That issue with the car being slow off the line is most definatly the timing i will almost garentee

My car was horrible off the line, so NoVTEC and I checked it, it was at like 10dbtdc so put it back up to 15 cause i like 89octane gas and damn it made world of difference. what it is, the nissan ecu retards the timing slightly at WOT then slowly adds it back in, from what i think it does atleast think i read that somewhere. so if you are like at 10dbtdc it is horrible till it dials back in the advance