Quote Originally Posted by Selyndria View Post
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.
Just because the "GCD" didn't display doesn't mean there wasn't one. There were animation times that basically functioned as variable GCDs. You couldn't activate an ability, weapon skill, *and* start casting a spell all at the same time., or if you were a SAM under Meikyo Shisui you couldn't activate 3 weapon skills at exactly the same time even though you had the TP for it. Some stuff, like Sneak Attack, could be activated at *almost* the same time as a Weapon Skill, basically functioning as "off the GCD" abilities. You also had to wait a few seconds after finishing one spellcast to begin another.

Just because there were no icons that greyed out doesn't mean there wasn't a global cooldown. It just wasn't static and depended on what you were doing. A GCD is just something that prevents you from using multiple actions at the exact same moment.

Can you imagine how completely impossible this game would be to balance, especially PvP, if an Archer or a Lancer could activate 4 or 5 Weapon Skills at the same time? Not only would that pretty much void all the awesome animations they put in the game, but it would absolutely insane burst damage. It would also be really stupid if an optimal rotation required you to activate multiple Weapon Skills at the exact same time.