@OP
Both Jaye and I agreed that kRO's casting time formula is stupid when applied on some skills. We also then pointed out that your proposed formula is not as perfect as you think it is. So far, it seems that you refuse to admit that your formula has faults.
-I pointed out that near-instant is still possible under your formula. In your formula 180 dex, 180 int, with 40% casting time reduction (2 sprint rings, dark illusion CoD) is ~93% casting time reduction, which is equivalent to 140 dex preRenewal. Throw in a 60% reduction from strings (which you're suggesting should stack multiplicatively and not additively with equipment casting time reduction) and we're looking at the same casting time as 145 dex preRenewal. That's already near-instant by RO standards. Of course this setup requires Strings to maintain the fast casting time, but Strings was already present in preRenewal times, just the usage is changed. In preRenewal, Strings was used to take care of aftercast delay (but Renewal fixes that with reuse delay) while in your proposed changes, Strings will then be used for casting time reduction. And of course, this is still not considering all the +dex and +int gears and %casting time reduction items that they may implement in the future.
-Jaye pointed out that even with your revised Archer casting time formula, near-instant is not enough in a practical standpoint. Archers aren't spamming skills like preRenewal SG where 1 cast is enough to take care of the mob, or at least control it. Archers are using skills like FAS that needs to be repeatedly used to clean up a mob, or Arrow Vulcan which just takes monsters down one at a time. So, from a practical and realistic standpoint, anything slower than instant cast will not do because of the nature of their skills - they need to constantly use it while tanking a mob and at the same time, it doesn't provide the same crowd controlling (or outright killing) effects as other AoEs do.
This is rubbish.
First of all, it's not an issue that near-instant cast is still available. It takes a whole lot of buffs, specific gears and stats, and favorable circumstances (such as not being stuck in a quagmire or under marsh of abyss) to have it.
Let's have a look. Pre-renewal:
max dex, dex gears, bless = instant cast with 99 stat caps
This suggestion:
max dex/int, cast reduction gears, bless, sacraments, strings = near-instant with 120 stat caps
Before renewal strings was still useful for reducing cast time, BTW. That is, IF you had a cast time still.
And even with the suggestion, it's still useful for reducing after-cast delay.
The thing is, there aren't going to be any problems later. You've already taken what... the +20 foods from Genetics, strings, sacraments, +10 kafra foods, all the current best cast gears available now, and max int/dex. What room is left now??? What are the odds that they're going to come out with an item which not only gives just as much cast reduction, but ALSO adds tons of dex and int? Oh, that's right, they WON'T. It would be retardedly overpowered. And even if new releases over the years slowly increased your dex/int, the returns would be diminishing, thanks to the properties of this formula. At the same time, odds are items which also increase attack speed would be released... so it would only be fair to slowly notch up casting time anyway.
The only real problem would be if gravity kept releasing items that gave way too much cast reduction time without ever thinking of the consequences. It would be like being able to easily get armor reduction to 99%. There was nothing wrong with how the defense system worked, but the point is you had to be careful with things and could not just progressively release items with more and more def.
And as for the archer skills, effectively what you want is a double standard. I would agree that archers would deserve, at the very least, a better formula to improve their casting, but you are going to go so far as to give them INSTANT cast, or near-instant cast, by time they hit level 70? That is BS.
I should also point out that near-instant is perfectly suitable. The difference between a 3.4 and 3 sec time between uses is only a drop in effectiveness of 12%. If you can't deal with a .4 sec cast time, you just don't know how to play RO. Here she was saying
Oh, this trap thingy does 9k, but it's just SILLY having to get monsters to walk over it! Hello? Monsters have behaved in the same, predictable manners since, uh... ALWAYS. Hunters have had no trouble utilizing their traps by getting monsters to walk on them. Mages have had firewall since the beginning too, and it isn't hard to put up a perfect, vertical firewall.
All I'm saying is this. If you are having a problem with very-near instant cast times on these archer skills, making them instant will not save you. Your problems would not be derived from the minuscule cast times you are forced to endure, but rather your lack of ability to play RO.