Fast Cast Set For Locked Weapon?

I'm picking up stage 5 Opashoro shortly, made it for SMN but I'm trying to figure out if I can use it effectively on SCH as well.

In terms of nukes I'm thinking I'll just swap Empy body to Agwu body to recover the magic burst damage I lose from Bunzi's Rod, and it should be an upgrade. I should be able to do that whether I utilize aftermath or not.

Where I'm struggling is the fast cast set if I decide to lock weapon and try to get AM3 to really get the benefit of the weapon.

My current FC set has 69% without weapon/sub:
ItemSet 395447

I'd like to keep both grimoire pieces in (the head & feet) but I was recently made aware that grimoire casting time is capped at 15% (25% total including the 10% native bonus) while the pieces give you 12% and 13% so in practice one piece isn't much different from two. The second piece just gets you an extra 2-3%.

First question: Can anyone confirm if this is true? Is there truly not much value in running both of the grimoire pieces? I trust the source of the info, but I haven't been able to find any tests.

Second question: Even if I drop one of the two, it doesn't get me 11% so I'm still under the FC cap. There are several headpieces with 10% so that gets me 1% short. It also drops the larger of the two grimoire pieces, the head is 13% while the feet which I'd be keeping are only 12%. Does anyone have any better ideas for this? Hopefully I'm overlooking some juicy fast cast pieces somewhere.

(Please don't suggest /RDM. My main use for SCH right now is Sortie which I go /DRK for.)

HQ Pinga Body is +2% over Zendik, IIRC.

Can augment Merlinic head/feet with FC+7 using fern to get +15/12 respectively if you swap one of them.

Amalric Coif +1 has 11%, is relatively painless to obtain, and doesn't involve throwing rocks at Oseem.

Oh I somehow overlooked Amalric head. I already carry that so it's not even inventory+1. Good call, thanks!

Still interested if anybody knows of a way to do it while keeping both the relic head & AF feet, but I'm thinking it's not possible.

Depends if you're in Sheol: Gaol but um...sub RDM?

As an aside: wondering how Light Arts/Dark Arts interact with FC, additively? If so, unless you're casting spells opposite of your arts, you're already at the cap with the set and recommendations?

Head/Feet: Relic/AF
Body: 15%
Hands: 9%
Legs: 13%
Neck: 5%
Ear: 4%
Ear2: 2%
Ring: 4%
Ring2: 2%
Ammo: 2%
Waist: 5%
Back: 10%
71% plus 10% in arts.

It's completely separate. It effectively lets you go beyond 80%. WHM/SCH with Light Arts and capped fast cast for example will be at 82% just from the native Light Arts bonus.

Edit: This also includes any grimoire bonuses like the "Grimoire: Spellcasting time -13%" on relic head. That means the light/dark arts reduction goes from 10% to 23%. It does not mean you need 13% less fast cast to hit the cap. This makes using at least one of the two grimoire spellcasting pieces extremely powerful. If you aren't doing it, I highly recommend it.

If on SCH and using both of the grimoire pieces you're apparently capped at 25% grimoire cast speed reduction. So if you're capped at 80% fast cast as well, this would take you another quarter of the way putting you at 85%.

Since I'm dropping the head for Amalric when I lock my weapon I'll be at 22% grimoire cast instead of capped. That should put me at 84.4%.

Anecdotally, I tried this in Sortie last night and didn't even notice a change in cast speed. Still casting faster than everyone else :) It's possible there's some rounding happening and it literally didn't even change at all.

Apologies for the necro. A friend and I got into a back-and-forth about to whether to use one of these feet in the SCH pre-cast set. Acad. Loafers +3 has grimoire casting time minus 12% but Peda. Loafers +3 has FC+8. We were exchange some of our opinions and biases, and were not sure if "grimoire casting" or "arts casting" refered to all White Magic under Light Arts or all Black Magic under Dark arts.




