I do not have exact numbers on hand for you on timers but I can give you accurate estimates with which you can work with. Currently there a few major issues with Mage combat. The most game altering one is recovery. Casting recovery is a timer associated with each spell that prevents you from casting another spell until the recovery time is up. Recovery timers are not being implemented correctly here. In general a recovery timer is greater than the time needed to actually get the cursor for a spell up. For example if you cast an Energy Bolt and target it the moment your cursor comes up, you cannot start another spell until the recovery timer finishes. The art of "fast casting" is learning the different recovery timers for different circles of spells, and "paying" that time off before targetted. Example. If you cast that same energy bolt, but hold the cursor up for around three quarters of a second to a second, you can instantly start a new spell the moment you target the ebolt. This is called fast casting , and any mage pvper with their salt understands this process and uses it both offensively and defensively. Here is where the issue is on UO:R. Fast casting here works as intended normally. However upon spell interuption, you cannot instantly start another spell. You should be able to. The only time recovery comes into play is when you have actually aquired the spell cursor, thus completing the cast, regardless of targetting. So if you are interupted on say your cure before you get your cursor, you should be able to immediately restart your cure, most likely beating out the next attempt at interupting it unless your adversary had fast cast it. It is not that noticeable here with cure for reasons I will explain later in this post but in bigger spells like gheal and so forth it becomes far more apparent. The way it is acting here is sort of a hybrid of recovery upon interuption. If you are interupted mid spell here, you have a recovery timer you still need to wait out, however that recovery timer is now only the time it would of taken to get the initial cursor. And not the full recovery timer. I am not sure as to the WHY of this, but that is how it appears. This affects both opponents interupting you, and self interuption. One advanced mage dueling technique called "daggering or candling" involves arming yourself with a weapon or item, in this case the dagger or candle, midcast before you get a cursor in order to immediately switch spells or restart your spell. This is used in many ways. One is to juke out your opponent into casting the wrong defensive spell. Example. Explode hold through recovery, target, start Energy Bolt , your opponent then responds by starting a greater heal, you arm dagger interupt your ebolt and immediately start a poison which they are unprepared for. It can also be used DEFENSIVELY to make someone who is interupting your cure interupt the wrong cure. Example: Opponent explodes then poisons you, fast casting into harm in order to disrupt your cure attempt. You respond by starting cure, equipping dagger while your opponent targets harm, and starting a second cure ahead of their next disrupt attempt. Its a very important part of skilled mage combat. When you dagger interrupt yourself here, you suffer from the aforementioned recovery issues where you still cannot immediately start a new spell, until you would of gotten a spell cursor. Again not sure why its just the cursor and not the entire recovery time in this instance but let us thank the gods its only that at the moment or mage combat would be ridiculous and just who poisons who first. As it stands now, it is still very much a race to get your opponent poisoned and to use massive first circle spam to keep them from curing. That is the basis of mage combat as it is for sure anyways, but the advantage for the attacker here without proper daggering, or offensively using uninteruptable first circle spam like magic arrow is overpowered and not accurate. Again for clarification, interruption of spellcasting should not incur a recovery penalty in any form, be it the full penalty or this hybrid cursor time penalty. Second issue. Spell timers. A few spells are quite a bit off on their timers. Though I want to give credit where credit is due, magic arrow, and Lightning two of the biggest culprits on UOR based servers , have accurate timers here and I was very pleased seeing their delays. Too many "UOR" era servers have instant dmg arrow/Lightning ala AOS. So Kudos on that. The two biggest culprits here are: Explode and Greater Heal. Explosion is a 6th circle spell with a delay from targetting to damage. It allows for combos to be set up. Currently the delay on explosion here is nearly twice as long as normal. Not quite but clearly over 1.5x the normal delay. If you cast explode and hold it so that you can fast cast the next spell, and you cast energy bolt afterward and target it immediately, the damage should be almost exactly the same time. Here, the ebolt hits considerably earlier. Here I can literally cast explode, target , cast nox, target, cast harm and target the harm before the explode hits. That is SOOO far off. It needs to be shorted by .4-.5 seconds. Greater Heal : Entirely too fast as well. When you cast mini heal the cursor comes up a fraction of a second before your first pump animation is at midpoint. When you cant greater heal it comes up a fraction of a second after it hits midpoint and starts its second half. There is very small difference between the two. Its not as pronounced a difference as the explosion delay but its very easily seen.
