
Cast Time Discussion
#26
Posted 02 November 2010 - 02:53 PM
#27
Posted 02 November 2010 - 03:18 PM
#28
Posted 02 November 2010 - 03:23 PM
Testing a Sura with 120 dex the Zen can was indeed very slow. I believe i read somewhere that the GMs did/was doing a fix to the cast time, has it already been done?
Dex has no effect on zen's cast time. On iRO it currently has 1.4 seconds fixed cast time, it's original balance was 2 seconds fixed cast.
Sacrament reduces this cast time by 50%, no much else has a noticeable effect.
#29
Posted 02 November 2010 - 03:53 PM
#30
Posted 02 November 2010 - 04:10 PM
In the time it takes for the interruptible Arrow Vulcan to go off, 2-3 Double Strafes could've went off or monster hit. My suggestion is to lower the fixed cast time, and make it not interruptible. Arrow Vulcan, to my knowledge pre-renewal, was balanced from the delay and the animation. Now there is the cast time, animation, and delay... Two are livable, all three are not.
Arrow Repel - With biased from playing Dancer branch, you have made it harder for an already hard class to level. With AV being next to useless (It's still a fun skill, just no longer practical), the class uses bows now. Normal tactics is Strafe, and Repel if close enough. But with Repel's cast time, the monster would hit before it goes off, making the whole point of the skill worthless. Only reason I can think of this even being nerfed was for PvP, since knockback doesn't work in WoE and it wasn't horribly game breaking to give a squishy character some form of protection. If possible, why not make the delay PvP only? Or at least lower the time to less than a second to make it viable to use.
EDIT// Forgot this part.... Arrow Repel is a first class quest skill. Why nerf a first class skill?
Edited by Evionne, 02 November 2010 - 04:10 PM.
#31
Posted 04 November 2010 - 11:13 AM
Archer Type Skills
The issue with archers before renewal is that any archer worth his own didn't have a cast time. Hunters and Snipers were considered very fast jobs to play, requiring you to play quick, and allowing you to attack quick. The return of cast time must feel like a real kick in the pants to players who made these characters for their speed and flexability. What I decided is that these characters should have less fixed cast time. A precident already exists for no fixed cast time jobs, almost all mechanic, genetic, and royal guard skills have no fixed cast, so it wouldn't be out of place here. For some skills that took just too long, I lowered the time on.

Charge arrow is kind of a twitch skill that is designed to keep monsters away from you. It does negligable damage and is fairly SP intensive. The skill knocks back 5 cells, so it only buys you a small window of opportunity. Unfortunately, the 1.5 second cast time is considerably longer than the time pushing a monster away would buy you. Additionally, the skill is completely overshadowed by the hunter skill Phantasm Arrow, which does the same thing without any cast time at all.
Charge Arrow is like most archer class skills widely considered a quick/twitch skill for skilled players. I feel that the 1.5s fixed time kills the use entirely, so in addition to making the cast time variable, I've elected to drastically shorten the cast time.

Again another skill that was regarded as only being useful before because of it's speed. It wasn't as badly nerfed as charge arrow, and I felt that it still holds usefulness by being usable while a song or ensemble is playing, so I elected to simply make it all variable.

A skill that with a cast time does not actually outperform double strafe on SP nor speed. It's a sad state for a skill to be in. In addition to removing fixed cast, I halved the cast time. The skill is seriously overshadowed by severe rainstorm anyways, making a concession on arrow vulcan will not dramatically affect balance.

What used to be the strongest and fastest Sniper skill, now the slowest. The half fixed cast time is truely crippling, and without an adjustement, the skill will likely see very little use after renewal. My fix of changing all cast time to variable would allow a 150 dex 50 in sniper to cast the skill in about 0.4 seconds. That's fair wouldn't you say?

Poor falcon. With rangers now specializing in Warg skills, the nerf on falcon skills is the nail in the coffin for falcon users. In order to return this skill to usefulness, I again changed the cast to completely variable.
Fixed Cast Mage Skills
For some reason, gravity deemed it of neccessity to make a couple skills completely unreducible. These skills include Ganbantein, Energy Coat, Soul Change, and Basilica. Basilica is beyond saving as a skill anyways so I won't mention it, and Soul Change I can sympathise with as being a fair balancing act. The other two have some answering to do though.

