’re forced to overcap your heat if the fight has full uptime and you’re using Barrel Stabilizer on cooldown. Usually this will not matter since the lost heat is unlikely to result in an extra Hypercharge window, but each encounter should be looked at individually to see if this will be the case.
Wildfire / Detonator
Wildfire’s potency is now increased by a flat 200 potency for every weaponskill landed during the effect. Weaponskills with the shortest recast timers are Heat Blast and Auto Crossbow, so Wildfire should always be paired with Hypercharge for the best effect.
Similar to Hypercharge usage, Wildfire cast should be delayed roughly 30% into the GCD when double weaved with Hypercharge to make sure you have the maximum amount of time to land your 6 GCDs into the effect. If Wildfire is used as a separate weave, it should be used at the very end of the GCD window exactly like Hypercharge, but this method is a bit tighter on the timing that properly timing the double weave as you will have one regular speed GCD within the duration instead of only 1.5s GCDs, though you don’t lose time with the early Wildfire weave.
The new Wildfire acts similarly to a DoT in that its damage is boosted by skill speed and it snapshots buffs at the time of application and not at detonation. However, it can not critical or direct hit so any buffs that boost those chances have no effect on it.
Detonator should never be used to end Wildfire early unless it allows you to gain an extra usage in the encounter.
Reassemble
Guarantees a critical direct hit for the next weaponskill. It is best paired with every 3rd Drill cast which means it won’t be used on cooldown but rather every 60 seconds to keep it aligned with raid buff windows. It can also be used on Air Anchor for the same potency gain but Anchor’s cooldown timer makes it unsuitable for regular pairing.
For AoE, Reassemble should be used on Spread Shot or Auto Crossbow when against 4 targets or more. It doesn’t affect the DoT portion of Bioblaster so it should never be paired with it.
Automaton Queen / Queen Overdrive
The battery gauge is used to summon Automaton Queen (or Rook Autoturret below level 80). Queen’s potency scales linearly with battery gauge and is worth roughly 94% of player potency due to pet scaling. You can summon it at 50 battery and for every 10 battery above it, you will gain another Arm Punch and more potency on the Pile Bunker finisher. This means that as long as Queen stays out for the full duration, the damage per battery spent is the same. Queen mirrors all the buffs except Dragon Sight that the player is affected with in real time so it can be summoned freely to take advantage of raid buffs at any time.
You will generate roughly 70-80 battery per minute, so to take advantage of raid buff windows, you can use that and Reassemble or Wildfire timer as a guideline when to summon Queen. Below you can see the durations for each battery level.
Queen Overdrive should not be used manually to trigger Pile Bunker unless the target will die or leave the battlefield before it goes off naturally because you lose the damage from skipped Arm Punches.
Queen Summary
| Battery | Punches | Duration | Pile Bunker | Total Potency | Pot / Battery |
| 50 | 5 | 12.5 | 400 | 1150 | 23.00 |
| 60 | 6 | 14.0 | 480 | 1380 | 23.00 |
| 70 | 7 | 15.5 | 560 | 1610 | 23.00 |
| 80 | 8 | 17.0 | 640 | 1840 | 23.00 |
| 90 | 9 | 18.5 | 720 | 2070 | 23.00 |
| 100 | 10 | 20.0 | 800 | 2300 | 23.00 |
Notes on Rook Autoturret
Before hitting level 80 you’re stuck with Rook. The usage is similar to Queen but some of its design oversights make it work a bit unintuitively. Namely, the 3 second attack interval causes summoning at 70 and 90 battery to slightly more valuable than other values. It’s not a big difference though, and for leveling content you don’t really have to worry about it, but for the sake of completion the stats are as follows.
Rook Summary
| Battery | Shots | Duration* | Overdrive | Total Potency | Pot / Battery |
| 50 | 2 | 6.0 | 200 | 360 | 7.20 |
| 60 | 3 | 9.0 | 240 | 480 | 8.00 |
| 70 | 4 | 12.0 | 280 | 600 | 8.57 |
| 80 | 4 | 12.0 | 320 | 640 | 8.00 |
| 90 | 5 | 15.0 | 360 | 760 | 8.44 |
| 100 | 5 | 15.0 | 400 | 800 | 8.00 |
*duration based on shot counts, might not reflect in-game behavior
Rotation
General Purpose Opener
(Prepull Reassemble + Tincture) → Drill (Gauss Round + Ricochet) → Split Shot (Barrel Stabilize) → Slug Shot → Air Anchor (Gauss Round + Ricochet) → Clean Shot (Gauss Round + Hypercharge) → Heat Blast (Wildfire) → Heat Blast (Ricochet) → Heat Blast (Gauss Round) → Heat Blast (Ricochet) → Heat Blast (Gauss Round) → Drill (Ricochet + Gauss Round) → Split Shot (Ricochet) → Continue
This is a general purpose opener. It’s a compromise between making the most out of critical and direct hit buffs while also landing Wildfire within the prime raid buff window for the best multiplier snapshot. Raid Optimization section covers opener modifications in detail.
