Initially I was actually leaning towards taking the Slow myself for much the same reasons (less damage taken) however there are a few problems with the way it's implemented.
+ Firstly, taking Choco Kick actually reduces the (already poor) Tanking capability of your Chocobo. This is because it will spam all available abilities, and using Choco Kick instead of Choco Drop doesn't pull any enmity. IF the Chocobo was able to simultaneously hold hate and keep an enemy Slowed, then I would consider it to be much more useful.
+ Secondly, you are correct that Slows reduce incoming damage... but it only impacts the rate of standard autoattacks (which Tank classes largely laugh at and Ranged classes end up kiting) and due to the way Chocobo AI works the debuff is usually only going to be affecting a single opponent. It's very unlikely that you're going to die from autoattacks from a single standard trash enemy, and Bosses and other tougher foes are often slow immune.
+ Thirdly, as already mentioned, is the diminishing returns angle. Having two sources of a debuff can easily mess up a debuff rotation. Perfect Slow debuff timing obviously isn't as vital as with Stuns, but it can still become annoying if someone is used to a specific rotation (I'm thinking of Lancers here).
+ Finally, combined with "Choco Rush" (the Stun) it has the lowest damage potency (130) of any of your Chocobo's attacks. Therefore any time your Chocobo uses the slow instead of another Weaponskill it loses DPS - so if you are in a situation where you won't gain any benefit from the debuff, the attack could be wasted.
Note that I'm not saying "Don't take it" - almost every debuff is situationally useful - but if you are going to take it, be aware of the downsides!
Personally, if there was enough SP to take Choco Kick and still have enough left to grab Healer Rank 7 and Attacker Rank 6, I might consider taking it. I almost never have my Chocobo "Tank" and have no other sources of Slow. Unfortunately, it's the weakest link in an already-strong lineup so was the obvious choice for me to drop...
I'm not so sure about that.the weak DoT attack just doesn't scale versus tougher opponents.
Choco Beak (the DoT ability) is the highest potency attack your chocobo has available. The initial 130 Potency is the same as Choco Kick (so even if it spams it and the DoT doesn't stack with itself, it's not doing any harm) but the DoT effect is quite strong and has no danger of negatively impacting anything. It's therefore practically never going to be "unhelpful" to have the Chocobo use it.
If the DoT lasts for the entire duration, it grants 20 potency every 3 seconds over 18 seconds, so 120 additional potency total. However even if the chocobo spams the attack back to back and overwrites that DoT, you would still get at least 1-2 DoT ticks between attacks, bringing it up from 130 potency to 150-170 Potency (Choco Drop and Choco Slash - your "main" attacks are both 150 potency). So it's still going to be your most powerful ST attack even when spammed.
And there's one last thing to consider... if you get into trouble and your Chocobo needs to start spamming heals, or you manually swap it into Healing stance, the DoT will still be ticking...
Agreed. Healer Rank 4 is going to be the first major milestone, but if you have the SP available, it's never going to be a bad idea to take it to Rank 7.7 in the healing tree is a must, the 30% healing buff is very good.
Try clicking the regen off and see how long it takes for the Chocobo to reapply it.As to the attack's having an Internal CD, I don't think so, because I've seen many times, back to back usage of the same WS, in a short period of time. Whereas, other times, the bird goes for a long duration between WS spam.. its too random.
There's definitely some kind of internal cooldown in place there (the same goes for Choco Cure - even in Healer stance it can't quite spam it back-to-back) but I agree that it's very tricky to get decent numbers for the attacks because of the behaviour of the AI.