Machinist latency issues need recognition akin to Ninja

[Kitfox]

To avoid ranting without improvement suggestions, I thought I'd go over the suggestions that were compiled in the pre-release media tour reaction thread.

Analyzing the problem

First let's examine the problem and its components

1. Heat Blast has a 1.5 second gcd
2. Heat Blast reduces Gauss Round and Ricochet cooldowns enough that weaving between Heat Blasts is mandatory
3. Between each gcd and ogcd action there's an estimated 0.70s animation lock + increased delay from latency

To reiterate: Weaving between Heat Blasts is mandatory because of the cooldown reduction effect on Heat Blast, this is why Auto Crossbow is less of an issue even though it has the same short recast time. Weaving between the 1.5s gcds is an issue because of the animation locks imposed on these abilities. The exact animation lock time is hard to pinpoint because of the latency factors involved, but usually in theorycrafting circles they're estimated to be roughly 0.70s long + any latency factors. That means even at ping as low as 50 ms, that leaves exactly zero room between Heat Blasts with one ogcd weaved between them.

This is an obvious problem for a game that has been claimed to be playable at 200 ms in the past as that would stretch the 1.5s gcd into a 1.8s one, in other words, induce 0.3s of gcd clipping. Hypercharge is used 3 to 4 times every 2 minutes, with 2 mandatory weaves in each one, with each causing 0.3s clipping that would add up to a total of 1.2-1.8s gcd clipping. Assuming the lost gcd is a heated shot, the loss is somewhere between 190-290 potency every 2 minutes. And this is when minimizing the effects by only weaving twice.

The job starts off with only 2 Gauss Round and Ricochet charges, which means 4 weaves are mandatory to avoid overcapping. If the original intent of the design was to weave between every Heat Blast, something you might want to do to maximize gains from raid buffs anyway, 200 ms latency would result in 1.5s gcd delay every Hypercharge, or 4.5-6.0s delay over 2 minutes. That's almost 3 whole gcds lost, a sign of an incredible design flaw.

Fixing the problem

As shown in the list above, this is a compound problem with three clear components. Fixing any one of these points would fix the problem as a whole, or at least alleviate the effects. This gives us 3 clear avenues to fix the issue. Next, let's examine some possible suggestions to fix each component.

Change Heat Blast recast from 1.5 seconds to 2.0 or 2.5 seconds

With a recast of 2 seconds, the gcd would allow comfortable single weaving practically any latency without allowing double weaves. This would require extending Hypercharge and Wildfire durations to retain same gcd amounts and some adjustments to the overall rotation might be necessary to accommodate the longer Hypercharges. The downside would be a slower rotation, which might not be as exciting for those that had no latency problems.

If the recast was a normal 2.5 second gcd, then double weaving would be possible. This might be preferable to keep the feeling of fast rotation since more actions can be packed within shorter time than with 2.0s single weaves. This would allow room for roughly 183 ms latency, though the room would shrink if skill speed affected the gcd speed.

Change Gauss Round and Ricochet cooldown reduction from 15 seconds to 10 seconds
OR Increase the maximum amount of charges from 3 to 4
OR increase Gauss Round and Ricochet cooldowns from 30 seconds to 40 seconds

All of these changes would have the same effect: ogcd weaving is longer mandatory during Hypercharge. The 1.5 second recast on Heat Blast would not be a problem for Gauss Round and Ricochet overcapping. The downside here is that there are other abilities you might want to use during Hypercharge, such as Tactician, Automaton Queen, Wildfire or Barrel Stabilizer. Nonetheless it would be an overall improvement.

Significantly reduce animation locks for all abilities

If the ~0.7s animation lock on most abilities was changed to 0.5s for example, this would instantly allow 200 ms more room for latency in all scenarios without changing anything else about the base rotation, ability values or timers. However, for low latency players it would allow triple weaving between gcds which could have some unforeseen side-effects. I doubt these effects would pose a larger disparity in performance than the difference between single and double weaving though.

That covers the easy solutions. Other possible solutions would be require a larger rework of the rotation and completely changing how the current job mechanics work so I won't speculate further on them, this post is already long enough. The basic requirements for improvements would still remain the same: No 1.5s gcds OR no ogcd weaving during those fast gcds.