How useful is fast-casting really?

[catharsis]

Other than the Mantra associated with it (which makes skills recharge faster), I'm just not sure how useful the Mesmer primary's fast casting really is... or rather, perhaps the issue is that domination, illusion and inspiration are all extremely useful lines. Obviously, fast casting is better than slow casting... but is it so much better that your ability points aren't better spent elsewhere?

Primary mesmers, any thoughts?

[Quintus]

On a Mesmer it isn't the most useful attribute ever, because of changes made to most of the Mesmer's interrupting spells (namely making most only take less than a second to cast). But it is extremely useful for Elementalist (>6 second AOE spells), Necromancer (Numerous high casting time spells), and Monks (>6 second Ressurects).

[Soul Monarch]

As a Me/N, I have zero points in Fast Cast at the moment. (I'm Illusion/Blood/Inspiration.)

Once I have some more useful skills in the curses or death lines, I'll respec to take advantage of Fast Cast. But for right now, 90% of the Blood Spells I use have low cast time, so it's pointless. But if I were raising minions or casting high power curses then I'd want it.

Now... if you were a Me/E fast cast would be just about the greatest thing ever.

[d4nowar]

some domination skills have fairly long casting times, cant think of what they are but i played a me/mo like crazy in all of the bwe, and i definitely noticed it.

also, if you are up against another mesmer, it lowers the chances that you will get interrupted. so i'd suggest putting your extra points into fast casting.

[Akasha]

I sort of have this same dilemma as well. I've played both mes/nec and nec/mes to ~lvl 10 or so, and like them both. Fast casting dosen't have as pronounced effect as soul reaping does, and I sort of "assume" fast casting is working even though it doesn't seem very strong. Anyone know what the gain in fast casting is per point spent in it?

Anyways, sorry to hijack, but I'm wondering if any seasoned players could lay some facts down about the pros and cons of mesmer or necro as a primary class (mostly pve at this point).

[Sjoerd]

I have been thinking about a mesmer as well - but fast casting didn't seem very appealing. How would an elementalis/mesmer work out? In priority I would play a mesmer, but I would use the high energy of an elementalist.

[seraphesy]

I play Me/E and use long cast time AOE spells of an elementalist
When I team up with other elementalists, they always complain that I kill things (cast faster) so that they can't do anything :P

but... in PvP, fire AOE is kinda not as effective as against PvE...
and Air or Water don't have that long casting time...

[Raiddinn Beatdropper]

I would never trade in storage for fast cast, and I would never use fire, so fast casting to me is pretty much worthless.

Me with Wiz/Mez and my friend with mez/wiz have been side by side, same lvl, same progress.. most of the game, both with earth and inspire and me with air thrown in, and we both had lvl 5 or 6 in energy/fast cast and I dont know why, but to me my char just feels more powerful than his.

I think a lot of it is the extra energy supply being just better than fast cast. With fast cast, assuming a mez/wiz dedicated a slot to mana tap, to try and compete in mana with the wiz/mez, forsaking the benefits of fast cast due to more spells being required from the mez/wiz vs the wiz/mez, the wiz/mez I am pretty sure would still win out.

Tsunamii Starshine

[kerpow]

As usual, playstyle is the answer.

I prefer fast casting over energy storage. My thoughts are being faster always helps but lasting longer only helps when you need to last longer. (I hope this never gets taken out of context).

If you want to play a blaster-esque role then I would expect a Me/E to get better burst DPS but the E/Me to get better sustained DPS.

[Expunge]

As usual, playstyle is the answer.

I prefer fast casting over energy storage. My thoughts are being faster always helps but lasting longer only helps when you need to last longer. (I hope this never gets taken out of context).

If you want to play a blaster-esque role then I would expect a Me/E to get better burst DPS but the E/Me to get better sustained DPS.
I should have went Me/E instead of E/Me, lol :(

Doing insane burst DPS is something that's very appealing to me, even if I have to dump all my mana at once to do it. You think it will matter if you're out of mana when everything on the screen is dead? Or would it matter that the E/X you just finished off still had 50 mana left when he died? Being able to spam those 5e 1s spells really quickly would be a plus too. Flare spam would own :>

I want to see how a Me/E would do with 10 FC / 10 Air / 10 Dom. That would rule. Or even 10 FC / 10 Air / 10 Ins. The energy/life steal would come alot faster if you ran into trouble (both of those spells are annoyingly long to cast when you *really* need them)

[Ensign]

Fast Casting Mesmer/Elementalists are awful. There really isn't a good way to put it - you give up the hat and superior rune to grab fast casting, and that does awful, awful things to your damage output.

The short answer is that you need ten in Fast Casting to deal the same DPS with a Mesmer/Ele as with an Ele/* with the Superior. That's just to get the same damage per second - you're still going to run into cooldown walls, you're still burning through energy much faster than the ele, and you just don't have the damage to show for it. Get up into the 13, 14 Fast Casting range and there might be a debate, but until then, there simply is none.

On a character that wants to use 2-3 second cast time Mesmer skills (Backfire and friends), I like Fast Casting a lot in the 7-9 base attribute range. It's also rather nice when comboed with long cast skills like the various Resses. As mentioned it does not help with interrupts much at all, and it generally isn't so good that you want to dump a ton of points into it. But it's definitely worth using.

Just don't waste your time on the Mes/Ele nuker please.

Peace,
-CxE

[Banta]

Since I’m not to concerned with PvE I went with Me/N over N/Me for the fast casting just in case. It will be fun to play with even if I don’t end up sticking with it.