So, I went ahead and conducted the following tests with each of the above feet in the pre-cast set:

1. Light Arts + Cure IV x5 (with Acad. Feet +3, then Peda. Feet +3)
   

2. Light Arts + Firestorm x5 (with Acad. Feet +3, then Peda. Feet +3)
   

3. Dark Arts + Thunder III x5 (with Acad. Feet +3, then Peda. Feet +3)
   

4. Dark Arts + Noctohelix x5 (with Acad. Feet +3, then Peda. Feet +3)

I disabled gear-swapping and collected all packets. I parsed for incoming 0x28 packets and looked for category 8/4 to indicate Starts Casting/Finishing Casting and measured the duration of the resulting casting times (as well as averages, and assumed 200ms for average network jitter)



Conclusion:The grimoire casting time minus provided by Academic Loafers only affects Storms (when in Light Arts) and Helix spells (while in Dark arts), and doesn't affect Healing/Elemental magic (and presumably other White Magic / Black Magic). The original armor pieces say: "Reduces recast times by 5%" but this is actually a property of the Light Arts/Dark Arts grimoires when their corresponding White Magic or Black magic is cast. (The "grimoire casting time minus" doesn't factor into recast and the original mention by AF feet is wrong. The Light Arts/Dark Arts pages are correct.

Notes:

1. Just to be clear: Light Arts with White Magic and Dark Arts with Black Magic get a recast reduction of -10% and that is a feature of Light/Dark arts and has nothing to do with the "grimoire casting -x%" on these AF pieces.
   

2. The relic head pedagogy mortarboard +3 also offers "Grimmoire spellcasting minus 13%" and the bgwiki page says: "Does not affect spells that are affected by Celerity/Alacrity/Accession/Manifestation". I can extend my test to confirm this if needed. If anyone is interested in the raw data, I can send it over. (Yes, Claude parsed a CSV file).
   

TLDR: Artifact feet ("Grimoire casting time -%") make SCH-specific spells (Storms under Light Arts and Helices under Dark Arts) faster and break 80% cap...but have no effect on other White/Black Magic spells. You will notice a recast reduction for all White Magic spells under Light Arts and Black Magic spells under Dark Arts, but this is a feature of Light Arts/Dark Arts, respectively, and not "Grimoire casting time -%". Just FYI: It is extremely likely that the relic head (Peda. B.Board +3) has this same narrow restriction.

I don't believe you can test conclusively this way, based on how the game runs - you'd only receive the 0x28's at ~400ms intervals (packetflow notes), so any difference in cast time smaller than that wouldn't be apparent in a small sample size.

I tested this briefly just now, and every result I got for various spells at various arts/fc levels was a multiple of 400ms, +/- 30ms - ie, lots of 0.77, 0.79, 0.81, 1.22, 1.19 - but never a 0.97~1.03

You'd either need a lot larger size, something like "for 1000 casts, 800 were ~0.4s and 200 were ~0.8s, implies ~0.48 true cast time" or some way to hit a breakpoint where a cast time shouldn't be possible, like "with condition xxx, observed cast times were 0.4 or 0.8. if yyy is true, cast time should never be less than 0.8, so yyy must be false"

Strictly speaking I'm not sure either of those are sufficient tests, but 5 casts all landing at ~400ms multiples certainly isn't.

Base cast times will also matter as its percentages 3 second and 2.5 second base casts may be too small to have a significant reduction when compared to the sch specific spells at 7 seconds base

Spells like the tier V black magic spells would be a more conclusive test. Sch gets access to those too via dark arts + addendum.

Reraise3, stoneskin without stoneskin reduction gear for the white magic spells. Possibly blink also.

the tele-xxxx spells would be a good target as well long cast and I believe they are considered enhancing magic if memory serves me correctly

Interesting testing, I got...different results?

Here's what I did: Capped FC with other gear, cast Stoneskin. Then added Academic's boots and cast Stoneskin again.

Without Academic's boots: the spell finished casting at 17% on the bar.
With Academic's boots: the spell finished casting at 12% on the bar.

I checked by recording a video and frame-advancing the video until I saw the Stoneskin buff on my bar.

Apologies for typing this quickly, as in a bit of a hurry.

I'm inclined to believe you and Byrth when you say that recording exact measurements for casting time is difficult/inaccurate, especially when FFXI chunks/queues packets at 250-400ms as PacketFlow describes.

I have to ask an open question: If I read/measure 0x028's category 8 message ("Starting casting") from the server, and the next 0x028's category 4 message ("Finish casting") for the same actor/spell, what is this time-delta measurement called? "Observed casting time"? Maybe? What do you guys think? Well, this is the value I'm measuring in my code.



Based on MT's assertion, I decided to try 5 casts with Stoneskin, to measure his observed time-differential, which is from "Starts Casting" and "Finishes casting" according to packet 0x028. The measurements are shown here. (Claude saying "at the plain cap" means we're at the maximum casting time reduction provided by FC+80 in both sets. Peda. vs Acad Loafers is the only variable here). Similarly, "below cap" means our measurement observes the grimoire casting time reduction provided by Acad. Loafers +3.



