Ability Delay -- Character Responsiveness (This will make or break SW:TOR)

[Putok]

I should note: (I am mildly comforted by this) -- Well played Mr. Amatangelo

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/new-year%E2%80%99s-pvp-update

 

 

Combat Gameplay: You’ll see several optimizations come online in January, and we are going to continue to tune this as time goes on.

 

Gabe Amatangelo

Principal Lead PvP, Operations & Flashpoints Designer

 

Bravo! Good news. Glad to see this is being taken seriously.

[tokosan]

yep. i noticed this at level one, because its an old habit of mine from WoW days, just when finishing a cast i will jump forward, clipping the cast bar short, but of course in wow the spell had already fired.

 

in this game, it does not allow me to do that. i know they are trying to be unique here, but you don't see toyota leaving rear view mirrors off to be "unique" or "epic"

 

DONT FIX IT IF IT AIN'T BROKE

[Tiron_Raptor]

Anything can be fixed, the real question is do they want to fix it?

 

We have seen statements from bioware, inside of this thread, that indicate that bioware wants players to enjoy the animations and feel "epic"

 

Giving instant abilities and cast bars, GCD timers and off gcd abilities precedence over animations means clipping animations.

 

So let me re-phrase: the question then becomes "how will they fix the problem?"

 

Bioware can either allow for animation clipping for crisp combat controls.

 

OR bioware can give animations priority and re-work or remove cast bars timers and ESPECIALLY off GCD abilities and instants. Oh and replace the haste stat, and haste abilities that increase casting time.

 

I am sure they will fix it, they aren't morons, but the playerbase, their customers, need answers on the direction they plan to take. Because bioware cannot have both, not without completely re-creating the entire combat system, and that obviously is not an option.

 

The other thing they can do is eliminate whatever they're doing that causes the animations to start so long after the ability has fired and go fully predictive. This will increase the incidence of things like the mount/dismount problem in certain cases, where something appears to happen and is then reverted, but would superficially improve the apparent responsiveness.

 

Which frankly is a downgrade in my opinion, as so far as I can tell, there is no actual real, mechanical delay preventing you from using most abilities. It appears there might be a problem with at least some of the non-GCD abilities not working correctly, but that for the most part, perfect chaining of abilities is in fact possible, without any 'delay' causing abilities not to work.

 

yep. i noticed this at level one, because its an old habit of mine from WoW days, just when finishing a cast i will jump forward, clipping the cast bar short, but of course in wow the spell had already fired.

 

in this game, it does not allow me to do that. i know they are trying to be unique here, but you don't see toyota leaving rear view mirrors off to be "unique" or "epic"

 

DONT FIX IT IF IT AIN'T BROKE

Personally, I'd consider having to deliberately "abort" the cast in order to be able to cast when you're supposed to be able to cast very broken indeed.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[tokosan]

Fellow PvPers, thank you for taking on the challenge of player vs player combat in The Old Republic!

 

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though - the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

 

We are all really excited at the tremendous volume of participation we’ve seen in PvP thus far. Your interest and demand dictates what we’ll be delivering in the near future. I wanted to give you some insight into where we are with PvP development and where we are going.

 

First and foremost here is what we are addressing as a top priority:

 

Level 50 Bracket Warzones: Level 50 players will have a bracket of their own, playing in separate Warzone matches to lower level players. This is something we have wanted to do for some time and now that there is an increasing number of level 50 players we will be implementing the feature in January.

 

Open World PvP on Ilum: The planet of Ilum currently allows for open world PvP even on a PvE server, but the mechanics and incentives of the planet are not in as intended yet. We’re working on longer term goals for the planet and for other PvP areas, but expect to see some interim adjustments in January - such as more respawn points to focus conflicts, restricting Companion Characters from the area, and revisions to rewards. Ilum will also become a major source of Valor. Valor buffs will increase and decrease based on the objectives your faction owns. These buffs increase the amount of Valor you receive per player kill. However they do not give anything in and of themselves, so players will still need to defeat other players for significant Valor rewards. Additionally, daily and weekly missions will require player kills to complete. Player kills for quests and Valor credit will have diminishing returns per player killed. So, the more players that are fighting other players, the better it is for everyone.

 

Combat Gameplay: You’ll see several optimizations come online in January, and we are going to continue to tune this as time goes on.

