/stopcasting

[Brista]

How exactly does one use a /stopcasting macro? Do you use an add-on to see when your spell completes?

[TheDragoon]

What most people do is get a cast bar mod like Quartz that can show how much lag you are experiencing compared to how long you have left in your cast animation. Once they overlap (ie, the spell cast will finish during the lag), then you press your macro to stop casting and start casting a new spell. If you time it correctly, the server will finish casting your spell just before it receives your command to cast the next spell, so you don't lose any time between spell casts due to lag.

Apparently Blizzard has said they plan to do something to change this functionality, however (and it does not involve a 1-spell server queue), so we'll have to see what those changes bring to this mechanic.

[Bolty]

I'll throw in a little more detail. As TD said, Quartz is one of the key addons for this, since it shows you plainly, on your castbar, how much time you lose while casting due to lag.

How lagged are you, in general? Let's say you're a frost Mage and your average latency to your WoW server is 250 ms. You go to cast a 2.5-second spell (Frostbolt).

Your client tells the server "hey man, I'm casting!" The server, 250 ms later, says "duh, okay." Now, keep in mind that on your screen, you started casting, but on the server, you didn't actually start until 250 ms later.

Fast forward a bit. You're reaching the end of your cast. It finishes, and you fling out your next frostbolt when the server lets you. The problem is, the frostbolt got flung 2.5 seconds + 250 ms = 2.750 seconds after you first hit your cast key/button. You lost 250 ms, or 10% of your potential true casting time, to lag. The game engine doesn't let you start up another cast of Frostbolt until it registers that you sent one off.

Guess what? Since you're lagged, you lost 10% of your raid DPS assuming you're just standing there flinging Frostbolts continuously. The more latency you have on average, the more DPS you lose to this. 250 ms is a very average latency level, and when you think about how much DPS you lose without having /stopcasting macros, it really adds up.

Ever notice how when you're mounting up, you can start moving before the mount actually appears to you - and it doesn't cancel the mount action? That's latency right there. You moved before you saw the mount, so you should have wound up cancelling the mount...but you didn't. This is the same effect. You told your client "I'm done casting. I don't need to wait for the server to tell me I'm done," started moving, and sure enough you were off and running with your mount.

So, what's with /stopcasting? Well, it allows you to tell your own client to ignore what the server is telling you. The server says "hey, you're not done casting Frostbolt yet, please wait." You're telling your client "go ahead and stop casting my current Frostbolt and cast a new one, because 2.5 seconds have gone by, the first one's actually done already, and I don't need to wait for the server to tell me it's done."

It works. It'll look like you cancelled your Frostbolt. You'll start casting a new Frostbolt, and (x amount of latency time later) see your first Frostbolt fire out of your body. This isn't an exploit; it's the standard way all high-end guilds have been pushing their DPS higher, and it's a fundamental problem with Blizzard's game engine. If you use Quartz as your casting bar, you can tack /stopcasting to the top of all your major long-casting spell macros and then use them once you're inside the "lag" portion of the casting bar.

So instead of having a button to cast Frostbolt, you'll now have a macro that goes like:

/stopcasting
/cast FrostBolt

etc.

What's the catch? Obviously, if you hit your Frostbolt macro too early, you cancel out the cast before you hit the "lag" portion and wind up actually cancelling the cast on both your client and the server. Doh. You also can't spam-pound the casting button anymore and have to use skill and attention on your cast cycles, much like Hunters do consistently.

This doesn't help for instant-cast spells; just spells with cast times.

As TD said, Blizzard has hinted that they have some kind of system to fix this soon and it won't involve "spell queues," that is, hitting a button and saying "keep casting this until I say stop." Your guess is as good as mine as to what they'll do, unless it's simply adjusting client-side cast bars to take latency into account and let your client cast another spell when it's inside the latency level.

If you're ever wondering how Caster X seems to do so much more damage than you, it could be because he's using /stopcasting to eke out that extra 10-15% damage over you. People don't tend to believe how big a difference it makes until they try it themselves. It also forces casters to pay even more attention to their activities instead of just kicking back and hitting the 2 key over and over and over. :) You want more DPS? You gotta work for it.

Note: as a healer, I don't use /stopcasting myself. The ramifications of accidentally cancelling a heal because I was trying to get that extra .1 seconds of casting time back is a player death. Also, sub-100ms latency is somewhat common for me. /stopcasting is mostly used by DPS'ers. From what I've read of people who switched, they say it takes anywhere between an hour to a night to get used to it (especially those used to spamming a key over and over), but once they get used to it, they're addicted to the increased DPS they can dish out with it. YMMV.

-Bolty

[Brista]

Thanks very much

I understood in general how it worked but I was mystified as to how people managed to time it without cancelling a cast. Quartz was the piece missing from my jigsaw

:)

[vor_lord]

What about smite?

I've stopped using a /stopcasting macro with Smite because of the talent Surge of Light. (For non-priests, Surge of Light is a proc that gives you an instant cast on your next Smite.) It plays havok on my timing so I've gotten lazy and returned to spamming my smite macro. It just became difficult to notice when it procced to take advantage of it.

Is there something out there that will help with timing which is inconsistent? I'm thinking of some kind of indicator that I can begin casting again. I've heard talk of a global cooldown monitor, but sometimes my next cast is governed by the GCD, and sometimes by the 2 second cast time and latency.

[oldmandennis]

Hmm how would it be an issue? Walk me through it, cause I don't see it.

