Stop Cast

Any chance we could ever get a /stopcast command for use in macros? Would be quite useful with bard and machinist.

And yeah i know taking a step or hitting esc will stop a cast, but its not the same thing as being able to write one into a macro.

I think I'm missing something here.

Why would you ever want to plan around breaking a cast? If you're planning not to cast then just don't cast...?

There's already a hotkey that you can bind for cancelling casts.

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Originally Posted by VitalSuit

There's already a hotkey that you can bind for cancelling casts.

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Yeah, but the functionality to add it to a macro would ensure it goes off every time as needed with 1 less button push. It would enable you to be orders of magnitude more efficient than jumping or hitting another button. If you've ever played that other MMO with the purple elves, you'll know what Im getting at here. Using /stopcast at the beginning of a macro can be a substantial DPS increase over a moving or jumping to clip cast times or hit procs.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

I think I'm missing something here.

Why would you ever want to plan around breaking a cast? If you're planning not to cast then just don't cast...?

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It lets you hit procs and clip your cast times, in the case of a macro command, a TON more efficiently than by stutter stepping too. It basically allows you to add a built in, effortless stutter step to every ability.

I remember bringing this up a long time ago. Maybe even beta forums. Stopcast would likely be useful here because of the delay procs have. I wouldn't expect it to happen anytime soon. They're just now adding macros to cancel a buff, and we still have no /item command, not to mention how useless combat macros typically are because of the ability queue removal. However, maybe one day SE will hop onto the functionality/QoL train. Don't stop asking.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

It lets you hit procs and clip your cast times, in the case of a macro command, a TON more efficiently than by stutter stepping too. It basically allows you to add a built in, effortless stutter step to every ability.

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In the case of Straighter Shot and Firestarter you don't wanna interrupt your ability to get them off. Even well timed it's a dps loss.

How is it a stutterstep if it breaks your cast? Stutterstepping is about not breaking your casts. If you stop casting that doesn't "clip" that would just straight up cancel your cast.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

In the case of Straighter Shot and Firestarter you don't wanna interrupt your ability to get them off. Even well timed it's a dps loss.

How is it a stutterstep if it breaks your cast? Stutterstepping is about not breaking your casts. If you stop casting that doesn't "clip" that would just straight up cancel your cast.

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Pretty much this. There is not a single instance where the use of a 'stopcast' macro will not result in a dps loss.

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Originally Posted by MrCookTM

Pretty much this. There is not a single instance where the use of a 'stopcast' macro will not result in a dps loss.

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Bard with WM would benefit by no longer having to delay hitting a proc, and in doing so may gain a proc they would otherwise have lost, all more efficiently than by hitting a cancel button or moving. Its like Prya said, it would allow you to effective cut out a lot of the penalty of WM and play bard much more like it originally played.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

In the case of Straighter Shot and Firestarter you don't wanna interrupt your ability to get them off. Even well timed it's a dps loss.

How is it a stutterstep if it breaks your cast? Stutterstepping is about not breaking your casts. If you stop casting that doesn't "clip" that would just straight up cancel your cast.

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Stutterstepping is about moving before your finished going through the full cast / animation sequences as soon as your ability has been registered as cast by the server. In FFXIV, much like pre 2.3 WoW, there is an amount of time between the server actually registering your cast and when you can move. Same way you can cast a spell and then start moving and still have that spell go off if you time it right. Stopcast would just make it easier by eliminating the need to move. Do you see what we're talking about now?

FFXI had this as well, wherein a blm could begin casting a spell and, if they timed it right, cancel out and already be moving or readying another spell while the first one is still casting.

If you are dealing with a game that doesnt track casts and movement in real time like 14, 11, or old pre 2.3 WoW, stopcast lets you game the system. Or least it makes it much easier to.

I'm still confused why you'd want to purposely cancel a cast so you can cast something else. But if you want a single button press to "stop" a cast, try pressing escape (or whatever button it is for console players). This forcefully stops your current cast as long it's within the range where it can be interrupted.

As for losing procs as a bard, there are actually intervals for river of blood between each procs. You could easily finish your current cast to use whatever proc you have after that aside from Straight Shot.

Even if you consider the chances of losing procs:
River of Blood has a 2x 10% chance to proc, assuming 20% crit rate
Straighter shot 20% chance to proc

Odds are much higher that you don't get a proc in comparison to wasting a proc. Where in most casts you may interrupt your cast for a proc and don't get a proc after your next cast; You simply lose GCD time like this.