 

We also have other exciting features coming in the near future including Ranked Warzone Matches, PvP Stat Tracking, Open World PvP Loot Drops, more Warzone medals for different objectives, Guard Optimizations and Target Optimizations.

 

Additionally we’re looking at ways to enable team vs. team, more level brackets and the ability to choose which Warzone you want to play in.

 

This is not a complete list of everything we’re working on that’s PvP related, but we have to keep some surprises for later! Thanks again for all your feedback and please keep it coming. We read as much as we can then cross reference with metrics to take action on features and tuning the game to ensure an enjoyable and competitive PvP community.

 

Gabe Amatangelo

Principal Lead PvP, Operations & Flashpoints Designer

 

"Combat Gameplay: You’ll see several optimizations come online in January, and we are going to continue to tune this as time goes on."

 

 

That's it? Not good enough for me. What is this, politics? Tell us what you're doing, dammit! We aren't children, we are (mostly) intelligent adults that bought a game we are mostly dissatisfied with!

[Bakarn]

The recent patch seems to have alleviated a lot of the problems with cast time spells, but hasn't fixed the UI bugs that go with them. Basically if you spam abilities now as you did pre-patch, the UI will do its best to try and reset the ability's GCD but it will not actually reset the ability.

 

Very odd behaviour. However you can now move at the instant a spell is cast and it will cast as required. The UI will state it has been cancelled, but the effect will result.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Bakarn

[astronaute]

The other thing they can do is eliminate whatever they're doing that causes the animations to start so long after the ability has fired and go fully predictive. This will increase the incidence of things like the mount/dismount problem in certain cases, where something appears to happen and is then reverted, but would superficially improve the apparent responsiveness.

 

Which frankly is a downgrade in my opinion, as so far as I can tell, there is no actual real, mechanical delay preventing you from using most abilities. It appears there might be a problem with at least some of the non-GCD abilities not working correctly, but that for the most part, perfect chaining of abilities is in fact possible, without any 'delay' causing abilities not to work.

 

 

Personally, I'd consider having to deliberately "abort" the cast in order to be able to cast when you're supposed to be able to cast very broken indeed.

 

So that is broken, but being mounted then dismounted is OK, right? Right?

 

Are you trying to say that for you SWTOR is better in term of "responsiveness" comparing to WoW?

If yes then you should just say it, I respect people with honesty and I'm happy if this is OK for you.

 

We, majority, that means "not you", we want something at least as good as WoW in terms of responsiveness.

 

Peace

[Brooding]

"Combat Gameplay: You’ll see several optimizations come online in January, and we are going to continue to tune this as time goes on."

 

 

That's it? Not good enough for me. What is this, politics? Tell us what you're doing, dammit! We aren't children, we are (mostly) intelligent adults that bought a game we are mostly dissatisfied with!

 

Precisely my thought.

 

"Several optimizations" is entirely too vague and could mean absolutely nothing in regards to the problem everyone seems to think is now going to be miraculously fixed.

 

If THIS is what they're referring to, it's about time! Thank goodness. Still, I'd much rather them reassure us by addressing this issue by name and alerting us to their intention to fix it during the aforementioned time period.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Brooding

[Tiron_Raptor]

So that is broken, but being mounted then dismounted is OK, right? Right?

 

Are you trying to say that for you SWTOR is better in term of "responsiveness" comparing to WoW?

If yes then you should just say it, I respect people with honesty and I'm happy if this is OK for you.

 

We, majority, that means "not you", we want something at least as good as WoW in terms of responsiveness.

 

Peace

 

I've never so much as hinted it's better.

 

I will say this now, however:

 

SWTOR is overall approximately as responsive as World of Warcraft, and has been since launch, with the exception of a few specific things that are bugged:

 

The 'Ability Action Queue' does not fire the ability precisely at the end of the GCD, but is substantially delayed.

 

Non-GCD abilities seem to at least sometimes be respecting the GCD.

 

They've got what I believe is a slightly higher-than-average problem with the network latency induced problem of the client thinking stuff is done before the server does, and then getting interrupted by the server.

 

With these few exceptions, I have seen not one shred of evidence, in game, on the forums, or on youtube, that showed an actual mechanical delay or failure.

 

What I've seen is a delay in the animations being played... Which has absolutely nothing to do with when the ability is used or the damage is applied: it's a purely visual indication for your personal enjoyment.

