Aftercast delay

From Guild Wars Wiki

After activating a skill there is a short period of time during which players cannot move or activate skills. Most skills that have an activation time (except attack skills) will have this aftercast delay.

• Standard spells and skills with an activation time have an aftercast delay of 0.75 seconds.
• Prior to the March 6th, 2008 update, point blank area of effect spells had an aftercast delay of 1.75 seconds, the update reduced the aftercast delays of most or all such spells to 0.75 seconds.
• Ranger Bow Attacks with an activation time of 0.5 seconds have an aftercast delay of 1.25 seconds and the arrow is fired 0.25s after activation.
• Shouts & stances have neither an activation time nor an aftercast delay.
• Most attack skills have no intrinsic aftercast delay as they use the timing of the attacker's weapon; however, note that although bow interrupts can be used without regard to attack timing, the attack timing is still in effect, so the next attack or skill will wait until the next round, appearing like aftercast delay.
  • (For example, say you attack once per second. At 0s, you shoot; the next attack cannot occur until 1s, and then 2s, etc. But a skill like Distracting Shot can instead be used any time between 0s and 1s (even immediately after the 0s attack); this still uses up the 1s round, and the next round can't begin till 2s, making it seem like the delay is due to aftercast. In other words, if you used the interrupt at exactly 1s like a normal attack, it would be indistinguishable in terms of delay.)

In certain cases the Aftercast delay can be cancelled by shadow stepping (on demand: Shadow Walk; conditional: Augury of Death, Scorpion Wire).