Job Ability Delay

[Byrth]

The FFXI community discovered a delay associated with using any Job Abilities. 1 second where you can't do anything followed by 1 second where you can use another job ability/WS/spell/etc but you can't auto-attack.

Dancer is such a JA based job that this affects us dramatically. If possible, it would be nice to eliminate the first second of inactivity.

Thank you

[Ninian]

I agree with the above statement.

[Byrth]

I guess I should explain a little more, now that I have time.

Presto Step -> Step -> Reverse Flourish takes a minimum of 6 seconds from JA delay, assuming optimal efficiency. Realistically, it's going to take at least 7 seconds. It gives a net 80TP assuming 100% step accuracy.

80/7 = 11.4 TP/sec, and level 3 Box Step (-9% defense, less than Dia 2).

With Haste, Marches, and Twashtar/STP Fusetto+2 (my DD combo of preference in Abyssea), I get 16.5 TP/sec and the damage from 2.5 hits per second (18 hits and 115 TP over 7 seconds).

So in a buffed situation with a single party, Step usage borders on futile thanks to JA delay. If we eliminated the first second of mandatory no-action, we would drop our 6-7 second delay to a 2-3 second delay and steps would be unarguably a good thing to do. It would help the flow of all jobs and make the game more fun, too.

I went into more depth and gave a few more examples:
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.htm...66661542399648

[Kari]

SE, I suggest listening to everything Byrth ever has to say about DNC, ever.
Byrth knows more about DNC than the people who created the job.

And as far as this topic goes, the only use I've found from Steps/Flourishes in this kind of situation, is to ensure a self Skillchain, which is almost worthless these days.

If they do change this, I hope they also remove the 1 second delay on gear swaps. I've been screwed over on my bonus Reverse Flourish TP so many times by that.

[Byrth]

Big thanks for the vote of confidence, Kari.

My problem with it is:
1) Steps are worth using if you're in a large group and many people are benefiting from your Box/Feather Steps.
2) Having multiple people in your party prevents you from self-skillchaining, which lowers the value of Reverse Flourish and indirectly makes steps less useful.
3) In a small group with Haste buffs, Steps actually lower your overall damage due to this JA delay.

It would just generally make the game more fun if we could use JAs quickly.

[Hyzenthlay]

I guess it depends how you play the job as to whether you use steps. I use DNC for mainly tanking so voke/stun i use alot also the actual debuffs come in useful on certain nms.

You can at least overlap some abilities, eg use a step halfway through a waltz but with so many abilities we do waste alot of time between them and never get to see our fast melee rounds. What does annoy me is the movement lock on waltzes. For dancers we're not very agile if we can't move during a waltz. Sometimes i need to do a waltz while running/pulling and it's a good few seconds wasted before i can move again.

[Jesterking]

What does annoy me is the movement lock on waltzes. For dancers we're not very agile if we can't move during a waltz. Sometimes i need to do a waltz while running/pulling and it's a good few seconds wasted before i can move again.

I agree with this, it hurts a lot. I was pulling last night in Tahrongi Canyon for a cleave party on my DNC, if I was getting smacked enough I had to stop and waltz myself, but with the animation going off, the mobs all swarm me on all sides, and I'd take more damage then I healed because I stopped to heal myself, AND then have to run through their bodies, which everyone knows is a pain and nearly impossible. (Like trying to run through the crowd in front of Horst and Joachim in Port Jeuno.) It makes it very difficult to do some things on DNC without being able to move. I don't think it would unbalance anything, if anything make the animation shorter, when casting heals on my SCH the cures are going off so fast I can't interrupt them due to /RDM and fast cast gear and atmas, so really my SCH has more freedom and mobility then my DNC does, which seems strange.

[Byrth]

Animation lock and Job Ability Delay are different things, but I agree both are issues. Depending how you swap gear, you can cancel most of the animation from Waltzes and stuff iirc. Jigs are different, and force an animation delay to prevent you from (for instance) Chocobo Jigging and deagroing a monster.

[Urat]

This a million times over. Sadly I believe this is for sure server side, and would probably require a lot of deep level recoding of the game in order to step JAs from screwing with timers. So I doubt this fix is any kind of small thing to ask of SE.

Either way, if SE fixed this major issue and fixed timer issues on waltzes, that would probably enough to declare dancer a flawless job.

[Zhronne]

This will never happen, sigh