Reducing Standard Cast Times (not recast time) to 2s

Title.

Helps slidecasting and removes caster tax. Makes casts flow together better.
If you've played Red Mage, you know what I mean.

Edit:
THIS IS NOT FOR WEAVING LIKE AST HAS. THIS IS SOLELY FOR REMOVING CASTER TAX AND MAKING SLIDECASTING MORE INTUITIVE

Have always thought, if there was one thing I wanted them to homogenize about healers, it was the cast time of melefic on AST. That was, easily, my favorite part of that class, and the one thing I wanted to see other healers get.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

Have always thought, if there was one thing I wanted them to homogenize about healers, it was the cast time of melefic on AST. That was, easily, my favorite part of that class, and the one thing I wanted to see other healers get.

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Nah, not malefic-tier. 2.3-2s at the very shortest. This is to improve play-feel, not to allow a weave.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

Nah, not malefic-tier. 2.3-2s at the very shortest. This is to improve play-feel, not to allow a weave.

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Allowing a weave would improve play-feel—especially on WHM.

If they made whm cast times less then they would probably need to redo the lilies system. The reason its so good right now it allows whm to weave, removing that just kinda makes lilies just an instant heal that gives back damage. On sch it might be borderline broken with all it's oGcds. I also think that it being a ast exclusive makes sense because their card system and low Pdps compared to sch or whm.

Yeah I get the feeling that if this were implemented, it'd be the nail in the coffin for anyone still playing AST.

I think the cast times are fine.

For those asking for a full weave-space, consider -- When all spells clip, you're as able to place oGCDs into any GCD as any other. You can also use them during forced downtime at effectively no uptime cost.

At present, all but AST has either full casts or instants (double-weaves), and those instants are on decently rare intervals (twice per 30 seconds for WHM via Lily/Dia, + potential Regens, for instance). This means there will be large windows where the oGCD itself can be implemented as the stutter-step, albeit at cost, but in exactly so far as is needed. AST, on the other hand, is obliged to use one and only one oGCD per GCD outside of Combust or AB. Both are likely mostly balanced around woven oGCDs, of course, though perhaps likely AST more tightly so than WHM, but WHM feels just a bit... freer in any particular emergency scenario than AST does precisely because those oGCDs aren't so strictly paced if you'd need movement anyways but not for more than a single oGCD's time and Dia and Regen are each too recently paced (though that, too, can be considered a failure of play).

Simply put, if you allow for weaving, thereby providing a potency over time spike as AST received in SB, expect to be balanced around that. So, exempting hidden/accidental healer dps buffs, that leaves just gameplay changes for the non-ASTs. Personally, I both find weaving oGCDs (and movement) into my instant casts more exciting and not being constrained to a one-oGCD-per-GCD pacing more freeing on non-ASTs, than I would if every job borrowed AST's 1.5-second casts.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Allowing a weave would improve play-feel—especially on WHM.

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For me, at least, giving free-weave casts to non-ASTs (especially WHM) would do less to improve play-feel than to reduce the signals of good performance which in turn made play more exciting.

A 2.3-2.0s cast time would not facilitate AST-like weaving.
Maybe it would make clipping for 1 skill better than using Ruin/Lily for just 1, but it’s still better to double-weave in Ruin/Lily like normal.
It’s about removing the 0.908s animation lock on Broil/Glare

While this thread has gone off topic, I'll say this. The fact that ast has the ability to single weave on every gcd is actually its greatest strength right now, it means it can slot its ogcd healing anywhere in a fight in optimal settings as opposed to taking a dps loss to force a weave with Lily/Ruin or delaying the ability to use on a dot refresh. It also gives them a larger space to stutter step compared to sch/whm.

However as the OP said. This is not the subject of the topic. OP is not asking for all healers to have Malefic level cast times. In fact, with the way healers are currently balanced, that would be too powerful for sch and would make lillies in their current form a redundant tradeoff.

More homogenization for healers! That'll certainly increase the player base of this role.

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Originally Posted by Caduagm

More homogenization for healers! That'll certainly increase the player base of this role.

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Are you really that attached to 2.5/2.5? If you like animation lock you may as well go all the way to 2.8 like Fire IV with a potency change to make up for it (335 for Glare)

I would be down for this. It would make pretty much all the mage jobs feel better, nevermind just the healers.

