The problem with "Instant OFF GCD" abilities makes combat feel less rewarding.

[Hirosashi]

I think when your skill say Cast: Instant, you generally thing its an instant ability ... or maybe I am wrong :S

Instant cast does not mean there is not an animation or effect or even that the effect with be applied instantly it simply means there is no cast time. Being able to apply 6 dots in an instant would just be broken, it would take all the skill out of chaining off-gcd and on-gcd abilities together to make a good attack chain.

A good example is thunder to aero, cast thunder the nano-second its down casting you can cast aero bam, two dots on the target at the same exact time, thats how you chain effectively. I dont know of any dots that are off gcd lol so aero was all I had there.

[Reika]

And then there is that issue where instant abilities are never really instant. Spirits within, instant right? wrong. You have to wait almost 3 seconds for the ability to do damage and silence your target. thats not instant. Even shield bash isn't really instant even tho it is a lot faster than spirits within.

You can't be truly reactionary in this game, because no skill is really instant. And they do this by design. in 1.0, skills were actually instant. You may have had animation lock, but if you use say Chaos thrust, the damage was registered to the server the moment you used the skill before it appeared on your screen. you can tell because if a long animation WS were to do enough damage to kill a monster, your party would not be able to attack the monster further, and they would have sheathed their weapons the moment the kill-skill got used.

It is even worse with healing spells. Lustrate is the worst of the single target, and succor is the worst of the aoe.

[Azgarde]

I wrote this on another topic, and thought I'd write it here too, because it definitely affects GCD usage and such:

Square said they didn't want to stress servers and only make a checkup on your location every 0.3 seconds. It will end up not working in the long term.

Make a boss ability where the delay between the visual for the spell effect and the time we have to move is 1.5 seconds. Now, consider the AoE appeared 0.3 seconds later than it really got cast, consider the 0.3 seconds server checkup on our location. You have 0.6 seconds less to move. So a 1.5 seconds time reaction is going down to a 0.9 seconds reaction time.

[complexxL9]

The way I see things is as follows (correct me I am wrong):

GCD:
Trigger Action -> Action Performs -> Global Cool down -> Trigger Next Action -> Action Performs -> Global Cool down

Off GCD:
Trigger Action -> Action Performs -> Trigger Next Action -> Action Performs

And with off GCD, you can alternate, without waiting in certain circumstances. like

GCD Action -> Perform -> Off-GCD Action -> Perform -> GCD Action

Off GCD:
Trigger Action -> Action Performs ->0.5-1sec animation cooldown-> Trigger Next Action -> Action Performs->

And with off GCD, you can alternate, without waiting in certain circumstances. like

GCD Action -> Perform -> 0.5-1sec animation cooldown-> Off-GCD Action -> Perform ->0.5-1sec animation cooldown-> GCD Action

here you go.

[Rin_Kuroi]

Anyways, just my own input. Not entirely certain where people are coming from with complaining about this because I honestly don't see what is wrong in the first place.

Animations block the use of certain skills. If I want to use Atherflow + Lustrate (two instant cast abilities) to heal the tank I have to wait for the animation of Atherflow to finish before I can use Lustrate. Since just about everything has an animation this is effectively a GCD for all abilities even for non-GCD ones.

[KogaDrake]

I was going to say something in the early going of this, but with the dev response I am for sure going to say it now. The fact that you can not be performing 2 different actions simultaneously is how the game was designed, and is 100% more realistic. Why is this, well simply i cant swing my axe in two different directions for 2 different skills at the same time, instantly goes off yes, but still the action ends I cant start the next swing.

Now is this a problem? No. Why not? it is simple, EVERY mechanic in the game which is needed to be interrupted/silenced was designed and balanced around this animation lock. If you start a skill at the second the cast starts, your instant off GCD will be fired off BEFORE the cast ends, sometime it will be VERY close, but you always have time to do it.

Some people mentioned that this is a huge issue for healing, and what I can say is if your in a situation that if the instant off-GCD heal does not go off in he middle of your previous heal's animation than one of a few things is wrong, 1 you used the wrong cure 1st as you were not paying attention, 2 your tank is severely undergeared to tank this fight, 3 your tank failed to use a cooldown for mob X's hugh move (scripted use of mountain buster in titan come to mind here), or 4 your non-tanks didnt get out of something they should have avoided. In just about everyone of these situations your either dealing with content that is to hard for the current group, content that requires more skill for the current gear of your group, or someone messed up on hard content that is made to be completed with near perfection or wipe (real progression endgame)

[Reika]

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I'm fairly sure you don't play healing classes.

[Unruhe]

Where in the world are you people getting that these abilities are supposed to be instant!? Stop thinking about wow...put it out of your minds please this is not an instant gratification combat system it takes work and strategy just like playing a real final fantasy game this is not a button mash fest, time your attacks, I have never experienced an issue with this so long as I planned ahead and acted accordingly This is the first game I have ever had to actually try and read incoming attacks to know what I needed to activate for those weapon skills that so not have an aoe affect that hurt.

It's funny because the current system IS a button mash fest. There's no way to tell when/if your off-GCD ability will fire or not so you have to spam the key to try to use it.

Even reliably using Swiftcast (next spell is 'instant') is a joke in combat because 90% of the time the key will not fire properly if you try to use it just after a spell. Once it does fire, there's a delay before you get the "buff" so if you try to cast immediately, odds are the spell will hardcast anyway. The amount of time you take recognizing that the game is shit and then adjusting your tactics usually makes you waste more time than if you'd've just hardcasted whatever spell you wanted in the first place. And that's just talking about one single off-gcd ability, I'm not even talking about chaining them. The game doesn't work like it should.

And don't even get me started on how much I have to mash Raging Strikes.

Shit awful game mechanics aren't the kind of "challenge" anyone should be defending.

[Blimbeard]

It's hard to believe that people are actually defending this. Even as a staunch supporter of SE and a huge fan of FF, it should be patently obvious to anyone with any sense of logic that the system is not functioning as it should be.

Instant abilities on the whole are designed to be reactive. Prime examples are skills like Benediction, Swiftcast and any interrupt. If they don't take effect immediately they are almost pointless, especially when you factor in short enemy cast times and RNG spike damage for example

I don't think every instant should be off the GCD, but even when they aren't, stopping a cast time spell and then firing off an instant is simply far too unresponsive to be useful most of the time. If a skill like an interrupt is designed to actually trigger after a 1 sec animation, then it should have a 1 sec cast time.

As stated previously, as things are, a lot of the difficulty is simply fighting the interface rather than actual meaningful game difficulty.

[Kanzer]

People need to learn the difference between "GCD' abilities and dealing with an animation lock. It's really not that difficult to deal with it and adjust, and once you do, you'll find that it's just as fun as anything, and the fights are designed with it in mind.

So stop QQing.