DEV REQUEST: PLEASE do not add cast bars to Samurai

[Risvertasashi]

Speak English and not Savage raid speak. Seriously, I have no Idea what you said.

I will just say that I have no issue with the BRD rotation and that I do have issues with a MCH rotation.

Bard has an oGCD skill, one of those skills you use between your GCDs. Except it also has a cast time, so it blocks you from using GCDs by the time your GCD skills are ready.

Of all the crude changes to bard that one struck me as the most obnoxious.

[Stitches1974]

Bard has an oGCD skill, one of those skills you use between your GCDs. Except it also has a cast time, so it blocks you from using GCDs by the time your GCD skills are ready.

Of all the crude changes to bard that one struck me as the most obnoxious.

All bard attack skills have a cast time with minuet on, with the exception of bloodletter , sidewinder, straighter shot proc, and misery's end. Either I don't see what you're talking about as an issue or I've gotten used to it and does not click to me as being an issue.

[Kitfox]

All bard attack skills have a cast time with minuet on, with the exception of bloodletter , sidewinder, straighter shot proc, and misery's end. Either I don't see what you're talking about as an issue or I've gotten used to it and does not click to me as being an issue.

Empyreal Arrow.

On topic: I find it weird to want an animation lock instead of a cast bar. You would rather be locked in place and die, than have an option to cancel the lock and move out of the way? Really?

[Malzian]

All bard attack skills have a cast time with minuet on, with the exception of bloodletter , sidewinder, straighter shot proc, and misery's end. Either I don't see what you're talking about as an issue or I've gotten used to it and does not click to me as being an issue.

To dissect this... Firstly oGCD means "off Global Cooldown", which is a skill you can use when one of your normal GCD (Global Cooldown, of course) skills are unavailable.

What can happen here is, say you have a Global Cooldown of 1.5 seconds (I picked this as a random example, let's not argue over the ACTUAL lengths of GCDs). If you have an oGCD skill that takes 1.6 seconds of animation lock, your GCD skill will have been available for 0.1 seconds before you can actually press it. This means you have have that 0.1 seconds "clipped off" from your active GCD time. Now this usually isn't a problem as, with this, it takes 15 activations for you to lose a single GCD skill.

Where the problem comes in its that is a skill takes 1.8 or 1.9 seconds to finish, you lose 0.3 to 0.4 seconds on your GCDs every time. At that rate you lose a whole GCD skill every 4 or 5 activations. If the time is even more excessive, you can lose a whole or more GCD every time you activate it. Thankfully we don't have skills that are to that extreme right now, but the activating time for Samurai is looking like it could take up at least one or more GCDs which, depending on the potency of the skills attack can be either a minor or a major DPS loss.

[Cabalabob]

All bard attack skills have a cast time with minuet on, with the exception of bloodletter , sidewinder, straighter shot proc, and misery's end. Either I don't see what you're talking about as an issue or I've gotten used to it and does not click to me as being an issue.

the BRD rotation has 2 main issues that the MCH rotation doesn't. And you touched on both of them.

1. No reliable way to mitigate the cast time.
MCH has a 2 part combo that does not require cast times if it procs and ammo to force a proc, as well as rapid fire. So when MCHs off global cooldown skills (oGCD) are available, such as gauss round, ricochet, blank and head graze, or it's buffs, it can force procs to mitigate the cast time, allowing it to fit 2 oGCDs into its global cooldown (GCD) without still being animation locked when the GCD is finished.

BRD can't do this, the only way it can mitigate the cast time is straight shot procs, which it can't force, making it unreliable, so when BRDs oGCDs are ready it can't force procs to fit them in, you can't plan a straight shot proc to be ready for your oGCDs, so you can only plan to fit 1 oGCD into your GCD before the GCD is finished. Due to cast times taking up about half your GCD.

So the primary issue here is, you can't use an oGCD while casting and you can't prevent the casts as BRD.

2. Random proc oGCD.
A large portion of BRDs damage comes from bloodletter procs. And due to issue 1, you will miss a LOT of bloodletter procs, if it comes off cooldown while you're casting you can't press it, and before you finish your cast it could very well proc again, wasting the previous proc you couldn't hit. Losing you damage. This combined with the fact you could have other oGCDs waiting to be used like blunt arrow, sidewinder or a buff, means even more damage is going to be lost as you have to hit that bloodletter and don't have time to use another oGCD before the GCD is finished.

Essentially BRDs random proc kit does not sit well with cast times which require planning. A problem MCH doesn't have because MCHs entire rotation can be planned out ahead of time with no variation outside of filler damage between burst phases.

BLM had a similar issue with thundercloud before it was buffed where there was only one specific point where you could fit it in without it being a damage loss, but since it was a random proc it was very unlikely it would be up during that specific point.

TL;DR random procs don't mix well with the planning required for cast times.