Weapon Swing Timer, Classic?

[Baler]

I was looking at another classic eq site and noticed a couple lines...
Does anyone know anything about this? Or can anyone remember classic live?

Fix: Only NPCs and hybrid PC classes are awarded with reserved melee attacks during channeling; casters and priests will now need to time their spells between melee attacks
Fix: Attack timers are now fully reset when swapping weapons

This would be a big change for casters/priests that currently, on p99 they automatically swing their weapon after a cast, so long as the cast time is greater than the swing delay.

The 2nd line would affect classes that weapon swap. For example this would kill that monk weapon swap dps meta. Was that even classic?

Anyone know anything about this stuff?

[Tiger_King]

After playing necro and a hybrid I can say that it mostly works in the way you posted, there seems to be a few things that mess up the swings on the hybrid even when casting, I believe it’s when a cast takes longer than the melee swing timer or if it’s a pc target spell such as a buff or heal etc bc you drop your attack target to do so. Haven’t tested it thoroughly but pretty sure that’s what I recall seeing/tracking. As for melee as a caster, not tons of ppl play in that play style so it shouldn’t affect many, but I could see some complain about it in the future maybe. Often on my necro I would root and dot to start a fight so I doubt it would change much for the now spreading idea of bone knight. Reason being; when hit with melee attacks while long casting you risk getting interrupted stunned or fizzle/fail to cast anyways so... casters playing as casters is meta for a reason over focusing on their melee play.

As for weap timer reset I do believe it is fully reset on a weap swap, this doesn’t seem to be an issue to me at all as I don’t often swap in combat. If there’s some example your specifically thinking of maybe share it so I could try it to see?

[Donkey Hotay]

What is meant by 'reserved melee attack' and why are you assuming it means there won't be an auto-attack to start the new melee swing timer after a cast?

[Ivory]

They already trying to nerf bones knights!!! -wildpanic!!!-

But also... it doesn't really make a big difference. Especially since if you really cared much, you could just stop attacking while casting... which would reset your attack to attack when the spell lands anyhow.

[Dolalin]

Correct Baler, this seems to be unclassic here. I bugged this in the Green bug forums. Weapon swing timer originally didn't reset for anyone, then it was changed to reset for hybrids only.

[Dolalin]

Here's the main bug thread which I just bumped and linked mine too:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=334518

[Donkey Hotay]

So I just toggle auto-attack off before a cast and then toggle back on after?


Good thing you guys are hunting down these bugs.

[Dolalin]

Your swing timer is still reset even if you have autoattack off, so no that ain't gonna work.

[Danth]

Your swing timer is still reset even if you have autoattack off, so no that ain't gonna work.

Maybe from weapon swapping? Weapon swapping was definitely not a big thing back then.

Toggling attack off, casting spell, then toggling attack back on was very much the standard way of bypassing the spellcast reset in-era. You could also cast a quick spell between weapon swings and it wouldn't slow attack rate provided the spell finished before the weapon delay was up.

Danth

[Mayge]

Ya toggling worked and would almost always do it on my SK for fear kiting.

[Donkey Hotay]

Your swing timer is still reset even if you have autoattack off, so no that ain't gonna work.

Toggling attack off, casting spell, then toggling attack back on was very much the standard way of bypassing the spellcast reset in-era. You could also cast a quick spell between weapon swings and it wouldn't slow attack rate provided the spell finished before the weapon delay was up.



lmao


Are you the guy on the personal crusade against chanters in the Bug forum or is that some other D-name.

[cubiczar]

Maybe from weapon swapping? Weapon swapping was definitely not a big thing back then.

As an old school rogue I can say weapon swapping was pretty big back in the day. I dual'd SBDs with intimidation for solo rogue fear kiting and had lower delay weapons to swap in for chase dmg and a higher dmg main hand for backstabbing.

Whether or not all the swapping resulted in better dps is a separate matter as I didn't know about log parsing for quite a while. But swapping weapons was something I did every fight

[Baler]

lmao
Are you the guy on the personal crusade against chanters in the Bug forum or is that some other D-name.

Please do not Rant or Flame in this thread. If you want to rant or flame go to the appropriate forum section. Thank You.

[Donkey Hotay]

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant how embarrassing that Dolalin couldn't see that turning off auto-attack for =/> swing timer was going to result in an instant swing on autoattack toggle. That was a unfortunate result for his argument and the likelihood of his bug thread gaining serious attention.

[Danth]

I don't see any embarrassment there. Dolalin performs a great deal of valuable research but nobody is 100% on everything, that's why it's a community effort. Case in point, I don't remember about weapon swapping one way or the other, didn't do it myself except for my short few months on the PvP server and can't remember for the life of me whether doing it reset weapon delay. I don't care about it enough to spend hours poring over archived USENET discussion boards.

