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Renewal: Update Fixed Casting to jRO's modification PLEASE.


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#1 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 04:55 AM

Fixed casting for certain skills was a good idea for game balance. It prevents there being a hard ceiling on the effectiveness of things like suffragium and magic strings which are not effective for their cast time reducing (the latter, strings, is only good for aftercast generally in pre-renewal). Additionally, with 150 being the cap, its too easy for people with 50 extra levels of stat points and 120 base stats to reach. With that cap being reached easily, we have people instant-casting skills that were never meant to be instant (such as storm gust). It makes sense for both the increased cap on the stat as well as the fixed casting.

HOWEVER.

Not all skills were meant to have lengthy cast times! Some skills were meant to be slow starting out and get faster (even instant!) later on, such as Arrow Vulcan, Slinging Arrow, Focused Arrow Strike, Falcon Assault, Magnus Exorcismus, etc. In fact, these skills are useless with fixed casting as they are either impossible to finish casting without phen, and their are outdamaged by even melee with their cast times as they are. I know for a fact Arrow Vulcan's 6 second base cast time wasn't because the skill was meant to always have a long cast bar. Its this way because the developers figured minstrel and gypsy would never have less than 120 or so dex and would require a really long base cast time on the skill in order for there to be any semblance of a cast time. Obviously it was meant so when you first got AV it had some room for improvement and you could work toward making it faster (or instant) as you leveled.

Now, skills are 20% fixed casting across the board without ANY thought as to modifying the base cast times of any skills whatsoever. Skills like M.E. with their, what, 10-second-ish cast time and AV's 6 second become extraordinarily long (try 2-4++ seconds minimum!!!) regardless of how much DEX you have, making the skills unusable. It is a sad state of affairs when a Gypsy is nothing but a dancer with +25% HP, leveling with double strafe just as she did for the LAST 99 levels.

jRO, being wise, unlike kRO, saw this. They also saw that in the 3rd class bracket, skills like SG, which were considered unbalanced with instant cast, were now not so useful anymore compared to 3rd class skills. An epiphany struck. Remove the fixed casting from all 2nd/trans job skills. Apply fixed casting only to 3rd job skills. So brilliant. So marvelous. So functional.

Please follow jRO's move.

Edited by Jaye, 13 September 2010 - 05:29 AM.

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#2 Kaijou

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 04:59 AM

Seconded, this would be amazing...however more amazing would be gravity listening to its player base.
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#3 Pururu

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 05:56 AM

I agree on this but some skill like asura strike or zen shouldn't be changed, it really need to be looked case by case. Trust me you don't want asura strike to be unstoppable (or goh if they do remove the fixed cast time of zen).

Edited by Pururu, 13 September 2010 - 09:21 AM.

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#4 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 06:01 AM

I agree on this but some skill like asura strike or zen shouldn't be changed, it really need to be looked case by case. Trust me you don't want asura strike to be unstoppable.

The cap for dex becomes like 180 or 200 so with monks/champs having around 120 zen and gfist will go from really fast to moderate again which is a slowdown. The 20% fixed portion is very unnecessary even for gfist.

Edited by Jaye, 13 September 2010 - 06:01 AM.

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#5 neokenshin

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 06:51 AM

I agree with this. It is extremely difficult using skills like Focused Arrow Strike with this fixed cast time. However as a Sura player myself, I will say that I would LOVE it if they kept a fixed cast time on Asura Strike and change Zen from a fixed 2 second cast to the standard 20% Fixed Cast/80% variable cast OR make it uninterruptable. With some of the new skills like Lightning Ride and Tiger Cannon, being able to get spheres a little faster will really help improve these skills but not break them. It will also force more people to learn more about the class instead of being an instant Zen/Fury/Zen/Asura One Trick Pony.
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#6 Fibrizzo

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 06:56 AM

Storm Gust not but Magnum Exorcism yes.

Awesome.

Edited by Fibrizzo, 13 September 2010 - 06:56 AM.