The 8 GCD Loop
The new rotation can be simplified into a loop consisting of 8 GCDs. Drills and Air Anchors form the rigid backbone of the weaponskill rotation. The 120 second abilities Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire along with Reassemble 60 second cooldown form the rigid oGCD elements. Hypercharge windows as well as Gauss Round and Ricochet usages are somewhat flexible. As an example, we’ll go over the general opener with this concept. The opener leads to the following loop.
Core Loop
The Split Shot icon represents a random heated shot here and the sequence loops back to Drill at the end. Air Anchor is replaced by another heated shot every other loop. Hypercharge can be used freely to replace a set of 3 heated shots. An example of this can be seen when we add oGCDs to the mix.
Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire should ideally always be used in the same position in the loop. Gauss Rounds and Ricochets are not marked here for the sake of clarity, but they can be used as needed to make use of raid buffs and to avoid overcapping when the oGCD space isn’t reserved for the 60/120s cooldowns.
General Priority
- Use Drill and Air Anchor on cooldown.
- Use Gauss Round and Ricochet charges to avoid overcapping charges.
- Use Hypercharge between Drills and Air Anchors to avoid overcapping heat.
- Use Queen to avoid overcapping battery.
- Use Reassemble, Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire on cooldown.
- Try to hit as many of your abilities within raid buffs windows as possible.
AoE Priority and Breakpoints
| Ability | Targets | Time | Potency | PPS per target* |
| Bioblaster | 2 or more | 2.50 | 60+300 DoT | 144.00 |
| Auto Crossbow | 3 or more | 1.50 | 180 | 120.00 |
| Flamethrower | 2 or more | 11.00 | 100 | 100.00 |
| Spread Shot | 3 or more | 180 | 180 + Heat | 76.80** |
*Auto-attacks not included
**Includes approximated potency per heat
- Use Bioblaster instead of Drill against 2 targets or more.
- Use Auto Crossbow instead of Heat Blast against 3 targets or more.
- Use Flamethrower instead of Spread Shot against 2 target or more.
- Use Spread Shot instead of Heated Combo against 3 targets or more.
- Use Reassemble on Spread Shot or Auto Crossbow against 4 targets or more.
- Air Anchor is worth using up to 4 targets when accounting for battery gains and good for Reassemble below 4 targets when Drill’s cooldown is being utilized by Bioblaster.
Optimization
This section is lengthy and borders on rambling to provide context and insight, but understanding interactions between the skillset and raid buffs will allow you to make your own decision about openers and rotation customization for most scenarios.
Basics
Let’s first get acquainted with some numbers. At base 2.50 GCD heated shots are worth roughly 400 potency with potency from battery and heat on single target Hypercharge included. This makes Drills a gain of 300 potency over heated gcds and Reassembled Drill roughly 720 potency gain. Air Anchors is a gain of 760 potency if the battery gained can be spent. Based on this we can get a baseline estimation of how much potency each usage of Drill and Anchor is worth should we gain any extras.
We rarely have to choose between an extra usage or raid buff alignment with Drill because opening with one will still allow the 2nd one to hit the tail end of the raid buff window while also ensuring the best chances for an extra usage. However, the placement of Reassemble might be worth looking into.
When paired with Drill or Air Anchor, Reassemble is worth roughly 420 potency and it would make sense to place it into the primary raid buff window. But since Reassemble guarantees a critical direct hit, it essentially gains nothing from critical and direct hit buffs. If those are the only buff types offered by the party composition, it’s actually worth it to place Reassemble on a Drill outside of it.
Air Anchor is one of the main moving parts in the rotation although it’s married quite closely to the Drill timing to allow enough room for Hypercharge windows. The short cooldown means that using it early in the opener instead of aligning it for raid buffs can often gain an extra usage in the encounter.
Next, let’s look at what kind of gains we can get from raid buffs.
