Duck/cancel

[Swish]

------------------------------
June 27, 2001 3:00 am
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- Spell and Item Interruption: Ducking will now interrupt a spell
instantly.

This has been classic on red up until now but never removed on blue. While everyone is learning (or relearning) new raid encounters - now might be a good time to remove the ability to duck cancel here.

Daldaen what say you on this matter?

I think the CotH duck/cancel phenomenon in the raid scene is one of the worst things going. Anyone disagree?

Spell timers should be the tip of the iceberg here if we're on a mission for classic.

[Lojik]

How come it has Taken so long to fix this?

[Daldaen]

This should've been made classic years ago. I'm very sad it never was classicized.

If they put it in for the next 6 months and then remove it (to match timeline), I approve.

Ducking is even more prevalent now with CH Chains, having the ability to instant cancel and save 360 Mana on a CH when the tank is already topped off is huge on endurance fights. Having to move your character or sit to cancel it at the end is more tedious and less precise.

It's been brought up several times, don't think I ever saw an explanation for the disparity here.

[Ele]

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191459&highlight=duck+cast

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50097&highlight=duck
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53604&highlight=duck
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53587&highlight=duck
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50035&highlight=duck+cast
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53309&highlight=duck+interrupt
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58707&highlight=duck+interrupt
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96441&highlight=duck+interrupt
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105273&highlight=duck+interrupt
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58814&highlight=duck+interrupt
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184095&highlight=duck+cast

[Gustoo]

How come it has Taken so long to fix this?

[indiscriminate_hater]

Typical BDA exploit

[Erazmus]

I wanna be able to drop coin!

[Whiteberry]

How come it has Taken so long to fix this?
I see what you did there,

[maskedmelon]

For Green99, how 'bouts we eliminate the ability to weave spells between combat swings too? That's not classic either, but I think it was originally patched to current mechanic some time around pre-Velious launch patch. Will research...

[kaev]

For Green99, how 'bouts we eliminate the ability to weave spells between combat swings too? That's not classic either, but I think it was originally patched to current mechanic some time around pre-Velious launch patch. Will research...

wut??

It wasn't 100% reliable, due to latency, but it wasn't impossible either. Before I worked out that Yaulp was nigh useless I was Yaulp'ing between swings on my original paladin on live in the summer of 1999. I hand parsed my logs at the time to verify that it worked fine with a nice long delay 2hander. (Logs were great in early vanilla because they were the easy way to monitor your numerical skill value, the messages disappeared in combat spam and your Skills window only showed the vague text and no numbers)

A lot of people misunderstood (and still misunderstand to this day) the interaction between auto-attack and spell-casting in original EQ. Spell casting did NOT "reset" your melee swing delay, the mechanics were completely independent. BUT, since you could not attack if you were casting, when the melee swing cool-down expired the attempted attack reset the cooldown timer. This is exactly what happens when you make a swing attempt at a mob you cannot see, or at a mob that is too far away, or at yourself, or at another player character or player character pet. You got no red message saying why your attempt to attack failed, just as you got no message when you attacked another player or a player pet.

The change (mid-Velious? can't recall) was that, for hybrid spell-casters ONLY, if your melee attack cooldown expired mid-cast with auto-attack active, instead of negating the attack and restarting the cooldown your attack was delayed until the cast finished.

This change was a big help to hybrids who did not understand the mechanic or were too lazy tap a key before and after casting to toggle auto-attack. For those of us who had worked out the mechanic and used our knowledge (there was a discussion on alt-games.everquest) it just saved a couple keypresses to turn auto-attack off/on before/after you cast during combat.

[Ravager]

For Green99, how 'bouts we eliminate the ability to weave spells between combat swings too? That's not classic either, but I think it was originally patched to current mechanic some time around pre-Velious launch patch. Will research...

When I first started playing in classic before Kunark, my friend explicitly told me to try to time my casts between swings.

[kaev]

When I first started playing in classic before Kunark, my friend explicitly told me to try to time my casts between swings.

Your friend was right, see my post just before yours.

[maskedmelon]

Spell casting did NOT "reset" your melee swing delay, the mechanics were completely independent.

That is the way things work now and worked post this patch:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2001-1.html

January 9th, 2001 3:00 am

"Melee attack timers will no longer be reset when a SK, Paladin or Ranger casts a spell. Previously these classes had to wait a full attack delay after casting before they would attack via melee again."

:/

[kaev]

That is the way things work now and worked post this patch:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2001-1.html

January 9th, 2001 3:00 am

"Melee attack timers will no longer be reset when a SK, Paladin or Ranger casts a spell. Previously these classes had to wait a full attack delay after casting before they would attack via melee again."

:/

Neither the first nor the last time a patch note gave an incorrect description of an EQ game mechanic. Accurate communication never was a priority at Verant/SOE. Also remember that these are the same people that insisted the Alchemy was working as intended when it was impossible to skill-up due to the initial buggy implementation. The people writing the patch notes for the players were often a clue or thirty short when trying to communicate something they misunderstood from a dev.


Note that the patch note is not completely incorrect. The first sentence is true and no doubt came direct from the dev who changed the client code (attack delays are client-side, you knew that, right?). The second is false and doubtless was a "clarification" added by some manager or community relations person.

[Uuruk]

You won't be getting a response from a dev on this and if you do they won't be taking it out.

Anyway back to my pet getting charmed.

[paradox010]

Having played EQ during this period, I can assure you that spellcasting did reset the autoattack timer, and it was one more reason that hybrids had legitimate reasons to complain about game balance.

[kaev]

Having played EQ during this period, I can assure you that spellcasting did reset the autoattack timer, and it was one more reason that hybrids had legitimate reasons to complain about game balance.

lol, nope. It was trivial to yaulp between swings of slow 2hander, more dicey to try to get slower casting spells off due to latency but on a good day you could tab, minor heal, tab and not miss a swing. The timer reset when it expired because you were mid-cast, not otherwise. That was with a 56K modem and voodoo2 (voodoo banshee) video.

[Gustoo]

Yes on live I played a ranger and I could cast spells in between attacks without interrupting my melee. Always cast right after an attack.

[curtischoy]

Casting a spell absolutely never reset melee swings.

[coki]

I wanna be able to drop coin!

dropping coin allowed for duping of plats! the firepot scam i think it was called, got nerfed as soon as a few people figured out how to do it

[tristantio]

I posted about weapon swing timers about 2 years ago:

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136455

It sounds like what some are saying is that essentially the timer didn't pause for hybrids.

So, if you had a weapon swing pending at, say, the 6 second mark, and you were busy casting a spell, you'd lose your swing (and have to wait till the 12 second mark - assuming a 60 delay weapon).

[tristantio]

If you want to see a lot of things still needing classic fixes, just browse my threads started (in particular, the ones under the Bug forum):

http://www.project1999.com/forums/search.php?searchid=4714803&pp=25

[kaev]

I posted about weapon swing timers about 2 years ago:

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136455

It sounds like what some are saying is that essentially the timer didn't pause for hybrids.

So, if you had a weapon swing pending at, say, the 6 second mark, and you were busy casting a spell, you'd lose your swing (and have to wait till the 12 second mark - assuming a 60 delay weapon).

Didn't pause for anybody. During Velious they made the cooldown pause at 0 for hybrids who were mid-cast. Later they made it the same for all. But if you played your melee'ing hybrid the same way a bard twists his songs (i.e. stop one thing to start another) you were fine before the change.