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#7 espeon

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:12 AM

http://forums.warppo...enewal-testing/
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#8 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:19 AM

I can mirror the thread over there if you have to have it there to constructively post.
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#9 Hrishi

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:24 AM

jRO's MATK formula would be nice too : >
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#10 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:26 AM

I'll have to make a sorcerer on yggdrasil (permitting time... sigh @ slow testing format) before I can comment on matk formula. Its just skills with high base time that were never meant to stay high, like M.E. or FAS that really stand out as being a mistake in the execution of fixed casting.
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#11 Fibrizzo

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:36 AM

I don't think that Magnus Exorcism should have the posibility of instant cast.

Wizards are only damage dealers with the lower HP and the lower defense gears. When priests not.
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#12 Prodigy

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:40 AM

Adding on to this, jRO was also planning to rescale the casting time formula to make Dex even heavier than Int. Right now, in terms of casting time, it's about 2 Int per 1 Dex. This means that non-Int builds have difficulty in getting a reasonable casting time with just Dex alone.

@Jaye
The cap for variable casting time formula (dex+(int/2)) is 265 which 3rd classes can reasonably hit.

Edited by Prodigy, 13 September 2010 - 07:59 AM.

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#13 Kitten

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 07:53 AM

Yes please.
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#14 Heimdallr

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 08:01 AM

Regarding the Fixed casting time.. You are listing specific skills, but not specific desires for skills after cool down. All skills that have a cast bar should have an after cast delay of some sort, even if it is really short.

So what would be your desired shortening value?

Dex should NEVER make the recastability to be 0 as it scales the damage per min way to high compared to someone that just misses the instant cast. Nothing should exponentially increase the effectiveness of something with just a few stat points.

With that said, this is part where we get to make feedback and change the system, so I'm moving this down to the renewal testing where it belongs and the discussion can continue.
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#15 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 08:23 AM

Cast time and cast delay are not the same thing, Heim. At least not in my context.

The skill I am most peeved about of course is Arrow Vulcan, so I will use it as the example.

Arrow Vulcan has a cast time of 6 seconds. This skill has a damage modifier of 1200%. This is equivalent to 3 double strafes or 12 melee attacks. Arrow Vulcan has a 2.8 second (we'll just say 3) "fixed delay" in the form of a very specific animation. So with 0 in all stats the base time to complete and re-use Arrow Vulcan is 9 Seconds. 9 Seconds to do what Double Strafe can do in 3 seconds with a base AGI and DEX of 1 with a bow and no speed potion. CLEARLY, arrow vulcan is not intended to have this lengthy cast time.

Given that a ~NAKED~ gypsy in pre-renewal has ~140 DEX, it is pretty reasonable to say that Arrow Vulcan's intended minimum cast time for a 99/70 Gypsy is around 0.4 seconds. It is fair to say this skill had no issues with 'power balance' even with 0 second cast time, given its 3 second follow-through animation. In renewal, even with 99 base DEX and 99 INT, a Gypsy has around 2 second cast time minimum on this skill due to the fixed time of 1.2 seconds and the steeper slope on int/dex to reach -100% variable. Even 0.4 seconds on AV made the skill difficult to use when someone else wasn't tanking for you. AV was largely only usable when instant cast. 2+ seconds is outright unusable as it makes the damage rate by default significantly less than double strafe and quite useless for soloing given the time you're offering to your enemies to eat you while you cast it. The same goes for Slinging arrow, which is similarly useless.

A work-around would be to remove the cast times for slinging arrow and AV, as well as FAS and FA. Reduce M.E. or Zen's base cast time to 1/2 what it was, etc, so that even with fixed casting and higher requirements on DEX these skills cast with similar speeds to what 1-99 non-thirds need to be usable.
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#16 neokenshin

