Faster Combo attacks -Global Cooldown-

Good Morning!

I am wondering what the community's feeling about lowering the cooldown to the combo resource generator abilities.

I believe, at least for me, that is a turn off of the game. I may get a lot of flack for this comment but, the combinations feel very slow, and not as engaging as they could be. i am not exactly sure what the global cooldown mechanic is set at, i believe 1.5 seconds?

if so would it be too much to ask for to have it lowered to 1 second? you can really feel the drag at its current setting.

Gobal Cooldown is 2.5 seconds. I think the reasoning behind leaving it that way will have to do with programming and server restrictions. Someone will surely correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the way it runs now is that when you use a skill or spell, the client first checks with the server if you are able to use it, then executes the skill.

GCD is 2.5 seconds, but it's at that so that you can use OGCDs between your GCDs. Lowering the GCD on combo abilities wouldn't make the game any more interesting imo, it'd just increase the time you spend spamming your main combo and not other abilities.

If you're not max level though, there's a decent amount of classes that suffer for it, because you don't get all your abilities until higher levels, so I can see the sentiment. I think the issue is really just with how low-level skills are handed out though, vs how the game plays at max level with a 2.5s GCD.

whoa 2.5 seconds. ok thats much worse than i imagined. However i can absolutely understand the point that at max level you see it less and less, or even not at all. Good point.

I would also agree that it does bug greatly at lower levels. and instances where you are restricted from using your abilities to their full extent. I.E Roulettes/PvP.

You both make great points, and i appreciate it very much.

As a side note, people have looked through logs to see how certain classes fare against each other, including casts per minute, and the average was around 38 CPM, where a 1.5s GCD is equal to 40 CPM (and there were some jobs like BRD/MCH/NIN that were a decent amount above that)

If you're leveling warrior, your CPM is probably on the lower end, but I think in general they want tank dps rotations to be simpler so they can focus more on dealing with mechanics/mitigation properly.

Lowering the GCD would just make combat worse.

One of the gripes quite a few players have with the combat system is it's already to convoluted and spammy. Many of the buttons classes have basically exist for no reason at all other than to make busy work for players, they don't actually make for fun engaging game play or anything like that.

Reducing the GCD to make that spamming even faster wouldn't do anything for engaging game play because many of the buttons are still just pointless busy work.

I have no real issue with the pace of combat even at low levels where it can feel much slower. The real issue comes from the lack of engagement or impact you get from pressing your buttons that's what makes it boring not the pace..

Yeah at higher levels OGCDs mean you often lack time to get everything out and many materia builds actively avoid skill or spell speed to prevent clipping and weaving issues.

That noted the OCGs don’t show up until post 50 so early game feels really slow compared to level 120 WoW... and I say level 120 WoW on purpose. Go try Classic WoW and then you will revel at how fast the 2.5 second GCD feels here...
- while WoW has a maybe 1.5 second GCD many abilities have a queue or long cast time. I have hit abilities and then waited up to 5 seconds for them to trigger... such as level 1 Heroic Strike fir Warrior. Or cast a spell with a cast time of 3-4 seconds and a cooldown over 10 seconds that uses 1/3 of total mana which takes 20-30 seconds to regen enough for cast number 4... and it’s my only spell.

Suddenly FFXIV at low level feels... not fast, but smooth and even in pacing...

WoW Classic has been very illuminating in showing me how nostalgia has warped my perception of other games... such as misleading me into thinking FFXIV is slow. In the same way that 90 minute queues as a DPS in retail WoW have made me re-examine my issues with a “long” 5-minute queue on DPS here...

I suspect my WoW resub to look at Classic won’t survive more than a month or two...

Someone has a video of a monk from a few years ago HWs I think, with every speed buff possible. The game can't register the attacks.

No thanks. It's good where it is, and there's classes with faster attacks if 2.4-2.5s is too slow for you.


This is still an RPG, not Tekken or whatever. They struck a fair balance.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

No thanks. It's good where it is, and there's classes with faster attacks if 2.4-2.5s is too slow for you.

This is still an RPG, not Tekken or whatever. They struck a fair balance.

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On the other hand, 2.5 seconds feels incredibly slow when compared to a game like WoW that has a 1-1.5 second GCD. It may not seem like a big difference on paper, but played side by side that extra second makes XIV's combat feel like molasses.

Now of course this game was designed around 2.5 seconds. It works really well here and I don't see any reason to lower it. Let's not pretend like faster combat can't work in an RPG though.