 

It's perfectly possible to chain abilities just as effectively as in World of Warcraft despite the apparent delay in the animations: all it takes is paying attention to the cooldowns instead of what your character appears to be doing at the moment.

[Brooding]

I've never so much as hinted it's better.

 

I will say this now, however:

 

SWTOR is overall approximately as responsive as World of Warcraft, and has been since launch, with the exception of a few specific things that are bugged:

 

The 'Ability Action Queue' does not fire the ability precisely at the end of the GCD, but is substantially delayed.

 

Non-GCD abilities seem to at least sometimes be respecting the GCD.

 

They've got what I believe is a slightly higher-than-average problem with the network latency induced problem of the client thinking stuff is done before the server does, and then getting interrupted by the server.

 

With these few exceptions, I have seen not one shred of evidence, in game, on the forums, or on youtube, that showed an actual mechanical delay or failure.

 

What I've seen is a delay in the animations being played... Which has absolutely nothing to do with when the ability is used or the damage is applied: it's a purely visual indication for your personal enjoyment.

 

It's perfectly possible to chain abilities just as effectively as in World of Warcraft despite the apparent delay in the animations: all it takes is paying attention to the cooldowns instead of what your character appears to be doing at the moment.

 

Tell me that when I'm stuck in place because the Sith Warrior's RAVAGE animation glitches out, does ABSOLUTELY NO DAMAGE, and doesn't go on CD. I've tried to study the issue on many of the countless times it has plagues me - both in PVE and PVP - and I still cannot understand why it happens, though my thoughts has something to do with possible positioning? Purely speculative, as it happens even when there is nothing unnatural about my positioning.

 

I wouldn't call that as effective in World of Warcraft, when my Arms warrior could channel bladestorm, then immediately after use his instants without delay / buggy animation / while actually doing the intended damage.

 

Some of these issues are much more than just visual disturbances. Doing NO damage and wasting time being forced to channel is a rather substantial inconvenience.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Brooding

[youwillburn]

I think Bioware built this game like they would a single player game. Which is mostly focused on eye candy rather than min maxing stuff. They either need to fix the UI to reflect their intentions eg. (get rid of 'instant' skills), or change the combat system. In either case there are bugs that need to be fixed such as ravage bugs, retaliation bugs.

 

I have no problems with them having their own slower paced combat system where every skill has a after cast as long as it's consistent across the board.

[Gurkburkenen]

It's called 'Network Latency'. One of the postulates of Einstein's theory of relativity (which I don't even BEGIN to fully understand, only the most basic parts of it) is that no information can travel faster than a constant he calls "C", which is accepted to be equal to the speed of light in a vacuum (it's slower in other materials. I also have my doubts as to if the measured speed of light in a vacuum actually *IS* C, after that bit with the neutrinos apparently going slightly FTL. Most likely it's some systemic bias nobody's caught but... who knows).

 

This means that no information can reach bioware from your client, or your client from bioware, faster than a beam of light could travel between the two of you. This is an extraordinarily short time over the distances involved, but still measurable.

 

Trick being, you can't actually achieve that speed on the internet. The signals can't actually reach the speed of light, because they have to pass through so many different boxes on the way. They're passed from router to router to router, with no pre-defined path (it's actually designed to automatically route AROUND holes in the network if it can). All this passing about slows the signal down. The signals also can only travel a certain distance through whatever medium they're in before they become too degraded to be received, so it has to be intercepted and boosted occasionally.

 

Even with this, the total, round trip response time generally ends up under 200 milliseconds, 0.2 of a second, on most connections. These days, a round trip response time of 20 milliseconds is not unheard of, and under 100MS (just 0.1 of a second) is not unusual.

 

If the travel time was perfectly predictable it could be compensated for: The client would know that it took X amount of time for the server to receive the signal, and that it should receive the success signal back from the server X milliseconds after that timer ends, and compensate accordingly.

 

Unfortunately, the nature of the network makes that impossible. Signal travel times are NOT predictable nor stable: they're changing constantly, based upon innumerable variables. Which of the almost infinite possible routes did it use this time. How long did it take each router along the way to process it and pass it on. How long did it sit in a buffer waiting to be sent down the line to the next router.

 

This makes it all but impossible to perfectly synchronize the client and the server: even if you managed it at one point by correctly predicting the network latency, it'd shift and you'd end up wrong again, quite possibly on the very next signal sent. It simply isn't physically possible to have perfect, synchronized communication between two machines at that sort of distance.

