Weapon delay myths.

[Zaer505]

I have been a drk for a while now and I have heard a lot of different opinions about this. Here goes. While using a scythe or gswrd, does casting or shooting a chrossbow in between swings affect it? I have tried it a good bit and can't really tell for sure. Also when a scythe or whatever has a 480 delay, I used to think that that meant it was 4.8 seconds, but i'm not too sure about this opinion.

I know that this has been brought up before I am sure, just figured I would ask for someone that has a good opinion or good facts about it.

The biggest reason I want to know is I am having hell keeping gwsrd, scythe, crossbow and my magics capped. I wanted to know if I am hurting myself by casting in between swings or shooting a crossbow. I honestly don't know how some of you guys do it. I am 20 and I still have yet to cap any of the things that I listed lol.

Any suggestions or links to good drk information sites pleast and thank you.

[Mhurron]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

About keeping weapons capped. The real important ones are G.Sword and Scythe. Marksmanship (crossbow) skill is quite low on DRK, it will take even longer to level then your long delay A weapons so I doubt you really need to worry about it. Elemental and Dark magic skill are also going to take a lot of time to skill, but you'll "easily" cap Dark Magic skill once you have Drain, Aspir, Stun and the Absorb-* spells. Elemental skill on a DRK just isn't that important for EXP and you have a limited MP pool as it is. I would reccomend leaving that to skill up on your own and later skill up in skillup parties.

What I did to keep Scythe and G.Sword capped was use one for 2 levels, then switch to the other for two levels, and continue that back and forth. If one capped before the two levels was up, I switched early, if it didn't cap I switched anyway. It kept the skills for both capped or very close to capped until doing bats in Garliage. Skillups really slowed down there, but picked right up killing crawlers in the Nest.

[Lmnop]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

yes, casting slows down your next auto-attack. casting a 4 second Drain will halt your swings for 4-5 seconds.

480 delay is 8 seconds flat. Every 60 frames = 1 second. So take delay divided by 60, and you'll have how many seconds you have to wait between swings.

[Tipsy]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Just level BLM and RNG before you level DRK

[Ghostraven]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Every 60 frames = 1 second.

I thought the game was capped at 30fps?

[Mhurron]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

I thought the game was capped at 30fps?

It is on the client. 60 is still used as the base reference.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Delay

Incidentally, I do not agree with the reason why 60 is used as presented on the ffxiclopedia as it makes no sense.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

People has a tendency to confuse delay with frame rate for some reason. Anyway, it seems to be an established fact that 60 delay is 1 second, or 1 delay is 1/60th of a second.

Frame rate is this variable thing that changes depending on condition. Out of the box, FFXI is capped at 30 frame/second max, but I believe I've read somewhere that there are hacks to increase the cap to 60 frames/second. Which is nice, but I doubt my computers can get above 10 frame/second during any Besieged, hack or no hack...

Edit:
Mhurron is right; the FFXIclopedia page on Delay is pretty stupid. Don't look at it. (Why did you post that link? >_>; )

[raidenn]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Level Rng to work on your xbow. Even with just decent equipment, Rng can still hit the mobs with very little problems (well WS hits are kinda unpredictable)

[Mhurron]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Mhurron is right; the FFXIclopedia page on Delay is pretty stupid. Don't look at it. (Why did you post that link? >_>; )

The math does appear to be correct, but the reason for using 60 is stupid. More likely is a RTC on a 60Hz cycle, if not something much simpler related to the speed of time in Vana'diel.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

I think it's just convention; for whatever the reason, time unit in programming tend to be in milliseconds or 1/60th second. I remember vaguely that there are regular hardware-generated system interrupts every 1/60th of a second for many platforms, so programmers/hardware designers to use it to sync graphic buffer blitz or something.

(I could be very, very wrong on that... >_>; )

[Wise Donkey]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Casting or Shooting in the middle of your Weapon swing does not exactly lengthen the time between swings. 480 Delay is still 8 seconds. Doing other things just pauses, if you will, the weapon swing timer while the action goes on. The timer then restarts once that action completes.

[Lmnop]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

i.e. a pause button is hit on the attack delay.

Incidentally, I meant to type 60 delay = 1 second in my original post. I was thinking about frames obviously, but I was actually trying my best to avoid that term. Yes, your computer being laggy won't make your character swing any slower, because it's figured on their end. Even if you're D/Cing, your char remains in game auto-attacking as normal for the 30 seconds that it can't detect you (or however that works).

[Mhurron]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

I remember vaguely that there are regular hardware-generated system interrupts every 1/60th of a second for many platforms, so programmers/hardware designers to use it to sync graphic buffer blitz or something.
(I could be very, very wrong on that... >_>; )

That would be a 60Hz RTC

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Even if you're D/Cing, your char remains in game auto-attacking as normal for the 30 seconds that it can't detect you (or however that works).

Oh, that's simple to explain. Your computer/PS2/xBox360 plays no role in auto-attack. It doesn't wait x seconds and tell the server to "swing again!" All of that happen on the server side, and it occasionally tells your client software to "display attack animation #n". If you client didn't get the memo? Tough.

That's why the frame rate on your computer has nothing to do with the attack delay--heck, nothing on your FFXI client has anything to do with the attack delay.

[Macht]

Re: Weapon delay myths.

Oh, that's simple to explain. Your computer/PS2/xBox360 plays no role in auto-attack. It doesn't wait x seconds and tell the server to "swing again!" All of that happen on the server side, and it occasionally tells your client software to "display attack animation #n". If you client didn't get the memo? Tough.
That's why the frame rate on your computer has nothing to do with the attack delay--heck, nothing on your FFXI client has anything to do with the attack delay.

Actually, that hasn't been the case for me. I've lagged and even had the server lag and the client still attacked. It's like the client does have a low level knowledge of what it should be doing. I use to call it one thing until Icemage decided to start attacking me for that. Basically though the client does have programming to it to determine what it should be doing.

So naturally if characters are engaged in a fight with the mob the client still continues the fight (meaning if your character should swing the they will) even if the server isn't there. I've watched a fight were a guy was killing Yagudo in 1-2 hits and when the server stopped for a few seconds I saw this guy engaged in a fight with the Yagudo for well over 8 hits.

The client still continued the motions that it knew to do. On the occurences of were you were engaged with a mob attacking it the client seemed to even know the mobs HP so battle between the mob and you still would actually happen even without the server. When the mob died though you'd see your members put away their weapons and just sit there. That's usually been the indicator for me that I'm lagging out, has always been that my party members stop responding and after battle don't do anything.

You also can't say that the client side doesn't effect anything when clearly the issues of overclocked systems and other anomalies happening client side have given players an almost speed hack like behavior. Makes sense that this would be happening given the method of how the server and client communicate while in-game.

The things you end up not seeing if something goes wrong will be stuff other players initialize. So a spell or WS they do you won't see if you lag bad enough. However you will still see your own attacks.