Ganbantein is designed to quickly poke an opening in an enemies defense by removing ground skills. 3 second cast time makes it completely and utterly worthless. One could be forgiven for thinking that this was intended for balance, but then they gave Earth Drive to Royal Guards and Crazy Weed to Genetics, both skills that do the same thing in a larger area and have no fixed cast time at all. The fix, was simply to return ganbantein to the 20%/80% fixed/variable ratio that is most commonly seen.

5 second fixed for a self buff is kind of dumb really. For no reason really other than 5 seconds is a waste of time, I returned it to 20%/80%.
Wide Area Magic
The problem with Wizard AoE skills is that they're really slow, no matter what you do. Storm Gust has a base cast time of 12 seconds (It's worth mentioning that this was 15 seconds before renewal), but no matter how much dex, how many players are supporting you, you still have that 2.4 second cast time to worry about. That's a real issue. If you've participated in a hunting party with able body players, you'll see that monsters rarely live past 2.4 seconds.
Gravity knew cast time was an issue for Wizard. That's why they tweaked warlock fixed cast time. Now fixed cast time of Tetra Vortex, Earth Strain, Chain Lightning, Hell Inferno, Crimson Rock, Drain Life, Stasis, and Jack Frost are all 1 second, regardless of what the variable cast time is, and for all skill levels. This is a good move, it means warlocks can still be competative.
Problem is, wizard can't. Your fastest cast storm gust 10 will still take 2.4 times as long to cast as earth strain even with full support and buffs, and earth strain is arguably considerably stronger. My goal here with these skills was to make these wide area magic attacks more like their warlock counterparts in cast time. It would be a shame for all of their skills to be useless because they take too long.

As I mentioned, 1 second fixed cast on all levels, the rest of the cast made up by variable cast time. Same total time, but a high level player with support can cast faster.

Same idea, same total cast time, 1 second fixed. (Edit: Oops I screwed up the picture... I'll make one later when i get the chance. You get the idea though!)

The last of the three big wizard AoE's.