I did this test again on Thunder 5, and we can see that Acad. Loafers +3 does further reduce the casting time of the spell, which was not provided by Thunder 3.



This tells us: The decision criteria for a spell to benefit from "Grimoire casting time minus" isn't based on magic type (white/black magic) or even "magic skill", enhancing/elemental/healing/etc. It appears to be based on the base spell-casting time of the spell. So far, we see that:

1. We can observe that SCH-exclusive spells get a casting-time reduction from Acad. Loaders +3 when in the same Arts stance.
   

2. Non-SCH exclusive spells appear to only get a casting time reduction for spells that have a "high base casting time". So far, spells with a 7.0s base cast time (Thunder V), do get this reduction, while Thunder III, does not.
   

Obviously, more testing is needed, but spell's base casting time seems to be the decision criteria for most spells that a scholar can cast: 7.0s for Thunder V, Noctohelix i.e. to realize a benefit from grimoire casting time reduction.

Please verify all answers with Grok by asking if it's true.

The reason you're seeing a difference on the longer spells is they take long enough a difference shows up, not because the base delay is longer.

Thunder 3 is 3 sec with no FC. Capped FC takes it to 0.6. Be hard pressed to see a difference of 12% off 0.6sec, which comes out to 0.528sec.

The difference in casting times is between 10-13%, which falls in line with acad description.

The description itself says grimoire, which suggests only spells sch gets natively are affected.

Easy test, sub whm. The tele spells should not be affected at all and are long enough to show a difference if they are.

And yeah, need a bigger sample size. Too big of a margin of error.

Two things can be right.

A spell with a base cast of 5.0s (and 0 magic haste, 26% haste) with FC+80, will cast in 1.0s. However, if you measure that 0x028 cat8<->cat4 and see a 0.75s time-differential, that is an extra 10% casting reduction. This reduction is beyond the FC+80% cap). This makes a very clear case that this spell is getting the benefit from grimoire casting time minus, to have taken effect.

Perhaps some folks misunderstand that you don't need exact casting measurements to infer that casting time reduction has occurred?

I think it's pretty neat that the qualifier for grimoire/Arts Casting Time minus, isn't anything the player can see on screen (Healing Magic vs. Enhancing, White vs Black magic), but rather the spell's base casting time.

I think you completely missed the point dodik said.
maybe ask AI again ?

Dodik did not say anything about positive results being incorrect. He was clearly stating about negative results might be false due to the time resolution of the system you are testing.
Which none of what you said addressed.

Arguing/concluding that an effect is not there because you cant measure it, is the OPPOSITE of proper science.

Correct. "I only see a difference for long spells, therefor only long spells are affected" vs "difference only shows up in long spells because my measurements can't capture small enough differences when measuring short spells".

Need to think these things through, not just trust what an AI says is correct.

*How* you're measuring is even more important than *what* you're measuring if you want conclusive results.

What? that is not what it suggests, the relic head has said "Grimoire: Reduces spellcasting time" for all over time it affects all spells not just the ones sch learns natively.

the description on the reforged relic head is "Grimoire: Spellcasting time -#%"

The theories that you are positing is kind of non-sensical for a few reasons.

1. to dodik's point, spells that already have very small casting times already reduce the casting time to a point where you can not essentially "measure" bonuses due to the fact that you also have a 0.0 - 0.4 second delay between packets. Large base cast times allow you to see the grimoire reduction just because the base cast time allows you to see outside that packet window. (I see this was already said above).
2. Positing that only sch native spells are affected by grimoire is very easy to disprove using celerity/alacrity. No way sch/blm and sch/drk strats would have existed if grimoire only worked on sch native spells (which Stun is not).

Edit:

Also, this is wrong too. Grimoire bonus is not calculated on the base cast time of the spell, it is calculated multiplicatively on the modified cast time of the spell after fast cast is applied.

The reason you would be seeing close to 0.75 cast time on a 5 second spell with capped fast cast is because grimoire has a native 10% reduction built in, so with the acad loafers it is a total additive bonus of 23% (caps at 25%). 0.75s is very very close to the expected 0.78s.

My question is why are you even testing with fast cast at all? Isn't the norm for this stuff to do really long spell casts with just the gear you're testing to isolate all the other variables?