It's a bit more complicated for Machinist where reaction speed's a much bigger factor

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Stutterstepping is about moving before your finished going through the full cast / animation sequences as soon as your ability has been registered as cast by the server. In FFXIV, much like pre 2.3 WoW, there is an amount of time between the server actually registering your cast and when you can move. Same way you can cast a spell and then start moving and still have that spell go off if you time it right. Stopcast would just make it easier by eliminating the need to move. Do you see what we're talking about now?

FFXI had this as well, wherein a blm could begin casting a spell and, if they timed it right, cancel out and already be moving or readying another spell while the first one is still casting.

If you are dealing with a game that doesnt track casts and movement in real time like 14, 11, or old pre 2.3 WoW, stopcast lets you game the system. Or least it makes it much easier to.

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I know what stutterstepping is. The point of it is to be able to move while finishing your cast; it gives you more movement, not less casting. Your movement is the ends, not the means. Stopcast would straight up interrupt your cast.

It sounds like what you want is to overlap casts, which is not at all how stutterstepping works. The game still q's the abilities.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Bard with WM would benefit by no longer having to delay hitting a proc, and in doing so may gain a proc they would otherwise have lost, all more efficiently than by hitting a cancel button or moving. Its like Prya said, it would allow you to effective cut out a lot of the penalty of WM and play bard much more like it originally played.

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But... cancelling a weaponskill in order to cast a proc is a dps loss... o.O

Also, no, the way it is now, you don't lose potential procs, since you can only get one proc every 3 seconds/server tick.

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Originally Posted by MrCookTM

But... cancelling a weaponskill in order to cast a proc is a dps loss... o.O

Also, no, the way it is now, you don't lose potential procs, since you can only get one proc every 3 seconds/server tick.

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Not for bard. You can easily get two procs back to back. If you could stop a hard cast, fire off a proc then go right back into hardcasting, its not gonna be a dps loss. Not to sound like a broke record, but since I keep getting the same replies, look at how things worked in 2.3 or earlier WoW. Thats the same system we have going here, and there is a reason people used stopcast and addons to give them a view of when the cast had areached the "point of no return" as it were so they could stop cast and begin another one.

In the time you are moving, you can already be taking another action. Its like how you could use stopcast in a macro in early WoW to "interrupt" a cast and start a whole new cast while the od one continued to go off. You could do the same in FFXI, except no macro there made it less efficient (Essentially the same thing here.).

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

I think I'm missing something here.

Why would you ever want to plan around breaking a cast? If you're planning not to cast then just don't cast...?

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It allows you to quickly start casting another ability without waiting for a prior cast to finish. Example: I'm casting Stone II on my white mage. Suddenly, the tank gets hit with a big attack because he didn't dodge far enough. I could stopcast the Stone II and start casting a Cure II on the tank, getting the healing spell to the tank around two seconds faster.

How it would work as a macro: I'd have /stopcast cast/cure II macroed. Every time I tapped the button of this macro, a command would also be sent to cancel any ability in the process of being cast and cast cure II instead. You'd need to be mindful not to accidentally hit it multiple times lest you cancel the cure II being cast and lengthen the cast time unless that's what you wanted to do.

Personally, I use my spacebar to stop casting. I just tap the spacebar with my thumb, my character jumps, and I've already started the other cast.

To sum up: Stopcasting is a great way to quickly react to the environment. It would be a useful addition to the macro commands especially for your big emergency buttons. i.e. your OH SHIT! skills.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

It allows you to quickly start casting another ability without waiting for a prior cast to finish. Example: I'm casting Stone II on my white mage. Suddenly, the tank gets hit with a big attack because he didn't dodge far enough. I could stopcast the Stone II and start casting a Cure II on the tank, getting the healing spell to the tank around two seconds faster.

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You're using the wrong comparison, though. Healers switch from one priority to another: From maiming to mending. In case of Bards and Machinists, they don't switch at all. They just create an unnecessary pause between their attacks to cancel their attack in favor for another.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Not to sound like a broke record, but since I keep getting the same replies, look at how things worked in 2.3 or earlier WoW.

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Have you read my previous post about this?

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

As for losing procs as a bard, there are actually intervals for river of blood between each procs. You could easily finish your current cast to use whatever proc you have after that aside from Straight Shot.

It's a bit more complicated for Machinist where reaction speed's a much bigger factor

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Just to add clarification; Bloodletter can still overlap if you're multi-dotting. While it's not a problem on it's own (multi-dotting or not), it does become a problem when you have a cast time on top of reseting oGCDs, as well as the entirety of the moveset which also includes an oGCD with cast time.

On MCH, it's entirely on their reaction time. If you ever have to stop cast because you got a proc, that's your own fault (or latency, but that's an outside factor that should never be considered).