Here's one I think is worth bringing up. Unlike all the wizard AoE's, Magnus didn't get the 20% reduction in total cast time that the others got. That (oddly) makes Magnus the longest casting of all the 2nd job skills. I can only imagine that gravity forgot about it. The solution then, is to give it the same bonus to cast time, and apply the same 1s fixed cast.
Edited by Doddler, 04 November 2010 - 11:14 AM.
#32
Posted 04 November 2010 - 11:40 AM
#33
Posted 04 November 2010 - 04:49 PM
I posted about this in the proposal board a while back. If I were in charge of balance, this is what I would do with 1st/2nd class skills.
Archer Type Skills
The issue with archers before renewal is that any archer worth his own didn't have a cast time. Hunters and Snipers were considered very fast jobs to play, requiring you to play quick, and allowing you to attack quick. The return of cast time must feel like a real kick in the pants to players who made these characters for their speed and flexability. What I decided is that these characters should have less fixed cast time. A precident already exists for no fixed cast time jobs, almost all mechanic, genetic, and royal guard skills have no fixed cast, so it wouldn't be out of place here. For some skills that took just too long, I lowered the time on.
Charge arrow is kind of a twitch skill that is designed to keep monsters away from you. It does negligable damage and is fairly SP intensive. The skill knocks back 5 cells, so it only buys you a small window of opportunity. Unfortunately, the 1.5 second cast time is considerably longer than the time pushing a monster away would buy you. Additionally, the skill is completely overshadowed by the hunter skill Phantasm Arrow, which does the same thing without any cast time at all.
Charge Arrow is like most archer class skills widely considered a quick/twitch skill for skilled players. I feel that the 1.5s fixed time kills the use entirely, so in addition to making the cast time variable, I've elected to drastically shorten the cast time.
Again another skill that was regarded as only being useful before because of it's speed. It wasn't as badly nerfed as charge arrow, and I felt that it still holds usefulness by being usable while a song or ensemble is playing, so I elected to simply make it all variable.
A skill that with a cast time does not actually outperform double strafe on SP nor speed. It's a sad state for a skill to be in. In addition to removing fixed cast, I halved the cast time. The skill is seriously overshadowed by severe rainstorm anyways, making a concession on arrow vulcan will not dramatically affect balance.
What used to be the strongest and fastest Sniper skill, now the slowest. The half fixed cast time is truely crippling, and without an adjustement, the skill will likely see very little use after renewal. My fix of changing all cast time to variable would allow a 150 dex 50 in sniper to cast the skill in about 0.4 seconds. That's fair wouldn't you say?
Poor falcon. With rangers now specializing in Warg skills, the nerf on falcon skills is the nail in the coffin for falcon users. In order to return this skill to usefulness, I again changed the cast to completely variable.
Fixed Cast Mage Skills
For some reason, gravity deemed it of neccessity to make a couple skills completely unreducible. These skills include Ganbantein, Energy Coat, Soul Change, and Basilica. Basilica is beyond saving as a skill anyways so I won't mention it, and Soul Change I can sympathise with as being a fair balancing act. The other two have some answering to do though.
Ganbantein is designed to quickly poke an opening in an enemies defense by removing ground skills. 3 second cast time makes it completely and utterly worthless. One could be forgiven for thinking that this was intended for balance, but then they gave Earth Drive to Royal Guards and Crazy Weed to Genetics, both skills that do the same thing in a larger area and have no fixed cast time at all. The fix, was simply to return ganbantein to the 20%/80% fixed/variable ratio that is most commonly seen.
5 second fixed for a self buff is kind of dumb really. For no reason really other than 5 seconds is a waste of time, I returned it to 20%/80%.
Wide Area Magic
The problem with Wizard AoE skills is that they're really slow, no matter what you do. Storm Gust has a base cast time of 12 seconds (It's worth mentioning that this was 15 seconds before renewal), but no matter how much dex, how many players are supporting you, you still have that 2.4 second cast time to worry about. That's a real issue. If you've participated in a hunting party with able body players, you'll see that monsters rarely live past 2.4 seconds.
Gravity knew cast time was an issue for Wizard. That's why they tweaked warlock fixed cast time. Now fixed cast time of Tetra Vortex, Earth Strain, Chain Lightning, Hell Inferno, Crimson Rock, Drain Life, Stasis, and Jack Frost are all 1 second, regardless of what the variable cast time is, and for all skill levels. This is a good move, it means warlocks can still be competative.
Problem is, wizard can't. Your fastest cast storm gust 10 will still take 2.4 times as long to cast as earth strain even with full support and buffs, and earth strain is arguably considerably stronger. My goal here with these skills was to make these wide area magic attacks more like their warlock counterparts in cast time. It would be a shame for all of their skills to be useless because they take too long.
As I mentioned, 1 second fixed cast on all levels, the rest of the cast made up by variable cast time. Same total time, but a high level player with support can cast faster.
Same idea, same total cast time, 1 second fixed. (Edit: Oops I screwed up the picture... I'll make one later when i get the chance. You get the idea though!)
The last of the three big wizard AoE's.
Here's one I think is worth bringing up. Unlike all the wizard AoE's, Magnus didn't get the 20% reduction in total cast time that the others got. That (oddly) makes Magnus the longest casting of all the 2nd job skills. I can only imagine that gravity forgot about it. The solution then, is to give it the same bonus to cast time, and apply the same 1s fixed cast.
That's a good suggestion Doddler... do you have some suggestions for Warlock's skills by any chance?
#34
Posted 04 November 2010 - 05:39 PM
#35
Posted 04 November 2010 - 06:31 PM
#36
Posted 04 November 2010 - 08:41 PM
#37
Posted 04 November 2010 - 09:23 PM
I hear Cart Cannon needs a fixed cast time. xD
Pretty much it doesn't.
#38
Posted 05 November 2010 - 03:07 AM