Danth

[kaev]

I was looking at another classic eq site and noticed a couple lines...
Does anyone know anything about this? Or can anyone remember classic live?



This would be a big change for casters/priests that currently, on p99 they automatically swing their weapon after a cast, so long as the cast time is greater than the swing delay.

The 2nd line would affect classes that weapon swap. For example this would kill that monk weapon swap dps meta. Was that even classic?

Anyone know anything about this stuff?

It's easy enough to tap your auto-attack key before and after casting. That's what you had to do before they allowed hydrids to be lazy back in the day.

[Dolalin]

Wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong about something :D

Evidence always speaks for itself. I'll look for some this coming week.

[Tiger_King]

Part 2 of OP statement: if weap timers were not reset upon weap swap you could actually lose out on dmg when swapping to faster weapons esp going from 2h to 1h... so it seems like it’s more so a normalized buff for everyone rather than a negatively impactful thing. Most ppl as casters are not switching from daggers to staff for melee purposes.... if anything it’s likely a swap to click a cast in which case it’s a total mute point yet again...

Also hybrids aren’t lazy for casting while auto-attack stays on considering they have more to manage overall vs most classes... don’t believe me? Try it over a pet class or healer in a group setting.... if you expect to get by on an argument that hybrids (which usually micromanage during play) are lazy because they don’t have to press x 2 more times every cast then I have several non puller pet casters I’d like you to meet...

[Mayge]

Wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong about something :D

Evidence always speaks for itself. I'll look for some this coming week.

From what I recall it worked liked:

Lets just assume you just swung your weapon.
Then you leave your auto attack on after the swing while you cast a a spell.
If you left autoattack on and your weapon swing timer elapsed(would have been able to swing if not for casting a spell), then you would lose that swing and would reset the timer. essentially the game is counting it as a swing that never happened.
If you turned auto attack off and waited for the spell to finish casting, you would get an instant attack in(assuming the swing timer had elapsed).


i think the hybrid changes they implemented simply meant hybrids didn't have to worry about switching AA on/off.

But basically if your swing timer elapses during a spell cast your timer was reset. Combining slow weapons with faster casting spells can also allow you to avoid the delayand not have to worry about toggling at all.

I'd recommend looking for early era SK tips/guides/posts related to fear kiting and you will probably find some commentary about it and weapon selection related to the issue.

[fastboy21]

I was looking at another classic eq site and noticed a couple lines...
Does anyone know anything about this? Or can anyone remember classic live?



This would be a big change for casters/priests that currently, on p99 they automatically swing their weapon after a cast, so long as the cast time is greater than the swing delay.

The 2nd line would affect classes that weapon swap. For example this would kill that monk weapon swap dps meta. Was that even classic?

Anyone know anything about this stuff?

I'm pretty sure its unclassic. On my shaman I keep attack on so that he can get a swing in between casts...even if you chain cast (like chain clicking your nuke bracer) the attack will go off between casts if the timer has been met. I intentionally pick the highest dam weapon with a delay less than the clicky or a proc weapon for the chance between nukes.

Can't prove it, but I think I would remember that strat from live.

[Danth]

Correct. The Velious-era removal of spellcast autoattack reset was for hybrids ONLY. Regular casting classes had their attacks reset (if they didn't toggle attack off prior to casting) all throughout the classic era and beyond. Beastlords were given that bonus a few months after Luclin came out when it became obvious they needed it. Casters were only added during Planes of Power, I think, maybe even one of the post-PoP half-eras like Ykesha. I don't remember exactly when they got it but it was definitely far beyond the era P1999 covers. Never seemed like a big deal to me here on P99 because of how trivially it's bypassed anyway.

Danth

[kaev]

...

Also hybrids aren’t lazy for casting while auto-attack stays on considering they have more to manage overall vs most classes... don’t believe me? Try it over a pet class or healer in a group setting.... if you expect to get by on an argument that hybrids (which usually micromanage during play) are lazy because they don’t have to press x 2 more times every cast then I have several non puller pet casters I’d like you to meet...

"lazy" was a joke.

Back in the day it was ignorance combined with an acute shortage of cleverness that caused hybrids (and priests) to miss swings due to spellcasting. The players that benefited most were those who had never realized they could turn auto-attack off and on to avoid missing swings. Players who understood and had practice at tapping attack off/on gained a little when lagging, because you didn't have a latency delay restarting your attack when the spellcast finished.

There was a lot of ignorance of game and UI mechanics among the players back then. I was accused of hacking the game client because I had made a hotkey of my secondary slot to allow hotswapping a shield to bash casters with my half-elf warrior. On p99 even the "Velious UI" required on Green allows you to keep your inventory and bags open all the time so we never need to sacrifice a precious hotkey slot for gear swapping.