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Not for bard. You can easily get two procs back to back. If you could stop a hard cast, fire off a proc then go right back into hardcasting, its not gonna be a dps loss. Not to sound like a broke record, but since I keep getting the same replies, look at how things worked in 2.3 or earlier WoW. Thats the same system we have going here, and there is a reason people used stopcast and addons to give them a view of when the cast had areached the "point of no return" as it were so they could stop cast and begin another one.

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It actually is a dps loss since you're delaying the use of your weapon skill by half a GCD if you have to cancel it. Getting back to back procs is more of an annoyance which still shouldn't exist due to the circumstances (until you actually hit SS the same time you get the proc, which is a different issue all together)

While it's nice to have some more expansive macros (including stopacst, other features like cancelaura or casting AoE on your cursor without a recitle), I don't think it'll help that much due to the gameflow of FFXIV (and the less-than-ideal serverside-detection)

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

You're using the wrong comparison, though. Healers switch from one priority to another: From maiming to mending. In case of Bards and Machinists, they don't switch at all. They just create an unnecessary pause between their attacks to cancel their attack in favor for another.

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I stand corrected. :)

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Not for bard. You can easily get two procs back to back. If you could stop a hard cast, fire off a proc then go right back into hardcasting, its not gonna be a dps loss. Not to sound like a broke record, but since I keep getting the same replies, look at how things worked in 2.3 or earlier WoW. Thats the same system we have going here, and there is a reason people used stopcast and addons to give them a view of when the cast had areached the "point of no return" as it were so they could stop cast and begin another one.

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No, you just can't. BL can reset every 3 seconds at most, this has been the case since 2.0 and there is no room for argument here tbh.

And cancelling a WS in order to use proc IS a dps loss, the math for this has been done as early as Brd got minuet. If you still disagree, you might want to have a discussion with some of the in depth theorycrafters for the class like Krietor or Aurily.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Using /stopcast at the beginning of a macro can be a substantial DPS increase over a moving or jumping to clip cast times or hit procs.

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Macros in this game don't work like that, your stopcast and bloodletter would try to execute at the same time. See any thread about dps macros and why they are bad.

Also, DoT ticks on the 3 second timer server-side, procs happen on that timer. There is no reason to cancel a 1.5s cast to use a proc.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Not for bard. You can easily get two procs back to back. If you could stop a hard cast, fire off a proc then go right back into hardcasting, its not gonna be a dps loss. Not to sound like a broke record, but since I keep getting the same replies, look at how things worked in 2.3 or earlier WoW. Thats the same system we have going here, and there is a reason people used stopcast and addons to give them a view of when the cast had areached the "point of no return" as it were so they could stop cast and begin another one.

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Even for bard, the chances of you getting a back to back proc is extremely rare. When you do, if you stopcast macro assuming it exists, to hit your BL proc and it procs again, the mental recognition time to realize you have gotten a proc while your next ability is casting, interrupt it and then recognize the second proc and hit it again would delay your next on-gcd attack anyway, resulting in a loss.

In wow, no good dps player interrupted casts for procs unless it was something that would refresh a very, very important buff. Every guide I ever read and every advice I ever got from stellar players in that game was if you have started a cast and didn't notice your proc, or if a proc happened in the middle of your cast, just let the cast finish. Stopcast macros were basically used for CS/shear or other ranged interrupts. That I could see being useful, a stopcast macro for say head graze/blunt arrow. Don't use a stopcast for procs.

On controller the button for stopcast is Triangle (or Y on Xbox). There might already be a button on the keyboard setup.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

It actually is a dps loss since you're delaying the use of your weapon skill by half a GCD if you have to cancel it.

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AN in exchange for that half a gcd you're gaining another shot fired. its just not gonna be a dps loss. Its not like that half a GCD just passes without getting anything out of it. You're still gaining a shot fired.

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

Macros in this game don't work like that, your stopcast and bloodletter would try to execute at the same time. See any thread about dps macros and why they are bad.

Also, DoT ticks on the 3 second timer server-side, procs happen on that timer. There is no reason to cancel a 1.5s cast to use a proc.

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Stopcast wouldnt try to go off at the same time. Its not an ability and it wouldnt be on any sort of cool down. Why would you think that?

And yes, you most certainly can get back to back bloodletter procs. It is not always a 3 second wait between procs.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

AN in exchange for that half a gcd you're gaining another shot fired. its just not gonna be a dps loss. Its not like that half a GCD just passes without getting anything out of it. You're still gaining a shot fired.

