What if SE added a "Delay" feature to spells.

[Neomage]

This is just an idea that crossed my mind, but think about it. When a mage is building up mana and power to cast a spell, why do they have to cast it right away? Why not add a feature for skilled mages(Mabye 50+) to supress that power untill the oppertune time? Obviously their would have to be restrictions on this to prevent abuse, such as a limit of one spell supressed at a time, and perhaps a MP or HP drain(it takes energy to spress that power), and mabye if you supress it to long it escapes anyway and you cast it on yourself(Imagine a BLM doing this with Flare II). But I see a load of places where this would be useful.

Imagine if you see a monster casting a very strong buff/debuff that needs to be dispelled or erased almost immediately, a mage could cast the spell early on and supress it waiting for the attack to go off before using it so it won't cast to early or to late. What about Summoner's Magic Bursts? Those are a PAIN to pull off. A melee in the skillchain taking a little to long for the WS? supress the magic untill the MB window opens. What about manaburn parties when everyone wants to use Thunder IV but one BLM isn't quite there? He can just use Blizzard IV and supress the spell untill the other BLMs are ready.

Any thoughts?

[Taskmage]

Re: What if SE added a "Delay" feature to spells.

I think with latency factored in, properly timing things with that feature would be no more or less of a pain to pull off. In designing the game, SE tries with varying degrees of success to make latency a non-issue (see their explanation of why chocobo racing won't be user-controlled). I don't know whether that would make them more or less receptive to the suggestion.

I don't know how summoner MBs work, but I don't see the need in your other examples. Blizzard IV takes a quarter of a second less time to cast than Thunder IV so the difference there would be negligable. Even if you tried to manually adjust by that small of an increment, variations in lag or your own reflexes could offset it. Even with a larger gap, you could do the same thing with a little knowledge of your job. When I time-nuke with blms I just put a /wait 2 in my Blizzard III and Thunder III macros and hit it the same time they do. Dispel and Finale are already fast enough spells that keeping them pre-cocked and ready wouldn't make that much of a difference.

Not a bad idea, but I don't see the point.

[Neomage]

Re: What if SE added a "Delay" feature to spells.

Meh, i guess your right. I just thought it would be cool.

[DakAttack]

Re: What if SE added a "Delay" feature to spells.

Summoner MBs are timed just as if you're adding another WS to the SC.