I've honestly been spoiled with the 1.5 cast time for Malefic that I can barely function correctly with my rotations on SCH and WHM. I feel that this is a good change for every healers since that would mean more weaving for oGCD heals and Shields

Please don't. For many reasons:

Finding/creating weaving opportunities is an important part of SCH/WHM gameplay.
It's something that keeps them from being significantly ahead of AST in dps.
It's something that makes AST unique. Not just because it's different, but because AST can enable their cohealer to DPS more than they otherwise could, by being able to handle some of the healing with no loss.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Please don't. For many reasons:

Finding/creating weaving opportunities is an important part of SCH/WHM gameplay.
It's something that keeps them from being significantly ahead of AST in dps.
It's something that makes AST unique. Not just because it's different, but because AST can enable their cohealer to DPS more than they otherwise could, by being able to handle some of the healing with no loss.

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Let's also consider the following, however.

1. Most animation locks use a standard .635 seconds' (or technically .633-repeating, but this simplifies to .635 in frame-analysis) duration. (Last I checked, Mudras use .5 seconds into another mudra, but .635 seconds into Ninjutsu. Jump uses an animation lock of just over a second in its latest implementation, iirc, while High Jump uses the standard lock if and only if the player's position does not move over the cast.)
2. Cast times allow for cast progress during the animation times/locks of previous casts.
3. The latest Broil spell and Glare, by all accounts here (I have yet to test them for myself since I don't have the ease of frame analysis I had before), instead use an animation lock of just over .9 seconds, costing over a quarter-second more of uptime if followed by an OGCD than other casts.
4. For these spells, therefore, to have only the same opportunity cost when followed by an oGCD as most other spells, they'd need to complete their casts a bit over a quarter second sooner, e.g. via a base cast time of 2.2 instead of 2.5.

The OP has never suggested a true space for a full weave, only this measure of compensation to balance those particular long-animation spells' opportunity costs.

Which, I'd like. No more than that, ofc, but that much seems reasonable to me. I worry about the false impressions it will leave on players less informed of this game's more esoteric bits, but that seems reasonable. Better than that, though, I'd just like to see the animation lock reduced to the standard value, as to leave no hidden increased penalty nor trick players into thinking they have a reduced single-weave penalty.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The OP has never suggested a true space for a full weave, only this measure of compensation to balance those particular long-animation spells' opportunity costs.

Which, I'd like. No more than that, ofc, but that much seems reasonable to me. I worry about the false impressions it will leave on players less informed of this game's more esoteric bits, but that seems reasonable. Better than that, though, I'd just like to see the animation lock reduced to the standard value, as to leave no hidden increased penalty nor trick players into thinking they have a reduced single-weave penalty.

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Reply was directed at the poster above who was talking about weaving. My bad for not quoting.

As for reducing the cast time below the Recast, I can see the benefits. It will remove the caster tax, it will help with higher latency and it will make it easier to slidecast around.

But this will have effects on balancing. By removing the caster tax, you can expect a dps increase on Broil/Glare of up to 4% (approximately) for SCH/WHM, depending on how many Broil/Glare you cast. Possibly more because this will also mitigate the effects of latency on the caster tax.

In addition, clipping is not binary, it matters how much you clip. If I clip with a 2.5s cast time, I eat 0.7s into the next GCD. If I clip with a 2.2s cast time, I eat 0.4s into the next GCD. Therefore, this reduces the cost of clipping across the board. It may not be a full weave, but it has many implications.

As an example, clipping Broil will cost you:
2.5s cast: approx. 82 potency loss.
2.2s cast: approx. 49 potency loss.
2.0s cast: approx. 26 potency loss.

In both of these cases, SCH will prefer to clip Broil for anything other than a double weave.
In the extreme case of 2.0s, the potency loss is so small that you'll prefer to clip two consecutive Broils rather than create a double weaving window with Ruin II.

With reduced cast time comes greater mobility, which will have its own impact on DPS.

A change like this will put SCH and WHM significantly further ahead of AST. You need to nerf Broil and Glare for a change like this to work.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin;5194224l

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I only suggested 2.0s because Red Mage already has a 2.0s cast for all of their short spells (likely so that lag won’t mess up dualcast).
I stated 2.0 because it’s a precedent in the game already, not because of balance.
Of course with dualcast and the long oGCD animation lock RDM has different clipping rules to healers.

2.4 would be the minimum actually required but because of natural spellspeed and gearing, 2.3 would be the best value.