Speculation: AOE as OGCD

[Allooutrick]

Good day, all. I've come to wonder how differently this game would play if all AOE attacks were OGCD and how to go about implementing that. Additionally, I wonder how they would change the classes as a result.

A big reason this thought came about is because its primarily dungeons and alliance raids that see these skills get the most use. Additionally, it appears that when people talk about balance and parsers, its usually the raid dps that's of the most interest.

So I'm curious what all of your thoughts are. Is it a good or bad idea? What changes would have to come about to make it work? How would this affect an average alliance or dungeon run?

[Raldo]

People generally focus on single-target DPS when talking about job balance, because a majority of the hardest content only involves a single target. You can be sure that if endgame content occasionally looked more like Coil of Bahamut - Turn 4, people might care more about AOE potential. Nobody cares if your job's AOE power can shave a minute off a dungeon run.

This sounds like a terrible idea, and it would definitely play differently.

If AOE skills were oGCD, it means...
- There are no longer any AOE combos (not a huge deal, but potentially makes things more boring)
- Each AOE skill is going to have its own longer-than-the-GCD recast length.
- There are no longer different rotations for single-target vs AOE. You'll be using your AOE skills during single-target combat too (unless they consume some resource, or share a recast with a single-target skill, like MCH's Drill/Bioblaster), and you'll be using your single-target GCDs during AOE combat because you have to do something while you wait on your AOE oGCDs to come back up.
- Anyone who currently CASTS their AOEs is either going to now have all instant-cast AOEs, or is going to be really irritated that their "oGCD" skills have cast times that eat into their GCD. There is currently no precedent for oGCDs with cast times, so I'm not really sure how this would play out for mages.
- Tanking dungeons is now potentially VERY annoying (unless their AOEs have a very low recast time), as you may have to keep switching the target of your single-target GCDs in order to keep threat.
- Unless they change things, Skill Speed / Spell Speed is now EVEN LESS USEFUL than it already is since it doesn't affect most (all?) oGCDs.
- If your AOE oGCDs have a short recast time, then all jobs will suddenly feel BUSY AS HELL as they're always pushing buttons non-stop. All jobs' DPS may become dependent on your ping and whether you can squeeze 2 oGCDs in between your GCD without clipping. People with high-ping connections might stop playing the game (see: complaints about MCH and pre-5.1-NIN).
- If your AOE oGCDs have a long recast time, but high power, then all jobs might suddenly get incredibly powerful vs old content.
- If your AOE oGCDs have a long recast time, but low power, then anything AOE that we currently do will now be done slower. Say goodbye to mass dungeon pulls.


Obviously the repercussions on existing content will vary based on how things are balanced, but I would predict...

Dungeons are going to be slower, since you're be primarily doing a single target rotation whilst peppering in AOEs when they're available. Depending on how often you can AOE and/or how strong it is, pulling multiple groups in a dungeon might go away.

Single-target stuff would probably need to be re-balanced, since you now have more oGCD skills at your disposal. Potentially, everyone's single-target DPS increases by a fair amount, or the power of their GCDs are lowered to compensate.


tl;dr: I struggle to come up with any GOOD side-effects of this idea, aside from potentially becoming overpowered when doing old content. The game would need to be built around this concept from the start in order for it to work well.