Is SkillSpeed too weak?

[Vendalwind]

Note i my above post my nin thresholds are not accurate*

They are total guesses but i know such thresholds exist

[MitsukiKimura]

You really don't skillspeed need it to get 5 Fell Cleaves/Bloodcleaves in their "burst" window as you just need to get the timing right and hope server ticks doesn't say no to your input, since the abilities are qued in at 0.5 seconds before it's ready if it's almost off cooldown.


If server ticks are really messing with you then yeah go for skillspeed for those if you really need to but it's not really needed... especially since neither WAR or DRK have DoTs(Salted Earth and Living Shadow do not count).


Whoever said that skillspeed is the way to go for DRK and WAR must think that we are still in Heavensward expansion...

I Said a certain amount. Never said it was the Way to go for the classes. Depends if you're able to fit 5 in the burst rotation or not

[Endariel]

Tbf, if not for Senei and Ikishouten, SkS would probably be the best SAM stat by a significant margin. All other sources of damage are affected by SkS, and at 216 per % expected damage increase compared to Direct Hit's 240. (Crit sucks until the high 3000s alongside high Direct Hit, or early 4000s if one has no Direct Hit.) Higanbana and auto-attacks will be affected less by SkS than Determination (254 stat per % vs 250), but as must of SAM's damage is GCD based or generated from GCDs without further bottlenecks (e.g. Shinten/Kaiten), it's a competitive stat at 1/9th more efficiency than Direct Hit.

Well, according to the balance, 28 gcd rotation is more effective than 29 and 30 gcd rotations.

So no, not really. Also, sams need to hit the right tier of sks to perfectly align banana reapplication, midare with meikyo, and tsubame gaeshi, not for senei

[Eliadil]

Well, according to the balance, 28 gcd rotation is more effective than 29 and 30 gcd rotations.

So no, not really. Also, sams need to hit the right tier of sks to perfectly align banana reapplication, midare with meikyo, and tsubame gaeshi, not for senei

Well, if we exclude the whole "we have to watch for our gcd to do a 57.5sec rotation" yeah SkS is pretty viable. At the moment it is because Tsubame is a poorly implemented skill. (An ability tied to a fix 2.5 GCD is a terrible idea, especially if it needs to be triggered by a 9GCD combo first)

If you remove Tsubame from the equation, or rework it to make it a better tool that doesn't force you into a GCD tier, then SkS becomes pretty viable.

[Brandedblade]

I dont have exact numbers, but I do know that healers tend to want enough spell Speed to hit...iirc, approx 2.44 gcd. I think it has something to do with keeping dot maintenance more consistent but I dont remember the exact reason

[Taranok]

Well, if we exclude the whole "we have to watch for our gcd to do a 57.5sec rotation" yeah SkS is pretty viable. At the moment it is because Tsubame is a poorly implemented skill. (An ability tied to a fix 2.5 GCD is a terrible idea, especially if it needs to be triggered by a 9GCD combo first)

If you remove Tsubame from the equation, or rework it to make it a better tool that doesn't force you into a GCD tier, then SkS becomes pretty viable.

I'd say the issue goes deeper than that. But the big problem comes from points already brought up. The 2 big offenders are that Skill/Spell Speed doesn't affect oGCDs, and some classes actually lose damage from having a faster rotation, such as Ninja, due to oGCD clipping.

WoW solved this problem in a couple ways, since Haste iirc reduces oGCD cooldowns (and since every class is a priority-based rotation, they don't have to fit things into a strict rotation). Since WoW also doesn't have snapshotting, Haste also speeds up the tic rate of DoTs while reducing DoT durations up until it would shave off an entire base tic worth of time, at which point it adds time up to the original maximum. So while haste isn't always the best, it's always viable on most classes. Especially after Bliz decided to kill their oGCD bloat.

FFXIV exacerbates the problem, though, because of "animation locks" on oGCDs and GCDs meaning you can't spam them out as fast as you can click, so there's a fundamental maximum to when, and where, you can use them, which causes other problems. The ridiculously tight rotations run into further problems because you kind of want to use certain abilities at certain times, and at the end of the day skill speed/spell speed is just a bad stat.

Only 1 class really likes it to any real degree, Black Mage, since its rotation is the least dependent on oGCDs and the most dependent on raw GCDs going out faster. But even that class can suffer from odd timings of GCDs and can under-run its cooldowns leading to delays and lost damage. Plus, the shorter your GCD, the more you clip on oGCDs while casting Fire/Blizzard 3s, so even that class has limits.

Basically, the rotations are too tightly tuned and dependent on things SS doesn't buff, while being made worse by snapshotting and a lack of DoTs being affected by much of anything in this game due to server-side limitations, so the stat ends up being garbage most of the time. And the one class it's actually good on is because it's a semi-freeform rotation with a relative lack of dependence on oGCDs and the ability to use those oGCDs somewhat freely. Also, a 2.48s GCD fire 4 on black mage is just...hilarious. I don't even care if it's suboptimal, it's just fun.

[BloodRubyXII]

SkS has a lot of comfort breakpoints for all tanks and Samurais at the very least.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, if we exclude the whole "we have to watch for our gcd to do a 57.5sec rotation" yeah SkS is pretty viable. At the moment it is because Tsubame is a poorly implemented skill. (An ability tied to a fix 2.5 GCD is a terrible idea, especially if it needs to be triggered by a 9GCD combo first)

If you remove Tsubame from the equation, or rework it to make it a better tool that doesn't force you into a GCD tier, then SkS becomes pretty viable.

Even a 5-second grace period between the Iajutsu's completion and Tsubame Gaeshi becoming unavailable would do wonders for it.

Though I have to wonder, honestly, why they force it to be used in the immediately following GCD at all. We have other unlocked skills that are prepped for at least 10 seconds -- some, indefinitely.

[zuzu-bq]

Speed stats and hastes buffs (all non personal were removed in Shadowbringers even) in general have the main issue of not fitting the class design of the game for the most part. Basically every class of this game has a great portion of their damage coming from Abilities and those don't scale or proc from GCDs. Making casting more weaponskills or spells not being as important, and sometimes breaking perfectly cycling rotations.

A good way to show this is to look at the jobs that have a good time with high speed, BLM being the one that enjoys it the most having actual 0 damage dealt directly from Abilities.

[Shurrikhan]

Speed stats and hastes buffs (all non personal were removed in Shadowbringers even) in general have the main issue of not fitting the class design of the game for the most part. Basically every class of this game has a great portion of their damage coming from Abilities and those don't scale or proc from GCDs. Making casting more weaponskills or spells not being as important, and sometimes breaking perfectly cycling rotations.

A good way to show this is to look at the jobs that have a good time with high speed, BLM being the one that enjoys it the most having actual 0 damage dealt directly from Abilities.

That leaves two equal options, though: (1) further reduce the already shallow options in the game to remove the chance of waste on inferior targets, or (2) add further undermechanics that allow for greater balance across those different options (e.g. scaled ability timers).

That they chose (1), yet again, shows the design philosophy of the devs more than it shows the constraints of the situation at that time.