 

And mitigating it with extra prediction has its own flaws: the existing limited prediction is already what's causing you to appear to mount and then dismount. If the prediction is increased, that sort of error will get WORSE, not better. And prediction is the only way, short of someone developing a relativity-violating instantaneous communications mechanism, to try to improve the synchronization.

 

There are two further alternatives:

 

Stop trying to predict things, and have a visible delay equal to your network latency on EVERYTHING you do.

 

Let the client authoritatively decide everything, and deal with all the hacks that result from trusting a machine that's out of your control.

 

 

Dude seriously, quit posting Wall of Texts on which things you dont know anything about.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Tell me that when I'm stuck in place because the Sith Warrior's RAVAGE animation glitches out, does ABSOLUTELY NO DAMAGE, and doesn't go on CD. I've tried to study the issue on many of the countless times it has plagues me - both in PVE and PVP - and I still cannot understand why it happens, though my thoughts has something to do with possible positioning? Purely speculative, as it happens even when there is nothing unnatural about my positioning.

 

I wouldn't call that as effective in World of Warcraft, when my Arms warrior could channel bladestorm, then immediately after use his instants without delay / buggy animation / while actually doing the intended damage.

 

Some of these issues are much more than just visual disturbances. Doing NO damage and wasting time being forced to channel is a rather substantial inconvenience.

 

That description makes it sound like a separate, unrelated issue I saw on that jedi knight video: I don't suppose ravage is the sith warrior version of riposte?

 

What appeared to be happening in that case was that riposte was erroneously partially respecting the GCD, with the client getting confused because according to what it knows, riposte is supposed to go off regardless of the GCD, and tries to simulate accordingly only to get reverted.

 

Hard to say if the issue is client side or server side, but I've seen some evidence that several non-GCD abilities have the same problem, so it could be a systemic thing with non-GCD abilities in general. Might even be server-side only, which would explain the client's confusion.

 

It is, however, a different, very specific problem, not the general problem that most people seem to be complaining about.

 

I'll note that per the OP, a Bioware post has stated that there are multiple different issues being lumped together in this thread under the heading of 'ability delay'

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Brooding]

That description makes it sound like a separate, unrelated issue I saw on that jedi knight video: I don't suppose ravage is the sith warrior version of riposte?

 

What appeared to be happening in that case was that riposte was erroneously partially respecting the GCD, with the client getting confused because according to what it knows, riposte is supposed to go off regardless of the GCD, and tries to simulate accordingly only to get reverted.

 

Hard to say if the issue is client side or server side, but I've seen some evidence that several non-GCD abilities have the same problem, so it could be a systemic thing with non-GCD abilities in general. Might even be server-side only, which would explain the client's confusion.

 

It is, however, a different, very specific problem, not the general problem that most people seem to be complaining about.

 

I'll note that per the OP, a Bioware posted has stated that there are multiple different issues being lumped together in this thread under the heading of 'ability delay'

 

Apologies for confusion, then.

 

However, Ravage is opposite to Master Strike.

[Tiron_Raptor]

Apologies for confusion, then.

 

However, Ravage is opposite to Master Strike.

 

Ah... now that IS odd then, because so far as I've ever seen master strike works fine, but I haven't played a knight since before launch. I haven't heard anyone complaining about it yet, but it's possible I could have missed it.

 

Could very well be a ravage-specific bug, or something. I know none of my trooper's channeled abilities seem to do anything even remotely resembling that.

[Bakarn]

Tell me that when I'm stuck in place because the Sith Warrior's RAVAGE animation glitches out, does ABSOLUTELY NO DAMAGE, and doesn't go on CD. I've tried to study the issue on many of the countless times it has plagues me - both in PVE and PVP - and I still cannot understand why it happens, though my thoughts has something to do with possible positioning? Purely speculative, as it happens even when there is nothing unnatural about my positioning.

 

I wouldn't call that as effective in World of Warcraft, when my Arms warrior could channel bladestorm, then immediately after use his instants without delay / buggy animation / while actually doing the intended damage.

 

Some of these issues are much more than just visual disturbances. Doing NO damage and wasting time being forced to channel is a rather substantial inconvenience.