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 08:34 AM

in response to Heim's Post, Here is a skill to review

Zen
Currently has 2 second Fixed cast with no after cast delay. However for it to be more effective, change the 2 second Fixed cast to the 20% fixed cast, which would be .2 seconds, and 80% variable cast and give it a .5-1 second after cast delay. This will give a good casting speed of the skill and make it more worthwhile for Sura skills, and prevent a super fast during WoE. In addition, the .5-1 second after cast delay will prevent something like fast Zen/insta Fury/fast Zen/Instant Gate of Hell. If the cast can't be changed, then make the skill uninterruptable like Summon Spirit Sphere without the cast delay. Both of these options will ensure that the Sura class can't pull the same cheap tricks as the current 99 DEX/8x VIT/5-7x STR Champions that almost or can reach Insta Cast.
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#17 Reika

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 08:43 AM

I like the 2 second fixed cast time. Keep in mind that Arch Bishops have Sacrament and reduces fixed cast by half. You know, depending on another class and all that good stuff.
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#18 Doddler

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 09:19 AM

The zen fixed cast time I'm certain is a deliberate change. Sura skills are off the wall broken with a fast zen. A sura however could rely on Rising Dragon every 30 seconds for a quick sphere fix if they needed it.

Also, people should consider that fixed cast can be reduced by 50% using secrament from an arch bishop. I feel that most classes are fine with the current cast time settings. There's a couple I think could stand to be adjusted (focus arrow strike, ganbantein), but overall it feels well while playing on the test server.

Edited by Doddler, 13 September 2010 - 09:21 AM.

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#19 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 09:27 AM

Zen being 2 seconds non-reducible was an intentional nerf.

This thread is about what is clearly a MISTAKE/OVERSIGHT from Gravity blindly applying 20% fixed casting on ALL skills without any attention to which ones would be severely hurt by it.

Edit: Thanks for that extra example (ganbantein). :( Also useless as a long cast.

Edited by Jaye, 13 September 2010 - 09:28 AM.

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#20 Sera

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 09:41 AM

Did they ever change the cast on Energy Coat?
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#21 Wanderer

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 10:03 AM

Are you going to turn this thread into a 'nerf this and buff that'? :(
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#22 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 10:09 AM

This thread must remain about whether or not blindly applying 20% fixed casting to all skills even-handedly is wise, not whether or not certain skills need a buff. As it is, the 20% fixed casting was a good change for some but utterly senseless for others. 1 size did not fit all.
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#23 Doddler

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 10:11 AM

Did they ever change the cast on Energy Coat?


As far as I'm aware, it is still 5 seconds fixed cast time.
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#24 Mwrip

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 10:43 AM

Soul Strike
-It costs 1.5x the cost of a bolt
-It's rarely the element you want (spirit, everything but undead resists this)
-It can only do half the damage output of a bolt cast
-It has an abnormally long aftercast delay for a bolt

All of these drawbacks are because you're supposed to be able to lob this in a tiny fraction of a second, even at low level, either as a combo finisher, or to instantly remove a minor threat. If one mage spell should have NO fixed cast time whatsoever, this is it. Fixed cast takes what was already a very niche spell intended for combo-heavy players, and turns it into just plain garbage.

Energy Coat
-This lasts 5 minutes (insanely long for an RO buff) yet costs a measly 30 SP (less than 1 tick of regen for a even a 2nd job), because you're supposed to be able to maintain it easily, provided you have the mana to keep it running. The fact that it not only drains a percentage of your mana per hit, but gets weaker as your mana bar gets lower, is of course both the balancing factor and true cost of this spell.
They changed it to 100% fixed cast, causing you to annoy your party every time you cast the skill that's supposed to keep you alive. I could see the standard 20% on it just to discourage the practice of "hey, I better coat for this one fight", but 5 seconds is insanely overkill.

AV may have been a bit too strong pre-renewal, but the new version makes it a trans skill that has the same purpose as a 1st job skill... and is worse at it. That makes no sense, whatsoever.

One thing I suggest is that they list all of the skills, and their current fixed and total cast times. Otherwise, we can't really comment until we see each skill by trial and error.
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#25 Kadelia

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Posted 13 September 2010 - 11:27 AM

Thank you for the additional examples. Soul Strike is a good example. AFAIK the only feature of it was the speed. Which is now gone :(
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