Multiplier gains over 6 minutes
| Buff | Drill (20s) | Air Anchor (40s) | REA Drill (60s) | Wildfire (120s) | Heat Blast x5 | GR / Rico x4 | CD |
| Trick Attack | 420 | 210 | 252 | 360 | 120 | 360 | 60s |
| Brotherhood | 140 | 70 | 42 | 60 | 40 | 60 | 90s |
| Dragon Sight | 105 | 105 | 63 | 180 | 30 | 90 | 120s |
| Technical Finish | 105 | 105 | 63 | 180 | 30 | 90 | 120s |
| Embolden | 42-210 | 42-210 | 25-126 | 72-360 | 12-60 | 36-180 | 120s |
| Devotion | 70 | 35 | 42 | 60 | 20 | 60 | 180s |
| Divination | 84 | 84 | 50 | 144 | 24 | 72 | 120s |
Critical and direct hit rate gains over 6 minutes
| Buff | Drill (20s) | Air Anchor (40s) | REA Drill (60s) | Wildfire (120s) | Heat Blast x5 | GR / Rico x4 | CD |
| Battle Litany | 70 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 60 | 180s |
| Devilment | 326 | 326 | 0 | 0 | 93 | 279 | 120s |
| Battle Voice | 70 | 35 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 60 | 180s |
| Chain Stratagem | 105 | 105 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 90 | 120s |
Although the numbers don’t take into account the multiplicative nature of buffs and the critical and direct hit buffs use simplified multipliers, we should be able to make some estimations on how to line up our abilities according to our party composition.
Utilizing multiplier buffs
First, we can make a note of the fact that it’s almost impossible for Air Anchor to gain enough potency from raid buffs to match the potency of an extra cast where the battery is also spent. Therefore Air Anchor should always be used early in the opener if it the fight has downtime and an extra cast can be gained before it with an early use.
In party setup with a Ninja we can see the gains from Reassemble actually outweigh the gains from Chain Stratagem and Battle Litany. If we add a caster with a raid buff into the setup, Reassemble becomes very valuable within the buff windows.
Wildfire is quite enticing for the line up as well, but the only way to get it inside while also getting Drill and Air Anchor in it would entail delaying the two GCDs for at least 10 seconds. This bears a risk of losing a Drill or Anchor cast. To make up for a lost Drill cast, the gains from Wildfire would need to outweigh the 300 potency Drill gain, this happens after the 4 minute Wildfire when the gains reach 360 potency. If an Anchor can only be gained at the end of the encounter, then Wildfire only needs to overcome the same gains as a Drill cast, which makes the total potency wall 600. This wall is overcome after the Wildfire at 8 minutes. However, this setup can’t overcome the gains from an extra Anchor cast where the battery can also be spent so another setup should be used, even if it costs the gains Anchor would get from being in the buff window.
Utilizing critical and direct hit buffs
Next, let’s examine Reassemble placement in accordance to critical and direct hit buffs. Let’s take the current powerhouse composition as an example: Dragoon, Monk, Black Mage and Scholar. Because Machinist doesn’t make the best Dragon Sight target, our main buffs are Brotherhood, Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem. We can see that our synergy with Monks is quite low: our main sources of burst rarely align with Brotherhood. The other buffs we can make use of are Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem but neither provide any gains for Reassemble and Wildfire.
If we align Reassemble within the raid buff window to take advantage of Brotherhood, we essentially lose the gains we could get from Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem with a naked Drill. Placing a Drill within the window would get us roughly 245 potency from Brotherhood, Litany and Chain, while using Reassemble on that same Drill would drop our gains to 112 potency. In this case, using Reassemble prepull on the first Drill instead of aligning it to the raid window would be a gain while also allowing a better chance of an extra use.
Similar case can be made with Dancer and Devilment. Although we make poor dance partners because of our lower dps output as a ranged class, we can still use the same rule as above for our rotation optimization. From the tables we can see that Devilment is an extremely potent buff, but doesn’t provide anything for our Reassemble and Wildfire. Therefore, if we’re ever partnered with a Dancer, we should never use Reassemble within the prime raid buff window and only worry about Wildfire alignment if it doesn’t take away from Drill and Air Anchor gains.
The comparison between the gains from naked Drills and Reassemble can be done for any party composition to figure out the best place to use Reassemble. Additionally those gains should be compared with an extra cast worth of 420 potency in case using it 20 seconds earlier than the raid buff window gains an extra cast in the encounter.
Phase and kill time planning
If the phase length or the goal kill time for the encounter is known we can add an extra layer to the rotation planning. Dividing the uptime duration with a cooldown of an ability gives us the number of times we can use the said cast within the phase or encounter. Any leftover time can be used to intentionally delay and align casts with raid buffs.