 

Bear in mind this state of affairs was not always true for World of Warcraft. For several years hybrid classes in particular went through a state where their abilities simply did not work as advertised. Some problems like the feral druid hit box had to be solved by giving every single melee class in the game a snare. Others (like the completely broken state of Ret paladin mana generation) remained that way for nearly 3 expansions. Various classes were completely broken. Some absurd bugs made their way through.

 

One glitch became a mainstay of PvP because the class that had it had no other active combat abilities.

 

WoW's current state is not how it always was. It was much laggier at launch than SWTOR is now.

 

I would also note that I have never had Master Strike fail.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Bakarn

[Brooding]

Bear in mind this state of affairs was not always true for World of Warcraft. For several years hybrid classes in particular went through a state where their abilities simply did not work as advertised. Some problems like the feral druid hit box had to be solved by giving every single melee class in the game a snare. Others (like the completely broken state of Ret paladin mana generation) remained that way for nearly 3 expansions. Various classes were completely broken. Some absurd bugs made their way through.

 

One glitch became a mainstay of PvP because the class that had it had no other active combat abilities.

 

WoW's current state is not how it always was. It was much laggier at launch than SWTOR is now.

 

I would also note that I have never had Master Strike fail.

 

Not so much a fail as forced animation with no actual effect other than visual. It happens rather frequently for me; in fact, I'll hit up my twitch TV for a while sometime soon to see if I can capture a few instances in action - rest assured, it is not uncommon.

[Afflictionz]

Bump...

[Tiron_Raptor]

Not so much a fail as forced animation with no actual effect other than visual. It happens rather frequently for me; in fact, I'll hit up my twitch TV for a while sometime soon to see if I can capture a few instances in action - rest assured, it is not uncommon.

 

That does sound very much like a problem with ravage in particular. Have you filed a bug report on it? I'd strongly suggest doing so if you haven't: if it is in fact an ability specific issue, they'll never find it unless someone there notices it specifically, without it being lumped in with six other things under a generic label (unless, of course, the various items are clearly delineated within that label).

[Darth_Nikon]

Dude seriously, quit posting Wall of Texts on which things you dont know anything about.

 

Pfft. Here, Gurkburkenen, here's the classic wall of text on the matter for you. Because it sounds like you're actually the one that's confused.

 

And hey, as long as I'm playing StarwarsBlade Alpha er, I mean space missions, I might as well see if I can bust out Bolo on an emulator for nostalgia's sake as well.

[Rezoo]

WoW on release, in 2004, did not have a gameplay-breaking issue like this.

 

Blame the Beta testers for testing the "story" instead of actual gameplay.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Rezoo

[Tiron_Raptor]

Pfft. Here, Gurkburkenen, here's the classic wall of text on the matter for you. Because it sounds like you're actually the one that's confused.

 

And hey, as long as I'm playing StarwarsBlade Alpha er, I mean space missions, I might as well see if I can bust out Bolo on an emulator for nostalgia's sake as well.

 

Heh, that's just a generic rant about latency, but both true and fairly informative.

 

The article that got me going on it was actually on a gaming site (forget which one) about Day of Defeat (the original, Pre-Source incarnation).

 

The gist of it was this: Using hitscan, one-hit-kill weapons, if two people fire at each other simultaneously, who wins?

 

Answer: The one with the lower latency between him and the server. His 'attack' message gets there first, so when the other guy's arrives, the server looks at him funny and goes 'You already dead foo.' What the lower ping guy sees is his shot going off (the client simulating it), and then a fraction of a second later he dies while the guy he just watched himself shooting walks off uninjured. (I've had that happen on sniper maps in TF2, because I was playing on a UK Server and everyone else there was...well...British, and had 1/5th my ping time). The faster ping guy, and everyone else on the server for that matter, sees the guy go down without firing a shot.

 

The general principle applies to any game, but it gets much, much worse when simulated projectiles are involved instead of hitscan weapons. With projectiles it doesn't just effect the order the server receives things in, it also effects where you have to aim the projectile at a moving target to hit.

 

What you're seeing on your client is just a little off from the state according to the server due to the network latency. You and your actions are a little bit ahead of where the server thinks they are, because the messages haven't gotten to the server yet. Everything else, from NPCs, to other players, to the rocket that dude just launched, on the server is just a tiny bit ahead of where it looks like it is on your client. This gets really bad when you get into chase scenarios: if you're being chased, the combined effect is that you appear much further ahead of the other person than the server thinks you are. If you're doing the chasing, you appear much closer to them than the server thinks you are. This affects ability use ranges, and was particularly noticeable as a warrior on WoW.

