This requires you to make your own macro's as well as to download a mod.

First of all--what this does. Everyone has lag. Even if it's 67 ping or so, everyone has lag. This means that in reality, a 3.5 second cast, is generally more like a 4 second cast. Because at some point, the spell will be complete, but on your screen it will still be casting because of the lag. And you can't cast another one because "another action is in progress"

The mod that you use in this.. experiment/set-up, whatever! Is called Quartz casting bar, or some other castbar mod that you like that shows your cast bar, as well as a cut off point for your ping. This cutoff point is where if you were to cancel that spell by running, jumping, dying, etc. The spell would still launch, or, you could cancel the spell and it would still launch.

You can use this. If you have a castbar that shows the lag cut-off. You can macro all of your spells to look like this:
"/stopcasting
/cast (Spell shift-clicked from book)" Without the quotes

What this macro does is when you press the button, it tells your computer to clientside, cancel the current spell and begin to cast whatever spell the macro is. Meanwhile, server side, your spell will still launch.

I'm a bit poor at explaining, but basically this brings your latency as close to 0 as possible, except for human lag. To use it, simply download the Quartz cast bar mod, set it up as you like it so you can easily see the cutoff point. Then re-macro all your spells to that macro:
/stopcasting
/cast (Spell shiftclicked from spellbook.)

You can give them reallllly cool new icons too. )=



(This is not cheating for one, Morwen uses it! And everyone in Archon is 99% sure she works for Blizzard, she disappears every time a patch is near, she will NOT join a raid that has any form of exploits/hacks/cheating, if she sees it from a guildmember she reports them. Also, there's no way to get ahead of Blizzard's set cast time, this set-up simply makes it as if your latency was 0.)

i'll give it a shot :P

the lag experienced sometimes is retarded.. especially when you know that extra few milliseconds would have had your spell land before someone else healed your target to full :P

this would have me changing my click-casting addon though too :P Lemme look into it.

I'm tempted to go 0/21/40 and try this out with shadowbolt spam.

I remember reading a post about this on the mage forums a while ago...didn't there used to be a mod called supercast that could do this for you automagically with no chance of losing the spell?

That's the downside to this, btw, if you mash the key or hit it a millisecond too soon, you completely lose the spell you were casting.

For people who don't understand how this works and why it isn't exactly cheating, here's what happens when you cast some spells, assuming 250 ms lag:

0.000 Press the shadowbolt key: Local cast bar starts moving
0.250 Shadowbolt starts casting on the server
2.500 You press the shadowbolt key again but the cast bar is sitting full and gives you an error about another action already in progress
2.750 Shadowbolt finishes casting on the server; the server sends notification to the client that the spell has completed
3.000 Your client receives notification that shadowbolt successfully completed casting. Your cast bar is drained and it begins drawing the shadowbolt animation. You can now start casting another shadowbolt.


And so on. So with 250ms lag (which is average on SC for east coasters with fast connections), it adds 500 ms to every single cast.

Now, why does it do it this way? It's so that when you have high or variable lag, you don't lose spells or observe really bizarre behavior. It would be way too confusing to a newbie who has no concept of what is going on.

I.e.: you get a lag spike when you start casting a spell, 500 ms

0.000 frostbolt key is pressed
0.500 Server receives frostbolt

However now lets say your lag drops down to 150 ms, AND also in this hypothetical situation, the game doesn't prevent you from casting until you receive notification it's complete:

2.500 frostbolt key is pressed again, because the client only enforces a 2.5 second delay
2.650 server receives frostbolt message. a frostbolt is still in progress with 0.350 left. it either disgregards your request (but on the client you are already filling a cast bar for this frostbolt) OR it kills your previous frostbolt and starts a new one.
3.000 the frostbolt would have finished on the server


So to smooth things out and prevent weird cases with variable latency, it waits for acknowledgement on both sides.

In fact I"m not sure, it might even wait to start casting on your screen until it hears acknowledgement from the server that it's okay to START casting.

This would look like (with 250 ms lag):

0.000 Press frostbolt key
0.250 server receives frostbolt message, spell ok send ack
0.500 received ack, start frostbolt castbar and animation
2.750 server finishes frostbolt, send ack
3.000 received spell finish ack, shoot frostbolt and free up client

This is actually probably more accurate, so it's actually 2.5 seconds of spell animation in this case (assuming your lag matches at the start and end...if you get more lag later it gets ugly).

But even in this case it's still double your latency added to every cast.

Here's how it looks with a stop casting macro and 250 ms latency:

0.000 press macro, start shadowbolt
0.250 server receives shadowbolt message, start spell
2.600 press macro, send /stopcasting to server and /cast shadowbolt
2.750 server finishes shadowbolt, ack client and draw the spell
2.850 server recieves /stopcasting; no spell in progress do nothing. start shadowbolt


so the time between real spell casts is from 0.250 to 2.850, or 2.6 seconds.

this shaves double your latency, minus however much reaction time you need to allow in order to be safe about your spell, from the cast time of every spell.

here's the doomsday scenario, which can become quite common if you have spikey lag:

0.000 press macro, start shadowbolt
0.250 server receives spell
2.500 press macro
2.749 server recieves /stopcasting, stop the shadowbolt, start a new one
2.750 shadowbolt would have finished but it was cancelled

so in order to try to shave off 400 ms you lost 2600 ms of casting time. so you need 6.5 successful 100 ms reactions in order to break even with a 2.5 second cast spell. of course you could be even more cautious, only cutting 300 ms off what was a 3000 ms cast. this is still a 10% dps boost.

if your lag is high when you start the cast and low when you finish, you are probably going to cancel your spell since the stopcasting will get there too early.

if your lag is low when you start and high when you send the macro, you will barely save any time.

if you have high, constant lag (almost everyone), this can really help.

going to try it this weekend i think!

