All spellcasters - A chance to up your DPS by 10-20% (Quart

[Logros]

Was going to put this in the Stratagies forum, but I figured it's worth going a bit OT to get this known. First, the mod and quick strategy I'm going to point folks to is /not/ for everyone. It involves starting at a latency bar with an obsessive compunction for efficiency. If you're just having fun, close this post now :p

Here's the basic rundown:
1) Get the Quartz mod (http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Quartz)
2) Create /stopcasting macros for your non-instant attack spells
3) Watch Latency stop being a limiting factor on your DPS

Quartz is pretty straight forward. If you just want to use the latency bar, all you have to do is install it. It'll replace your regular blizzard castbar, and add a red section at the end. That red section indicates your latency. Now, casting normally, you cast your spell and can then cast your /next/ spell after the casttime+latencytime has expired. So if you've got a 2s spell (say.. talented Lightning Bolt for no uh.. particular reason), and your latency is 300ms (0.3 seconds), then you're going to be casting LBs every 2.3 seconds. Quartz also by default shows the global cooldown, which I find to be useful (to set that up, go to the Quartz menu with /quartz, and hit Global Cooldown - enter the name of an instant cast spell, hit enter, then enter a backup just in case. Voila)

To create a /stopcasting macro, all you do is open up your macros (/m, or use the options menu), and set up a macro for your spell, like so:

/stopcasting
/cast Lightning Bolt
/y PEWPEWOMGZLAZRZ

Replace your Lightning Bolt spell on your action bar with the macro, and use that instead. Alternately, if you /don't/ want to have the stopcasting in all the time, you can also do:

/stopcasting [modifierhift]
/cast Lightning Bolt

This'll only trigger the stopcasting part of the macro if you click the action bar with Shift held down.

**

So, with your stopcasting macro and quartz in hand, you go pewpew things (or heal things, pfft). When you cast the spell, as soon as your Quartz bar fills up to the red section, you hit the next spell. Instead of starting the cast at 2.3s (casting time + latency), you're casting it at about 2s. Doesn't sound like much maybe, but that's a 'free' increase of about 13% DPS.

The pitfall of this is that:
a) If you hit it too early, you cancel your spell, wasting time.
b) It requires you to be staring at that casting bar instead of at the game window
c) It's tricky to use in fights with a lot of movement, mostly because you have to focus on the castbar to such a high degree

**

Anyways, tossing this out there. I'm hoping folks will adopt it at least for fights like Gruul - we woulda had that fat SOB if folks were using this, of that i'm sure.

[Guest]

/installs Quartz
/boosts DPS by 13%
/pulls aggro 13% faster
/dies

Joking aside, I like the idea of this macro. The soft spot is always there anyway. You can start casting your next spell before the first one fully completes, but having a visual indicator would be helpful. Thanks, Logros.

[Logros]

Because your latency (lag) changes cast to cast, if you're using a /stopcasting macro (needed to cast without latency turn-around), you're risking cancelling your spell, or playing it 'safe' and not getting the full benefit. If you're not /stopcasting, then starting the next cast 'early' (by hitting the cast before the first is finished) wouldn't help your speed, afaik, since you'd still have to wait for the server to OK it. Might work, but I haven't seen any testing to say it does.

Folks have asked me a few times how this works, so I guess I didn't explain it really well. Just doing things normally, when you cast a spell, the time it takes is the base time of the spell, and then once that's finished, your client tells the server that it's done, the server tells your client you can take other actions, and that allows you to start casting again. That's why there's the lag. If you watch someone using this, there won't be that slip pause between casts, it'll be constant.

[Logros]

I've tested out the casting early without the /stopcasting macro, and it doesn't help. The spell isn't starting until the cast time + latency period is up.

I'd recommend folks give this a whirl, especially since we've got Gruul today :lol: