The problem with "Instant OFF GCD" abilities makes combat feel less rewarding.

[complexxL9]

What I've noticed is you have to wait till half the GCD is done before they will activate. Watch your CD and try when it's half way. I think this is working as intended to prevent popping multiple skills off GCD while still keeping a perfect rotation. If you want more then one you will miss your next GCD. And sometimes it's worth doing that too. I think it's just fine how it is.

They should be called "off-half gcd" then ^^ because that is what they are atm.
Anyway "working as intended" is nothing new, the same response I've got in beta, strangely enough this is put into "duplicate bugs" http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ight-mechanics
So by not making instant off gcd abilities - instant, I guess they will have to nerf the content (if that duplicate bug is going to be addressed).

I wish they would at least consider it for expansion or something like that. Just to be able to see light at the end of the tunnel.

[ChriskoOnAnotherLevel]

OP people have been saying this since early beta, and constantly getting flamed by the white knights for it.

Making all the Off GCD abilities instant, and I mean REALLY INSTANT regardless of situation or action would do worlds for making combat more fluid and a bit more fun.

What we have now is a clunky mess that does flow smoothly at all.

[Acretia]

I think they should just ditch the gcd altogether. I don't recall FFXI having it and I loved how things worked. Different spells had different cast times and that was it. I remember using things like chainspell which would basically be impossible in the current system.

Word, Ditch it.

[Baratan]

It's really not all that bad when you get used to it. The way I see it is that most abilities trigger a global cooldown, while non global cooldown abilities do not. While the icon animation could and should be implemented for those skills, I've found that GCD abilities have a 2.5 second GCD while non-gcd abilities have a 1 second GCD. You can test this by creating macros with GCD and non-GCD abilities. The one with the non-GCD abilities, such as rampart, fight or flight, convalescence for a gladiator will all trigger sequentially after 1 second wait lines. While GCD abilities will not.

It's not that GCD abilities do not have a cooldown, it's more or less that they're on an invisible 1-second gcd. It would be helpful if the icons animations did display this. WoW went the longest time with a GCD implemented without any indication or mention of it's existence.

[CrstyCaptin]

Instant abilities need to be instant. Not 1-2s later or 1s later then you need to wait through an animation.

Here's a few things that are extremely annoying.
*Adds for ADS pop in turn one. Depending on the add, one of them runs right to ADS. Even if you flash, shield lob, whatever a soon as he pops, the add will take off towards ADS for 2s, turn, then return to you. During this time dps are trying to kill it and you've lost hate by the time it gets back to you.
*Continuing from above, after you loose hate and you hit your halone button and your animation starts, you get halfway through the animation before it's INTERRUPTED because the mob starts to run away and it doesn't fire. Why is it that I press a button and the ANIMATION must finish before the ability actually counts for anything?
*Ifrit stunning. You literally must sit there and do nothing before an eruption in order to stun it otherwise your GCD or non GCD cooldown will block you from getting your stun off before the animation cast bar hits 80%. Why is it that the spell must be stunned by 80% or you automatically fail? What's the point of the extra 20%? Why is battle response time so bad that you literally can't do anything pre eruption because if you are you'll most likely miss the stun?
*Swift cast. Hitting swiftcast and instantly casting any spell will not make that spell instant. You need to wait 1-2 at least before casting your spell after swift cast in order for it to be instant. Again, bad response time.
*About to apply dots as bard after hitting internal release. I hit internal release 15 times and it finally fires halfway through the GCD cooldown, then when I hit my dot skill, I need to mash on that 5 times for it to fire 1-1.5s after my GCD cooldown is up. Again, terrible battle response time.
*Firestarter/Freecure. By the time I see these proc, I'm halfway through my next spell already.

I know half of these(all?) were off topic from OP, but reading this post makes me feel like the Dev's really aren't playing the game like the rest of us are playing the game, or at least those of us that are doing endgame where precision is required to win which simply is a mess because of how bad the response time is for battle. This seriously needs to be addressed.

[Reika]

Hello,

Based on the way the game was designed, and also taking into account the current level of difficulty, the development team has no plans to change the timing in which non-global cool down actions can be used, and would like players to take this into consideration when forming strategies.

The development team needs to show the time til you can use the next skill or ability after using an skill or ability ability via hotbar icon countdowns like WS's do. Activate all related skills global cooldown for how long we actually have to wait, don't make it look like there is no GCD for "non-global cooldown abilities" when there is GCD for them.

Or they can just fix their code and have them off any kind of GCD as they should.

[Jinko]

Hello,

Based on the way the game was designed, and also taking into account the current level of difficulty, the development team has no plans to change the timing in which non-global cool down actions can be used, and would like players to take this into consideration when forming strategies.

Translation, this is caused by the same problem as the AoE and server latency, we don't know how to fix it so you will have to live with it.

Looks like you guys will be bleeding players after the free trial.

Wasn't even worth rebuilding ARR when its going to end up with similar numbers to 1.0.

I use off GCD skills on both BRD and DRG just fine. What I've noticed is you have to wait till half the GCD is done before they will activate. Watch your CD and try when it's half way. I think this is working as intended to prevent popping multiple skills off GCD while still keeping a perfect rotation. If you want more then one you will miss your next GCD. And sometimes it's worth doing that too. I think it's just fine how it is.

It's kind of funny that you are suggesting to wait til half the GCD and then try, its like people suggesting to pre-move before plumes in Titan, you guys just don't get it, its broken and needs to be fixed.
(you know the reason why you have to wait half the GCD is because of the 300ms built into every action you take, its acting like a mini invisible cooldown timer)

[Ninix]

This is extremely annoying, but since they've said time and time again that they're not changing this behavior, whatever, I can accept it.

What I *really* hate, though, is how there's no UI feedback or ability queue for this animation delay. You can't reliably know if the ability will go off or not with one press, so you basically have to mash the key until you're certain it's activated, and then begin to mashing the next key.

If I could press the key ONCE and have it activate once the previous animation has finished (y'know, like I can do with regular weaponskills and spells if I press them a bit before the GCD is up?) I would be far less annoyed with this.

[nimrod]

Needs to be FIXED ASAP, combat is the most important thing in an MMO - while u Level- while u do ENDGAME content.

Hope it gets more attention on PLD f.e. are also the 2.5Sec GCD not helping at all about this problem.

[Meta]

I'm more annoyed about the audiovisual feedback we receive; the UI registers your input, but it's not always clear-cut that the ability has been activated when readying your next action in a short period of time.

If there's a downtime period because of server issues or intended game design, fine, but at the very least give me audiovisual feedback that conveys "you can't use this now" and "the ability did not activate".

Better yet, why not have the user client store the command in a queue and relay that information to the server as soon as it can? That way we don't have to constantly mash keys and still not activate intended actions. This implementation of an action queue made even 1.0 feel like it had a smooth (but not interruptible) flow of combat.