38 thoughts on “Frame Rates can affect your DPS! 10 Janky Mechanics of Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail”
If you stick really close to enemies when they move you've probably encountered this one, when enemies move through your character as you do an action (most likely with casts like iaijutsu but can happen to weaponskills with unfortunate timing) the game will decide you are not in range and cancel that action even if the enemy is very clearly still in range. It's incredibly annoying every time it happens.
I once had a really old laptop back in ARR. Its performance was so bad that got 8-12 FPS mid combat or in busy town zones. I want you to imagine how bad that was for movement. People outran me on my chocobo. By walking.
Naturally, I played BLM. And I learned the value of Aetherial Manipulation for keeping up with the tank in dungeons.
Somehow I managed to heal a tank in Keeper of the Lake's final boss with that same BLM because the healer died early and we still had cross-class Physick at the time. It required full on spam to keep the tank up, but I managed to dodge the entire fight while keeping up with that.
It would be cool if red mage actually got given high enough natural strength levels so that their auto-attack dealt good damage. Lean a bit more into the whole spellsword hybrid identity. It doesn't need to be melee dps levels of damage, but it would be nice if it was high enough to actually be noticeable
Now I know, why I've seen so many times, that someone is clearly in an AoE puddle, when it blows, but they receive no damage. I always think they are late to get out of it, but they are not. It's just that I see their actions with a slight delay, so to speak.
There is also other hilarious things related to fps, namely, certain graphical features. For example, jiggle physics are tied to your fps and if it is too high then it completely breaks and disables itself. Locking your fps to 60 and below is a safe bet for seeing that feature in particular.
Not entirely sure how this works, but my friend cleared all the ultimates on a relaively low spec laptop (~20-30 fps) and in some mechanics where people would get knocked back into a stack hit, he would sometimes get knocked back too late and receive all the stack damage on him instead of the party.
So, my "favorite" moment of jank is one I'm experiencing right now as my group goes through TEA. Namely, your cast can get cancelled through mostly no fault of your own if a boss runs past you just wrong. Normally, when you're channeling a cast if you rotate your character it'll cancel it because you're no longer facing the right direction, but if your target moves you'll automatically rotate to keep looking at them. However, if your target runs functionally right over you such that in one moment they're on one side of you and the next moment they're on the opposite, it seems like sometimes the game just gives up on rotating your character and cancels the cast as though you weren't facing the right direction. It's very rare, and only seems to happen when you'd otherwise have to turn around in a single frame, but it can be incredibly annoying when it happens because it's basically outside of your control aside from hoping the tank doesn't drag the mob right over top of you.
A funny thing about mage autos, I noticed once when I was running Syrcus Tower on SCH that my auto attacks did around 1/4th to 1/3rd the damage of my Art of Wars (Arts of War?). It's actually hilarious thinking about how much damage you lose over the course of a fight by casting at range at lvl 50 đ Although not many fights last long enough for it to be all that significant. Idk how it was back when ARR was current, but I wonder if casters being in melee range would have made dps checks on Coils easier đ
the thing about the game is the server checks the most recent snapshotted position it had of your character's relative position when a mechanic goes off which could be about .20 seconds off from your position on the client. the use of weaponskills, spells and abilities force a snapshot of the position their used.
As I am playing on 300 pings, i went to search which jobs are good/bad on high latency and the ones that are always said to be bad on high latency are machinist and ninja. I never realised it is also bad for red mage even though i playing mostly summoner and have gotten use to waiting for a while to cast after casting swiftcast. Maybe a video on jobs least and most affected by latency will be goodđ.
"its an incredibly janky game" yup.. after doing quite a few raid tiers now, watching my static members (with anything above like 50ping) dodge mechanics, just for the mechanic to still kill them regardless.. ive come to realize this game is very very janky
I like the ghost one. Happens quite a few times that you dodge an aoe and stop just outside of it to continue casting and the game will think you are still in the aoe. But if you keep running until it resolves then you are more likely to be safe. Also weirdly enough jumping over from a tile of lava to a safe tile works the same, you are up in the air mid jump and don't get hit.
The jank i discovered is when fighting Honey Bee Lovely. I realized it with blm's Aetherial Manipulation but tested it with multiple gap closers. During Honey Bee Lovely's Beat 2 with the moving hearts, you can gap close THROUGH the hearts without actually hitting it and taking a heart. I make use of this every time I need to get to the stack marker at the end of Beat 2 as blm.
