2.5s Recast/GCD feels wayyy too long.

[Physic]

I always like this argument. "FFXIV is soooooo slooooooooow" -- says someone either playing a slow job, is low level, or isn't doing it right.

Samurai is a medium-high-speed job, floating somewhere around 49 APM on a training dummy if you count positionals as just one button press (usually it's two, as most people right-click+strafe. In that case it'd be ~55.) For the record, 49 puts it right around Demonology Warlock, which is in the upper half speed-wise for WoW. It's true none of the jobs this expansion quite match up to the fastest WoW DPS specs (Fury Warrior at 67 apm, highest in FFXIV right now is Ninja at around ~55 for one-button positionals, ~60 for two.) Still, the difference isn't dramatically large, and many WoW refugees complain about there being too many mechanics to dodge during boss fights in FFXIV. That would certainly imply that FFXIV fights require more movement than WoW. I disagree however, as even a cursory glance at the world first race in WoW shows there's *plenty* of crap to dodge there, too.

I'm kind of lowballing the FFXIV numbers btw. They're honestly probably a bit higher, as people generally stop casting whenever they have to be off a boss, and on someone like Innocence that's a decent amount (the jumps, the phase transition, getting marked with the big circle, etc. This means about 4%-ish offtime during a pull), so bump the FFXIV numbers up a tad if you'd like. And no, I'm not counting Bloodbath, Sprint, etc., just the rotational stuff. My WoW numbers come from SimCraft, which is literally "this is you playing at your absolute maximum" and also doesn't include defensives for non-tanks. Any APM above the listed amount is wasted APM.

Also, I can kinda tell why you think the combat in this game is slow. If you need help with Samurai and pushing buttons faster there's resources you can turn to (The Balance is pretty good), but in general you should be doing ~30% more APM than you are now. Most of the time for melee it's simply a lack of confidence in your rotation (which causes hesitation as you stop to think what button to press next) or fear of keeping high uptime on the boss (dodging very far from bosses to avoid mechanics instead of staying on it.)

And if anyone says "but positionals don't count lol" -- it's literally you pressing a button to get more DPS. It counts as an action.

not sure what you mean, but if you are counting movement, that isn't what people are talking about.

[Xyr]

I mean... you can take a quick peak at his fflogs to tell that even with his super slow 2s GCDs he can't press buttons right and plays SAM incorrectly.
Meanwhile me here on my summoner double triple weaving lol and want even slower GCD...

Ah yes, the fflog argument. Yeah, my fflog of 2 eden fights where I had no idea what the boss mechanics were as I just hit lvl 80, and it was the first or second day that raid came out obviously is the perfect evidence of how great the game's combat is. That's like deciding the state of a nation based on the input of two people out of 300 million. If the game had 60s gcd on every skill, and someone who had low logs said the gcd is too long, you'd probably still say that he only feels it's long because his logs lmfao.

[Berethos]

I already stack skill speed. As I said, it only got me to about 2.05 recast. Still nowhere close to 0.5s to 1s gcd.

No, not every game need 1.5s, now a days with modern combat systems most gcds are either gone completely or down to .5s.

Gone completely?

I don't think so.

You may not see it actively displayed on a screen, but there is absolutely an internal "cooldown" between uses of abilities...especially in the MMO world. It might be baked into the animation of the ability (even if you can animation cancel, there's still a brief window where you cannot activate the next ability), but it is still there. In fact, most of those "modern combat" games give even more precedence to the animation that FFXIV does...but in the end it has the same function as a global cooldown does here - limiting how many actions you can take in a specific time.

Animation delay/lock. GCD. Even the firing rate of a weapon in an FPS - all controls on how often you can attack and do damage to a target, based on and balanced for the type of game it is and the mechanics of the gameplay.

I also find the "down to .5s" a suspect claim - which MMOs have such a speedy gcd? Are they the ones that have the action style combat...that instead uses the animation delay as a means of controlling your rate of attack? Or is there some other fabled MMO out there that uses tab-targeting and button presses, but lets you spam then every half second?

[reyre]

Ah yes, the fflog argument. Yeah, my fflog of 2 eden fights where I had no idea what the boss mechanics were as I just hit lvl 80, and it was the first or second day that raid came out obviously is the perfect evidence of how great the game's combat is. That's like deciding the state of a nation based on the input of two people out of 300 million. If the game had 60s gcd on every skill, and someone who had low logs said the gcd is too long, you'd probably still say that he only feels it's long because his logs lmfao.

Ok you are making a terrible argument there, first you wrote that you just hit lvl 80 with SAM so that means that you dont have enough experience with the class to play it properly so if it feels like you have a long GCD is because YOU are not playing properly, that alone renders your whole point kind of worthless but moving on, second so you dont know the fight and you did poorly? not uncommon but it also implies that yo could have a more fluid (faster) feel of the GCD if you knew the fight, hence you feel the class is slow.

