Didn't even think of that

I guess this will result with a retour en-force of G15 macros as far as DPSers are concerned. Press G1 to (cast fireball and wait 0.025s), repeat as long as G1 is down.

I guess blizzard will have to take an official stand on the G15 and macroing software because I could definitely see people do it.

That's already a "breach" of the rules; you would be casting multiple spells with only one button press. Having such a regular interval between "key-presses" would quickly attract attention, I think.

I tried spamming in the red zone on quartz and it looks like you can cut the lag even without a g15, though I'm sure not as effectively. Used a mouse wheel macro to try and burst fireball casts around the red. When it goes well, quartz starts getting confused into thinking you have better latency than you really do, though I couldn't get it very consistently due to the PTR's instability.

Blizzard has tried to fix the stopcasting need in 2.3 as we all know. There is on the PTR however now the issue that 1.5s spells don't get any benefit because of the GCD. But now Blizzard is saying they'll fix that too in a next PTR patch. I'm such a happy spriest

Analysis of 1.5 s cast problems on Test

Late reply, but I'd assume that's because Quartz uses the time difference on client between the GCD activating and the actual popup of the castbar. The behavior you noticed is probably because of the change that made GCD's start at the same time the castbar popups for subsequent preemptively cast spells, instead of on button presses.

Casting behavior's been changed again in the recent patch (with hilarious results) and according to Slouken being changed yet again? I dunno... we'll see what kind of wacky solutions Blizzard comes up with for the entire lag vs GCD vs preemptive casting issue.

I just began switching to this mode of casting (har, har, just before 2.3 may correct these discrepancies, too) and am wondering what the application to Aff Locks would be?

I know the obvious one...

/stopcasting
/cast Shadow Bolt

I presume you hit this macro, and then hit it again in the red zone of Quartz when you're spamming it?

Now...if you wanted to refersh UA, which has a casting time, say the following situation occurs:

/stopcasting
/cast Shadow Bolt

/stopcasting
/cast Unstable Affliction

/cast Corruption

/cast Immolate

/stopcasting
/cast Shadow Bolt

Would this rotation work? Should I be adding the stopcasting macro to ALL spells which have a casting time? I've seen my own lag range from 50-300ms, and seen Quartz vary quite widely. However, I'm thrilled to have found this, because I believe 1 of my own dps problems was this exact situation.

Is the stopcasting macro only good when you are CASTING a spell that FOLLOWS one which has lag?

As a for instance, Corruption Following UA may work, b/c UA has a Cast time and therefore a Lag time. But would a /stopcasting macro work after Corruption, when casting immolate. No, right? Because the insta-casts won't even appear on casting bars like Quartz?

I'm hitting VR with a totally revamped style, so I want to tweek it as best I can and move up the charts, even tho I'm the AFF-Malediction Lock.

Any help would be appreciated to understand the application of this to the many classes in the gym.


Arkanius

Here we go again...
Every spell that you want to cast after a spell with a casting time needs to have a /stopcasting before it so you can click it in the "red zone". This is true as of 2.2. 2.3 is supposed to fix it but for now it doesn't completely work afaik. Also note that the red zone is just a graphic feature of an addon and you can use /stopcasting quite easily with just a basic CT-mod to show a timer on your castbar as well as knowing your latency. Quartz or the likes help, though, but after like 2 years of /stopcasting fireballs (I pretty much started using it without anyone telling me about it, discovered it when I tried making an autocancel macro after they removed autocanceling from CTRA and noticed wierd things when you cancel a spell and recast right away as well as cancel near the end of the cast), I can almost use /stopcasting without even looking at my screen.

Tested on PTR 2.3. Personally I feel that, with or without /stopcasting, it doesn't make a different. I could easily cast UA > Corruption, as long as Corruption is cast within the red zone, it should apply immediately after UA.

But I'll still stick to /stopcasting as it gives me a more control.

P/S While trying to mount, you can't move forward during the red zone and assume you'll mount right after, it will just cancel your mount eventually.

that sucks worth a a complaint ;p

I've only just learned about Stopcasting macros (newb eh?), and a hunter in my guild is stating the castsequence macros for casters and non-casters yield the same results and dps. Is this true?

How do castsequence macros fit in WoW?
What situations are they used?

I'd have posted this separately, but have no priviledges to do so.

The player is a hunter, and is basically contradicting what little I know of StopCasting, suggesting that SPAMMING a castsequence macro provides the same result, minimizing lag, increasing dps.

Can someone with knowledge provide some insight here, as it is leaving many of my casters confused and ruining the informational forums we have.

Thank you.

Yes it does still work with #shottooltip
I don't think you need to specify the spell if there is only one spell in the macro. If you has it use a trinket in the macro as well, then you may need to specify, so you could just use:

#Showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Frostbolt

I recently added the #showtooltip, before that hovering over the macro wouldn't show the mana cost, damage etc of the spell, although the icon would automatically be chosen.

Castsequence doesn't have much to do with /stopcasting and personally I don't use any castsequence macros.

So if I am casting Frostbolt more than once, when the castbar gets to the red area is when I would hit my Frostbolt button again?

Odd... I've done that before, mostly with my flying mount, I'd hit jump in the red zone and hop up, then get boosted into the mount...

As for castsequence, wouldn't that work off the client cast time? ie, it won't move onto the next item in the sequence until the previous command is 'complete', and since, on the clientside, latency applies to the cast time, spamming a castsequence won't improve dps any more than hitting the 'next' command on immediate completion (it -may- speed up due to spamming it and saving on human reaction time). Using stopcasting however, short circuits the client cast time, so it -will- improve your dps as it basically cuts your clientside cast time short and sends the next spell immediately.

I hope you are talking about PTR 2.3

Well, it is probably my bad that I forgot to mention my latency, it is usually 400ms, so as you can imagine the red zone should be relatively significant. Therefore, if you jump in the red zone, it now serves like /stopcasting.

I have made almost all of my combat related spells into macros with stopcasting. You never know when you are going to need to cast an instant spell and you will want to stopcasting teh previous timed spell.

So for me its UA, instant corruption, and then whatever else depending on the encounter. I need a /stopcasting on the corruption to shave the time on the UA.

Any new news on the 2.3 cast time changes? From what I've read in this post and others around these boards, spamming the spell button is just the same as a /stopcasting macro. The exception being 1.5 seconds spells which seem to have a problem building latency.

Does spamming in 2.3 = /stopcasting in 2.2?

The last thing I heard is that you can't just mash the cast button as everytime you do it it will invoke the GCD. Seems like you will still need something like quartz you just won't need to use macros unless you like to activate trinkets prior to your spells.

Also I've been noticing extreme inaccuracies with quartz's latency estimation. After 2 years of /stopcasting with simply having numbers on my castbar (so with 300ms ping I hit my macro 0.2-0.3s before completion), I've noticed quartz will sometimes show a correct red zone but VERY OFTEN would show a red zone way too big than it really should be. To be safe you should be hitting /stopcasting when the progress bar reaches what would be your smallest red zone you've been getting recently, or just ignore the red zone and look at your latency and base your /stopcasting on that - and that doesn't even require quartz as a basic ct-mod pack would do that.