Oh dear….RDM was the first DPS I tried and I gave up on it and switched to DNC because the dual cast buff would come up too late, messing up my entire rotation…and that happened mostly in content where I needed the high DPS (A.k.a the content I picked up RDM for). At the time I thought it was my connection or something. I had no clue it's a known issue!
Macros: it makes sense for it to exist AND be purposefully broken to prevent unfair advantage? Who does that make sense to? Who has the advantage? Is it possible to install the game without the macro system?
7:25 – Yeah, I stopped playing RDM at all for a bit when I lived somewhere with a bit more finicky internet connection since my Dualcasts would wiff so often it was just obnoxious to try playing. I can play it more now, though at this point, I kind of prefer SMN, so it's whatever, but I remember getting annoyed with it, having to delay casts or interrupt my cast to then use the Dualcast, etc. And on Healer, the Swiftcast Raise and having to delay…yeah, I remember…
18:25 – "So, do YOU know of some real wacky jank in FFXIV?" Well, I HAVE played SCH for 9 years now. I'd say I know some. : ) Seriously, with SMN getting its rework, SCH is the undisputed "Jank, the Job" now.
Movement speed is tied to your framerate as well. Learned this in a dungeon with a guy playing on a potato. Worked with him for about 30 minutes trying to figure out why his movement speed was halfway between running and walking. He was using mkb, so it wasn't a joystick problem. Eventually I figured out he was getting under 10 fps. Had him drop his settings down, and suddenly he could run full speed. This was a level 85 dungeon too… so he prolly played the whole game at like 1/2 run speed.
16:44 i always run ahead of the tanks when dpsing, because I know that if I'm ahead of them, i'm actually right beside them (and my AOEs need to be sufficiently far in the future to hit the running pack). i play 190ms on average
Definitely the animation lock of healer lb3. The other healer can use "rescue" to cancel this animation lock so they don't take damage/can move and start healing early! I am a healer main and I'm always ready to rescue a co-healer that is using healer lb3 nifty little trick đ
Fun fact: your FPS used to significantly affect "jiggle" physics. If you ran at 30 fps, you had easily visible physics effects, but at 60+ there was basically none.
I believe this was fixed at one point, so now I can appreciate the jiggling of my hat in full 144 fps gloryđ
Not exactly a game mechanic, but important for the true endgame of glams!
My favorite bit of jank is how when you cast an AoE heal/buff, it applies to everyone in succession rather than all at once… unless you cast an instant or ability right after it, at which point it all happens at once.
They told us that "Enhanced Unmend" was useless, but they just dont understand the brilliance of this! It's a buff to high latency players, clearly! They can use unmend with full stacks of plunge, and then plunge to use a stack of it, and have its cooldown refunded despite using plunge after unmend!
Clearly the best DRK opener is Unmend into plunge while having bad latency so that you can get 1 more plunge in during a fight.
Warning: The above thing is completely untested, and i highly doubt its optimal. I am however interested in seeing if this is actually possible.
This can probably just be lumped in with all the latency stuff, but Bard DoTs can be reapplied with Iron Jaws up to a second or so after the DoTs fall off. Iron Jaws takes about half a second to re-up the effects, but if you initiate the attack right as they fall off, you can 'catch' the DoTs. The markers on the target can actually disappear completely and come back in this way.
Of course it's safer and overall better to just use Iron Jaws when you have 2-5 seconds left instead, but it still feels cool when it happens.
fun fact: if you weave something after a delayed damage gcd, as soon as the weave resolves, the damage goes out early. i use this to get an extra holy in white on the first boss of fru in opener. i use lucid as picto never needs it unless they die. i imagine this is so damage you do always applies in the order you press it?
Something to look into is dodging heals in PVP, i'm not sure what causes it (probably dying before the animation ends) but i've seen a few screenshots of people dodging their own Recuperate in CC I've only seen these complaints since 7.1 revamped PVP but perhaps its possible to dodge heals in PVE too
If you stick really close to enemies when they move you've probably encountered this one, when enemies move through your character as you do an action (most likely with casts like iaijutsu but can happen to weaponskills with unfortunate timing) the game will decide you are not in range and cancel that action even if the enemy is very clearly still in range.
It's incredibly annoying every time it happens.
I once had a really old laptop back in ARR. Its performance was so bad that got 8-12 FPS mid combat or in busy town zones. I want you to imagine how bad that was for movement. People outran me on my chocobo. By walking.
Naturally, I played BLM. And I learned the value of Aetherial Manipulation for keeping up with the tank in dungeons.
Somehow I managed to heal a tank in Keeper of the Lake's final boss with that same BLM because the healer died early and we still had cross-class Physick at the time. It required full on spam to keep the tank up, but I managed to dodge the entire fight while keeping up with that.
Remember, Art of War is a gain on one by standing in melee and auto attacking in between cast for a good amount of levels
It would be cool if red mage actually got given high enough natural strength levels so that their auto-attack dealt good damage. Lean a bit more into the whole spellsword hybrid identity. It doesn't need to be melee dps levels of damage, but it would be nice if it was high enough to actually be noticeable
I use a latency reducing VPN thing to play FFXIV cause otherwise jobs like RDM and DNC are just unplayable đ«
Now I know, why I've seen so many times, that someone is clearly in an AoE puddle, when it blows, but they receive no damage. I always think they are late to get out of it, but they are not. It's just that I see their actions with a slight delay, so to speak.
There is also other hilarious things related to fps, namely, certain graphical features. For example, jiggle physics are tied to your fps and if it is too high then it completely breaks and disables itself. Locking your fps to 60 and below is a safe bet for seeing that feature in particular.
RDM on materia, maybe this explained why I havenât already included the Jolt/Grand Impact parts as intuitively. Itâs just unreliable.
Will u ever start doing ultimates?
Not entirely sure how this works, but my friend cleared all the ultimates on a relaively low spec laptop (~20-30 fps) and in some mechanics where people would get knocked back into a stack hit, he would sometimes get knocked back too late and receive all the stack damage on him instead of the party.
So, my "favorite" moment of jank is one I'm experiencing right now as my group goes through TEA. Namely, your cast can get cancelled through mostly no fault of your own if a boss runs past you just wrong. Normally, when you're channeling a cast if you rotate your character it'll cancel it because you're no longer facing the right direction, but if your target moves you'll automatically rotate to keep looking at them. However, if your target runs functionally right over you such that in one moment they're on one side of you and the next moment they're on the opposite, it seems like sometimes the game just gives up on rotating your character and cancels the cast as though you weren't facing the right direction. It's very rare, and only seems to happen when you'd otherwise have to turn around in a single frame, but it can be incredibly annoying when it happens because it's basically outside of your control aside from hoping the tank doesn't drag the mob right over top of you.
A funny thing about mage autos, I noticed once when I was running Syrcus Tower on SCH that my auto attacks did around 1/4th to 1/3rd the damage of my Art of Wars (Arts of War?). It's actually hilarious thinking about how much damage you lose over the course of a fight by casting at range at lvl 50 đ Although not many fights last long enough for it to be all that significant. Idk how it was back when ARR was current, but I wonder if casters being in melee range would have made dps checks on Coils easier đ
2:25
This is why NoClippy and XivAlexander are used. This game needs heavy updates to fix these things but will probably never happen.
the thing about the game is the server checks the most recent snapshotted position it had of your character's relative position when a mechanic goes off which could be about .20 seconds off from your position on the client. the use of weaponskills, spells and abilities force a snapshot of the position their used.
As I am playing on 300 pings, i went to search which jobs are good/bad on high latency and the ones that are always said to be bad on high latency are machinist and ninja. I never realised it is also bad for red mage even though i playing mostly summoner and have gotten use to waiting for a while to cast after casting swiftcast. Maybe a video on jobs least and most affected by latency will be goodđ.
Honestly the entire stats system is jank.
"its an incredibly janky game" yup.. after doing quite a few raid tiers now, watching my static members (with anything above like 50ping) dodge mechanics, just for the mechanic to still kill them regardless.. ive come to realize this game is very very janky
Take a sip of water each time Caetsu says a variation of "we'll get back to this later".
I like the ghost one. Happens quite a few times that you dodge an aoe and stop just outside of it to continue casting and the game will think you are still in the aoe. But if you keep running until it resolves then you are more likely to be safe. Also weirdly enough jumping over from a tile of lava to a safe tile works the same, you are up in the air mid jump and don't get hit.
The jank i discovered is when fighting Honey Bee Lovely. I realized it with blm's Aetherial Manipulation but tested it with multiple gap closers. During Honey Bee Lovely's Beat 2 with the moving hearts, you can gap close THROUGH the hearts without actually hitting it and taking a heart. I make use of this every time I need to get to the stack marker at the end of Beat 2 as blm.
