2.5s Recast/GCD feels wayyy too long.

[Kabooa]

A handful of defensive utility cooldowns are oGCD, but everything else was on a 1.5s GCD. They've been gradually backpeddaling on it after maybe a year and a half of people telling them it was a terrible idea.

I personally enjoy the animation canceling it allows, from a purely visual perspective. Like you found an opening and NOW ITS TIME TO GO, BABY!

You thought it was Gekko, but it was me, Shinten!

[Fryfor]

honestly just looks like you'd rather play WoW tbh

[Roshidon1]

So not sure if someone has already posted this but Bard is a decent APM job. The GCD is 2.5 seconds but you often have Ogcd's (sometimes 2 if your ping is good enough) to weave in between GCD. So with Wanderer's Minuet you have Pitch Perfect (ogcd) that becomes available and usually procs every 8 seconds or so;

Here are some more ogcd abilities: Raging Strikes, Bloodletter, Empereal Arrow, I could go on and on honestly. During Mages Ballad (ogcd) your Bloodletter will reset 80% of the time every 3 seconds. During Army's Peon (ogcd) your gcd will quickly (usually) go down to 2.05s from 2.5, so theres that.

Ninja is also a high APM job so you may want to consider switching from Sam to Ninja.

[Berethos]

As for those of you saying ah there's no such thing as 0 gcd because of physical limitations of how information gets transferred across the internet. 0 GCD is 0 GCD, just because physics won't allow it doesn't mean it's not 0 GCD, no need to argue semantics.

No game has a 0 gcd. That's not a thing that exists. There is ALWAYS some sort of delay in when the game allows for the next input to happen - even in the single player, offline, and completely designed for different mechanics so you're comparing apples to oranges games you mentioned.

[Xyr]

Could OP please address the OGCD argument? Almost all dps jobs have many of those and the ones that don't have cast times where gcd doesn't feel that bad. The combat system is designed around weaving OGCD skills.

I didn't want to bother because I didn't want to have to look up all the OGCD skills. Since I've only played SMN and SAM in Shadowbringer, I'll use them as examples.

For SAM, I won't mention every single oGCD skill, the primary ones to weave are Senei, Shinten, and Kaiten. Kaiten takes 20 Kenki, Shinten takes 25, and Senei takes 50 with a CD of 120s. Ikishoten gives 50 Kenki every minute. Hakaze, Shifu, and Jinpu generates 5 Kenki per cast. Kasha and Gekko generates 10, and Yukikaze generates 15.

In one minute, 24 GCD skills can be used, note Midare/Higan/Tsubame all have a 1.5s cast time + 2.5s recast.

Listing the GCD skills:

Hakaze ->Shifu -> Kasha -> Hakaze -> Jinpu -> Higanbana -> Gekko -> Hakaze -> Yukikaze -> Kasha(Meikyo 1) -> Midare -> Tsubame Gaeshi -> Kasha(MeiKyo 2) -> Gekko (Meikyo 3) -> Midare -> Hakaze -> Shifu -> Kasha -> Hakaze -> Jinpu -> Gekko -> Midare -> Hakaze -> Shifu

With 13% haste selfbuff, this takes ~60 seconds.


That's a gain of 140 Kenki from GCD skills in 1 minute + Ikishoten 50 per minute - Senei 25 per minute - 4 Kaiten 80 per minute - 3 Shinten 50 kenki per minute, 10 residual Kenki.

Above is a list of 30 actions, adding in True north x2 + Meikyo, a total of 36 actions per minute. Which brings down the 2.5s to 1.82s.

So, with 13% sks + weaving still leaves it to be a long ass GCD of 1.67s(weaving reductions incluced).

An entire team can be wiped out in League or Dota in a 1.67s stun...

WoW has a base of 1.5s GCD but their gear have extremely high stats compared to XIV. Even without stacking for haste intentionally, most dps will get 30% or so from their equipment, those who stack haste can reach 50-60%, and 30% is enough for them to reduce their GCD to 1s, and their GCD can be reduce to .75s on classes with self-haste buffs.

Not to mention, WoW is the worst case. Tera, Blade and Soul, and Back Desert all have incredibly low GCD, even accounting for animation lock.

The point of this thread is not, "I would do more damage if GCD was lower," or "There's not enough skills to use."