[Molvania]

the fast casting is only good for pure Mesmers or Me/E anything else its just a waste to use and it is only good to have like 3-5 fast casting

[Twilight Doll]

Here's my take on fast casting.

1. Less time to cast means the sooner the skill will recharge for use.
2. When doing something such as running from the enemy, it helps to have fast cast so you can quicky go on about your business without getting hit too much or at all. (On warriors or even anyon chasing me, I can usually stack 2-3 hexes easily without getting hit when they're chasing me with imagined burden in a single chain. lvl 8+ fast cast)
3. Counter-casting

I would only put skills into fast casting really if you're a pure mesmer build.

The biggest reason is just simply dishing out spells/skills a lot quicker than others. You'll definately notice the difference when you put more points into it.

[Akasha]

the fast casting is only good for pure Mesmers or Me/E anything else its just a waste to use and it is only good to have like 3-5 fast casting

Wouldn't a mesmer/necro build benefit quite well from some points in fast casting? Necro spells generally have long casting times, depending on which ones you're using. I chose mes/nec over nec/mes because I feel like I can survive a little bit longer by getting off important spells faster. Maybe it's all in my head, I dunno. Those points spent in fast casting are sure hard to part with I'll tell you that :p

[JYX]

I wouldn't say that...for example I made a very nice nuker dual attunement build with Mesmer primary and fast casting as the base of its large DPS. Fast casting is a creative skill, it makes skills useful...like Arcane Conundrum or erm...Energy Tap.

[Desferous]

Ensign, Can you explain the hat and superior rune comment? I don't know what you are talking about.

[Zarconis]

He's referring to the headgear that often adds 1 attribute point (available for your unique attribute) as well as adding a superior rune (+3) to that.

[Ensign]

Basically a primary class attribute can be pumped to 16 using the appropriate +1 headgear and a superior rune (+3), while a secondary class attribute is limited to whatever its natural level is. Thus an Elementalist/Mesmer can have 16 in Fire Magic, while a Mesmer/Elementalist can only have a 12 in Fire Magic, and so forth.

Just for the sake of comparison, look at Fireball. An Ele/Mesmer is casting it at level 16, dealing 119 damage per cast - the Mesmer/Elementalist is casting it at level 12, for 91 damage per cast. The former takes 2.75 seconds total to cast - the latter has a variable casting time due to Fast Casting, but at a fairly typical level 10 it'd have a casting time of 2.05 seconds.

Just on pure DPS, the Elementalist is getting 43.27 DPS from his Fireballs, while the Mesmer is getting 44.39. So the two are fairly comparable on those grounds alone.

But then you have to take energy costs into account. While they're getting similar DPS figures, the Elementalist is only spending 5.45 Energy per second on that Fireball, while the Mesmer is spending 7.31. On top of that the cooldowns work in the Elementalist's favor - they can chain cast using fewer skills as their spells take longer, while the Mesmer ends up needing to fit in more to always have something available.

Plus Energy Storage.

It's a cute strategy at low levels when hats and runes aren't available, but once you get to higher levels, have access to major runes or better, and generally start approaching optimal strategy, the Mesmer/Elementalist quickly becomes useless.

Peace,
-CxE

[Red Locust]

That's all great on calculator, but what Ensign fails to mention is that in PvP, the speed at which you deliver spells matters a lot. Let's say you have fast casting at 10, you can cast a Phoenix in 2 seconds, as opposed to the usual 3 second cast. That essentially lets you put in another 1second spell in the time it takes the E/Me to cast one Phoenix. It makes a huge difference when you are stacking hexes on an enemy and can manage to stack 3 in the time it normally takes to stack 2.

And cooldown problems can be easily avoided by chaining a power drain spell in between casts. You are denying the enemy energy and refilling yours while the E/Me is still casting. After several spells, the time saved really starts to add up.

[NiGht_HaWk]

That's all great on calculator, but what Ensign fails to mention is that in PvP, the speed at which you deliver spells matters a lot. Let's say you have fast casting at 10, you can cast a Phoenix in 2 seconds, as opposed to the usual 3 second cast. That essentially lets you put in another 1second spell in the time it takes the E/Me to cast one Phoenix. It makes a huge difference when you are stacking hexes on an enemy and can manage to stack 3 in the time it normally takes to stack 2.

And cooldown problems can be easily avoided by chaining a power drain spell in between casts. You are denying the enemy energy and refilling yours while the E/Me is still casting. After several spells, the time saved really starts to add up.

Heartily agreed. But ive heard that fast casting doesnt work on spells with 1 second casting times or less. So if you are going for an interrupt mesmer, fast casting does you no good at all.

Im pretty sure its like 3-4% casting time decrease for each point.

Fast casting can be great for a monk with alot of resurrect spells which have 8 second casting times. You could reduce that casting time easily to 6 seconds, which can mean the difference between life and death.

[Red Locust]

Actually, fast casting does affect 1 second or less spells. At a fast casting of 16, all your spell casting times are pretty much halved. Also, putting more points into fast casting yields diminishing returns, so you can get a hefty part of the bonus by leaving fast casting at around 9 or 10.

And, while its true that the domination line of spells has very quick casting times, Illusion and Inspiration spells take quite a bit longer to cast, and you want to be able to cast illusion spells as quick as possible when there's a warrior running after you.

[Erasmus]

About the most useful things fast casting helps are interrupts ( every millisecond counts) and res spells. Basically anything time sensitive.

when talking about DD, it doesnt help as much as people think. In almost all cases, an elementalist prmary with the same number of points in energy storage, will do more damage over a battle. Simply put, energy, not time, is the biggest limiting factor for a nuker.