Bard question on Blunt Arrow timing in Bahamut's Coil

I've been having some problems with using blunt arrow to silence ADS on Coil turn 2. In fact, I'd say I had problems with it ever since Dhorme Chimera as well.

The issue is with the animation lock. If I happen to initiate a GCD skill right around the time the boss casts High Voltage, it doesn't matter how fast I click Blunt Arrow after that, its not going to go off in time.

Right now I compensate by predicting when the boss will use High Voltage (20-30 seconds after the last one), stop using skills, silence, then resume using skills until its my turn next. It's working okay, but I know that I'm wasting some DPS potential. Is there any other way you have done it?

I'm just worried that there'll be a boss in the future where there's no real pattern to predict its next attack at all.

When I play bard and have to use Blunt arrow, it usually doesn't fail to go off unless I'm massively tunnelvisioning. There doesn't seem to really be an animation lock if you used a GCD skill. Could just be an issue on your end

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Originally Posted by NintenPyjak64

When I play bard and have to use Blunt arrow, it usually doesn't fail to go off unless I'm massively tunnelvisioning. There doesn't seem to really be an animation lock if you used a GCD skill. Could just be an issue on your end

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I could click Blunt Arrow the very first milliseconds that High Voltage starts to get casted, but if I *just* use a GCD skill and still going through the animation, its not going to go off.
This doesn't happen very often, mind you, since the chances of me using a GCD at the same time as High Voltage is not that high, but it only takes one miss to wipe a raid.

For our FC, I alternate Blunt Arrow silences with the tank's Spirits Within silences. We call out rotations on voice chat as well (i.e. Vox you're next, Sthal you're next, Vox you're next, so on and so forth). Typing takes too long and can get lost in the chat/heat of the moment, so I would consider party chat unreliable. We also have our off tank ready for back up stuns in the event you noted above - overall, I would say wasting some DPS potential for a few seconds in favor of silencing a 30 second non-removable paralyze is worth not using a skill or two :) Really depends on how on the ball your partner is for silence rotations. Hope that helps a bit!

Some people have really good connections and delay doesnt affect them, so they dont have to stop doing DPS.

But im from chile and usually i have to STOP using any skills until high voltage comes, then Burst and repeat.
Of course you dont wait from the start you have a few secs until the next HV its coming but then i stops using any skills.

It totally sucks but hey he will die ^^

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Originally Posted by Kroktar

Some people have really good connections and delay doesnt affect them, so they dont have to stop doing DPS.

But im from chile and usually i have to STOP using any skills until high voltage comes, then Burst and repeat.
Of course you dont wait from the start you have a few secs until the next HV its coming but then i stops using any skills.

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That's pretty much also the way I'm doing it ^^ Burst for a few seconds, apply dots, then wait to silence.

Still, I'm not convinced its purely a matter of good versus bad connections. My blunt arrow is in a macro that also informs party members that I just used the skill via party chat.
When the situations I described above occur, I can see in the party chat that I already clicked the macro button, but I can also see later that Blunt Arrow hasn't been used at all! (not on cooldown).

I haven't had any issues with the animation lock preventing me from firing it off in time, but my latency is pretty decent.

If you have to stop attacking for a few seconds, that's what you should do.
Hitting the silence is FAR more important than a few globals worth of dps.

One tip that I may suggest (even though I'm not 100% sure it makes any difference):
I stay in pretty close, just outside of the range of repelling cannons to minimize the arrow travel time just in case that affects when the silence actually applies.

I'm not sure about the boss, but all of the adds up to it use High Voltage after Repelling Cannons, so I use that as an indicator that it's coming up next. Your best bet though is to slow or halt dps when your turn to silence is up if you're having lag issues or problems with the gcd. Depending in what adds you killed the abilities it uses are different. I usually have to watch for it a few seconds after he cats Allagan Rott (spell?).

