So what kind of feedback will I get if I cast too early? Currently I trigger a 1sec GCD if I cast my heal too quickly. Will this still hold true? I would test this but, the char copy has been broken every time I try to copy.

---

Q u o t e:


It's pretty easy. You install Quartz, and instead of making a thousand /stopcasting macros to accompany it, you just cast your spell when it tells you to. No macros needed.

---

forgot to quote (See post above)

---

Q u o t e:
So what kind of feedback will I get if I cast too early? Currently I trigger a 1sec GCD if I cast my heal too quickly. Will this still hold true? I would test this but, the char copy has been broken every time I try to copy.

---

It won't invoke the GCD until the server says "okay, you're not casting now." Let me put it this way.

As it stands now, if you cancel it too quickly, your client tells you that you can't cast again via the GCD. With this change, you can tell the server to start casting again if you are 1 second into a 3 second cast. After the round-trip latency, it will come back and tell you that hey, you can't do that yet. If you start another cast at the 2.5/3 second marker with 500ms latency, even without a stopcasting macro, the first cast will go off, and the second will begin casting instantly.

Every time you cast a spell, no matter what the client thinks if you can or can't, it asks the server, not the client if you can. If the server says "sure" - your client will update accordingly. Take the /stopcasting out of your macros, and spam it several times a second. End result, it's completely feasible to get faster casting than you currently have with Quartz + macros, simply by spamming the button. (Why is this possible? Because it eliminates any needed "accuracy" or "perfectly timed" chain casts that the /stopcasting macros requires. Hit it 20 times a second and it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll have next to no downtime between casts.)

---

Q u o t e:
As it stands now, if you cancel it too quickly, your client tells you that you can't cast again via the GCD. With this change, you can tell the server to start casting again if you are 1 second into a 3 second cast. After the round-trip latency, it will come back and tell you that hey, you can't do that yet. If you start another cast at the 2.5/3 second marker with 500ms latency, even without a stopcasting macro, the first cast will go off, and the second will begin casting instantly.

---

As I understand it, right now the GCD (only) is still blocking cast requests client-side, which only really affects spells with a casting time 1.5 seconds or less. However, it sounds like that is not by design and it should be fixed before 2.3 hits release, if I understand the rumours correctly.

---

Q u o t e:
No, the 1.5 second cooldown is by design. You can't start casting again until that client-side cooldown has elapsed, and you'll notice that, because it's client side, latency doesn't affect it.

---

Does that mean that if you cast too early, such that the server receives the cast before the previous cast has finished, you'll have to wait for the client side GCD and your new cast will fail? Or will the failure response from the server cancel the client's GCD when it's received? Or have I just misunderstood completely?

---

Q u o t e:
If you're composing a formatted string to display in a button or font string, use the new FontString:SetFormattedText(fmt, ...) API

---

Awesome, thank you! =)

---

Q u o t e:


The failure response from the server cancels the client's GCD.

---

So does this mean that if someone is on a low latency connection (let's say a 50ms latency) and they try to cast a spell and that at the moment the command to cast a spell is sent from the client, the spell has 35ms to go on the server (i.e. by the time the command reaches the server after 25ms, there's still 10ms to go until it's allowed to be cast), that the server will respond to the client (after another 25ms) saying that it was unable to cast the spell and it'll cancel the GCD on the client.

That failure response from the server will arrive back at the client after 50ms, and it will then interrupt the GCD. And because it started a GCD, the client couldn't have tried to send another request to cast a spell 10ms after the first (which would have succeeded).

So in this case, with someone on a 50ms latency, they'd have 40ms of wasted time if they had tried to cast a spell 10ms early.

Now if say we have someone on an Australian latency of around 500ms and they try to cast a spell 10ms too early, then they'd have to wait 490ms before the client recieves word from the server that the spell cast failed and to cancel the GCD. And in the meantime the client can't try to send another spell to the server for another 490ms...

Doesn't this seem.....wrong?

Or does the client still get to send spell cast requests to the server even during GCD?

If it can, then this isn't really a problem (though unless there's bandwidth limiting of some sort it could flood the server) and the latency won't have a big effect.

If however the client is locked out of doing anything for that 500ms while it's waiting for a reply from the server which tells it the cast failed (even though it was only 10ms too early, and if another spell cast request had started 10ms later it would have worked), then I fail to see how this helps people on high latency.

Further to my previous post, doesn't this mean that in the case of 2 people hammering a button to cast a spell (or pressing it once, but as close as they can to when they feel the spell is ready to be cast), that on average the person with 50ms latency will experience an effective average increase of 25ms cast time on any 1.5 second cast spell due to getting in too early, while someone on a 500ms ping experiences an effective average increase of 250ms on cast time on every 1.5 sec cast spell?

And wouldn't implementing a 1 deep spell queue completely fix this problem?
Yes, I realise that implementing a 1 deep spell queue will involve a lot of work. Some sort on the server side in terms of code, work and expense also in the server side on the extra memory requirements.
And it'll require work on the client side as there would need to be some UI work done to represent to the user the added possible complexity of having a 1 deep spell queue.

But wouldn't this pretty much solve latency issues for higher latency people, at least in regards to chain casting (i.e. PvE).

Sure, for PvP purposes (and in terms of active use things like Kick and Counterspell etc for PvE), latency will always be a factor. But for most cases, it's something that seems to only be a problem because the proper steps haven't been taken to fix it.

