Guild Wars 2

Meteor Shower behaves very strangely.
If you abort casting as soon as the first meteor is dropped, the rest will carry through.

Does channeling for the full duration cause more damage or launch more meteors? I’ve noticed no difference.

Some insight on this would be nice, it’s a very confusing ability with very situational usefulness.

Channeled skills, if interrupted or cancelled before their channel is complete, go on their full cooldown.

In the case of Meteor Shower, the longer you channel the skill, the more meteors will drop in total - if you cancel or are interrupted before completing the cast, only a fraction of the total meteors will fall.
If you cancel before any meteors have fallen, the skill will go on the normal cancel/interrupt cooldown instead of the full 30s.

I didn’t notice a decrease in the number of meteors

There definitely is one – if you cancel casting right after the first meteor falls, you’ll get maybe one further hit per second, which is very noticeable compared to the barrage from a full channel.

During the casttime you cast multiple times a small meteor shower that stacks up.

Try casting it and stop after the first drop. It makes "boom …. pause …. boom* instead of boom boom boomediboom

I don’t see how you can’t notice the difference… It’s huge.

If you really can’t see it, take a short video of the skill when canceled after the first meteor drops and then another with the full channel time. Count the meteors. It’s a very big difference, and plays into the risk/reward of being vulnerable standing still for the duration of the channel.

If that is the case, then excellent.
I do wish the skill tooltip explained this a bit more.

If I cast another spell while it is channeling, will this cancel it as well?

Yes, it cancels when you try casting another spell mid-cast. It’s easier to wait until it finishes casting and then hit the next skill you want to use.

Yes, doing anything apart from instant-cast skills during MS will cancel the channel, setting it on full recharge if any meteors have already fallen.

The only skill I can think of off the top of my head, with 0 cast time, that will cancel the MS channel: Frozen Ground, Staff Water #4. This skill previously had a cast time, so it’s quite possible that it shouldn’t interrupt the channel... but it does! :P
The Magnetic Aura (Staff Earth #3) has 0 cast time and can be cast freely while channeling, as can Arcane utilities, Cantrips, Glyph of Elemental Power and Signet of Air.

That’s very useful to know that instant casts wont interrupt it, thanks!

I wonder if the frozen earth fluke should be reported as bug?

Frozen Ground and Lava Font have cast times under 0.25 seconds, but they aren’t truly instant. Cast times under 0.25 seconds aren’t shown, which is why they appear to be instant cast skills, but truly aren’t. The cast time for Lava Font is 0.2 seconds, and I assume Frozen Ground is about the same.

It’s a bit confusing and could use clarification (i.e. tooltips showing ALL non-instant cast times), but once you learn how they work it’s not too much of a problem.

ExTribble.7108:

Frozen Ground and Lava Font have cast times under 0.25 seconds, but they aren’t truly instant. Cast times under 0.25 seconds aren’t shown, which is why they appear to be instant cast skills, but truly aren’t. The cast time for Lava Font is 0.2 seconds, and I assume Frozen Ground is about the same.

It’s a bit confusing and could use clarification (i.e. tooltips showing ALL non-instant cast times), but once you learn how they work it’s not too much of a problem.

Oh, when did Lava Font’s tooltip drop its cast time? I must’ve missed the patch where that was changed and only caught the Frozen Ground one - not realising that it didn’t become instant, just very very fast.
Thanks for bringing that up! ^__^

To elaborate on "Cast times under 0.25 seconds aren’t shown": all cast times are rounded for display, as are condition/boon durations - but the exact values are always used by the game. I’m not certain how the rounding is done, but from what ExTribble says it sounds like things are always rounded down to the nearest 1/4 second.

It was on the June 25th patch (2013). Upon a second read-thru I saw that Frozen Ground and Lava Font were changed to the 0.2s cast time. I only remembered the change to Lava Font for some reason :P

And it does seem that they’re rounded down because based on those patch notes, Lava Font used to be a 0.36s cast time and it always showed a 0.25 (or 1/4) sec cast time prior to that patch.

Great, thanks for finding that info!