A Few Questions Regarding Astrologian

So, I've been leveling my Astrologian to 60, and along the way, I've had two thoughts cross my mind.

The first is, does the Spear and the Arrow actually effect my chocobo? I don't see a difference, but perhaps that is just because their effects aren't as noticeable as they should be on a chocobo.

The second is, what exactly does Disable effect? Are auto-attacks an action? Because many bosses in the earlier levels don't tend to have cast bars for their big attacks, making me just want to throw it onto them on cooldown, much like any other caster would do with Virus.

interesting questions. I'm sure the choco is effected as I know Balance shows, but I've not noticed it as much with Arrow/Spear. It could be just not paying attention to them when they get it (when I dont RR them) but it might not scale as noticeably either.

As for Disable, I've not noticed it really doing much of any good, so maybe it does count auto-attacks. I havn't used it much in the later levels simply because it felt so useless at lower ones. Maybe it's a timing thing, make sure it hits right before a boss does a casted ability; but idk.

Chocobo skills I'm not so sure about. It might just me using the wrong stances, but Chocobo skills seem to range from having no cooldown to 5 minutes seeing how inconsistent they are with using those. I'm used to my Chocobo just auto-attacking for a minute straight, then constantly overwriting their own Choco Beak the other minute. :p

Disable is iffy. It definitely does work on both auto attacks and skills, but... Theoretically you should be able to land it a split second before a cast finishes, but due to XIV's technical shenanigans, you really want to give a wide berth when using Disable to mitigate big hits. At least one second before a cast finishes, if not even earlier. Virus has the same issue where it will have no effect if you activate it a split second before something happens.

I'm inclined to think the abilities do affect chocobo skills, but that the AI for them isn't very good. All attacks are essentially coded at 3 seconds because of it. Now, if you could take manual control of your chocobo, that might be a different story.

Also, disable reduces all damage by 5% (this increases to 10% reduction at lv.44 with the trait). It is essentially virus; and is used as such. When you use Virus or Disable on most bosses, it doesn't matter. If you're raiding, you tend to save disable and virus for specific phases. It depends on the boss and there is no catch-all situation to use it.

i dont use chocobos, but, disable is extremely useful for tankbuster, or big aoe damage casts. is the boss gonna cast a big aoe soon? disable. is the boss about to tear the tank a new asshole? disable. is everyone taking excessive damage and you need a little breathing room to top everyone off? disable. it effects ALL damage for the duration, and is useful in any situation that high damage is being taken.

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Originally Posted by Anova

Also, disable reduces all damage by 5% (this increases to 10% reduction at lv.44 with the trait). It is essentially virus; and is used as such. When you use Virus or Disable on most bosses, it doesn't matter. If you're raiding, you tend to save disable and virus for specific phases. It depends on the boss and there is no catch-all situation to use it.

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Though I don't have hard evidence, I believe this to be the case for Disable. When you're fighting common enemies, the percentages translate into so small numbers that they'd fall within the natural variance of the attacks. But when used on say something big like a raid-wide hit or a tank-buster move, the 10% becomes much more noticeable.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think Disable stack with some if not all the other debuffs like Virus and Rend X, which should make it a very useful tool in more intense encounters.

from what little I have tested, as most of the chocobo abilities are auto attacks with very rarely interspersed other abilities, you will get more use out of arrow than spear, but neither would make a big enough difference to really bother to be honest (for chocobos, not players)