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You don't seem to comprehend why it's a DPS loss for wasting a GCD. Canceling a cast in general means you've been standing still for the time you've been channeling up to the point where you have been casting. If you were to split this down into 3 GCDs with 1 bloodletter proc inbetween, you'll finish 3 casts + the bloodletter faster than doing 3 casts, canceling one, using that bloodletter and re-casting that canceled cast. If you're betting on that one chance to get that re-proc within the next GCD, you're betting on the low chances as I've explained to you in my other post:

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

As for losing procs as a bard, there are actually intervals for river of blood between each procs. You could easily finish your current cast to use whatever proc you have after that aside from Straight Shot.

Even if you consider the chances of losing procs:
River of Blood has a 2x 10% chance to proc, assuming 20% crit rate
Straighter shot 20% chance to proc

Odds are much higher that you don't get a proc in comparison to wasting a proc. Where in most casts you may interrupt your cast for a proc and don't get a proc after your next cast; You simply lose GCD time like this.

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For every cast you cancel in favor for a proc, you'll waste time in the long run. On average you'll waste your time spend casting by canceling it four times out of five.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

And yes, you most certainly can get back to back bloodletter procs. It is not always a 3 second wait between procs.

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River of blood can only be activated when damage is actually dealt from your DoTs. Apply it on a dummy and look at the numbers. You'll realise they appear at a timed interval and are not continuous. Ergo: Bloodletter can't proc faster than 3 seconds. If it's happening it's because the DoT damage happened shortly after you use bloodletter.

Sources for you to read up about that confirms this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ots_explained/
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/117...=1#post6154837

If you don't want to read those, here is a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQGGTKgL8-g

In particular this bit of that video:
https://youtu.be/aQGGTKgL8-g?t=5m

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

AN in exchange for that half a gcd you're gaining another shot fired. its just not gonna be a dps loss. Its not like that half a GCD just passes without getting anything out of it. You're still gaining a shot fired.

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No. No, you don't gain anything. Since a proc can only happen every 3 seconds and a weaponskill is on a 1,5 second cast, you will ALWAYS be able to use all your procs while finishing all your weapon skills, without ever having to interrupt anything. I don't get what's so difficult to understand about that.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

And yes, you most certainly can get back to back bloodletter procs. It is not always a 3 second wait between procs.

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No, it can't. See post above me. Just stop pretending this bs already, it's seriously dumb.

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

Stopcast wouldnt try to go off at the same time. Its not an ability and it wouldnt be on any sort of cool down. Why would you think that?

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Unless you put a full second wait after it, it would attempt to go off at the same time. And unless your ping is 0 nanoseconds and this non-ability occurred faster than instant abilities, it wouldn't work (again look at why macros are bad for dps threads, abilities don't queue).

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Originally Posted by Shirobi

And yes, you most certainly can get back to back bloodletter procs. It is not always a 3 second wait between procs.

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Back-to back being 3 seconds apart, yes. DoT ticks on the 3 second game timer with HP/MP regen. Procs happen when a DoT tick hits critical.

Can the macro be executed instantly in server-side without dealing with the same server-client delay? And why bother to use macro, when u can just tap strafe button ;)

Description in one of the posts saying you could essentially cancel the cast at the same time you'd stutter step to get the same effect + you could instantly after start casting the next skill.(on phone, quoting small parts from big posts is hard)

That might have worked in Wow or some other MMO but as far as I know in this game casting and recasting times are not linked. So even if you'd do the stopcast and get the cast bar off the screen and still fire off the cast. You'd have the recast timer running until you can do the next skill because server registered your skill as cast so it'll finish the recast timer. (Pretty sure that if you'd cancel your cast early enough to not get the "stutter step" effect on it and it wouldn't cast, then your recast timer would reset too. But that means lost GCD time which we all know what that means)

As said many times. If you have cast time of 1.5s and DoT ticks every 3 second you can't lose a proc unless you don't use the proc after the cast you just started. The only time you can get the reset of BL in under 3 seconds of using the skill is if you used non-proceed BL and right after using that you get the proc. But that means you still won't get the next proc during your current cast.

Hitting ESC on the keyboard cancels actions/spells.

/stopcast
/ac "Instant Healing Spell" <mo>
/stopcast
/ac "Instant Healing Spell" <t>
etc.

Or

/stopcast
/ac "Super Defensive Cooldown" <me>

Are the only things I can think of that could be useful, and only tanks get defensive cooldowns that are worth anything, so the second one is moot.

Am I missing something? It sounds like the advocates of this thread are asking for a way to cheat the system to multi-rapid-cast things they shouldn't be able to.
The "point of no return" in a cast is there to give higher latency players the benefit of the doubt when moving; it's not there to say "go ahead and start doing something else now". Clipping a cast to start casting sooner is far less innocent than clipping a cast to dodge.

If the damage dealers in party are not putting out enough damage with the system as it is, there are far graver problems than the inability to start casting the next action early.