Crepe

I've had this problem a lot, too. I can't really tell if it's a display problem in Dotimer or if I'm canceling the UA or Immolate with the /stopcast macro. I can't stare at 40 rapidly changing debuffs and count the number of UAs or Immolates while dancing around abyssals.

EDIT: Also, /stopcasting is very useful for dots, in case some of you haven't tried it out. Back when I was a "button spammer", I got really annoyed at affliction since the latency in allowing you to cast a spell after a GCD was enough that I thought I had gotten the spell off and had moved to spamming my next ability. /stopcasting before all my instant spells fixes that little bit of lag after the GCD.

 

◊ Kyth

I tested this a bunch in 5-mans today, rather curious. The answer is that it does land, but the timer thinks you cancelled so doesn't show it basically.

I'm running tons of 5-mans to get used to it. I'm also a button spammer I've learned =).


The "click versus keybind" is an interesting idea.

 

Mondragon

Am currently using stopcasting before my immo and shadowbolt..will now start using stopcasting after insta DOTs aswell. I need every tip and trick I can to not lose too much ground vs Afflic locks on movement fights

TY for the tip, will report back with findings.

 

◊ Cadfael

This might only be me and please bear in mind I don't accuse anyone here, but in my honest opinion, the use of stopcasting as described here borders on exploitation.

The reason why I see it that way is thus: stopcasting, as I see it, was implemented such that you are able to use a cast or on-use trinket that does not call the gcd, such as a Priest's Inner Fire followed by an actual, gcd triggering spell. The stopcasting is needed to tell the macro interpreter that it really can send the next cast line to the server and should basically ignore the normally required confirmation from the server (which takes a few ms, due to round trip time of the data package).

The macro interpreter has not enough information to know what the full status is, it can't know nor can it check for an action blocked due to a cooldown or waiting for an outstanding confirmation. It can just try to fire one. And since it can't wait until a condition is met either, which is a deliberate design decision against "botting" macros, it needs such a command which basically aborts the internal "wait for server confirmation" and allows to send the next cast command immediately to the server (because now there is no longer a blocking "wait for answer").

This is what it does and this works.

However... now we're using it to shorten cast times and bring out more casts in less time. As a healer coming to the Twin Emperors back in pre-TBC, I was for the first time really required to spam GH on my tank and abort when not needed. Probably anyone who did that noticed, that if you aborted your spell too late, it did abort the cast bar but the spell never the less got through, healed (or overhealed) the target and did cost mana; even though you aborted it. The reason why this is so lies in the fact that the client does basically send a "cast started" once you start casting and then 0.5 seconds (I think) before completion it does send a "not aborted" token to the server. At which time you can abort and the spell still goes through because the client already reported that you didn't abort in time to the server.

The reason this must be so lies simply in the fact that there is latency between your client and the server: normal network latency, processing latency on the server and again network latency when it sends back a reply, and this has to be compensated with such tricks so that the game feels responsive and non-laggy.

Now what the stopcasting in this case does is, it aborts after your client sent the "not aborted" message to the server but before the cast bar is fully up, so the client is not as long blocked and you can start casting the next spell, while the former is going off at the expected time. This in fact does more or less reduce the casting time that the client is enforcing you.

Now one can argue that it is just removing some latency and this is true. But this is a core technical mechanic that is happening to everyone and with this little trick you can shorten your casting time, increase your DPS (or HPS) by quite a margin. It is also true that you don't really need a /stopcasting, you can just move your char a little bit or hit ESC but using one does help and makes it easier.

Why do I feel this use is not intended? Well Blizzard can change the client anytime to make this the default behavior because the client knows exactly when it did send the "not aborted" to the server. They could unlock casting the next spell then but they don't. It feels to me that by using this, we're circumventing a technical limitation of the client here and, as I initially wrote, are bordering on an exploit here.

