Should Skill Speed and Spell Speed still exist?

First time poster. There’s been a few posts over the years about sub-stat changes. I wanted to check the community’s vibe on two: skill speed and spell speed.



Would it be easier for all (devs and players) if they were removed entirely and replaced with a set GCD speed for each job? The damage boost can be added to other substats to compensate. 

The base being 2.5 seconds, and then some job being faster or slower depending on the feel they are going for with the job?

Surely less variance here will make job design and balancing a little easier? It’s also less burden on newer players learning the ins-and-outs of substats for higher-end content. 

It seems only a few roles care about SKS and SPS anyway these days. Most seem to be designed to function at a 2.5 GCD, with buffs to GCD speed either applied or added as a trait.

But when they do, if you ignore it through ignorance or not wanting to put in the work to gear properly for higher end content, it can really harm their ability to function effectively.

And there’s no heads up on this either other than community-led content. 

Realise this also raises questions around game complexity, and removing personalisation for each job via simplification. I know some love this level of granularity, planning an encounter down to the GCD through being able to tweak GCD speed for maximum impact. And it could make some roles markedly worse for sure if the decision around their GCD speed falls the wrong way. 



But what do other players think? And what am I missing here?

Yeah bro we should make gear even more streamlined with even less choices.

And what are you even saying? jobs already have faster GCD based on the job, namely

Monk passive (Greased Lightning); Samurai sustained buff (Fuka); Ninja sustained buff (Huton); Reaper temporary rotational burst (Enshroud); Bard temporary buff (Army's Paeon); Machinist temporary rotational burst (Hypercharge); Black Mage temporary rotational burst (Leylines); Summoner varying rotational cast/recast times (Garuda); Red Mage temporary rotational burst (melee combo); Astrologian temporary rotational burst (Astrodyne).

And there's different BIS for different GCD depending on class u play. but substats in this game are already a meme.

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Originally Posted by Purrnauskis

Yeah bro we should make gear even more streamlined with even less choices.

And what are you even saying? jobs already have faster GCD based on the job, namely

Monk passive (Greased Lightning); Samurai sustained buff (Fuka); Ninja sustained buff (Huton); Reaper temporary rotational burst (Enshroud); Bard temporary buff (Army's Paeon); Machinist temporary rotational burst (Hypercharge); Black Mage temporary rotational burst (Leylines); Summoner varying rotational cast/recast times (Garuda); Red Mage temporary rotational burst (melee combo); Astrologian temporary rotational burst (Astrodyne).

And there's different BIS for different GCD depending on class u play. but substats in this game are already a meme.

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I’m not suggesting removing haste stats but as for your last line at this point near every class in the game besides healers and arguably BLM who don’t care about haste their GCD BIS is basically always “as close to 2.5 as your gear will physically let you” because every class hates haste at this point

If anything I think we should move in the opposite direction and go back to more stats to pick from, not less.
I miss accuracy. I miss enmity. I even miss STUN RESISTANCE.

Just give me something fun to toy around with even if it's not optimal.

I think tuning your GCD speed to exactly what you want for a given fight is part of the charm of Skill/Spell Speed stats. Removing them would also remove any ability for the player to adjust their GCDs around inconvenient mechanics and also remove a lot of personalisation from builds.

Sure, most people tend to follow TheOneBestBuildAsMandatedByTheBalance(TM), but I personally enjoy tuning my own GCD speed to suit what I prefer rather than blindly chasing what other people do.

As for the system being unclear to new players, I think that maybe they should put some better tutorials into the game instead of removing every system that requires some additional knowledge.

I think skill, and spell speed should be merged into a single haste stat, but speed shot NOT be removed. That being said, it might open up some weird things. but I think that ability recast times could also be affected by haste.

I also think they really need to look into making rotations a little more speed friendly.

Remove:
Haste : spells speed / skill speed

Add new stats:
For melee:
Slash power / piers power / smash power

I would keep it but turn it into Haste. There is no good reason for the stats being separate.

Skillspeed and Spellspeed are victims of how static rotations are and the two minute meta. If those went away, we would have a lot more freedom. As it is, you want a specific spellspeed/skillspeed otherwise your rotation isn't aligned with 2 minute raid buffs, which becomes a problem if you're trying to really optimise.

I think this is a terrible idea. I cant comment on melee but on smn i need to adjust the amount of sps each patch / gear change so i can hit all the demi spells, i think its due to my ping, latency and that im on controller - its always a slight bump away from the standard bis melds. If you removed the option to do this, i would struggle to get the attacks out. I think when it comes down to it. Needlessly removing layers of choice will only end up with making the game more boring.

Besides where do you draw the line? Why not just remove str/ mnd/int and turn it into power while were at it? Or combine crit / DH and Det? Its a slippery slope and one that would ultimately leave the game dimminished.

But i am someone who would love to see some sort of talent tree, even if it was just cosmetic, just to give more choice and options.

As long as they stop adding speed on gear for jobs that can only function at 2.50s..

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Originally Posted by Valence

As long as they stop adding speed on gear for jobs that can only function at 2.50s..

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Might be a take, but while I think it's fine for jobs to have an optimal GCD speed that they want to aim for, but I think that all jobs need to be at least functionally playable at any speed. Like no job should implode in on itself if it has the 'wrong' speed.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Might be a take, but while I think it's fine for jobs to have an optimal GCD speed that they want to aim for, but I think that all jobs need to be at least functionally playable at any speed. Like no job should implode in on itself if it has the 'wrong' speed.

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Yeah spell speed / skill speed just need a rework to be usable as a whole. right now there's one correct solution, and that's it. There's no damage benefit to that stat, it's just a requirement to check off.

One idea for example is to merge both, and call them "Alacrity", then make that affect cooldowns. But, to truly mess with the ability to optimize this, make it non-linear: The shorter a cooldown is, the stronger the effect is. Hence it affects GCD the most (being the shortest CD), moderate amounts quickly drop your GCD by 15%-20% (2,2s-2,0s effective). But your long CDs like your 120s raid buff is only affected by 3%-4% (still a respectable 5-6s off) at those levels. In other words, you'll forcibly misalign your bursts in the raidgroup as a whole, even if individually the stat will probably be optimal to stack.

If anything the two stats should be replaced with a universal speed stat. Make it affect movement speed too so that it's actually fun to use even if not optimal for deeps

You will never see these stats combined because it would require redesigning old relic weapon stat distribution UI elements. Ain't nobody going back and re-doing the Sphere Scroll art because somebody wanted a stat removed.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

You will never see these stats combined because it would require redesigning old relic weapon stat distribution UI elements. Ain't nobody going back and re-doing the Sphere Scroll art because somebody wanted a stat removed.

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You're right, that's also why they added DH to replace Accuracy when they removed it, or Tenacity to replace Parry on Battledance materia (which is funny and sad because it didn't change anything for that last one).

I do think they should add a second effect for skill speed because spell speed have a effect on Regen skills making them slightly stronger and more consistent not by much but just enough to feel a small impact

Just merge SkS and SpS and either apply job-specific scaling to the resultant consolidated Speed (or buff them to be slightly BiS for the jobs that most favor them and therefore competitive for most jobs) or have it affect them damage of most abilities and periodic damage identically to Determination. As such, all secondaries would affect time-limited damage identically (with Speed simply swapping GCD damage to frequency of GCDs, thereby being more easily balanced across jobs with varying portions of GCD-affected damage).