Guild Wars 2

I noticed that certain skills like Eruption (Staff Earth #2) and Meteor Shower (Staff Fire #5) I can actually move away/dodge/etc before the casting bar finishes, and the spell still goes off. I think I can even cast them and immediately dodge away and they still go.

Yet other spells like Staff Earth #5 (forget the name), I have to wait the ENTIRE cast bar., otherwise it won’t activate. Similarly with the Signet that applies burning. If I cast it, and dodge right away, the spell won’t activate but it WILL have a cooldown of 3-5 seconds for some lame reason.

What is the deal? Why the inconsistencies? Why have cast bars if they are meaningless for certain abilities?

Also, is there a list of which abilities the cast bar matters for and which abilities it doesn’t?

May be it’s bug, and will be fixed as other minor bugs, which gave elementalist minimal advantage (of course without fixing critical bugs). Anet hates elementalists, live with it…

If you break the cast bar on Meteor Shower during the cast, the amount of Meteors that drop are significantly less and drop a extreme slow rate over the duration. I think on Eruption, the damage is significantly less and does not apply all 5 stacks of bleed. Not quite sure on that one, gonna have to test it. The secondary cooldown for breaking some skills before the cast time is there so if you break it before cast, you’re not penalized with the full CD of the skill but in stead a secondary cooldown before you can activate the spell again.

So you should always let the cast bars run their full timer, even if it doesn’t LOOK like it’s necessary?

These are excellent questions. I would love to get a more objective idea of what happens when a skill is used.

Casting time?, will movement break it being cast?, does the animation directly demonstrate when something is cast (or is there a delay)?, can it be cast at the same time something else is cast?, does the whole cast bar have to happen before it works (or works fully)? I have lots of questions like this.

This should all be included in the skill descriptions when you mouse over them and it would make it much easier to tune combinations.

Yes, as far as Staff goes, anything with a cast bar needs to run it’s course. Casting Eruption and breaking the cast bar before it’s done causes the skill to do no damage and apply no stacks of bleed. It also does not proc any fields as a blast finisher since the skill was not completed.

@ Eddard – Almost all skills can be cast on the move except 2. Healing Rain and Meteor Shower. These two require you to be completely still while casting. Any type of movement during those 2 skills during cast will cause the cast break and initiate the secondary cooldown. E.G. hitting w/s/a/d or rolling will break the cast bar. In Meteor Showers case, if the cast bar is broken before Meteors start being summoned, it will trigger the secondary CD. If you break the bar after the Meteors start being summoned, the full CD will trigger. It seems that for this skill, depending on when you break the cast bar affects the amount of Meteors dropped. If you’re running a Staff, you should ALWAYS let cast bars finish before casting another skill.

@ hakurface: Thanks bro (or sis).