I've used this for the past month or more now. FYI only use it in raids, PVE, it'll just screw you over in pvp.

I've always used a /stopcasting macro for counterspell.

oh, and i've always used the macro to make water! it cuts the 5 minute job down to like 4:30!

cast bar is nice for mounting too, you can start running or jump in the air quicker!

I actually suggested a form of this a year or so ago, can't seem to find the post though. it used a mod that did the /stopcast for you so you never had to worry about canceling a cast, before they took that ability away from mods. someone accused it of a form of hacking, was it icy's friend Natasha? i dunno can't find the post.

anyways

I think i did see a bit of a jump in dps, however it is ridiculously easy to get screwed up and lose a cast altogether. my latency always used to be around 50~150 the past two years, the last few months i never get under ~200. the variance in latency like chron talks about is a problem at times. but theres no doubt it takes ~.2 seconds or so off casts.


i really get screwed up when i don't remove the /stopcasting macros from my bar before i go to arenas.....

WHY THE FUCK AM I NOT CASTING ANYTHING

*lose game, keeps quite and hope noone notices the 500 damage done total..>.>*


edit: sorry chron, i didn't actually read all of your post....was gonna go back and read it now....but WTF man shorten that shit up!:P

Poor Ema used to be like "omfg how doez mutton get off that manys frostbolts!"

Course this was back in ZG... you've been a mystery for a long time

I did forget this takes quite a bit to get used to, and if you notice situations where you spam hit buttons, that'll screw you over. I suggest going out to Dr. Doom, boom, can't remember, and just practicing for a bit. And yes, when things are hitting you, like in PvP or solo'ing, it becomes a lot more difficult to use. I have two castbars for PvE and PvP/solo'ing.

yeah i remember that post Mutton. Use that handy dandy search tool.. it works perfectly 20% of the time.

i tried this today, and i cant auto heal myself (alt+healing button)
any idea how can i fix this? i am sure there must be a way to "IF" it :P but no clue how can i check if a key is pressed

/cast [modifier:alt] [target=<MyName>] <SpellName>; <spellName>
/stopcasting

TY!!!!! :hklove: :glomp:

edit: it doesnt work
/stopcasting
/cast [modifier:alt] [target=Qon] Lesser Healing Wave(Rank 5); Lesser Healing Wave(Rank 5)

bah it works
but if i dont press alt it heals myself

for yourself you can use target=player

so

/cast [modifier:alt, target=player] blahblah; [help] blahblah; [harm, target=targettarget] blahblah

do you have auto self cast on?

And if you just want to easy-mode it, you can always just select "auto self cast" in the interface options menu. So if you aren't targeting anyone, or if you are targeting an enemy, whatever you are buffing/healing will auto-select you.

For raid healing, there's a nifty mouseover macro as well, which ought to speed up your heals on anyone...yourself, the raid, etc.

it doesnt work with Macros :( its works with earth shield but doesnt work with macro'ed spells


anyway i found a solution :) i know how to make it work :P

only problem is i dont know how to return to the last target before i healed myselft

i tried /target lastarget but it targets some random person :S

well if you use /cast [target=player] spell it shouldn't change your target

ill check that
macro is (atm) like this

/stopcasting
/target [modifier:alt] Qon;
/cast Chain Heal(Rank 3)
/target [modifier:alt] lasttarget
/cleartarget[modifier:alt]

just to be sure what i am doing tell me if i am wrong
first line stopcasting, 2nd changes target to Qon IF i press alt, cast chainheal3 (no matter what i am pressin), targets my lasttarget (which is not working), i proved if cleartarget worked but it didnt >_>


now with /cast [target=player] spell it only cast it on myself

the idea is (just to be sure you understand me)

if i press alt, cast it on myself
if i am not, cast it on the target

don't do that...

just put

/cast [modifier:alt,target=player] Chain Heal(Rank 3); [nomodifier, target=target] Chain Heal(Rank 3)

what you put is unnecessarily clunky.

even that above can be pared down to:

/cast [modifier:alt, target=player] Chain Heal(Rank 3); Chain Heal(Rank 3)


or:

/cast [modifier:alt, target=player] Chain Heal(Rank 3); [harm, target=targettarget]Chain Heal(Rank 3); Chain Heal(Rank 3)

this one casts on you if you press alt
on the target of a mob if you have them targeted
and on your current target if you don't meet any of the above criteria

/cast [target=mouseover] Purge

is also awesome for getting rid of things :P

it doesn't only count unit frames but you could be moused over the person's body and it will still work =)

ok thank you very much ! i am going to test it now :P if it works i owe Miyuki and You a Keg of Dulce de Leche :P

and remember that with all of these as long as you have a target it will cast on them. You don't have the change targets to you. It's kind of like casting on your focus.. you can directly specify the target of that particular spell while still staying on your own target. =)

just tested it .............. where shall i send the keg <3???? :glomp:


yeah my first idea was switching targets with Macro, cause i didnt realized i could do that inside the []

nyc por favor!

Also! remember to add
#showtooltip Chain Heal(Rank 3)
/stopcasting

before all that if you're using the quartz set up =)

ill see what can i do

if it cant be a keg =P ill send you half pound or something