This ties to the previous notions of gaining extra usages before downtime. The first tier of Eden Savage provides good examples of this. In E1S, E3S and E4S, the first phase is just long enough that you can gain an extra Air Anchor cast if you use it within the first 3 GCDs of the fight. You could use it on the 2nd GCD, but we know that delaying it for another one doesn’t cost us a cast and we can hit more raid buffs by using it as the 3rd GCD, so we would use it there. Similarly, late Wildfire opener would come into play in situations where we know that we won’t gain another Drill or Anchor cast when delaying them by 4 GCDs in the opener.
Another common practice is delayed buff stacking if another cast can’t be gained at the end of the encounter, eg. in a ~9:30 minute encounter you could delay the 2 minute buffs from 8 minutes and stack them with 3 minutes buffs for a final burst at 9 minutes. For Machinist this could mean delaying Wildfire for that stacked burst window as another cast can’t be gained anyway and a better damage multiplier can be made use of with the buffs.
Tinctures
Tincture cast times are also a good example of this. Tinctures are craftable consumables that provide a stat boost for 30s. As they’re completely external to the rotation of all jobs, they can be used as it best suits the fight.
The long recast time means that in any fight shorter than 9 minutes and 30 seconds you can only use your potion twice. Optimal times to use one are during the opener and the reopener at 6 minutes when all abilities and raid buffs align again. If the fight is longer than 12 minutes, there’s another reopener at 12 minutes.
In the event that delaying until a Wildfire window is not possible without losing uses, the best times to use tinctures center around 1 minute intervals when we can land 2 Drills, one of them Reassembled, 1 Air Anchor, 2 Hypercharges and Queen into the duration. Even if such a perfect line up can’t be taken advantage of, an extra tincture window is usually worth more than one well aligned one.
Customizing openers
With all of the above information we can get down to optimizing openers. Here are some basic rules and guidelines to summarize previous information:
- Drill is the best first GCD as long as the second cast lands in raid buffs. Can be delayed by 1 GCD to still hit most raid buffs with the 2nd cast.
- Air Anchor should be used within the first 4 GCDs if it gains an extra cast before downtime. To get the most out of raid buffs with an early cast the ideal position should be 3rd or 4th GCD. If no extra casts can be gained, it should be delayed until prime raid buff window.
- Reassemble should be used prepull if it gains an extra cast within the encounter or if the main raid buffs are comprised of critical and direct hit buffs. If party setup includes a NIN, Reassemble should be delayed for the raid buff window as long as extra casts can’t be gained with an earlier use.
- Wildfire can be used as early as 2nd or 3rd GCD if no raid buffs provide gains for it or it gains an extra cast. Otherwise it should be delayed until the 6th GCD to catch all possible multipliers.
Let’s go over some possible modified openers. I’ll be using shortened form for this since there’s so many ways you can move things around. Here’s a list of when the raid buffs go out to give us an idea of what to aim for.
Raid buff timings
| Buff | Start(s) | End(s) | First affected GCD |
| Trick Attack | 10,6 | 20,6 | 5-6 |
| Brotherhood | 9,0 | 24,0 | 5 |
| Battle Litany | 2,4 | 22,4 | 2 |
| Dragon Sight | 3,6 | 23,6 | 3 |
| Devilment | 9,7 | 29,7 | 5 |
| Technical Finish | 7,5 | 27,5 | 4 |
| Battle Voice | 3,9 | 23,9 | 3 |
| Embolden | 12,3 | 32,3 | 6 |
| Devotion | 8,0 | 23,0 | 5 |
| Chain Stratagem | 7,0 | 22,0 | 4 |
| Divination | 10,7 | 25,7 | 5-6 |
Legend:
1 = Split Shot / 2 = Slug Shot / 3= Clean Shot / HB = Heat Blast
WF = Wildfire / HC = Hypercharge / REA = Reassemble
Quick opener
REA Drill → 1 → WF → Anchor → HC → 2 → 3 → Drill
- Prepull Reassemble, 2nd GCD Wildfire, early Anchor
- Tighter Wildfire window since it’s used separate from Hypercharge weave
- Gets everything on cooldown as fast as possible
Openers for critical and direct hit buffs
REA Drill → 1 → 2 → Anchor → WFHC → 3 → Drill
- Prepull Reassemble, 4th GCD Wildfire, since no gains from raid buffs
- Early Anchor still benefits from Battle Litany and Battle Voice
- Use if extra Anchor cast can be gained
REA Drill → 1 → 2 → WFHC → 3 → Anchor → Drill
- Prepull Reassemble, 3rd GCD Wildfire, since no gains from raid buffs
- Late Anchor for more raid buff gains, especially strong as dance partner
Openers for multiplier buffs
Drill → 1 → 2 → Anchor → 3 → HC(→WF) → REA Drill → 1
- Late Reassemble for raid buff gains, especially strong with Ninja
- 6th GCD Wildfire inside Hypercharge after the first Heat Blast
- Tighter Wildfire because it’s used separate from Hypercharge weave
- Early Anchor is good for extra cast
1 → 2 → 3 → 1 → REA Drill → 2 → Anchor→ WFHC → 3
- Delayed burst opener, 7th GCD Wildfire
- Use for long fights with high up time if party has heavy multiplier buffs
- Good reopener structure if you can skip some of the heated shots at the start
These are not the only ways the openers and rotation can be modified and parts of the above examples can be mixed and matched depending on party composition and encounter.
Gauss Round and Ricochet Optimization
Gauss Round and Ricochet don’t need to be spent immediately. They can be saved for a more opportune moment, such as a raid buff window, as long as they’re not capped. Without overcapping, the most we can hold in reserve is 4 total charges worth a total of 600 potency. That’s a decent chunk of extra damage and landing it in raid buffs rivals the gains that can be gotten from other abilities because we can do it for almost every raid buff window due to the flexible nature of the skills.
A good way to keep track of the moments where we would want something saved up is to keep track of the Reassemble timer, since it either marks the start or the end of the buff window, depending on if you used it prepull or for the 2nd Drill within the buff window. Setting up for a charge dump is fairly easy: when you see a buff window approaching, simply weave less charges in the preceding Hypercharge and try to float around 2 of each without hitting the 3rd charge.
Hypercharge Optimization
In addition to pooling charges, we can take charge optimization a step further by timing our Hypercharge within buff windows. It allows us to use up to 4 extra charges for another 600 buffed potency. The Heat Blasts themselves are not really an improvement over the heated shots when accounting for the battery we would get from the regular combo, but from raid buff perspective before the battery is spent we gain 200 potency from the base potency difference.
There is a downside to this however. Using Hypercharge during buff windows means that the Gauss Round and Ricochet charges must be dumped within Hypercharge, between the 1.5s GCDs, and this is extremely ping sensitive. If we clip with every weave, even if we don’t lose any Heat Blasts, the delays in the GCD rotation might eat away all of the gains from raid buffs. Even if assume the only GCD we lose in the rotation is a heated shot, that is an average loss of 400 potency over 2.5 seconds, so a maximum of 1.25 seconds of clipping you can have with Hypercharges would amount to a 200 potency loss. Even if we only clip for 0.1 seconds per weave, it amounts to 64 potency average loss and that’s enough to eat the gains from most of the raid buffs as it’s roughly the equivalent of 10% buff for 600 potency. Therefore this is not recommended unless you can do your Hypercharge weaves without clipping.
Hypercharges follow a pattern of 2, 3, 3 extra casts between Wildfires. The phasing can be offset depending on the opener and Barrel Stabilizer usage but the same pattern will emerge in any 6 minute loop. For this example it means we get 2 extra Hypercharges between the first and second Wildfire, and 3 extra between the second, third and fourth Wildfires. When used as soon as possible, we get a Hypercharge roughly every other Drill loop which presents us an opportunity to delay the cast until the next Drill section if it’s affected by a raid buff. Below is a table of the 6 minute buff loop, which is incidentally also the Hypercharge loop if Barrel Stabilizer is used on cooldown. Delayed casts are bolded.
Delayed Hypercharges
| Time(s) | Buffs | Natural Hypercharge | Optimized Hypercharge |
| 0-20 | 60s, 90s, 120s, 180s | Wildfire | Wildfire |
| 20-40 | |||
| 40-60 | Hypercharge | ||
| 60-80 | 60s | Hypercharge | |
| 80-100 | Hypercharge | ||
| 100-120 | 90s | Hypercharge | |
| 120-140 | 60s, 120s | Wildfire | Wildfire |
| 140-160 | Hypercharge | Hypercharge | |
| 160-180 | |||
| 180-200 | 60s, 90s, 180s | Hypercharge | Hypercharge |
| 200-220 | |||
| 220-240 | Hypercharge | Hypercharge | |
| 240-260 | 60s, 120s | Wildfire | Wildfire |
| 260-280 | Hypercharge | ||
| 280-300 | 90s | Hypercharge | |
| 300-320 | 60s | Hypercharge | Hypercharge |
| 320-340 | |||
| 340-360 | Hypercharge | Hypercharge | |
| Loop back to start |
As seen above, delaying the Hypercharges after the opener to the next respective Drill loop allows us to make better use of Trick Attack and Brotherhood. For the remaining 4 minutes, the natural Hypercharges line up with with buffs quite well, but there’s one more Hypercharge that can be delayed after the 3rd Wildfire to hit Brotherhood again. Air Anchor alignment will affect the exact time you can Hypercharge and can sometimes make you unable to hit the window fully with Heat Blasts.