 

The trick being, when projectiles and lead time get involved, you don't just have to compensate for the movement of the target between when you fire and when the projectile gets there, you also have to compensate for the fact that the target is a fraction of a second ahead of where they appear to be, and are going to move even further in the time it takes your fire message to get to the server. So you have to lead a little extra. How much depends on your latency.

 

It's not hard to extrapolate that general principle to other things in the game: the '/stopcasting' thing from WoW was quite literally dependent on exploiting network latency to improve casting time slightly... just speculating based on what I've seen and heard, I'd guess that the client holds the castbar at complete until it gets the success message from the server or gets interrupted, also preventing you from casting a different ability until that message comes in. By interrupting it, you stop the client from waiting for the return message before it lets you do anything. In which case, you could actually do the interrupt slightly BEFORE the server actually considers the spell completed: as long as the message from the client about the interrupt gets to the server after the server has already sent the 'success' message(even if it hasn't reached your client yet), the server will just ignore it.

[Yestreen]

http://www.swtor.com/blog/new-year’s-pvp-update

 

The 'improved combat optimization' discussed in this announcement makes me feel optimistic. If this pertains to the ability delay issue then we should have this fixed some time this month

[Darth_Nikon]

Heh, that's just a generic rant about latency, but both true and fairly informative.

 

Well, it's based on what Chesire learned as a result of getting Bolo up and playable on the net back in the day, so it seemed appropriate.

[Light_Valkyrie]

Effects anything with a cast > instant, or cast > channel, or channel > instant.

 

Play a Merc BH, it's one of the biggest problems with DPSing atm. You don't have a smooth, fluid rotation because you're constantly hindered by ability delay.

 

Its the same for most dps / anything really

 

Lightning Sorc = crap to play as Lightning storm insta cast Chain lightning proc is crap due to the delay.

 

And as a Madness / Lightning hybrid, yep still crap. I like how death field doesnt fire off if I use it after I cast ANYTHING with a animation.

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/new-year’s-pvp-update

 

The 'improved combat optimization' discussed in this announcement makes me feel optimistic. If this pertains to the ability delay issue then we should have this fixed some time this month

 

 

Good glad to see SOMETHING.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Light_Valkyrie

[Tiron_Raptor]

http://www.swtor.com/blog/new-year’s-pvp-update

 

The 'improved combat optimization' discussed in this announcement makes me feel optimistic. If this pertains to the ability delay issue then we should have this fixed some time this month

 

When you push the button, and you see your character standing there for a bit before actually animating the ability, you're not seeing the ability being 'delayed' and 'going off way late'. Your GCD already cycled fully and is available again: the ability has already 'gone off', your client just hasn't shown you the effects yet. if you use another ability now, it will go off just perfectly and have full effect, even though your character just lifted his arm to fire the rocket.

 

On the server.

 

It just hasn't been shown to you on your client yet.

 

But what your client shows doesn't matter. Your client isn't even the game.

 

The server is the game. Only what the server thinks matters, and it calculated the damage and applied it to your target as soon as your attack request came in.

 

The only 'ability delay' is you waiting too long to use your next ability because you're watching the animations instead of the much more accurate UI. You could've already used your next ability as of thirty seconds ago, but you were too busy wondering why your guy was just standing there.

 

If you use an ability and the GCD doesn't abort and reset after a few seconds, the resources you used don't get put back, and the ability's cooldown doesn't reset like you never used it at all, the ability almost certainly was used successfully. Unless you're disconnected entirely or something, but you'll figure that out right quick if you are.

 

It's waiting. Waiting for you to stop gawking at your character lifting his arm and use the next ability.

 

Its the same for most dps / anything really

 

Lightning Sorc = crap to play as Lightning storm insta cast Chain lightning proc is crap due to the delay.

 

And as a Madness / Lightning hybrid, yep still crap. I like how death field doesnt fire off if I use it after I cast ANYTHING with a animation.

 

As a tactics vanguard, I have never once had problems with any channeled ability or instant cast ability delaying or otherwise failing to work because of any animation or delay issue.

 

As tactics, I use pulse cannon practically every chance I get. Almost every ability I have has an animation.

 

I'm a bounty hunter that looks like a stormtrooper.

 

I chain stuff just fine, because I watch the cooldowns, not the animations.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor