Crusaders Quest Action Queue Guide

Crusaders Quest Action Queue Guide by Floreau

CQ has an action queue setup for instances where an individual hero has more than one action to do due to the spamming of blocks/skills. This queue normally doesn’t go further than storing one extra chain for many characters, but when you have Energy of the Goddess, Mana Recycle, and Western Gunner, often times seen in conjunction with each other, you can have a long list of actions a specific hero needs to do, which the action queue is setup to process in an appropriate manner without ‘losing’ any data.

There are (an assumed) 4 priority brackets when it comes to the Action Queue:

• Blocks and Skills
• Active/casting passive procs
• Move into range
• Auto-attack

So, a key distinction I want to make before getting into the queue’s key interactions is between the two kinds of passive procs: passive procs and active (casting) procs.

Passive procs include things like Robin/Nazrune being primed when an ally 3chains, or Mew gaining SP+block when ally 3chains. These are things that can happen while they are doing another action in the action queue. Passive (passive) procs function independently of the queue, while still giving the ‘passive activated’ animation (that blue/yellow imploding orb of light). This also includes passive procs that are effects of the move itself, like Yeo’s party block generation or Sneak’s explosion per bullet. Though this is likely a slightly different category in technical terms, they’re similar enough for the sake of labeling to fall under this definition.

Active, or casting, procs are different from passive procs because they are directly affected and are a part of the action queue. These are all indicated by having a casting animation. These include procs like Hikari’s Whirlwind Arrow, Archon’s electric orb, Sentinel’s satellite lasers from the sky. This is the major point I’d like to discuss: active procs and how they interact with the queue.

Note that in the action queue priority, [Blocks and Skills] come first above action/casting procs. What this means is that as long as there are block/skills waiting to be executed, no action/casting proc will happen until after all the blocks/skills have been done.

For example, let’s assume an Archon with MR (+EoG support and constant buff access from Drake): Let’s assume that Archon queues up two 3chains, one Mana Recycle, and another 3chain, all in the span of a second.

What we’d like to see happen is:

• 3chain
• Orb proc
• 3chain
• Orb proc
• Mana Recycle
• 3chain
• Orb proc

However, what the game actually does is:

• 3chain
• 3chain
• Mana Recycle
• 3chain
• Orb proc

Because action procs do not store how many times it’s been primed, only that it is primed, an Archon who spams 3chains will effective lose out on a lot of damage from Orbs. In this example, Archon only casts one set of Orbs, despite having casted three sets of 3chains.

This is just a vague estimate of how the game runs its action queue, but there is a definite take away application that affects several heroes now:

If you use a team that has a hero who is reliant on action procs, make sure you give the queue some free time to actually cast those procs.

Waiting half a second to cast the next chain will greatly increase No.9’s bullet output*, stop people from complaining that Sentinel’s passive sky laser procs are ‘bugged,’ maximize Archon’s damage and stun over time in boss/PvE/PvE settings, etc.

*edit: No.9’s passive apparently queues up just fine normally. I don’t think any other non-premium unit has that kind of purposeful interaction with the queue. Thanks to Kesuto for testing.