Aftercast

After seeing some topics with aftercast, and experiencing some of my own (Quick Shot amazingly has aftercast, what's the point of picking this now?), I was wondering if there was a list of skills/spells or the mechanics of how aftercast works. If not, why not make one?

Whats aftercast?

Well, I'm not a expert on it like some people here, but some skills have this little animation or rest time after you use it.

For me, I've only experienced Quick Shot, but here's how it goes.

Seeing as how I was travelling from Yaks to LA, I picked up QS since someone said it is better then Power Shot. So yeah I try it out.

So here's how the sequence works without QS.

Shoot arrow
Reload animation
Shoot arrow
Rinse and repeat

Here's how it works with Penetrating attack

Shoot arrow
Reload animation
Penetrating Shot
Reload animation

Here's how it works when you add quick shot (Trying to take advantage of the speed)

Shoot arrow
Reload animation
Pentrating Shot
Quick Shot
Stand around looking stupid
Reload animation

I'm thinking other skills have similar experiences.

Good plan, though I think I stumbled across something like that somewhere...
I'm confused as to why there is so much rounded done in gw. Why can't they just include after cast?

Hey I couldn't find one on the guides or directories so I decided to try and start one. I'm completely clueless as to which skills/spells actually have aftercast and the conditions for them. Which is why I want to know. Plus, if I learn it now, I won't waste my skill points on something as stupid as Quick Shot ever.

After every skill, spell, anything you cast, there's a 0.75sec delay before you can attack or cast another spell.

What? That doesn't explain quickshots apparent sitting around doing nothing for a second compared to a regular shot or penetrating shot happening then resuming the reload animation. QS shoots real quick, sits there, then reloads! Ack, I'm confused.

Unfamiliar with aftercast but what I can pick up of the context here, if this is a programmed part of the game then you have a great suggestion there. They should have a chart with the times etc. So people can have some sort of "heads up" picking those skills.

On the other hand, in considering possibles for the sake of giving Arena.net the benefit of the doubt...

1) It could be some sort of bug that no one has really brought up (Just assuming it is this "aftercast.").

2) You could be right at the threshhold of having enough mana to cast the spell after quick shot and, having pressed the keys in succession so the commands are cued, your character takes a stand to wait for mana versus firing. I don't know if this occurs as i haven't had it happen to me so was just something to consider again as a possiblity.

3) Just wondered, if when you look back at the times you stood around, did anything else seem to just stop being active? I found with certain network lags, the game client is running fine but the commanda coming to the units stopped flowing from the server so all the units stop and just stand around waiting for the lag to stop. I am not saying you wouldn't notice that as it is very obvious, just wondering if you had some really momentary lag that this type of "incident" started to happen and then stops.


Again just options to maybe help bounce this around. Personally I'd post something in the Official Suggestion thread as seriously it could be a bug that no one brought up and it'd be addressed right quick I would think.

*Edit* Well if its a real programmed potential there does need to be some sort of chart, although by the description it seems it is based on the mix of skills you use. The sequence using the same skill over and over seemed to not have this aftercast, likely because of the skills cooldown time being longer I would imagine.

*Edit* Discard the above. Learning curve from Aria's post=Assume aftercast is on everything until you know otherwise, and, it appears the only way around it is if the cooldown time exceeds the .75 seconds according to Ensign in discussion about fast casting...

So in the first sequence Xellos stated using the quick shot over and over the cooldown must have absorbed the aftercast time (stand around do nothing) because it is longer. As the discussion in the thread from January as posted above doesn't appear to discuss farther into aftercast than as stated above.

Anyway that's how it appears now to this GuildWars player.

The search button does wonders. Click me.

Ahh, I guess this recalls the good old days when I was still a lurker.

EDIT: And no, Sin, it's not a bug. Again, the search button is the answer, as it is 99% of the time.

Thank you (Ack I'm guessing the .75 is the reason my ranger sits there after QS..so that makes QS useless...HOORAY!)

I've never used Quick Shot so I wont comment on it.

Aftercast is what happens every time you cast a spell. It's a "hidden fee" so to speak.
Every time you cast a spell, first you pay the energy, then you go through cast time, then the effect takes place, then there's aftercast.
It's easy to see when you cast a spell like Animate Bone Horror- it's the time after the minion already comes up where you're still waving your arms around (but not doing anything.)
It prevents you from moving, casting another spell, attacking, or taking any other action during that time.

The aftercast on most spells is 0.75s.
The aftercast on PBAOE spells was just bumped up to 1.75s.

I didn't know any non-spells had aftercasts, that's news to me.

Umm Scaph, I believe I know what your talking about, but if memory serves, if your done casting, and your doing your aftercast, you can just click somewhere, and you'll move there instead of the aftercast, so if you move just a tiny bit, you can cast a new spell again. Of course, I can be totally wrong about this, but this is from way back when I tried Elementalist out.

EDIT: I'm probably drunk about this post. Ignore.

OK, there's two different things going on here. Quickshot has no aftercast. Normally a bow attack will go Draw->fire->rest. With Quickshot, you remove the draw portion of the attack, and fire instantly. However, it doesn't modify the RoF of the bow at all, so consequently, you notice and extra long rest period. This is different to the aftercast.

Scaph explained the effect pretty well. It's present on any spell/ hex/ enchant/ glyph/ ritual/ signet/ trap/ generic skills(eg troll unguent). It's not on shouts, attack skills, preps, and stances. I can't think of anything I've missed there.

Thanks for clarification! But doesn't that mean QS is useless? I mean, I only used it because someone here said it was basically an extra attack. So I thought I'd give it a shot. Instead, it's just a faster shot, while having merits, is definately not what I want for an elite.

Yeah, I'm really not sure what the deal is with QS. Maybe I'm missing something, but getting a otherwise normal attack off 0.5 seconds earlier doesn't even seem worth a normal skill, let alone an elite.

I believe the initial impression someone had was that Quick Shot was a "free attack."

The benefit I can see:
-Get one last attack in before your prep ends
-Get another spike of damage to try and eliminate a target before they get healing.

I have no idea why it's elite, but the whole elite mechanism frustrates me.

The point of quick shot is the faster arrow movement. If you shoot an arrow at an enemy moving perpendicular to you, then the attack will stray or miss or something like that. With QS your arrow moves faster and hence a less chance of them dodging it. Does this make QS any less crap? No.

Anyways, I'm not here to flame aftercast, but I have one last question about aftercast. Here is the basics of my Zealot Channeler Mo/Me farmer

Divine Boon
Channeling
Zealots Fire

Put up Channeling and Zealots Fire and then spam Boon. I figured you would be able to cast Divine Boon 4 times a second since it has a 1/4 second cast and 0 second recharge. But while I am still laying a hell of a beat down, I am definately not casting 4 times a second. So you are saying that regardless of the cast time there will always be an additional .75 seconds before I can use another skill and hence I am only casting once per second? This would make more sense. If I had a 1 second cast then it would be 1.75 seconds? Hrm. Well that would explain why the build is not as godly as my calculations had shown. Please any info would be nice.

It is always annoying when you calculate something like that, and then the info it was based on turns out to be wrong.