While this is a rehashed topic, I must say you've worded this quite well and it sounds pretty straight forward to me. I look forward to the feedback from Ezekiel and the pvp community at large. I will say it has seemed nigh on impossible to interrupt a greater heal cast with melee and perhaps your understanding is correct. I pack a katana on my LJ and after a good chop or two will try to toggle to that and while I can get some good hits off, I still feel like I rarely ever see melee disrupts. I've also 'daggered' before a bunch on my dexxers, intentionally disrupting things but rarely because I'm hardly casting spells higher than 4th circle anyway. It makes total sense in regards to forcibly stopping yourself mid-cast. Almost forgot, because I can't help it, it's "would have" not "would of", which seemingly is a misinterpretation of "would've". Sorry for that.
This is not the case nor has it ever been during the Renaissance era. There has always been the standard recovery delay upon spell interruption & going forward from the era it was not until the AoS expansion with the release of faster casting & recovery items was it ever possible to immediately recast another spell upon interruption without waiting out the delay. Again, this was never the case under any mechanics in era prior to the release of Age of Shadows. If this were possible it would completely negate the entire concept of the UOR pvp strategy of attempting to keep your opponent in a poison-lock preventing them from being able to heal. If this were true then all one would need to do is simply hold down your hotkey for cure & there would be absolutely no possibility of ever disrupting the opponent more than once which was certainly more than possible in era. These are the appropriate mechanics for the era & as such why they are this way here. Self interruption follows the same mechanics as interruption from another player or monster does. Disrupting your own spells via taking damage via popping magic trapped pouches or equipping an item (i.e; candling) has always incurred the standard recovery delay. This is a common misconception that has been thrown around numerous times & in my opinion many players believe this to be the accurate mechanics simply because UOGamers Hybrid has it set this way. This is not how the mechanics should function. The 1 second damage delay existed for all spells in era except for harm, explosion & earthquake & as you've stated are the accurate timers for these spells & why they are implemented as such here. The explosion spell is currently set to the appropriate damage delay. It was not possible in era to simply queue an energy bolt following an explosion in order to sync the damage. Because of the damage delay on energy bolt combined with the casting time, in order to sync damage from the combination of explosion/energy bolt you will need to apply the appropriate delay in targeting the energy bolt after the spell cursor comes up, queuing the target will not achieve this.
Months ago I was more into dueling, and I was dueling with Clyde for awhile on TC and ended up in a situation where he lead with a poison while I was at full health and used weaken and harm to interrupt my cure until I was down to the ~20 range and then finished me with an EB. I spent all of that time attempting to cure. Afterwords I asked him what I should have done and he said the only way I could have survived was by using a circle 1 to interrupt one of his harms. That didn't seem like a safe option so I pretty much decided I wouldn't be able to beat him consistently. I did ask around and other people said that Clyde had low ping which helped, I really can't say. I'm not saying that because I couldn't heal an attack that the system is broken. I'm not the best dueler and if there are people better than me then it is probably a good and working system. But I was surprised to not be able to cure a poison for so long. I don't expect people to prevent a cure more than 2-3 times reliably. So when Akasha mentioned to me what he thought was wrong with spell recovery, I told him it made sense to me. I don't suppose that adds anything to his argument, I just wanted to share my experience.