You cast smite, you cast smite again with /stopcasting, the first one hits, and the second one right after your latency is up. When the GCD is up you hit smite again. Is that how it goes? How is this a problem?

[Arnulf]

How exactly does one use a /stopcasting macro? Do you use an add-on to see when your spell completes?

Another idea I had about /stopcasting

Consider the macro

/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

I would use it like this; I had just started casting frost bolt or fire bolt (any channeling spell) when I notice that my target starts to cast a channeled spell also. Instead of hitting ESC I would press this macro button which would first stop my current channeling spell, thus cancelling it, and immediately do the interruption on my target's channeled spell.

Other classes or races could use Earth Shock, Hammer of Justice, Arcane Torrent, etc. instead of Counterspell.

I haven't tested it though.

[RTM]

Hmm how would it be an issue? Walk me through it, cause I don't see it.

You cast smite, you cast smite again with /stopcasting, the first one hits, and the second one right after your latency is up. When the GCD is up you hit smite again. Is that how it goes? How is this a problem?

I've heard of people having problems with /stopcasting & Nighfall also, I imagine it would be a simliar situation here. It should work like you describe but somehow you end up wasting procs.


VL, there's a GCD bar bundled with Quartz. It's basically another bar with a 1.5 sec timer that shows up when you start casting a spell. Not sure if that's what you're looking for but it might be worth checking out.

[Pantalaimon]

Hmm how would it be an issue? Walk me through it, cause I don't see it.

You cast smite, you cast smite again with /stopcasting, the first one hits, and the second one right after your latency is up. When the GCD is up you hit smite again. Is that how it goes? How is this a problem?

I'm fairly certain that this is what happens:

You cast smite
Start casting again with /stopcast; note this smite has a casttime
1st Smite lands - triggers a proc

When your 2nd cast completes, it "uses" the charge even though it wasn't instant. Basically your charge is completely wasted.

One can infer from this that the SoL functionality is server side (oh, wow, imagine the exploiting if it was client side and people could figure out how to get at it:P) yet the casting animation is client side - so your client goes into its casting before it's been informed that your next smite should be instant. Some funky stuff going on to be sure, though.

Edit: Removed a bit of faulty logic.

[Klaus]

I'm fairly certain that this is what happens:

You cast smite
Start casting again with /stopcast; note this smite has a casttime
1st Smite lands - triggers a proc

When your 2nd cast completes, it "uses" the charge even though it wasn't instant. Basically your charge is completely wasted.

I suppose that if you notice the proc during the 2nd cast, you could just whack the key again, which should cancel the one you're casting (the one with the cast time) and restart it - which should then consume the proc and be instant cast. So, you'd have to be on your toes about using the macro to compensate for the lag, and also to maximize your use of SoL procs.

[LochnarITB]

Another idea I had about /stopcasting

Consider the macro

/stopcasting
/cast Counterspell

I would use it like this; I had just started casting frost bolt or fire bolt (any channeling spell) when I notice that my target starts to cast a channeled spell also. Instead of hitting ESC I would press this macro button which would first stop my current channeling spell, thus cancelling it, and immediately do the interruption on my target's channeled spell.

Other classes or races could use Earth Shock, Hammer of Justice, Arcane Torrent, etc. instead of Counterspell.

I haven't tested it though.

I've been using counterspell this way for a while. Testing indicates it works.;)

[PapaSmurf]

What about smite?

I've stopped using a /stopcasting macro with Smite because of the talent Surge of Light. (For non-priests, Surge of Light is a proc that gives you an instant cast on your next Smite.) It plays havok on my timing so I've gotten lazy and returned to spamming my smite macro. It just became difficult to notice when it procced to take advantage of it.

Is there something out there that will help with timing which is inconsistent? I'm thinking of some kind of indicator that I can begin casting again. I've heard talk of a global cooldown monitor, but sometimes my next cast is governed by the GCD, and sometimes by the 2 second cast time and latency.

Quartz will definitely help here because it's global cooldown timer sits right on top of the cast bar. Just one place to look. In addition I've found the SCT helps me a lot with Nature's Grace Procs. The damage gets calculated when you cast the spell not when it hits, but if you're relying on the crit damage bonus to tell you that it's hit it will be too late. For me, SCT will tell me the NG procs immediately when I cast it so I can plan ahead. If I'm spamming Wrath this isn't an issue because I'm GCD limited anyways, but sometimes I like to throw in a starfire after NG procs.

[mandydax]

I've been using Counterspell this way since they introduced the new macro system. CS is not subject to GCD, so you never need to spam the button to get the CS to go off. It works perfectly. (Of course, if you are familiar with your latency or use Quartz, you can finish your cast and immediately get the CS off. I will often open on a caster mob at range with Frostbolt, start a second Frostbolt, and as that goes off, hit CS. A lot of caster mobs' spells are 2.5-3.0 seconds cast time, so the travel time of the first FB lets me hit the end of their first cast.

[vor_lord]

When your 2nd cast completes, it "uses" the charge even though it wasn't instant. Basically your charge is completely wasted.

So this isn't what I'm getting at. This happens all the time, but if your Smite wasn't instant the charge isn't used (you can either use it after your current cast, or cancel and hit it (which I think is a waste of time given that it is a 2 second cast only, by the time you cancel and hit it again you could have just completed your cast).

My question was really about searching for help on visual indicators to keep my timing on track. I end up in this "Why isn't my cast bar moving? Did I double tap and cancel? Was it a Surge of Light? Should I hit it again?" kind of situation.

It's a matter of shifting attention from the cast bar to a global cooldown in a reliable fashion that I'm getting at.