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

[icceti]

it's the very long a$$ animations for skills previously casted.

i apologize for bring AION up, but back in AION that was the reason even casters went for "attack speed" weapons. a cleric would raise her hand and put it down after casting a heal. the "attack speed" weapon would make that movement faster. with semi-endgame weapon & glove, it made the movements very snappy. hands were raised, swinged and put down immediately after each skill.

this animation problem drove me away from my PUG. she would use a skill and it take at least a second to finish the animation... while i want to move her out of the way to avoid a mob/boss's skill.

~sigh~ i see there are food that increases cast speed. maybe something to fix this too?

[tuseroni]

oh, i misread, you were just talking about the animation cooldown...thought you meant the time from pressing potion to the time the potion took effect.

[complexxL9]

oh, i misread, you were just talking about the animation cooldown...thought you meant the time from pressing potion to the time the potion took effect.

That also, a combination of both makes very frustrating experience. You see you need a potion, but can't use it until previous skill animation has ended, and when you use it - the effect applies after 0.5 delay. In total there is somewhat 1.8 sec delay if you are trying to use potion right after using some other skill.

Now imagine this in end-game raid where tank need to push his oshit button, 1.8 sec delay in a challenging content could mean the difference between a wipe and a kill. Not to mention this has very negative effect on combat experience overall.

[tuseroni]

i think the 0.5 second delay is not as much of an issue the monster still has to beat your timestamp from when you hit the button. even if you latency were higher (i assume you are on a server somewhere close to where you live) this would still be pretty constant. the animation delay is the more critical one (since the button cannot be pressed until the animation is done)

[IzumiRaito]

yes! no panic spam all skills! i wouldnt even mind all off-gcd skills to be on-gcd as long as their individual cd is greatly reduced (not exceeding 30s for strongest), maybe less duration

[kro]

They're sacrificing completely responsive gameplay for more animation consistency. When you consider how tons of people complained that abilities didn't have a weighty enough feel, this was the result. I can see why they did it and I'm cool with it.

I'm also guessing that having truly instant abilties would give KB users a slight advantage since you can just "piano" keys 1-4 and have all your buffs up at once.

Each buff you activate also has to be deliberate because you can only activate 1 during GCD without losing efficiency. Instant abilities are meant to be used one at a time during the GCD i.e. Heavy Swing > Bloodbath > Skull Sunder > Berserk > Butcher's Block.

At least it's not like 1.0 where you shouldn't use any abilities for a large portion of the Ifrit fight unless you wanted to eat an eruption. Having free movement at all times is a huge buff.

[complexxL9]

At least it's not like 1.0 where you shouldn't use any abilities for a large portion of the Ifrit fight unless you wanted to eat an eruption. Having free movement at all times is a huge buff.

To be better then 1.0 is not good enough, these "instant" abilities rebuke a lot of potential players, I can't convince my friend from other mmos to even try this, because it feels so clumsy. If SE insists on this design, they should at least do a better job informing the player, when the skill is actually available for use.
It could be so much better then this.

[QuantumDelta]

-snip-

I'm very aware of the mechanics, however when it has an effective casting time of /longer/ than Cure III's actual cast time, it makes you a little curious as to what the actual point is.
Heals like Renew in other games are generally seen as mana efficient ways of minimising overheal, I've found it most useful chucking it on targets that have taken periodic (normally failing to avoid avoidable) damage, rather than on the actual tank, and letting it sort their HP out.
It is very slightly more mana efficient than Cure III, but for actual 'usefulness', especially with it's 2.48 second effective cast time....not great.
Like I said, I pretty much only dump it on the tank when the tank is about to run in or is on HP where it's no issue if I'm on GCD for a two and a half decades.

[ShadowRupert]

My problem with GCD is as a healer using my poison cure spell is not worth wasting my time via GCD. Why you ask? Every poison i have seen is aoe hitting most or all the party with 10sec timer, 2 sec per cure poison GCD means it takes 8 seconds to cure each person on effect at time you can have 3 or 4 stacks hit each player the same time that would take 32sec to remove where the poison ends in 10secs. So it is just better to spam heal due to GCD

[w0ng3r]

"Less rewarding" - Are you frikking kidding me? This game is so easy that there is NO sense of achievement anyways, GCD's aren't gonna fix it.