So to summarize, you dont know the class well enough, you dont know the fights well enough, how do you expect to fight properlly? and yes by fighting properlly the "speed" (more the feel in reality) of the class goes up. Does this game need a faster GCD? not really if we go just by infraesctructure high ping in some jobs makes them very hard to play, if we go by player feel, most of the time there is enough shit going on in your screen to keep you bussy for a while, so slow GCD is less noticeable especially when you factor in oGCDs. Having a fast GCD will make this game better? probably not, having to hit buttons faster doesnt imply good gamplay mechanics, i mean look at ff15 you could smash that atack butting as fast as you can but it was just that, one button smash even at the highest difficulty that game was extremely boring combat wise. Pretty? yeah, but dull. So fast GCD for the sake of fast GCD is not really an improvement its not even QoL, its just pretty but dull.

[Ardox]

I already stack skill speed. As I said, it only got me to about 2.05 recast. Still nowhere close to 0.5s to 1s gcd.

No, not every game need 1.5s, now a days with modern combat systems most gcds are either gone completely or down to .5s.

You realize this is impossible, right? Onlines games need to send signals around the globe back and forth between the players and there's no game where such speedy fight would sync properly in a multiplayer game.. Even if you had direct communication with laser and direct line of sight, in a vacuum, and with instantaneous computers you'd still need 0.1 sec to sync 2 players on the globe because the choking point would be the speed of light..
• then you have the average latency of the web of ~0.2sec
• plus the gaming server computation time (be sure the command is valid, not spam, authentificated, etc.)
• plus the player computation time (that you can't assume have the top tier gaming setup)
• plus the back and forth to synceverything..
Realistically, you can't have anything under 1sec and hope you're game will run smoothly... Not with today's technology

You don't see the cooldown, but I can assure you it's there.

And that's why you see thing like getting hitted by an AoE even if you were completely out of the zone on your screen, Or why you can slide-cast, Or why you can trigger an oGCD when there's still a fraction of time to the cooldown, Or having a Benediction going on CD but not saving the target: With time, MMO teams have learn how to hide latency issues like that, but it's far from easy or straight forward

[Darkstride]

It only feels slow at first until you have a mountain of OGCDs to fill in the gaps. Some jobs are hectic at 80 trying to cram everything in without clipping.

[brasteir]

Ah yes, the fflog argument. Yeah, my fflog of 2 eden fights where I had no idea what the boss mechanics were as I just hit lvl 80, and it was the first or second day that raid came out obviously is the perfect evidence of how great the game's combat is. That's like deciding the state of a nation based on the input of two people out of 300 million. If the game had 60s gcd on every skill, and someone who had low logs said the gcd is too long, you'd probably still say that he only feels it's long because his logs lmfao.

Oh. My. God. Why is a 3rd party mining my data and putting it on display? That is disgusting, it should be at least opt in. I have no interest in either savage or cretins using my logs as an argument, how do I get this hidden?

[Xyr]

Oh. My. God. Why is a 3rd party mining my data and putting it on display? That is disgusting, it should be at least opt in. I have no interest in either savage or cretins using my logs as an argument, how do I get this hidden?

Love sarcasm in texts. If games were designed based on logs then they might as well be designed for the top 0.1% players. "Oh your parse is 95%? That's why you feel slow., you are not at 99%. Your parse is 85%? That's why monks feel clunky, it's because your parse is low. Ninja's aren't undertuned you just don't know how to play, look at your logs."

You might as well use "logs" for every single problem anyone ever has with the game at this point.

[Powercow]

not sure what you mean, but if you are counting movement, that isn't what people are talking about.

No, we're not counting moving for mechanics. Yes, we are counting moving to his positionals. This is because moving to hit positionals is literally pressing a button to increase DPS against a stationary target, and therefore counts as an action to any reasonable person.

If you mean more in general, APM means means "Actions Per Minute," or how often you need to hit buttons every minute. The reason this is relevant is because the claim that FFXIV's GCD is so slow hinges upon the belief that combat in general is too slow. Anyone can easily go look up some of the faster jobs in this game and find out that, no, it's really not much slower than a game like WoW. It is slower in general, and some jobs are much slower than WoW equivalents, some of them can keep up with the faster WoW jobs.

[LunarEmerald]

I mean... you can take a quick peak at his fflogs to tell that even with his super slow 2s GCDs he can't press buttons right and plays SAM incorrectly.
Meanwhile me here on my summoner double triple weaving lol and want even slower GCD...

A level 80 still complaining about the gcd is more than likely someone who bought a skip potion to 70.