Maybe I am completely wrong and Blizzard is fine with this but I don't have a very good feeling in my gut about this issue and I really wouldn't be surprised much if the /stopcasting is suddenly being changed and won't work the same anymore. I know that this would be a big issue for high-latency players, but I just don't feel good reading about this trick.

Am I too paranoid about this ?

 

Thezilch

You're paranoid.

Stopcasting only levels the playing field. A client with 500ms latency to a server can play by the same DPS/HPS means as a client with 50ms to the same server.

Stopcasting DOES NOT allow a client to cast faster than intended. 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 casts will always be 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 respectively. Stopcasting only removes event-packet roundtrip.

A client can also never make the decision to "know exactly when it did send the 'not aborted' to the server," because it is a server event with serverside checks (including serverside states) not present to clientside. There are some horrid implications if they begin to let the client make this decision.

Obviously, the best solution is to allow a one-deep queue on spells, but the suggestion has fallen on deaf ears for some time now.

 

◊ Cadfael

sorry, let me clarify this. Yes a 3.0 second cast always remains a 3.0 second cast. But in one case, if you cast the first spell at time=0, you can start a following second cast at time=3.0 which will land at time=6.0 and in one case you can start the second cast at time=2.5 which will land at time=5.5 with already 0.5 second into the next cast.

That's what I meant. More spells in the same time frame. Higher DPS. It's "like casting faster" when you look at the big picture.

There's a lot of things the client does and not the server.

I agree this would be a proper solution. However just because Blizzard does not answer a specific request does not mean that they don't work on anything.

 

Zeblök

I use quartz, and an optional bar (with /stopcasting infront of some mainspells) i switch to when i have hige ms not to lose out to much on dps. When ping is fine i'm a button spammer and it works ok.

IMO you can't cheat w /stopcasting cus you can't shorten cast time, you can however /stopcasting to erly and missout on the whole cast if u try and get some kind of machinelike precision with near non excisting delay in chaincasting.

 

Thezilch

Are you suggesting those using ISPs local to their server are cheating? Using lower graphics settings for higher FPS is cheating? There is no exploit here. Client A can cast the same spell every ~3.05 seconds with 50ms latency or every ~3.0 seconds with /stopcast (hardly worth the trouble). Client B can cast the same spell every ~3.4 seconds with 400ms latency or every ~3.0 seconds with /stopcast. With /stopcast, both clients are on "equal" ground, where Client B is required to do MORE processing for equal results. It's like casting at intended rates, equally.

 

dukes

@Zeblok: If english is not your first language, I apologise, but that's just awful to read and you really need to retype the whole thing.

@Cafael: with lag you end up with say:

0.0 = start casting
0.2 = cast bar appears
3.0 = spell goes off
3.2 = cast bar finishes, client acknowledges you can cast a new spell.

Without lag (or using quartz) you shave that 0.2 extra seconds off. It means you get more casts in the same timeframe, but it levels the playing field so to speak. Rather than someone with 550ms lag doing an entire one-sixth less dps than a person with 50ms lag, entirely because of how the client works, you now end up with all your casters doing comparable DPS. It's a pretty major difference. On my alt I've gone from being able to do fireball->fireball->scorch before a mob gets to me, to being able to just do 3 fireballs. The lag isn't generally that bad, but it's enough of a difference to make a third fireball get interrupted once or twice before it goes off otherwise.

 

Zeblök

well it obviusly isn't my first language, and even in my own language i'm realy bad at typing.
so writen english is somthing that i'm realy bad at, all i can do is appologize and try and make short statments in the future rather then trying to overtype what i'm trying to say.

[EDIT:]
oh and btw, is there a way to utilize this on my rogue ?

[/EDIT:]

 

• frmorrison

I don't see how you can use /stopcasting with a Rogue, since every abilty is instant. However, Quartz can show your weapon's swing timer which you may find useful.

 

Zeblök

Yhe i saw somthing about that, never got it to work tough.
And just out of interest does that work for hunters to help them with shotweaveing and such ?

