Stance Cancellation

I was wondering if you could end a stance by clicking on its icon like you could with enchantments, or at least like you could with enchantments in the first Open Beta Weekend Event.

Nope, stances remain up until their duration expires. Enchantments act the same way, actually - only maintained enchantments can be manually cancelled.

Peace,
-CxE

Thanks again for your fast and to the point reply Ensign, I hope I’m not bugging you too much

From what I understand recasting the same stance during battle will reactivate the timer on the stance and in effect cancel the original stance. I’m sure you have realized that I’m trying to figure out the best way to use Mantra of Recall. The optimal outcome seems to be a net gain of 15 energy every 15 seconds (provided you have the 15 energy to recast it), however I don’t know if this gain is worth the Elite skill slot.

I guess to answer that you will have to know a bit about my build.

The reason I am so paranoid about my energy pool is that I want to go primary Mesmer with as much as 8 points, not including items, in Fast Casting, and cast Flare, from the Elementalist Fire skill tree, in rapid succession.

I realize that I am giving up a lot of benefits of the primary Elementalist, such as their considerably larger energy pool, but I think that due to the lack of a recast timer on Flare every point in fast casting increases my DPS considerably.

As you see with this strategy my energy pool will be drained within 12 to 13 seconds at best (hoping I get a few energy gaining skills in there), but my DPS will be off the charts, or so I think.

I would love to know if this could work; if it could be done better; and if you have any energy skills I could help me out.

It's all good, bug me as much as you want.

I don't know if Mantra of Recall will self-cancel - I haven't re-acquired the skill since they changed it to a stance, and I haven't gotten a hard confirmation one way or another either way. Has anyone actually tested this?

I would assume, judging from how Battle Rage works, that it would end itself when you re-used the skill - you do lose all adrenaline in that case, and you should gain the energy in the case of Mantra of Recall - but some hard confirmation would be nice.


Your energy won't be draining nearly as quickly as you think, though - one Flare every 1.4 seconds (at 10 Fast Casting) will take 18 seconds to use up a 40 energy reserve - with Fire Attunement up, you'll have a good 26 seconds to continue to spam Flare uninterrupted.

Your DPS with these stats (10 Fast Casting, 12 Fire) should be a rather pedestrian 27.85 DPS - comparable to a Warrior with Conjure but no other buffs.

Peace,
-CxE

Confirmed hardly.

I was sure that the cast time for Flare is 1 sec even without Fast Casting. How did you get one Flare every 1.4 seconds?

Cast time is one second, aftercast is .75 seconds. Cast time plus aftercast is 1.75 seconds.

Level ten Fast Casting reduces the cast time to .65 seconds, which kicks the overall cast time to .65 + .75 = 1.4 seconds.

Peace,
-CxE

Ah, I was not aware of an after cast timer. Is it a constant .75 or does it fluctuate depending on the duration of the spell cast time?

My healer (Mo/Me) used Mantra of Recall in various Tomb matches and a few GvG matches. It works exactly like Ensign and Garan expected. My experiences with this stance are as following:

Pros:
- Insta Cast. You can use it while running or while using other skill.
- No tricky timing like Power Drain.
- No need to target enemy like Energy Tap.
- Fairly easy to use, because you only have to watch your skill slot and energy bar.
- Not susceptible to spell interrupt and backfire.
- Decent energy return every 15s. With 8 in inspiration, you gain 27-15=12 en.
Cons:
- Might be susceptible to skill lock (ie: Diversion).
- Elite. My monk can really use this slot for a good Monk elite skill (ie: Word of Healing).
- Tricky energy management. With 15en requirement to use, you have to try to maintain 15en in your energy pool pretty much all the time. Once your energy is below 15, you can't use this stance. You either wait for it to expire or use other energy gaining skill/spell to get your energy above 15. I used Energy Tap as my backup energy gaining spell.
- Susceptible to enemy with energy denial build.
- Most likely you would use other energy gaining skill to combo with Mantra of Recall stance.

Overall, Mantra of Recall is abit tricky to use for my monk with 40en pool. As long as you can maintain your energy usage pace, this skill is great. This stance has bigger potential in class with bigger energy pool (El/Me).

Aftercasts are constant for any spell, signet, or nature ritual. It's just the time spent on the actual, final cast animation, as opposed to the pre-cast, variable length animation.

Peace,
-CxE

Is there an equivalent for the aftercast time for non-spell skills?

No .

Does interruption such as power leak still work in the aftercast portion? In other words, if I try to interrupt orison do I have 1 sec window or 1.75 sec to interrupt it?

No, aftercast occurs after a skill has been activated. In other words, it happens after the skill has happened. The casting is raising your arms and sending a blast of fire at a target, the after cast is lowering your arms back to your body, essentially. To interrupt a spell you need to hit it while it's activating, hitting it after it's activated an in the aftercast phase won't prevent the skill from happening. I'm not sure if it will still interrupt and give you the result of, say, a Power Leak and drain all that energy, but I don't believe that it will.

An interrupt that lands during an aftercast will still work - it will interrupt (stopping nothing, and perhaps even speeding up the opponent), and any secondary effects will trigger. You can Leak someone during an aftercast to drain away their energy, despite failing to interrupt the skill.

Peace,
-CxE

Damn. Can we distill Ensign down to book form, so I can have a copy on my shelf with all my other reference material?

soon you too can have your very own number-crunching, fact-ferreting Ensign! operators are standing by...