Queen Optimization
Queen optimization is quite easy. For every 60s, we build roughly 70-90 battery, so we can simply summon Queen every 60 seconds aligning it with whatever raid buffs happen at 60s, 120s or 180s intervals. Reassemble cooldown works as a good landmark for this as well. With prepull Reassemble we can summon Queen just before or after the Drill it’s used on. With late Reassemble we can keep an eye for the same Drill by making a note of when Reassemble has roughly 15s left on its timer. The only odd one out from this schedule is Brotherhood.
Optimizing for Brotherhood is complicated because the battery can easily overcap when trying to follow 90s timings and because we’ll most likely also want to summon Queen for other raid buffs in between. Contra suggests the following plan in their Monk optimization document when there’s no Ninja in the party. Changes from the regular 60s intervals are bolded below. Battery amounts are estimations based on the general opener and can change with different Anchor and combo alignments.
Queen Battery Plans
| Time(s) | Buffs | Regular Battery Plan | Brotherhood Battery Plan |
| 0-20 | 60s, 90s, 120s, 180s | (70)* | (50-100)* |
| 20-40 | |||
| 40-60 | 50 | ||
| 60-80 | 60s | 80-90 | |
| 80-100 | |||
| 100-120 | 90s | 90 | |
| 120-140 | 60s, 120s | 70-80 | 50 |
| 140-160 | |||
| 160-180 | |||
| 180-200 | 60s, 90s, 180s | 80 | 50 |
| 200-220 | |||
| 220-240 | |||
| 240-260 | 60s, 120s | 70 | 70 |
| 260-280 | |||
| 280-300 | 90s | 50 | |
| 300-320 | 60s | 80 | |
| 320-340 | 50** | ||
| 340-360 | |||
| Loop back to start |
*only apply from second loop onwards
**if the last Queen in the loop is skipped, it can be summoned at 100 battery for 6 minute buffs, only possible with certain Anchor alignments without overcapping
With the above plan for Brotherhood, we will be able to summon Queen for it along with the major 120s and 180s buff windows. It should be noted that these Queen timings use the delayed Hypercharge timings from the previous section to generate enough battery at the right moments to have enough for summoning Queen. This plan should only be used in the absence of Ninja because Trick Attack is a much more potent raid buff and getting some of the Queen potency under it is a higher gain.
In closing, while all of these optimizations might not always make a large impact in the grand scheme of things, there’s no reason not to take advantage of them if you want to master the job and make the most of it. I hope this section has introduced and clarified most of the concepts behind different aspects of optimization.
Gear
General stat priority
Weapon Damage > Dexterity > Critical Hit > Direct Hit = Determination > Skill Speed
Optimization
Optimizing gear sets comes down to finding the most efficient stat tiers to hit the highest damage multiplier available. This can mean deviating from the general priority due to the stats available on gear and some pieces being more efficient than others. Skill speed can also greatly alter the priority depending on how efficient it is to hit a good rotational GCD tier.
Stat tiers
Critical Hit: http://theoryjerks.akhmorning.com/stats/crit/
Direct Hit: http://theoryjerks.akhmorning.com/stats/dh/
Determination: http://theoryjerks.akhmorning.com/stats/det/
Skill Speed: http://theoryjerks.akhmorning.com/stats/speed/
Skill speed and filler GCDs
The rotation aligns perfectly at base skill speed with 2.50 GCD. Any added skill speed will start to add clipping due our weaponskills getting ahead of the static cooldown timers Barrel Stabilizer and Wildfire.
To realign the timers we need to add GCDs before each Barrel Stabilizer/Wildfire. If fillers aren’t used to delay the Drill and Air Anchor cycles, Wildfire will eventually drift to overlap them at higher skill speeds causing us to either delay Wildfire or delay Drill and Anchor. Delaying Wildfire until the next Hypercharge window is not worth it because of the rather long delay, so it’s better to delay the GCD rotation by a suitable number of filler GCDs.