#39
Posted 05 November 2010 - 07:20 AM
By time you are level 150/50 with 120 base DEX, Severe Rainstorm's damage is around 5500-6000% and AV's stays 1200%. Even with a priest lexing, AV is fricken worthless. Does this skill REALLLLLLLLLY need a cast time for balance applications? NOT.
Only advantage of AV is the shield and that's a pretty silly advantage since in both scenarios you got a priest tanking for you.
It's supposed to be a Trans skill. If the class is still using it's first class double strafe to level as opposed to it's Trans skill, as a trans character, that just seems odd. Believe it or not, there is a period in which people are trans and before they reach third in which the skill could be useful.
#40
Posted 05 November 2010 - 07:42 AM
#41
Posted 05 November 2010 - 08:13 AM
#42
Posted 05 November 2010 - 08:23 AM
Edited by Limitless, 05 November 2010 - 08:25 AM.
#43
Posted 05 November 2010 - 08:37 AM
Aimed bolt is probably better in strings with lex aeterna, much like FAS and Arrow Vulcan were before compared to DS, at least.
The one thing striking me odd is the traps which are instant cast and do better damage than any casted skill any archer-type character has. How does this make sense? If doing this sort of damage instantly is balanced, why do all these archer skills have fixed casting?
#44
Posted 07 November 2010 - 02:34 PM
- Orleans gown of dex switching +3 dex (total +5 dex)
- Orleans server
- Orleans glove nimble
- +7 crown of deceit [dark illusion]
- Eraser/BG equip
- Sprint ring/some other nimble accessory
These reduce the cast time a lot, but not many gears reduce fixed cast time. Maybe some new fixed cast time reduction gear would help?
#45
Posted 08 November 2010 - 01:34 PM
To keep things uniform at 20% fixed / 80% variable so I mention cast time as 1 number...
Magnus Exorcismous cast time really needs to decrease from 15 seconds to no more than around 8 seconds.
The 12 second cast time Wizard AOE spells also need their cast times reduced to then around 8 seconds.
Edited by mooMOOmoo, 08 November 2010 - 01:34 PM.
#46
Posted 08 November 2010 - 01:36 PM
To keep things uniform at 20% fixed / 80% variable...
Magnus Exorcismous cast time really needs to decrease from 15 seconds to no more than around 8 seconds.
The 12 second cast time Wizard AOE spells also need their cast times reduced to then around 8 seconds.
The mage bolts skills has already been lowered from 7 seconds at level 10 pre-renewal to 4 seconds post-renewal
#47
Posted 08 November 2010 - 07:01 PM
How I feel about fixed cast:
I feel some skills should go as low as 5% fixed, namely archer branch skills.
One that comes to mind is arrow repel, the nature in using it is to push enemies back, out of harms way.
I kinda feel that arrow vulcan, falcon assult, and FAS should have the 5% too, they all have re-use delays after all.
The nature in playing sniper was to kill things while keeping out of harms way.
The current cast times make it very difficult to do that, the mobs will come up and rape you before you finish your cast.
I suppose hunter branch has phantasmic arrow to use instead of arrow repel though for getting something away from you quickly, but ministrel branch doesn't have that...
Magic Damage is less in renewal (from what I've seen/heard) so maybe have their cast times 10-15% depending on the skill?
Priest branches I would think 10%? (Long cast time on buffs? They have delays too you know...)
Everything else I'd say go 20%? (I don't know if acid bomb is 20% or not, doesn't feel like it)
Edited by SamuelAdams, 08 November 2010 - 07:06 PM.
#48
Posted 15 November 2010 - 10:29 AM
Edited by Trixdee, 15 November 2010 - 10:44 AM.
#49
Posted 15 November 2010 - 02:42 PM
#50
Posted 16 November 2010 - 02:47 PM
It was likely an oversight in the coding toggle. There is no other skill that had a "cast time to initiate, no cast to disable" cast set.
Edited by Kokotewa, 16 November 2010 - 08:07 PM.
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