Skill Chaining

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Skill Chaining

JoeTang

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Posts: 8,031
Threads: 178
Joined: 2008-07
Gender: Male
IGN: Justice
Server: Tespia
Level: 162
Job: Shadower
Guild: Gundam

2012-07-25, 07:58 PM (This post was last modified: 2013-06-14, 04:09 PM by JoeTang.)

Skill chaining is a special effect that causes fluid movement between two skills. A notable example of this is Mercedes' Charge Drive -> Rolling Moonsault -> Gust Drive -> Lightning Edge, and Phantom's Brise Carte -> Phantom Charge -> Twilight. There is a set timing window in where the next skill can be activated to be chained. If this window is missed, there is generally a significantly longer delay in using the next skill. The skill being chained generally requires activation during the current skill, not after, and thus activates immediately. This separates it from just consecutive spamming of two different skills. Along with this, most skill chains have a special property called "skipActionFrame".

In the data, "skipActionFrame x" designates that when this specific skill successfully chains to another, frame "x" and afterwards are skipped, reducing the delay of the skill. i.e. the skill ends sooner than it normally would, making it faster. Some skills also have a specialActiomFrame/delay, but I do not believe this actually affects the attack speed, as Mercedes' skills have them and I have not noticed any variation.

Technical Information

As an example:
Hayato's Sanrenzan, first slash has

Code:
skill/41001000/addAttack/skill    41001004

skill/41001000/addAttack/type    0

skill/41001000/addAttack/reqCount    1

skill/41001000/addAttack/pattern    154

skill/41001000/addAttack/skipActionFrame    4

skill/41001000/addAttack/patternType    1

skill/41001000/addAttack/skillPlus/0    41001002

skill/41001000/addAttack/patternPlus/0/pattern    155

skill/41001000/addAttack/patternPlus/0/skill    41001002

Here, you can see the first line designates the specific skill you are chaining to, Sanrenzan's second attack. There is also a designation for skipActionFrame = 4, as well as a skillPlus, which designates another skill that can be chained, in this case Renjinzan's first attack.

If we look at the delay data, we see this:

Code:
kenjiSwing1/0/action    swingO1

kenjiSwing1/0/frame    0

kenjiSwing1/0/delay    -30

kenjiSwing1/1/action    swingO3

kenjiSwing1/1/frame    1

kenjiSwing1/1/delay    -90

kenjiSwing1/1/move/x    4

kenjiSwing1/1/move/y    0

kenjiSwing1/2/action    swingO1

kenjiSwing1/2/frame    2

kenjiSwing1/2/delay    120

kenjiSwing1/3/action    swingO3

kenjiSwing1/3/frame    0

kenjiSwing1/3/delay    60

kenjiSwing1/3/move/x    -21

kenjiSwing1/3/move/y    0

kenjiSwing1/4/action    swingO3

kenjiSwing1/4/frame    0

kenjiSwing1/4/delay    60

kenjiSwing1/4/move/x    -21

kenjiSwing1/4/move/y    0

The delay data designates the character position, movement, and delay involved with a specific skill. More than just some number of milliseconds of attacking, it includes each individual "frame" involved, that is a specific time spent doing some part of the attack. The "delay" information may appear as a negative, and we have not discovered the significance in this, but it should be treated as a positive when adding. In this example, the skipActionFrame = 4, so when chaining to the second slash of Sanrenzan, Frame number 4 is skipped (and should there be any other frames afterwards, they are skipped too), reducing the delay by 60ms, cutting out the last portion of the skill.

In summary, most chained skills will reduce the delay, making the skills execute faster than if they were to be used on their own.

This information does not account for possible spam delays and terrain effects or character positions that would otherwise prevent their use. i.e. I do not know if there are any restrictions that can occur that prevent these chains from being executed. This is merely what is presented in the data.

Hayato:
Of Hayato's skills, only the first job skills have prerequisites for activation; that is, you are required to use [Sanrenzan] and [Renjinzan]'s first hit before the second, etc, but no other skills require anything to activate. Any different instances of [Sanrenzan]'s icon is purely stylistic. Any level of the skill itself is interchangeable.

First Job