For every 0.06s reduction in GCD speed one filler GCD must be added to preserve the Wildfire alignment between Drills and Air Anchors. This gives us efficient GCD speed tiers at 2.50, 2.44, 2.38… and so on. Being slightly below these values isn’t necessarily bad, because it counteracts clipping that might happen with oGCD weaving during Hypercharge and allows us to better keep up with our Wildfire timer as well as raid buff windows. However, the benefits are hard to quantify because of the variable nature of latency and connection conditions between each player.
Having a faster GCD tier can help with squeezing in extra Drills and Air Anchors in tight uptime window such as before E3S Maelstroms. It also gives us an opportunity in every Wildfire cycle to realign Drill and Anchor casts for some more flexibility or to fix a mistake in case we delay either of them by accident. Additionally, it can help reduce Drill/Anchor drifting caused by latency based clipping in Hypercharges.
Best-in-slot gear sets
| LINK | ILVL | GCD | WD | DEX* | DH | CRIT | DET | SKS |
| 1A56Q | 470 | 2.48 | 122 | 4241 | 2395 | 3274 | 2541 | 578 |
| 19QWB | 470 | 2.44 | 122 | 4241 | 2177 | 3430 | 2265 | 915 |
*varies slightly based on character race
Tools
Rotation and gear comparison spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kVv_40wjUkJjEqg_bjYwQqebDMZtKIvXokKDKQ8Ni_o/edit?usp=sharing
Web app simulator:
How to deal with ping problems
Causes
Machinist is very sensitive to high latency. The problems stem from the 1.5s GCD tied to Heat Blast. By itself it would be fine, but because Heat Blast also reduces the cooldown timers on Gauss Round and Ricochet, it means we’re forced to weave at least one of each between Heat Blasts. Weaving oGCDs between 1.5s GCDs leaves almost no room for latency based delays because of the way animation locks force us to wait until the next action can be initiated. Latency directly adds delay to this lock time causing the following action to be further delayed.
Besides the raw distance between you and the server, your ping can also be affected by routing through heavily congested networks, packet loss and your in game activities. Different areas and duty instances use different servers which can result in a different experience even with the same average ping. You might for example do your rotation fine within a raid instance, but struggle with clipping when trying to do the same on a practice dummy. You can even have faster and slower responding instances of the same fight.
While we could recite different ping amounts, experiences vary between people because there are a lot more factors to network based delays than just ping. Therefore, the easiest way to test your connection is to try out the Hypercharge rotation and see how you perform.
The golden standard is being able to weave an oGCD between every Heat Blast without clipping your GCDs. This allows you the greatest amount of freedom in your oGCD usage, such as getting out as many Gauss Rounds and Ricochets for burst windows, using Wildfire inside Hypercharge to hit certain raid buffs, using Queen at an optimal time, and using Barrel Stabilizer for heat or Tactician for mitigation.
Testing your connection
Start by doing a 6 GCD Wildfire without any oGCD weaving so that you know the benchmark damage you’re trying to hit. For good measure, you can do a 5 GCD Wildfire to see what the difference between the two is like.
6 GCDs: BS WF HC→ HB → HB → HB → HB → HB → 1
5 GCDs: BS WF HC → HB → HB → HB → HB → HB
Next, try to weave an oGCD between every Heat Blast. Alternating Gauss Round and Ricochet works best for this, but you can use other ones as well.
BS HC WF→HB(GR)→HB(Rico)→HB(GR)→HB(Rico)→HB(GR)→1
If you’re unable to use 5 Heat Blasts within Hypercharge or fit the last Split Shot into the Wildfire, you probably have a latency problem. Try reducing the amount of oGCDs until you find the amount you can do while hitting the previous GCD benchmarks.
Solutions
The obvious solution is to reduce the number of oGCD weaves by burning all of your Gauss Round and Ricochet charges before using Hypercharge. This can severely limit your flexibility due to the amount of time we spend in Hypercharge, but if you can weave at least two times, one Gauss Round and one Ricochet, you can avoid significant dps losses from overcapping charges. However, you might run into some awkward alignment issues in content if you need to pop Tactician for mitigation or other abilities for rotational purposes in the middle of Hypercharge.
Another solution that might help is a VPN service. Virtual-Private-Networks and tunneling services can help stabilize your connection and lower your ping by improving your network routing to the game server. Usually these services cost money to use and are mostly available to PC players though there are some router based VPNs as well that could be hooked up to consoles. They can make a big difference depending on where you’re connecting from and to which data center but your mileage may vary between different services or different nodes within the same service depending on internal server availability and traffic.
