GCD or insta-cast abilities more important?

Hello everyone. I'm planning my macros and the orders for them as a BRD. My question is: Would it be more beneficial to cast bloodletter first even if the GCD is ready to start bloodletter's cool down?

This is of course assuming straight shot buff and DOTS are up. Should my priority be to use heavy shot to get the GCD going or Bloodletter to get that cool down started? Thanks for the help!

GCD first. That way you can use it when bloodletter is down without losing time (you need to wait a second between the two, and it will still wait if the first ability doesn't fire.)

Instant Abilities in this game are not instant.
Instant = offGcD and they delay your next Ability by ~1.3 Seconds.

With this in mind I would only use such macro if you find yourself often missing the procced Bloodletter and you do not want to improve on that and don't want to pay more attention.

You get the most of your offGCD Abilities if you weave them in exactly between your GCDs.
In very few situations there are execptions to this.

With any "sequence" macro it will happen that you delay your next GCD by up to 1.3 seconds.
Bard has more than 1 offGCD Ability, so this can quickly add up to a loss of double digit amount of GCD over the course of a fight.

Like stated above, it may help you if you are lazy or just don't want to pay much attention or don't care that you are giving 80% instead of 100% in your performance.

Also, this applies to most classes, not only Bard.

I've noticed that often when an ability hasnt been used for ages, if I use another one, I can't use the first one either until the second has recharged. Other abilities are immune to this and I can click them whenever they've recharged.

Can someone explain why/how this works? I dont understand why i cant use an ability when its recharged just because I use a completely differemt ability.

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

Like stated above, it may help you if you are lazy or just don't want to pay much attention or don't care that you are giving 80% instead of 100% in your performance.

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It also helps if you play with a controller. Thought I'd add that in as fumbling between triggers does cut into getting them out, not to mention misfires of the wrong abilities. Stuff that's really only overcome with a lot of patience and practice.

On the whole though, from what I've seen and been told Bards are part DPS part support, it's okay for a bard to lose a little time on most occasions. By the time it actually matters you'll probably have become adept enough to work all of this out on your own.

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Originally Posted by Ecosmith

I've noticed that often when an ability hasnt been used for ages, if I use another one, I can't use the first one either until the second has recharged. Other abilities are immune to this and I can click them whenever they've recharged.

Can someone explain why/how this works? I dont understand why i cant use an ability when its recharged just because I use a completely differemt ability.

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can't follow, can you give an example?

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

can't follow, can you give an example?

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He might referring to chain / procced actions? For example Misery's End. It has a recast timer, but can only be used at 20% enemy health.

Heavy Swing, for example. I click that and even though Skull Sunder is available until then, once I click Heavy Swing, not having activated Skull Sunder, Skull Sunder still has to recharge. If I click Heavy Swing again, Skull Sunder recharges again. It doesnt make sense.

Things like Brutal Swing and Bloodbath don't act like this. They act normally.

That's the global cooldown. Most abilities share a recast timer.

Why? I can understand each ability having a recharge timer, but not why using one would stop me using another. Will it eventually be possible for me to make an attack chain that has no gaps?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ecosmith

Heavy Swing, for example. I click that and even though Skull Sunder is available until then, once I click Heavy Swing, not having activated Skull Sunder, Skull Sunder still has to recharge. If I click Heavy Swing again, Skull Sunder recharges again. It doesnt make sense.

Things like Brutal Swing and Bloodbath don't act like this. They act normally.

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This is the Global Cool Down (or "GCD"). Quite a few attack skills share the same cooldown (2.5 seconds by default, slightly adjustable based on Skillspeed for DoW or Spellspeed for DoM). Using any one of these skills means they all have to recharge.

In this game your character has 2 types of being "occupied" while using abilities.

1. 2.5 seconds global Cooldown (GCD-ability)
   Most of your abilities take your character 2.5 seconds before he can take another action.
   
2. ~1.3 sec "instant" Abilities(offGCD-ability)
   These abilities do not trigger the 2.5 seconds global Cooldown, but prevent your character from using any other ability the next ~1.3 seconds.

For any class it is usually the best to try to weave offGCD abilities between you GCD abilities.
I.E. you as Warrior should try to weave in your defensive Cooldown right after you triggered one abilitiy of your attack combos, this way you don't waste time/GCDs.

Is it possible through levelling other classes to acheive a hotbar woth no GCD abilities, and hence not have to idle about for 2.5 seconds waiting for abilities to recharge? The 'instacast' ones seem to have animations that take abt a second, so using all instas would be far less annoying than the strange GCD ones.

I think the reason why I can't 'get' the GCD thing is that the animations dont take 2.5 seconds, so what I see is:
Aargh, take this, evil squirrel! [huge swipe with axe]
Stand like lemon doing nothing for a bit.
Warrgh!!! Get some! [swing wildly woth axe]
Da de da, waiting for some reason. Maybe my arms are tired?
Graaagh!! [chop chop]
Yawn. Be with you in a minute.
Yaaroogh!!! [slice!]
Etc.

I played City of Heroes for a while. That game had no GCD. The various abikities all had different cooldown periods, some v long, but it was possible after abt lvl 10 to get a cool seamless attack chain going, both power use wise and animation wise.

Hopefully as I level up in FF14 I'll be able to simulate this. It's the 'doing nothing' steps in between ability uses that's causing my thematic disconnect.

The animation from most of the GCD abilities should last most of the GCD, and no, you will never achieve being able to use that many abilities that are off the GCD, for one, most of them have cooldown times, and two, most of the the cross classeable ones do not deal damage.

I'm used to a 1.5s GCD, so the 2.5s GCD feels pretty slow.

Also, I do not know what MMO's you have played before without some sort of global cooldown or animation that acts as the global cooldown, but this is pretty standard, a bit on the slower side, but pretty much the industry norm.

So apparently you posted a second one while I was typing this up...


Closest you'll get to something like what your talking about is playing Monk, and 95% of their actual rotations are on the GCD.

Thanks for all the help everyone. I have made a couple macros to test while I finish leveling. I have one for heavy shot (heavy, ME, BL), one for straight shot (straight shot, ME, BL) and one for my buffs (internal release, hawks eye, raging strikes, barrage). I don't have blood for blood yet. I'm thinking of only using the regular straight shot so I don't accidentally delay getting the buff up and/or delay using a straight shot proc.

I understand this isn't the most efficient way to dps but it wil make some room for the situational things on my cross bar like songs. Often I'm on my playstation vita so changing bars isn't as seamless with the back touchpad. Any further suggestions are welcome. Thanks again!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ecosmith

Aargh, take this, evil squirrel! [huge swipe with axe]
Stand like lemon doing nothing for a bit.
Warrgh!!! Get some! [swing wildly woth axe]
Da de da, waiting for some reason. Maybe my arms are tired?
Graaagh!! [chop chop]
Yawn. Be with you in a minute.
Yaaroogh!!! [slice!]
Etc.

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Genuinely the funniest rendition I've seen. This is how I'm going to think of Marauders hereafter.