Spell cast-speeds in Diablo

[Attika]

I'm interested in cast times for certain spells; i.e., the time it takes for your avatar to complete the "casting" animation.

According to Jarulf's Guide, the higher a rogue's clevel, the faster their arrows fly according to this formula:
32 + (clvl-1)/4

AND (from the same source) at higher slevels, certain spells travel faster; for example, Holy Bolt according to this formula:
Speed: 16 + 2·slvl

And finally, there's this tidbit in JG in regards to Phasing:
"Note: * Due to being a non targeting spell, it is slightly faster than Teleport and it may thus be easier to escape with this spell than with Teleport."

Now I'm curious about this; in what way is Phasing 'faster than Teleport'? Is it because different spells have different cast times? If your cursor is already away from your character and you cast Teleport, will it take longer to complete the same slevel Teleport spell as compared to a Phasing spell because it (Teleport) has a slightly longer cast time? The statement in JG's seems to suggest so.

Two questions then:

#1.) Are there different "cast times" for different spells? (NOT different speeds that spells _travel_, THAT'S already known to be affected by slevel for a bunch of them.) What are the slowest spells as far as cast-animation times? The fastest?

#2.) If so above, then is this cast-animation time affected by either slevel or clevel? So you should be continually trying to upgrade slevels and/or clevel to try to bring down cast times? Which affects cast time more, slevel or clevel?

Anyone know or experimentally test and see a difference? Or simply know if game code shows a formula for casting speed?

[the Langolier]

Because phasing is non-targeting, your character executes the spells one frame before it would execute teleport. It works the same way for all targeting/non-targeting spells.

So, to answer your question, I'd have to say that heal other is the slowest spell, because you actually have to left click on the player, and even then sometimes you click a monster instead, and you have to try again. Sometimes it can take a while just to heal your partner!

When it comes to spells there are two values that are very important: casting speed and the casting frameset. You can fire multiple spells in a row at your casting speed (0.40 for a sorcerer), BUT if after having cast a spell, and you want to do something OTHER than casting a spell immediately after (like walk to dodge missles or attack for telekill), you will need to wait until your CASTING animation is complete. This time is ALWAYS longer than the time it takes to cast another spell.

Case in point: When a warrior telekills an enemy, you will notice that he does not begin to attack an enemy immediately after teleport executes. He actually has to finish his casting animation before he swings. It took him 0.70 seconds from when he cast the spell to when he actually teleported, and then ANOTHER 0.30 seconds before he can swing.

The same thing goes for attacking animations. With haste you can attack every 0.35 seconds, but you will notice that on your last swing you will see your character bring his sword all the way back before you can move or teleport to the next enemy.

Just for fun, I changed the warrior's casting speed down to 2 frames (but didn't change his casting animation). What do you think happened? Well, if you guessed that he could no longer telekill, you'd be right! He would teleport like lightning, but since his casting animation was so long, and of course he would have to complete the majority of it right next to the enemy, they would have enough time to walk out of his range before he could attack! After that, I cut both his animation and casting time to 2 frames. In that cast, he could teleport and attack so fast that I actually found it hard to keep up! It was so fast that I could hardly react fast enough to the new position of the enemy to continue to swing in its direction.