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

[indira]

well theres no animation lock and other game just give skills longer recast and other skills a shared cooldown and if OP is only lv28 he didnt even get the boosted traits or a job yet.
the content later on makes up for the simple battle system.

later on stuff get crazy so it should feel alittle better when you do the 8 man lv50 story raids & fight, lv44 dzemael darkhold raid will be the first crazy one.
the lowbie primal titan fight is chaos. the lowbie garuda fight is the same as version 1 she will still will rip new guys apart at first.

[RyuujinZERO]

It was my chief criticism in beta, it's slightly amusing that a regen is instant cast yet less time efficient than a Cure III... you can basically only cast a regen on a tank when the tank is at full HP in a hard hitting fight.

Regen is a HoT. Much like a DoT it's all about opportunity cost. While you're spamming cure over and over you're locked into a casting animation and unable to do much else. HoT's and DoT's allow you freedom to take other actions while it's ticking over - if your ward doesn't need a tonne of heavy healing this instant Regen will buy you a grace period before he needs another big heal.

Arcanists are a class entirely built around that principle - DoTing up targets, allowing you to properly analyse the situation and adjust tactics accordingly. So as a white mage you should be familiar with that

[Voormund]

This thread mirrors my own thoughts from the past day's play. There is nothing more frustrating for me than tanking a mob and seeing a cast bar come up - throwing my rotation out of whack by attempting to use my stun - and having it go off a half a second after the attack is cast or even better having it go off just as the enemy's cast ends, it still activates the GCD, and still get hit with the damage.

If this is working as intended they definitely need to go back to the drawing board on this one. The GCD alone makes combat feel more sluggish than it should be IMO.

[Arrack]

Hello fellow players, I want to take few minutes of your time to discuss on Instant Off GCD mechanics in ARR, which in my opinion will hurt the game in the long run.
Here is the video: http://youtu.be/sEMkGhlcwUw

It is working as intended. Instant and/or off-gcd abilities will not fire instantly because you can't use abilities if there is an animation still running from previous ability. Different animations can't "overwrite" each other (as they do in for example in World of Warcraft) and in beta forums developers commented only by saying it is by design. So for example in your video you try to use Rampart. It doesn't fire off until your previous animation ends.
That being said it is still pretty annoying and there was same mechanism in SW:ToR but it got removed pretty quickly, mostly because of PvP if I remember right.

I hope they will realize how restricting it is and change it.

[v_jones]

I'm obviously just speculating here, but considering they haven't changed this due to player feedback, I have to imagine that clunkiness is somewhat intentional to discourage playing that way. I don't think the cooldowns are meant to be saved, then blown all at once in a moment of desperation. I just treat them like normal skills for the most part, and weave them into my rotations. That's probably the reason skills like Berserk last for 20 seconds, and Bloodbath lasts for 30 seconds.

Skill -> Bloodbath -> Skill -> Berserk. Now you have ~23 seconds of Bloodbath and 20 seconds of Berserk, so neither are really wasted. Whether you like this system or not is naturally personal preference, but I'm not so sure we're going to see many changes to it.

We`ll not only is the gcd a mess for me or anyone who has played neawer mmo`s over the years but those instant skills are a joke.
Exmaple:

Me as a maurauder/warrior, I have a couple of instant "buff" abilities which when used together form a very good combo.
I.e. Bloodbath with Berserk.
One ability raises your damage the otherone converts your damage (%) into healing.
In the current situation as the threadstarte correctly points out it takes roughly 2.5-3.0 sek (when you factor in some "human" related delay)
As for a warrior, beserk last not the same time as bloodbath so in total your are stealing crucial uptime where those skills run together.

After a couple of days now, with several instances done I can sort of deal with the gcd because skillspeed will lower it over time anyway. But instant skills should be instant - End of story this needs to be fixed.

[Naks]

its more than just saving cooldowns to blow together, there are interupts and stuns available but just arent practical to use as you cant use them exactly when you want to, your very likely to never interupt or stun at the appropriate time, causing unneeded deaths and frustration

with pvp being added soon, its not going to be very competitive with these random length invisible delays

[Decrith]

I found that all this delay you guys are talking about is basically animation delays, basically the animation won't let you begin the next command until the animation is completed.

[Marduc]

I found that all this delay you guys are talking about is basically animation delays, basically the animation won't let you begin the next command until the animation is completed.

This is exactly right. I made a GIF about it in beta, others created bug reports, and all we got was "working as intended." I understand if this is working by design, but as I've said countless times, the game does a very poor job of portraying to the player that he/she cannot use an ability because of said "animation cooldown." It's very frustrating when you're trying to stun a mob that's casting the spell but can't because you're locked into an animation that last .8 seconds.

The game is confused about what most modern players view an "instant" ability as. Instant means that when I push the button, the ability fires off. If the abilities are going to be tied to an animation, don't call them 'instant' because MMO veterans will misinterpret the ability as happening the second they push the button. I think it's poor game design. They should change the name of the skills to "Activated Skills", meaning they don't require a cast bar channel, but rather an activation channel that can still be used while moving. Furthermore, other skills should be grayed out while you're locked into this activation channel...at least that's my opinion.

[tuseroni]

my theory on the subject:
instant cast pressed -> client sets local variables saying instant cast was cast -> tell server i pressed the instant cast -> server responds that it accepted your instant cast -> animation goes off and it's official.
for the server:
player says it cast it's instant cast at this timestamp
monster says it attacked you at this timestamp.
server compares timestamps to see which one went off first (timestamp of course being synced to server time)
server responds with an ok on the instant cast and also says you were hit by a monster (or the other way around)

[tuseroni]

so if you use your potion the client subtracts one potion and begins cooldown, it contacts the server and says "i'm using a potion at [timestamp]" the same time a monster is saying "i'm hitting this guy at [timestamp]" monster hits first then potion. server sends you the monster hit, then sends the potion ok (the server isn't checking if the potion is useful to you, only that you aren't double spending or bypassing cooldown) the client receives the monster hit and decreases your HP, your HP goes less than or equal to zero and you go into dead state. then it processes the potion ok but the potion does nothing because you are in dead state. course this will only happen if the monster hit first (even with the delay, monsters timestamp has to beat your timestamp.)

this means in the best of circumstances instant skills are limited by latency (since the skill needs to get the OK from the server to make sure you aren't cheating)

of course that is just my educated guess as a programmer.