Recast time for mage mobs?

[Armando]

As a melee, casters are my biggest enemy, for obvious reasons. While I could live off of 300 HP for well over 5 minutes thanks to the wonders of high Defense, Size 3 shields, and Phalanx, all it takes is 6 seconds for a Fire III to take off that much HP. So I decided to pinpoint the amount of time caster mobs wait between spells.

While I was testing mob TP gain, I gathered a bit of data from the Land Worms in Qufim. They would cast another spell between 16 to 20 seconds after the last. Demon DRKs seemed to wait around this long as well, casting their Tier II nukes and dark magic (I didn't record numbers on them, was too busy staying alive.) However, Ahrimans waited noticeably longer between spells, and mostly cast Tier III spells, Tier II -ga spells, and Ancient Magic.

I intend to look further into this next weekend, but in the meantime, can anyone shed some light on the subject? There seems to be a correlation between the strength of the spells being cast and the waiting time between spells, but I don't have enough data to tell yet.

[WishMaster3K]

I'll see what I can do. Normally I don't like fighting imps w/o silencing their asses first.. But I'll poke around a few mobs as well. I'll find something to fight that won't bore me and I'll let you know.

[Armando]

I appreciate it. If possible, can you /clock every time the mob starts and finishes a spell? I do that, screenshot the chat log, then when I'm done I write down the spell that was cast, and how long the mob waited before the next spell, both counting from the start of the last cast and from the end of the last cast. Here's the data I got from the one Ahriman I let beat me up until I had to warp out of Zvahl:

Subject: Ahriman

Format:
Spell (cast time | recast) ___ Started spell...ended spell -> Beginning of next spell ___ (cast time according to /clock, mostly there to see how accurate I clocked it) | time between start of spell and start of next spell | time between end of spell and start of next spell

Fire 3 (6 | 26.5) ___ 3:59:19...3:59:25 -> 3:59:57 ___ (6) | 38 | 32
Thundaga 2 (6 | 26) ___ 3:59:57...4:00:04 -> 4:00:24 ___ (7) | 27 | 20
Flood (18.75 | 43.75) ___ 4:00:24...4:00:43 -> 4:01:08 ___ (19)| 44 | 25
Flare (19 | 44.5) ___ 4:01:08...4:01:28 -> 4:01:47 ___ (20)| 39 | 19
Poison II (1 | 5) ___ 4:01:47...4:01:48 -> 4:02:19 ___ (1) | 32 | 31
Sleep II (3 | 30) ___ 4:02:19...4:02:22

The underscores are really tabs but the forum doesn't like spaces. It looks a lot prettier in Notepad.

[Armando]

After testing on various mobs, I've concluded that Worms are just an exception to the rule (but then again they already are even without taking the recast timing into account, since they don't cast while their target is in range.)

Attached is the .txt file where I was writing down the spells used, cast times, and time differences of the mobs I was examining, 'til I decided writing it down was taking way too long. Basically, you'll find a little bit of data on Land Worms, the already posted Ahriman data, and a much lengthier piece of data from a slightly lower level ahriman mob, a Morbid Eye. Figured I'd post it if anyone was curious.

Also, here's a .zip with all the screenshots I took, if anyone wants to examine them personally. Every now and then you'll find an extra accidental /clock or something of the sort. I usually marked them in /echo with some sort of short phrase along the lines of "null".
http://files.filefront.com/Mob+Casti.../fileinfo.html

Edit: By the way Rena, I appreciate the effort. I WAS going to be FFXI-less for the whole week but plans changed and I'm staying over at a friend's apartment, who actually has functional enough internet to allow me to play. I would be interested in seeing a small sample from Imps though.