Here are some common ones people often use or recommend for online gaming:
- Mudfish: https://mudfish.net/
- WTFast: https://www.wtfast.com/
- Pingzapper: https://pingzapper.com/
- NoPing: https://www.nptunnel.com/
- Battleping: https://www.battleping.com/
High Ping Opener
If you’re unable to use the other openers because of too many Hypercharge weaves or a tighter Wildfire setup, here’s a decent alternative.
(Prepull Tincture) → Split Shot (Reassemble + Gauss Round) → Drill (Barrel Stabilizer + Ricochet) → Slug Shot (Gauss Round + Ricochet) → Clean Shot (Gauss Round + Ricochet) → Air Anchor (Wildfire + Hypercharge) → Heat Blast → Heat Blast (Gauss Round) → Heat Blast (Ricochet) → Heat Blast → Heat Blast → Split Shot (Gauss Round + Ricochet) → Drill (Gauss Round + Ricochet) → Continue
It’s almost the same as the normal General Purpose opener except the opening Drill is delayed by 1 GCD. This means you are able to use a more ping friendly Wildfire setup and use all of your Gauss Round and Ricochet charges before Hypercharge but as a trade off you lose a little bit of damage from some raid buffs. Using Reassembled Drill as 2nd GCD means that you lose out the gains you would get from Battle Litany and your 2nd Drill won’t be in Trick Attack, 5th GCD Wildfire application means you can’t snapshot Embolden with it.
When customizing your openers at high ping, make sure you’re able to burn all of your charges before Hypercharge. Usually this means you need at least 5 GCDs before your first Hypercharge. To keep Wildfire as lenient as possible, use Wildfire+Hypercharge double weave to start it and end it with a heated shot.
Fixing the class design
If you have any problems with the class or the rotation because of high latency, I urge you to post feedback about it for the developers on the Official Forums. The only way we can hope for things to change and improvements to be made is if we make our voices heard and keep reminding them about the issues.
You can find the Official Forums DPS section here:
The most current feedback threads are often pinned in the Balance Discord Machinist channels if you don’t want to make your own or have a hard time finding previous discussions about the problems.
Credits
Document written by Lynn Nuvestrahl (Odin). Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome at The Balance discord Machinist channels or at Lynn#8794.
Special thanks
Anonymous mch
Fox (Fox Dyo, Omega)
0rp (Irina Sykes, Odin)
Shuni (Shunittseru Tohka, Cerberus)
Sune (Sune Dakwhil, Twintania)
Contra (Contra Banned, Gilgamesh)
The Theoryjerks
And everyone in The Balance Machinist community!
Changelog
1-Jun-2019
Primer created.
28-Jun-2019
Primer updated to official launch values.
29-Jun-2019
Updated Queen usage.
1-Jul-2019
Updates to Flamethrower math.
4-Jul-2019
Added notes on Queen usage, tentative opener, more notes on the rotation and skill speed.
15-Jul-2019
All sections expanded towards guide status. Added Gearing section.
18-Jul-2019
Added notes on Rook behavior. Primer updated to Guide status.
19-Jul-2019
Added skill icons and fixed some typos.
25-Jul-2019
Small change to Late Wildfire opener, now starts with Gauss Round + Ricochet after 1st gcd, also broke up the Reassemble + Barrel Stabilizer double weave so that the rotation scales better with skill speed. Slight update to Fast Wildfire opener as well to open with Gauss Round + Ricochet as there’s no downside to delaying Barrel Stabilizer.
26-Jul-2019
Updated Fast Wildfire opener to reflect new findings on Drill and Air Anchor delays. Added a note of the delay to Drill and Air Anchor sections.
31-Jul-2019
Updated for patch 5.05. Updated Reassemble info and rewrote the skill speed section due to new available GCD tiers as the cooldown on Reassemble is no longer a limiting factor. Added Best-in-slot section.
9-Aug-2019
Added Optimization section. Changed general purpose opener.
11-Aug-2019
Fixed Chain Stratagem timing, updated General Purpose Opener and both cdh and multiplier openers using early Anchors by moving Anchor to 4th GCD to make use of the Chain. Added a section on how to deal with ping issues along with modified opener.
20-Aug-2019
Added sections on Gauss Round / Ricochet, Hypercharge and Queen optimization.
21-Aug-2019
Updated BiS sets. 2.48 gcd gear set switched one Det meld into DH. Added another equally strong gear set for 2.44 gcd, the faster gcd can be good at squeezing extra Drills / Anchors with fast instances.
The Balance Discord – 5.X Machinist Guide page /