The point is regarding combat, the games listed above(other than WoW), have good combat flow, it's fluid and synchronized, even with animation locks, it's pleasant to play because you don't feel that animation lock, it's like everything is natural.

FFXIV doesn't have that flow and the incredibly long GCDs are a part of the problem.

Ever played a MOBA and get stunned for 1.5s? And in that 1.5s you just watch in slow motion as literally 20+ things happened, your health drop from 100% to 0, but you can't do anything for this 1.5s that feels like a eternity so you just sit back and read a book or something. That's exactly how it feels everytime my GCD comes up and I have nothing to use.

[HyoMinPark]

If SAM feels too slow, try playing a job like NIN then. It has far more oGCDs and Huton decreases your GCD naturally. Just don't stack Skill Speed or you'll clip your GCD like a madman. Or you can try playing a job like BRD, where you frequently double weave oGCDs and procs, and have a song that can give you +16% Haste at 4 Repertoire. Or you can try SMN - I hear they even have some triple-weaves going on.

The GCD in this game is fine and doesn't need to be changed because it works with the content this game produces. Especially if you're playing busy jobs. With its current design and issues with server latency, there are certain jobs that avoid skill speed for lower GCDs altogether (e.g., NIN, DNC, MCH, SMN).

If you think combat is slow, why don't you try Savage where you have to learn the mechanical dance while also keeping up your rotation.

If neither of these work for you, then perhaps this isn't a game you will enjoy.

[Roshidon1]

WoW has a base of 1.5s GCD but their gear have extremely high stats compared to XIV. Even without stacking for haste intentionally, most dps will get 30% or so from their equipment, those who stack haste can reach 50-60%, and 30% is enough for them to reduce their GCD to 1s, and their GCD can be reduce to .75s on classes with self-haste buffs.

Not to mention, WoW is the worst case. Tera, Blade and Soul, and Back Desert all have incredibly low GCD, even accounting for animation lock.

The point of this thread is not, "I would do more damage if GCD was lower," or "There's not enough skills to use."

The point is regarding combat, the games listed above(other than WoW), have good combat flow, it's fluid and synchronized, even with animation locks, it's pleasant to play because you don't feel that animation lock, it's like everything is natural.

FFXIV doesn't have that flow and the incredibly long GCDs are a part of the problem.

Ever played a MOBA and get stunned for 1.5s? And in that 1.5s you just watch in slow motion as literally 20+ things happened, your health drop from 100% to 0, but you can't do anything for this 1.5s that feels like a eternity so you just sit back and read a book or something. That's exactly how it feels everytime my GCD comes up and I have nothing to use.

I disagree. I think barring a few latency issues the combat has good flow, is fluid and synchronized (well maybe not Ninja, mostly due to latency issues admittedly) minimal animation locks, etc.

You keep comparing FFXIV to other games. This is not those games, and in fact its kind of nice to have something different for a change and not the spam-fest you get with alot of other games.

[Physic]

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.

you can define actions per minute as any button press from the player, but thats nor really relevant when talking about gcds in games. or how much the player has to do.

by your definition, a fighting game where you press two buttons at the same time to throw is two actions, or irl, taking one step is like 100 actions. It may be true by your definition, but then its a pointless statement, its like defining beats per minute of a song, by the number of notes in song and not the pace of the song. his point is the gcd makes the game feel sluggish. if your version of apm doesnt represent speed or pacing, its not really relevant

[Physic]

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

gcd feels bad on many classes, it actually feels worse as more games have handled it better. This isn't really an opinion that has much to do with level or time played. i been around since 1.0, and i can say yeah it feels slow and doesn't flow well. some classes more than others. And some levels more than others, but overall, pretty slow by current standards

[Physic]

I disagree. I think barring a few latency issues the combat has good flow, is fluid and synchronized (well maybe not Ninja, mostly due to latency issues admittedly) minimal animation locks, etc.

You keep comparing FFXIV to other games. This is not those games, and in fact its kind of nice to have something different for a change and not the spam-fest you get with alot of other games.

most basic chains flow feels extremely artificial, how is something a combo action , with 2.5 seconds between parts? Now, I do believe some people prefer that to the opposite. but that doesn't mean it flows, I would say most actions being not allowed regardless to length of animation, or length of effect for a specific static amount of time essentially defies the term flow.

you could probably say its like clockwork, but I wouldn't say it has good flow.