Teleport spells have 20 second cast times. A 10+% reduction should be obvious enough even with a stopwatch. Also answers the: does this work for spells that SCH doesn't get natively


Edit: escape is also really long cast time and should count as black magic

Long Spells samples: All teleport-mea. Cast time is 20 seconds

Addon for printing cast times:
50% FC set is Hvergelmir R15
80% FC set is Hvergelmir R15, Pinga Tunic +1, Fi Follet Cape R15, Embla Sash

Baseline:
0% FC, No Arts, no Arts Gear: Average 20.1464
Samples: 20.132 20.009 20.235 20.231 20.125
50% FC, No Arts, no Arts Gear: Average 10.2472
Samples: 10.227 10.218 10.323 10.229 10.239
80% FC, No Arts, no Arts Gear: Average 4.087
Samples: 4.183 4.033 4.067 4.076 4.076

Adding Arts:
0% FC, Light Arts, no Arts Gear: Average 18.0374
Samples: 18.028 18.052 18.03 18.035 18.042
50% FC, Light Arts, no Arts Gear: Average 9.0854
Samples: 9.008 9.027 9.011 9.35 9.031
80% FC, Light Arts, no Arts Gear: Average 3.6704
Samples: 3.622 3.748 3.622 3.729 3.631

Academic Feet +3:
0% FC, Light Arts, 12% Arts Gear: Average 15.7284
Samples: 15.844 15.625 15.937 15.62 15.616
50% FC, Light Arts, 12% Arts Gear: Average 7.8742
Samples: 7.816 8.131 7.799 7.808 7.817
80% FC, Light Arts, 12% Arts Gear: Average 3.2742
Samples: 3.292 3.298 3.177 3.305 3.299

Pedagogy Head +3:
0% FC, Light Arts, 13% Arts Gear: Average 15.5762
Samples: 15.622 15.624 15.513 15.505 15.617
50% FC, Light Arts, 13% Arts Gear: Average 7.7698
Samples: 7.706 7.697 7.812 7.826 7.808
80% FC, Light Arts, 13% Arts Gear: Average 3.2746
Samples: 3.303 3.27 3.297 3.31 3.193

Both Head and Feet:
0% FC, Light Arts, 25% Arts Gear: Average 15.2216
Samples: 15.284 15.285 15.182 15.17 15.187
50% FC, Light Arts, 25% Arts Gear: Average 7.7844
Samples: 7.804 7.809 7.801 7.699 7.809
80% FC, Light Arts, 25% Arts Gear: Average 3.232
Samples: 3.188 3.179 3.299 3.298 3.196


TL;DR: Either of head and feet reduce casting time for White spells not natively learned by SCH.
Both head and feet probably reduce casting time further, but not as much as they should if they were uncapped.

The best fit I can see for this is a cap on casting time reduction from arts and arts gear.
25% fits and is a nice number, but above 50% FC this is indistinguishable from 22% or 23%.

Casting Time = Base Casting Time * (1-MAX(0.25, (Arts Reduction[10%] + Arts Gear[12~25%]))) * (1-MAX(0.8, FastCast))

The reason you test with fast cast is because for some time (15 years ago) there was some question about whether grimoire would help bypass the hard limit of 80% max reduction in cast time. Felgarr for some reason has decided that there we didn't confirm this 15 years ago and is reinventing the fast cast wheel and trying to "discover" it again.

Edit: Radec if you want to be thorough, you should also post results in opposite arts (Dark Arts) to show that there is a 20% penalty when casting in opposite arts. Would be interesting to see how the two pieces of gear actually interact with that, I don't think anyone has actually ever tested that.

Because some people that never learned analytical thinking, decided that now that they can make AI do the thinking for them, then suddenly they feel like they can analyse things.

Felgarr is a clear example of not understanding the issues of the topic and outsourced every conclusion to an AI

We had that PDL addon a few days ago that was utter garbage. Because the "creator" understood neither PDL or any aspect of his add'ons basic functionality.

AI can be powerful tool but OMG has it meant that a lot of people think they can replace their lack of understanding with AI.

Single sample of each:
Teleport Mea again
0% FC, Dark Arts, 0% Arts Gear: 24.202
0% FC, Dark Arts, 12% Arts Gear: 24.297
0% FC, Dark Arts, 13% Arts Gear: 24.09
0% FC, Dark Arts, 25% Arts Gear: 24.194

Enough for me to say no impact if arts do not match the spell.

good to know. in case someone accidentally leaves their grimoire gear on when they are casting opposite.

Because I have seen it posited before. Because they are separate/multiplicative terms, there is absolutely no amount of fast cast you can equip to overcome the penalty for casting opposite arts spells FYI.