Spam Heavy shot ONLY when u think its about time for a silence. the other skills, specifically venomous shot and bloodletter, have a longer skill animation and you have to wait for your current animation to end before a new one begins. Least that worked well for me

I share our problem as well. Ever since Chimera, it was nothing but frustration and agony!
It's just something they will be have to dealt with, it is just unacceptable for me to stop dpsing and standing like a retard auto-attacking the boss and wait for boss abilities to pop.

The problem most likely is you are using the /ac "Misery's End"/ac "Bloodletter"/ac "Heavy Shot" all in one macro and spamming the hell out of it. I had exact same problem with animation preventing me from blunt arrow going off. I fixed by tapping slower during this fight and never had a problem after. I'm pretty sure it was the bloodletter animation that jacks it up. Anywho if that doesnt work for u just dont use macros in that fight. Hope that helps.

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Originally Posted by WaRBeaST

The problem most likely is you are using the /ac "Misery's End"/ac "Bloodletter"/ac "Heavy Shot" all in one macro and spamming the hell out of it. I had exact same problem with animation preventing me from blunt arrow going off. I fixed by tapping slower during this fight and never had a problem after. I'm pretty sure it was the bloodletter animation that jacks it up. Anywho if that doesnt work for u just dont use macros in that fight. Hope that helps.

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I thought that was the problem too, so I actually switched to a new hotbar with no macro whatsoever when its my turn to stun. Even then, this problem persists.
You are correct though that Bloodletter animation is one sure way of jacking this up, but I'm saying that there are other causes too.
Thanks anyway for the help guys.

Calm down, take a deep breath, stop spamming your dps. When it's your turn, use your hotkeys deliberately, wait for the GCD to expire and watch for the boss' ability before you use another skill. Unless you accidentally use a GCD as High Voltage starts or immediately after, you will have more than enough time to use Blunt Arrow.

The only reason I ever mess up is if I get trigger happy and try to silence Rot if it comes out when I think Voltage should be next. And that's just cause things can get hairy sometimes.

High Voltage is significantly crippling to the point where you're more useless if you miss your silence than if you don't dps for a rotation.

So, couple general things:

1. There is an animation lock for every ability in the game where you cannot use any other ability.

2. Most on-GCD abilities have animations anywhere from (random guessing) 1.0-2.0 seconds. For example, Monk Demolish takes a ridiculous amount of animation time (punch punch spin kick kick, all for one move). On the flip side, Dragoon Chaos Thrust's animation can be clipped as fast as 0.5 seconds into it.

3. Most off-GCD abilities have animations anywhere from 0.1 seconds to like 0.5 seconds (except Dragoon Jumps which go up to like a full 1.5-2.0 seconds).


If you want ultra-reliable Blunt Arrows, your only option is to stop attacking.

However, you don't necessarily need to go that far. As another player said, they just need to make sure they don't "tunnel".

As long as you're highly sensitive to the fact that High Voltage is about to be cast, and you immediately react, you should be able to get Blunt Arrow off in time. The only exception is if you're legit lagging, playing from AUS, over wireless, etc etc etc.

The problem that people usually run into is as follows:

t=0.0 : PEW PEW Heavy Shot
t=2.0 : queue up next PEWPEWPEW
t=2.5 : PEW PEW Heavy SHot
t=4.0 : I'm mashing my button queuing up next PEW PEW
t=4.5 : High Voltage starts casting
t=5.0 : PEW PEW Heavy Shot
t=5.5 : oh wait, High Voltage is casting
t=6.0 : BLUNT BLUNT (Heavy Shot still casting)
t=6.5 : WTF BLUNT ARRER
t=6.7 : Blunt Arrow casts
t=7.0 : Blunt Arrow lands

*checks time*
High Voltage lands, gg.

What you can do to mitigate the risk (without totally stopping DPS) is this:

When High Voltage is going to cast soon, stop mashing your rotation and double check that HV is NOT casting before you press every button.

This will probably cause you to drop a fifth (a half second) of every GCD during your "I AM ALERT FOR HV" phase. But dropping 20% DPS over ~5 seconds is a lot better than dropping the full GCDs, or letting HV get off.