 

Vektor

Only from the client's POV, which is essentially irrelevant, as the actual game world calculations and event processing occur in serverland.

From the server's POV, you're just spamming your spells back to back, the next one starting almost as soon as the previous one is complete. Casting a 3.0s spell every 3.0s does not violate game rules.

Without stopcasting, from the server's POV, you'd be casting a 3.0s spell, waiting half a second just standing there... doing nothing. Then you'd start your next 3.0s spell.

All you've done is mitigate the effect of network latency on your performance. Since network latency is an unpredictable, uncontrollable factor that occurs outside the game world as a result of limitations on the transmission medium, this is clearly not even remotely exploitative.

As several others have said, getting an ISP with a better latency (or being local to the game servers) or boosting graphic performance would yield similar performance increases for the same reasons as stopcasting - and having a better network link or video card is clearly not exploitative.

It's also worth noting that latency affects short-cast spells more than long-cast spells. If you're frostbolting, you'll incur 2xLatency every 2.5s. If you're fireball spamming, you'll incur 2xLatency every 3.0s.

That means 0.5s RTT would make your frostbolt a 3.0s cast spell and you lose 16.6% of your potential frostbolt dps. The same latency makes fireball 3.5s cast, meaning you only lose 14.2% of potential fireball dps to latency. This artificially biases the game toward longer cast spells the higher your latency is. And while it may be the case that the long-cast spells already tend to be higher dps than short, real-world network performance shouldn't necessitate the choice of long-cast over short-cast. If I want to scorch spam for mana efficiency, I should be able to do so without incurring a 25% damage penalty to latency just because I'm using a shorter cast spell.

 

Apate

Well, some people think it works for warriors. I am not one of those people, but I could be wrong

See you, auntie.

 

Zeblök

Well i'm just thinking of 1k ms situations where your button is higlighted and u just stand in idle combat pose doing nothing for 2-3s. So i'm wondering if a /stopcasting /cast hemorrhage would actualy make it so that i keep my hemospam up even tough i'm totaly lagged out
Think i migh acctualy have to put up a heavy uppload crash my ping and try it.

 

authority11

Crepe, can you list the dots I need the /stopcasting on as a UA Lock?

I'm assuming

/stopcasting
/cast Unstable Affliction

but would I need one for corruption and agony and siphon?

 

Crepe

I have before all my commonly casted spells: Shadowbolt, Immolate, UA, SL, Corruption, and CoA.

 

notreallyunique

If your round trip latency is greater than your GCD time, then stopcasting will help you avoid the button lockout. If your round trip latency is less than your GCD, stopcasting will only help you on abilities that aren't tied to the GCD (e.g. warrior shield block). Since your latency is bumping right up to the rogue GCD, it might be worth experimenting. I wouldn't expect a dramatic dps increase.

 

Darkmantle

Spell stop casting does not allow you to cast more spells than someone with 0ms would be able to cast. This should be absolutely clear before any other discussion.

As an Australian I play on servers based in the US. Even with the best network connection in the world I would still have lag since data can't move faster than the speed of light. Is it fair that an american who is closer to the server gets to cast more spells than me per given time period? My answer is no. Melee classes auto attack serverside and rogues attacks are governed by the server and energy regens at a set rate so they lose minimal dps for having lag(on a stationary target, up to 1000ms). Were as casters and to a far greater extent hunters suffer badly from lag.

This method just levels the playing field between different players.

 

◊ Cadfael

Yes that was my misunderstanding. Last evening I went on and tested a lot around. I could swear a year ago, when we were at the Twin Emperors, that the "cutoff" point was more or less exactly at 0.5 seconds before the spell bar was full. Since I generally have a two digit latency to the realm, that was quite a difference.

Now I knew that once you aborted the spell late so that it still got through and if the time when one does this lies beyond the gcd, then you could cast the next spell already.

