So instant skills are not going off instantly - working as intended (why this then?)

[Synvul]

I understand this. I asked in free company why I would want to use Bloodletter over Heavy Shot. Became a big thing with a raider in the FC deciding to be a jerk and getting blacklisted. I asked why. All said instant and not on GCD. The problem is that this instant spell animation is as long as GCD. At least when I use. So I ignored them and moved the ability away from use. I don't understand this as some abilities it seems like I can interrupt and there are others that I can not. I would enjoy at least having an ability that broke current animation to allow a different ability to be used even if it had a 30 second cooldown. Could at least make a macro then for what ability you normally would need instantly.

[KogaDrake]

I understand this. I asked in free company why I would want to use Bloodletter over Heavy Shot. ... The problem is that this instant spell animation is as long as GCD. At least when I use. ....

not sure how you say bloodletter animation is length of GCD, i use heavy > bloodletter and still have a short wait on GCD to use next skill.

on the topic, i'm swinging a hammer and mid swing i instantly stop and start swinging in another direction for another skill makes no sense. immersion = cant do 2 vastly different things that require the same item at once, just like RL. Nothing I have seen in FFXIV has any dps race where you also need to stun, so get over the faceroll DPS zerg mentality and learn some other strategies!

[complexxL9]

not sure how you say bloodletter animation is length of GCD, i use heavy > bloodletter and still have a short wait on GCD to use next skill.

on the topic, i'm swinging a hammer and mid swing i instantly stop and start swinging in another direction for another skill makes no sense. immersion = cant do 2 vastly different things that require the same item at once, just like RL. Nothing I have seen in FFXIV has any dps race where you also need to stun, so get over the faceroll DPS zerg mentality and learn some other strategies!

Immersion is nothing compared to gameplay in an mmorpg. You can't immerse yourself to pay monthly fee for a crappy experience.

[Naks]

not sure how you say bloodletter animation is length of GCD, i use heavy > bloodletter and still have a short wait on GCD to use next skill.

on the topic, i'm swinging a hammer and mid swing i instantly stop and start swinging in another direction for another skill makes no sense. immersion = cant do 2 vastly different things that require the same item at once, just like RL. Nothing I have seen in FFXIV has any dps race where you also need to stun, so get over the faceroll DPS zerg mentality and learn some other strategies!

wheres the strategy in not knowing when you can use your next ability due to animation lock, every animation has a different length, half the time you either have to mash a button til it works or hit it and realise a few seconds later that it failed to go off, the point is the terminology, if something is instant, then its instant not instant and wait 0.random til it goes off and locked out of any other ability while you wait.

[complexxL9]

I understand this. I asked in free company why I would want to use Bloodletter over Heavy Shot. Became a big thing with a raider in the FC deciding to be a jerk and getting blacklisted. I asked why. All said instant and not on GCD. The problem is that this instant spell animation is as long as GCD. At least when I use. So I ignored them and moved the ability away from use. I don't understand this as some abilities it seems like I can interrupt and there are others that I can not. I would enjoy at least having an ability that broke current animation to allow a different ability to be used even if it had a 30 second cooldown. Could at least make a macro then for what ability you normally would need instantly.

Do you really think they intend people to not use abilities in anticipation of cast that might be required to interrupt? I don't think so, and if it would be true I would be simply amazed about how this bad of the encounter design is allowed.. the more I think about it, it's probably SE just having a low standards at least from the western mmorpg player perspective.

[Eirva]

I understand this. I asked in free company why I would want to use Bloodletter over Heavy Shot. -snip-

Use Bloodletter right near/at the end of the GCD, then use a GCD ability immediately afterwards. The GCD ability will cancel the rest of the Bloodletter animation. It's most obvious if you combine Bloodletter and Windbite because Windbite's animation is so much different from the rest of the stand-and-shoot abilities. If you wait too long or hit Bloodletter too early, the animation won't cancel. Try practicing on one of the striking dummies. You'll need to get used to it, especially when Bloodletter is constantly resetting on DoT crits.

[Nenin]

It just seems like lazy programming tbh. Rift is now a F2P game and they still manage to make all the OFF THE GCD abilities fire OFF THE GCD.

This is all a small problem now since pvp doesn't exist but once it's added this will become a nightmare if not fixed. There's no skill involved in sitting around twiddling your thumbs until a spell is cast. To keep the analogy going, it's much harder to maintain an optimal dps rotation, while purging buffs, while monitoring 10+ ability cooldowns, while monitoring your positioning to ensure enemy dps can't hit you while being in range of friendly healers, while surveying the field to pick out healers to target and interrupt+silence mid GCD (1.0 sec for most dps, 1.5 at the absolute maximum), than to auto attack something waiting 10+ seconds to interrupt one heal and resume dps.

I LOVE all the pvp based changes that WoW and other games like Rift

[Nenin]

Implemented to ensure a high skill cap for each role.

This is all fine for now but if SE ever hopes to have even marginally successful PVP they must revert these decisions. It's insulting enough to have a 2.5s GCD but not allowing "off the GCD" to fire when you hit them is a slap in the face. It's basically saying, none of you useless plebians can handle hitting more than 1-2 buttons every 3 sec so here's a system that will make you feel capable in spite of your poorly wired nervous systems.

[Nenin]

I apologize as usual for multi-posting due to the 1000 character limit. I keep forgetting this is twitter 2.0 for no apparent reason.


And yes, I fully understand that the decision to keep non GCD skills from firing until animations end was not entirely due to poor programming. I'm just using this forum as an outlet to vent my frustrations. As far as I can tell this is the reason for video game forums existing. Nobody searches for a forum to say that they are moderately satisfied with all aspects of a product. They post because they intend to keep playing the game and wish to improve their own experience.

I'm sure any SE programmers reading this know vastly more C, C++, Perl, Python, C# and countless other languages far better than I do (with the exception of maybe FORTAN, don't ask) so don't take it personally.