We are just going to have to disagree then. I never played Hybrid. What I did play though was OSI. To a level that I won the Tournament of Champions, held by OSI, on two different servers. The only player in all of UO to do so. I played during this era, to such a degree of expertise I was extremely well known. This era was my best in all of UO, and I knew every timer, and every mechanic. So I am 100% confident when I say that when you daggered a spell, there was no recovery. End of story. You seem firmly planted in your opinion and you are the admin, so I will adapt to the way you have it. However, I know without a doubt from expert experience that there was absolutely no delay upon daggering spells on OSI in Publish 15. The explode delay is also not even debateable. I can get TWO spells to land before the explode does. That has NEVER been possible in any era of UO. Not even in aos with 4/6 could you explode, Nox , harm and have the harm dmg before the ex dmg. Like I said, I like it here, I like the staff, and I can easily adapt, Ive already done so. I was trying to be helpful. Not offensive. I could care less what hybrid did. AS for what you said about dmg delay with ebolt, yes there is a dmg delay from targeted ebolt, that has nothing to do with explode delay being too long. If you cast explode , held it, cast ebolt you targetted ebolt within miliseconds of getting the cursor for its delay and explodes delay to synch up and hit together. I dont use ques. So again that arguement is also irrelevent. I have never used a que in UO in history. You can manuallly target within miliseconds of the cursor coming up with a keystroke timed correct. The delay on ebolt has nothing to do with anything. Never in history, and Ive played OSI in every era, and countless player run servers throughout the years, have I had to let go an explode, start a poison, HOLD THE POISON for over a FULL second, release the poison, have them start their cure, and then the explode hits to interrupt. I am sorry man, the delay is just way way long. Roman agreed when we were dueling earlier. As has every single other mage ive dueled so far and talked about with it. Ask Meijin , Im positive he will agree too. Explode delay is so long here that sometimes people release it defensively, cast a cure, cast a mini heal, start antoher mini heal and their explode then hits and interupts me. I almost forget they cast an explode cause it got pony expressed into next weeks mail. Come on. This isnt an insult to anyone, or the server. Its a legitimate issue.
The explosion delay in AoS was actually longer than it was prior to that expansion release, by an additional 0.5 seconds. Under the AoS mechanics, when utilizing 4/6 casting it was entirely possible to cast a small array of lower circle spells after targeting an explosion before the damage applied. It wasn't uncommon to see players utilize spell combos like explosion -> fireball -> poison -> magic arrow or something of similar nature. The default delay before damage application for explosion is 2.5 seconds after targeting. After Age of Shadows the delay was raised to a flat 3 seconds. Certainly, I didn't take your post to come off as an offensive suggestion or demand for change. Ditto, however its no secret that many players have over the years mistaken their mechanics for how things "were" on production servers & what they feel certain things "should be". This has been the case on numerous subjects & a good example of that is damage & efficiency from wands. Many believe they "should" operate at a flat 100/100 magery/eval effectiveness or simply take the user's skills into account, however that was not the case & in era they functioned off a flat rate of 60.0 magery & 0.0 eval. If we lowered the damage delay from explosion down from what it is now it would not be possible to sync damage from these 2 spells together. Even with queuing the energy bolt immediately as the cursor came up you would not be able to sync the damages together in any circumstances if we reduced the delay on explosion.
I synched them many times today in duels, even after daggering a nox in between them. Ill just learn to adapt, already figured out the timing and how to break the cure lock earlier today with Roman. Its not a big deal. The explosion thing is just so alien to me, and gheal is hardly longer than mini! Just watch the animation. Itll be fine though.
I seem to recall casting Exp-Mb-Poison or Exp-MB-Lit and having it land right about the same time on EA servers during AoS.
'not quite sure where I stand on the Explo/Ebolt issue. It's been so long.. and with my computer still borked, I can't get a feel for it here, unfortunately. I seem to remember that when fast-casting the Ebolt, I would have to hold it a short time to synch them. When casting them back-to-back, the damage did not come in at precisely the same moment, but close enough. Yes and no? I'm not entirely certain Ezekiel has it right when saying.. ..but I, too, seem to recall a delay upon spell interruption. At a guess, you were mostly daggering Cures and maybe Poisons? The delay wasn't really noticeable with low circle spells, and your assertions concerning defensive play sound accurate. But with 6th circle spells, yeah, I think it was there. If you went Explo/Explo[dagger]/Poison, you'd notice a delay before it would let you attempt to cast the Poison.
Definitely wish daggering worked as it did back then on here. Not really sure why it doesn't. I think Akasha had it mostly right when it came to daggering, but to my knowledge there were two different delays when being interrupted - One for self interrupts (daggering as we called it back then) that was near instant recovery (possibly a small delay, but definitely a fraction of the recovery than normal disrupt dealy) and then when being disrupted by anything else the standard disrupt delay as you see here. Anyone that says self disrupts didn't recover faster must have not 5xed much or not have been at a high enough level to know, because daggering was a staple for anyone that was good at 5x. It's been so long ago that some things I won't say I am sure on, however this self disrupt delay was definitely a thing back then - otherwise why would daggering even be a thing? Also is there any reason why explo pot countdown timers are not shown to all and only the person throwing? I guess I don't understand the reasoning behind it..