So my fault lies in the assumption that there is a 0.5 second point before spell end plus latency where you can abort and cast the next spell. In which case you really could shorten the "cast time" down to 2.5 seconds on a 3 second spell by aborting. The spell would still take 3 seconds to be cast but when it is cast finally, you were already casting the next one, effectively reducing the "casting time" so to speak. That was what I was talking about.

However I was wrong. It doesn't work this way. I can't tell if I just remember it wrong or if there was a change somewhen since then, but at the moment all you can shave off really is the latency, so there probably isn't anything wrong with that.

Please note that I never begrudged any high-latency player from using this, I was concerned about its use by a *low-latency* player such as me being able to basically have 2 spells "in casting" and being able to, say, cast 2 3.0 second spells within a timeframe less than 6 seconds. But it's not possible, all is well; I assumed wrong.

 

Bandagraph

I have a question that is a bit of a derail, but still relates to this subject.

I am currently trying to work on maximazing the DPS of a 31/30 warrior I raid with and am curious about Imp Slam related to latency. Does this Quartz addon, which I've read has a swing timer, have the latency bar for the auto attack timer as well? If so, could a warrior start casting slam BEFORE his auto attack as long as his swing timer is past this latency mark?

Also, another question related to slam: Am I correct in assuming it does not trigger the global cooldown and could be chained at [.5 sec] rather than [5 sec + latency] using a /stopcasting macro? Seems like this would be a huge dps increase given the speed you are chaining these casts.

Sorry if I am way off. Unfortunatly I have to tank most of the time and only respec to PvP.

 

TheOnly

NO that is not how it works at ALL.

The second cast CAN NOT begin at time 2.5 like in your example at all.


#1 - There is no "not canceled" message sent to the server. None. Its a lot more simple than that. If the lag time is 500 ms, then if a client cancels a heal at 2.75 seconds into a 3 second heal, the cancel message gets to the server at 3.25 seconds, which is too late -- the heal already went through. If the canceled message is sent before 2.5 seconds the message gets to the server before the 3s mark, so it is correctly canceled.

The "normal"situation is that in chain casting a 3s cast and 500ms ping time (round trip to/from) it looks like this:

Time 0: Client starts to cast. Message is sent to the server "cast begin, spell X"
Time 0 + lag/2 = 0.25s: Server actually recieves the message, and begins casting spell X Sends message to client "yes you are casting spell X"
Time 0 + lag = 0.5s: Client recieves confirmation, cast bar starts at 0. Server is already .25s into the cast.
Time 3s: Client cast bar shows 2.5s out of 3 into a cast. Server is actually 2.75s into the cast.
Time: 3.25s, server finishes casting, sends "cast compete, draw animation" to client
Time 3.5s, client cast bar finishes cast animation is drawn, client can click next spell.


-------
Stopcasting allows the client to send a cancel request to the server before it is done with its cast bar. In the example above, if this is done AFTER the 3 second mark, it will get to the server after the actual cast happened, allowing for another spell to start casting just after 3 seconds from the start of the previous one. A message sent before that will cancel and competely kill the original cast.

 

srg

To answer a statement above about affliction locks. I would put /stopcasting only after spells that you use after a non-insta cast spell.

For example if you know that you are always going to cast a Siphon Life after Coruption /stopcasting wouldn't be needed since it has no factor on global cooldown.

Having said that I am a EST'er playing on a PST server so my latency is typically 170 - 250 compared to 50-60 when I was on a local server. This function mixed w. Quartz would be ridiculously helpful. However I have a tendacy of spamming button casts of my next cast. With macro'ing /stopcasting that would essentially mean I'm casting nothing haha. Have to get use to a totally new play style, but the reward for it should be very high.

 

• Arawethion

One question:

Does anyone have occurrences in which you hit your /stopcasting macro, the previous spell completes, you incur a GCD, but the new one does not start casting? It doesn't make sense to me at all.

For reference, my full macro:

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

adlwow

Just FYI.. using the G15 in this manner is breaking TOS.