Cast Timing 101

In watching the [All] chat feed, one Magician-oriented question that I see repeatedly asked is:

Why don't my spells always cast the first time I push the button?

This comes down to the the fundamental mechanic of cast timing, and the rather unforgiving manner in which the GoA developers have implemented it in their game (especially in comparison to some of the "looser" implementations like World of Warcraft).

Simply put, cast timing refers to when you need to initiate a subsequent spell with relation to a prior spell being cast in order for it to activate.  In GoA, the mechanic seems to be that the activation timer for Spell A must fully complete before Spell B can be initiated.  (This is markedly different than the cast "queuing" system employed in WoW, where a second spell can be "preloaded" to activate shortly before the first spell cast has completed.)

Where I think that this can sometimes challenge GoA nukers is with regards to our standard Magic Attack.  Unlike our other spells, Magic Attack is a toggled "autoattack" ability, meaning that when you push/click the key/button to initially activate the spell, it stays on and continuously reactivates itself until toggled back off.  (Our other spells are single-use charges.)  Although I have yet to thoroughly test, it anecdotally feels like the time between reactivations of Magic Attack could be as short as 0.5 seconds, despite the 1.80 second cooldown professed in the skill description.

As such, in order to cast another spell like Flame Shot for instance, the Magician would need to either precisely activate Flame Shot within that brief window between Magic Attack reactivations, or momentarily toggle off Magic Attack, cast Flame Shot (or whatever spell is trying to be cast), and then re-toggle Magic Attack back on.  I suspect that my fellow nukers who are asking the question which prompted this post really are trying to activate a spell 2/3/4 times before it goes off, but it is only the last attempt which is aligning with the Magic Attack reactivation window and resulting in a successful nuke.

Whichever approach is taken - timing, or toggling - the result should be the same: a wall of casting carnage.  Happy nuking!

Baby Steps - Grak

In the annals of video game combat history, this is definitely one of the less significant achievements, but it gave me a chance to cut my solo nuker teeth and test out some of the game mechanics that I had picked up after a few hours in Gates of Andaron.

Grak is a Level 14 Gremlin Boss which needs to be defeated as part of the quest, Luntar is Strong.  He had four-times my HP and a support mob in tow, but with the use of some pathing and the fact that mobs can't jump,  it was a pretty straightforward and easy fight.

After clearing out the handful of aggroing mobs on the way to Grak's spawnpoint in Evergreen Forest, I waited until his back was turned and pulled and killed the minor Gremlin that shared Grak's hill.  I'm not sure if this was necessary, but since both mob names were in yellow, I didn't want to take the chance of fighting two mobs at once.  (If it was necessary, then I can confirm that Grak has some sort of visual cone to aggro.)  Once I regen'd full HP and MP, I used Flame Shackles to pull Grak away from the other surrounding aggro mobs and towards the steps immediately across from him.  My pull position is shown in the screenshot below.

This is where pathing came in, and ultimately led to his [easy] defeat.  Even with the -50% movement speed effect from Flame Shackles, I still took one pretty hard hit from Grak, but was able to jump up onto the second step in the "staircase".  I stress second because he was still able to hit me on the first step.  As shown in the Info Pane of the below screenshot, from that point I just alternated Flame Shot and Fire Spirit's Curse while autoattack casting with my staff.  I took no damage, and had Grak dead in no time.

Again, especially compared to some other fights that I've won in the past, this was a baby battle. It was nice to get this first one under my belt though, and begin to understand solo nuking as a Magician in Gates of Andaron.

Hello World!

Hello, and welcome!  I am Zinshan, Fairy Magician of Lapiris District 3 in the online MMORPG, Gates of Andaron.  I have created this blog to help share my experiences and learnings with my fellow gamers.

A bit about me:

• I am a highly experienced MMO player, having spent several years leading hardcore endgame content in FFXI, WoW, and most recently, Rappelz.
• Be it as a Black Mage, Mage, Chaos Magician, or Magician, I am a career nuker. Blowing stuff up is what I do, and it will be exclusively from the Magician's perspective that I will write all of my guides and strategies.
• I specialize in doing things solo/lowman, meaning that you can expect my posts to focus on taking down mobs alone, or with one or two close friends.
• Having learned from the great Team Kanikan, I am a stickler for game mechanics, and how to best leverage them to achieve success in difficult encounters.

I have started this blog to track my progress from Day One - which was yesterday - through the full lifecycle and evolution of Zinshan.  As such, you will likely see me stumble around initially while I learn the basic gameplay and combat system, but bear with me; if past performance is any indicator, my future successes will be noteworthy.

Cheers!