Oh dear….RDM was the first DPS I tried and I gave up on it and switched to DNC because the dual cast buff would come up too late, messing up my entire rotation…and that happened mostly in content where I needed the high DPS (A.k.a the content I picked up RDM for). At the time I thought it was my connection or something. I had no clue it's a known issue!
Learned some stuff. Others I sorta knew but you fully explained them.
Macros: it makes sense for it to exist AND be purposefully broken to prevent unfair advantage? Who does that make sense to? Who has the advantage? Is it possible to install the game without the macro system?
7:25 – Yeah, I stopped playing RDM at all for a bit when I lived somewhere with a bit more finicky internet connection since my Dualcasts would wiff so often it was just obnoxious to try playing. I can play it more now, though at this point, I kind of prefer SMN, so it's whatever, but I remember getting annoyed with it, having to delay casts or interrupt my cast to then use the Dualcast, etc. And on Healer, the Swiftcast Raise and having to delay…yeah, I remember…
18:25 – "So, do YOU know of some real wacky jank in FFXIV?"
Well, I HAVE played SCH for 9 years now. I'd say I know some. : )
Seriously, with SMN getting its rework, SCH is the undisputed "Jank, the Job" now.
Movement speed is tied to your framerate as well. Learned this in a dungeon with a guy playing on a potato. Worked with him for about 30 minutes trying to figure out why his movement speed was halfway between running and walking. He was using mkb, so it wasn't a joystick problem. Eventually I figured out he was getting under 10 fps. Had him drop his settings down, and suddenly he could run full speed. This was a level 85 dungeon too… so he prolly played the whole game at like 1/2 run speed.
16:44 i always run ahead of the tanks when dpsing, because I know that if I'm ahead of them, i'm actually right beside them (and my AOEs need to be sufficiently far in the future to hit the running pack). i play 190ms on average
Definitely the animation lock of healer lb3. The other healer can use "rescue" to cancel this animation lock so they don't take damage/can move and start healing early! I am a healer main and I'm always ready to rescue a co-healer that is using healer lb3 nifty little trick đ
Machinist mains glares at Wild Fire and Overheat.
Fun fact: your FPS used to significantly affect "jiggle" physics. If you ran at 30 fps, you had easily visible physics effects, but at 60+ there was basically none.
I believe this was fixed at one point, so now I can appreciate the jiggling of my hat in full 144 fps gloryđ
Not exactly a game mechanic, but important for the true endgame of glams!
My favorite bit of jank is how when you cast an AoE heal/buff, it applies to everyone in succession rather than all at once… unless you cast an instant or ability right after it, at which point it all happens at once.
They told us that "Enhanced Unmend" was useless, but they just dont understand the brilliance of this!
It's a buff to high latency players, clearly! They can use unmend with full stacks of plunge, and then plunge to use a stack of it, and have its cooldown refunded despite using plunge after unmend!
Clearly the best DRK opener is Unmend into plunge while having bad latency so that you can get 1 more plunge in during a fight.
Warning: The above thing is completely untested, and i highly doubt its optimal. I am however interested in seeing if this is actually possible.
16:00 machinist flamethrower does the same thing, it deals 1 extra thick of damage for a total of 11 ticks when its only supposed to last 10 seconds
And here i was wondering if i was just bad when i was playing at 20fps…. (laptop moment)
This can probably just be lumped in with all the latency stuff, but Bard DoTs can be reapplied with Iron Jaws up to a second or so after the DoTs fall off. Iron Jaws takes about half a second to re-up the effects, but if you initiate the attack right as they fall off, you can 'catch' the DoTs. The markers on the target can actually disappear completely and come back in this way.
Of course it's safer and overall better to just use Iron Jaws when you have 2-5 seconds left instead, but it still feels cool when it happens.
fun fact: if you weave something after a delayed damage gcd, as soon as the weave resolves, the damage goes out early. i use this to get an extra holy in white on the first boss of fru in opener. i use lucid as picto never needs it unless they die. i imagine this is so damage you do always applies in the order you press it?
No amount of combat macro jank will stop me from removing my brain and using Viper macros to automate every Serpent's Tail action.
Something to look into is dodging heals in PVP, i'm not sure what causes it (probably dying before the animation ends) but i've seen a few screenshots of people dodging their own Recuperate in CC
I've only seen these complaints since 7.1 revamped PVP but perhaps its possible to dodge heals in PVE too