On a related noted, how will channeled spells function with these changes? If the nochanneling client side option is added to a macro, then it seems like they won't benefit at all from the changes being introduced in 2.3. And if nochanneling isn't used then they'll still cancel early and ticks will be lost. Again, no benefit from 2.3.

Any chance of changing nochanneling so that it functions on the server side?

I apologise if I'm sounding pushy or whatever. Like you, I just want to see the best outcome for the game.

---

Q u o t e:


The failure response from the server cancels the client's GCD.

---

is there any way to "refund" casting time? (like recording button spams and adjusting cast times retroactively)

I finally got on the PTR and was able to do some testing. See results below for details.

I started off by doing well timed casts with Quartz (no stopcasting) and was able to get my avg lost cast time to about 100ms. I then started to spam my HL and was able to avg ~50ms lost cast time. Conclusions: Spam is your friend now and if you want to stop a cast use movement keys or escape to recast. Also, people on a 500 ms latency connection will be able to reduce their cast lag to 50ms without stop casting, but they still are hindered by having to wait 500ms to get status results like raid health and mob positioning back from the server.

Questions:

1) How was I able to cast holy light in less than 2 seconds?
2) Can I turn off the not yet recovered message? Mages in a 25 man are going to kill my hard drive with spam
3) Why was post 188 deleted but not 183? Rather selective don't you think?



Note: I guess I took to long to edit my post so all of my time calculations between casts were lost in the original and I did not feel like redoing them. Time to Cast Holy Light is 2 sec after getting the lights grace buff.

[pre]10/20 12:07:44.703 Your Holy Light heals you for 109.
10/20 12:07:44.718 You gain Light's Grace.
10/20 12:07:46.828 Your Holy Light heals you for 107.
10/20 12:07:48.625 Your Holy Light heals you for 108.
10/20 12:07:50.687 Your Holy Light heals you for 108.
10/20 12:07:52.937 Your Holy Light critically heals you for 170.
10/20 12:07:53.453 You gain 21 Mana from Illumination.
10/20 12:07:55.062 Your Holy Light heals you for 110.
10/20 12:07:57.078 Your Holy Light critically heals you for 163.
10/20 12:07:57.593 You gain 21 Mana from Illumination.
10/20 12:07:59.093 Your Holy Light heals you for 110.
10/20 12:08:01.312 Your Holy Light heals you for 114.
10/20 12:08:04.296 Your Holy Light heals you for 110.
10/20 12:08:04.328 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:04.468 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:04.609 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:04.734 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:04.890 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:05.000 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:05.140 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:05.281 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:05.406 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:05.546 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:05.703 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:06.515 Your Holy Light heals you for 115.
10/20 12:08:06.546 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:06.687 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:06.828 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:06.968 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:07.125 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:07.250 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:07.406 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:07.546 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:07.718 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:07.859 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:08.000 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:08.562 Your Holy Light heals you for 107.
10/20 12:08:08.593 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:08.734 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:08.859 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.000 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.156 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.296 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.453 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.593 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.718 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:09.890 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:10.031 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:10.578 Your Holy Light heals you for 112.
10/20 12:08:10.593 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:10.734 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:10.890 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.046 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.187 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.343 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.484 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.609 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.765 You fail to cast Holy Light: Not yet recovered.
10/20 12:08:11.906 You fail to cast Holy

---

Q u o t e:
I finally got on the PTR and was able to do some testing. See results below for details.

I started off by doing well timed casts with Quartz (no stopcasting) and was able to get my avg lost cast time to about 100ms. I then started to spam my HL and was able to avg ~50ms lost cast time. Conclusions: Spam is your friend now and if you want to stop a cast use movement keys or escape to recast. Also, people on a 500 ms latency connection will be able to reduce their cast lag to 50ms without stop casting, but they still are hindered by having to wait 500ms to get status results like raid health and mob positioning back from the server.

---

10/20 18:40:54.806 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 68.
10/20 18:40:56.458 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 70.
10/20 18:40:59.098 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 66.
10/20 18:41:00.646 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 64.
10/20 18:41:02.259 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 64.
10/20 18:41:04.187 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 64.
10/20 18:41:06.824 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 64.
10/20 18:41:08.785 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 62.
10/20 18:41:11.801 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 61.
10/20 18:41:14.486 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 66.
10/20 18:41:16.000 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 71.
10/20 18:41:17.550 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 70.
10/20 18:41:19.426 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 69.
10/20 18:41:22.978 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 62.
10/20 18:41:25.378 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 64.
10/20 18:41:27.122 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 63.
10/20 18:41:30.184 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 66.
10/20 18:41:33.212 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 71.
10/20 18:41:35.867 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 63.
10/20 18:41:37.820 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 68.
10/20 18:41:40.468 Your Lesser Heal critically heals you for 106.
10/20 18:41:42.416 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 68.
10/20 18:41:45.430 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 62.
10/20 18:41:46.977 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 64.
10/20 18:41:48.930 Your Lesser Heal heals you for 71.

That's 24 casts after the first with a time difference of 54.124 seconds.
Or 2.256 seconds per cast on average.
On a 1.5 second spell.
I was using a G15 keyboard to auto-spam it every 100ms.

This is definitely still broken for people on high latency.

(note: I had between 500ms and 600ms latency)