Global cool down questions and thoughts.

[SoothingBell]

Hi there! I play a DRG main and secondary AST. When I play my healer I don't ever think about my GCD. When playing DRG though and trying to keep up my rotation with Dragons Blood I always find myself struggling against the countdown of my buff to keep it up. 2.5 GCD is quite the struggle. I feel like its so slow. Like 2 seconds id be perfectly fine with, even 2.2 seconds. Maybe I'm asking for too much. I have friends who have told me they didn't enjoy playing the trial with me because of the GCD being too long they felt it made the game slow. I just wanna hear what other people think though.

ADVICE!!!

[KaijinRhada]

The GCD being 2.5 by default was one of the things that I hated while playing beta, since I am used to GCDs being between 1 and 1.5 seconds. If I recall correctly, it's a design choice, but 2.5 is an eternity with games. It's mostly bothersome in the early levels, but down the line, the problem becomes less glaring. The challenge then becomes getting to the point where you have more than three things to push and other mechanics that can shorten the GCD/abilities that are off-GCD.

[Slappah]

You could try playing ninja

Between huton and all the damn SS they love throwing onto nin gear, and then sch haste buff and maybe get crazier and an ast throws on that skillspeed buff too, you could get as low as 1ish second on the gcd, maybe even lower depending


-EDIT-
But yes. You're asking for too much. It's a design choice. Idk if you noticed but this isn't an extremely hardcore MMO. The game is also cross-platform with ps3+ps4.
I couldn't imagine a baseline 1 second GCD when playing on controller, especially ps3. You might as well just /afk if it was like that and you're doing 72m PvP, diadem or S rank hunts.

They aren't going to change the GCD. It's simply not gonna happen.
The entire game has been designed around this 2.5 GCD, and it works fine. It can feel slow at first bit after having played for over a year I'm perfectly content with it. It feels natural to me at this point. I like it.
Would I mind if it was faster? No. But at this point I don't want it faster. The game plays just fine.

Plus at level 60 every job has a lot of off-gcd skills they throw in so it's not like you're sitting there..hit a button, wait 2.5 seconds then hit another. You hit a GCD, hit an off gcd, another GCD, another off gcd, cooldowns, utilities.

[Tint]

you will need a GCD of 2.4 seconds or below (590+ skillspeed) for the dragoon rotation.

the long GCD allows stats like skill- and spellspeed and a bunch of off-gcd skills. and with the off-gcds the gameplay feels fast. but it takes a while to learn all the skills. in low lvl it really is kind of boring :X

[Colorful]

It's the primary reason I play Ninja, most other classes just incredibly slow to me (I'm used to MMOs with faster GCDs). I believe it was made slow to appeal to FFXI players? Not quite sure, but that game played slowly, and I'd have to assume that played a part in the choice. Regardless, I feel Ninja is perfect. Between GCD, mudras and OGCD abilities, I think the speed at which they execute their abilities is perfect.

[Ykronix]

Pugilist/Monk is one of those classes that rewards you for going through your rotations with Greased Lightning, which cuts the downtime by a lot. You're going through your rotations a hell lot faster, and in terms of this game, is REALLY fast. Unlike some mmos (at least the ones I've played), you don't just click a target and spam buttons. You have to be dodging out of obstacles and aoe attacks, and as a melee class, you'll be hard-pressed out of everyone else to avoid taking hits you won't survive. Combined with other off-GCD skills (many can be gotten from cross-class skillsets) its really a lot to keep track of on top of your core rotation alone, and there's enough skills to be exploited in that rotation that you'll likely be wasting that one second you earned trying to remember which to use next while being distracted running around avoiding attacks.

[Enkidoh]

Not this again... this has been argued since the Alpha and SE have stated they've made their decision, why the GCD is like that and that they are sticking to it. It's not going to change. If you treat GCD as analogous to the traditional FF style ATB gauge instead of expecting the game to be about button mashing as fast and as hard as you can, then it becomes far more enjoyable.

[AskaRay]

I like the global cooldown speed. Any faster and I'd have trouble with certain jobs...any slower and yeah, it would be awfully long. This isn't a fighting game; I don't need instantaneous actions.

[jack891]

quick tip
if the blood of the dragon timer reaches over 21s (maybe slightly more depending on latency) after using wheeling thrust or fang and claw u should be safe to use geirskogul.
otherwise dont use it unless BOTD is about to come off cooldown
this is based on having the 2.4s gcd so u may need to adjust and play around with the times if ur not at the cap

hope this helps