Animations and their effect on Combat

[JackBoosh]

Hi everyone.

Before I say anything, I just want to say I am thoroughly enjoying FFXIV so far and plan to continue playing for the foreseeable future.

Basically, I'm posting here to get people’s opinions on the fact that Combat Animations take priority over the actual effects of the ability. This is something I've seen in other MMOs in the past and it really does ruin otherwise flawless combat systems, particularly from my point of view as a Tank in an FC progressing in Bahamuts Coil. Here are a few of the things I've noticed about animations messing with combat:
I have had to split this over a few posts due to the 1000 character limit.

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[JackBoosh]

• Ability Delay - When your character is still performing the animation from a previous attack, you must wait for the animation to complete before you are able to cast another attack. Even if the Global Cooldown has passed and even if the second move is off the Global Cooldown. An example is using Rage of Halone followed by Spirits Within (Silence) - this is a huge problem for me on bosses where I need to silence such as ADS in turn 2. If im doing my normal rotation, the animation can block me from silencing when I need to, despite the UI telling me I am ready to cast, my only choice is to hammer the Key until it decided to activate. This, combined with the servers being located across the Atlantic from Europe, means that I often miss a lot of easy silences.

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[JackBoosh]

• Picking up moving targets as a melee - If an enemy is moving across/away from you, if you start using an ability, and by the time the animation is finished, the target has moved out of your range, the ability doesnt connect which can cause problems picking up moving targets as a tank. Shield Lob ensures a hit but is very expensive in terms of TP and breaks the normal Tank Combo rotation for a paladin. A solution is to move with the target to ensure you stay within range, but again this is effected by the natural server latency. I can see this also becoming a problem in the upcoming PvP arena where players are likely to be moving pretty much non stop.

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[JackBoosh]

• Cooldowns dont activate straight away - Again, if a cooldown has some kind of animation, the effect does not activate until the cooldown is finished. A good example of this is Hallowed Ground for paladins. When you click the ability the paladin will perform an animation, despite the spell being an instant cast. There is a window of about 1 second when the animation is playing that you can be killed because you dont have the immunity buff, but the cooldown is consumed, and in a situation where Hallowed Ground is going to be useful (when you are near death) this can be a real pain in the neck.
• Revive Animation - After being revived, players are bound on the spot for a few seconds because of the animation. A lot of the time players are revived then instantly die from not being able to avoid AoE attacks.

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[Mazi]

Just edit your original post.

[JackBoosh]

Just edit your original post.

Thanks for the tip, new to these forums, will remember for the future.

[JackBoosh]

There are many other issues which come under this category but these are just a few I can think of off the top of my head from personal experience. The point im trying to make is that I feel like animations shouldnt be a deciding factor in how successful you are but at the moment a lot of important mechanics are governed by animations.

Im just looking for peoples opinions on this and am wondering if anyone else feels the way I do about this issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jack Boosh of Odin-EU

[CurryRaisu]

I'd like to see this addressed as well. It makes Skill/Spell Speed even more useless...

[sasakusaku]

Nothing like jamming on my Benediction key and 4 seconds later it actually goes off. Instant, my fanny.

[MistressAthena]

Nothing like jamming on my Benediction key and 4 seconds later it actually goes off. Instant, my fanny.

It's the worst with the PLDs most powerful spell (forget the name atm >.> dead tired). Which makes you go invincible for so many seconds. How many times I've died due to lag + waiting for an animation you can't even properly see, only to see the spell go off as you die. ffs SE.

It's supposed to be an "oh Crap" situation ability, not a 'well maybe I'll be troubled in a bit, I guess I'll press it now just in case!" ability...

That being said, I'm poorly disappointed in the animations in general. They are fast, look like crap, and ultimately do nothing other than to slow down your spells, which is just coupled even worse by the global CD.

1.0 had fluid nice animations, that looked great, and felt like a real fight was going on. 2.0 looks like 7 people waving their arms frantically with flashy lights going off. Totally retarded imo.