Aftercast delay

Aftercast delay is the period after successfully activating certain skills, during which players cannot move or activate other skills. Aftercast delay, which is almost always 0.75¾ second ("s"), is common for skills that have an activation time, but otherwise uncommon. If a skill causes an aftercast delay, (a) your character cannot move or auto-attack until the end of the aftercast period and (b) the skill must be queued, so it cannot be used while knocked down.

Guidelines

Aftercast delay

These skill types always have an aftercast delay of 0.75¾ (unless noted further below):

• All chants, echoes, glyphs, and rituals
• All spells (unless listed below).
• Five skills without activation times: Air of Superiority, Burning Shield, Feral Aggression, Inspirational Speech and Ursan Force;
• All forms, except for the elite Norn ones (Raven, Ursan, and Volfen Blessing);
• All signets except Dolyak Signet;
• All other skills, unless listed below.

Exceptions

The following skills do not have an aftercast delay, even though they fit one or more of the categories above:

• Dwarven Stability
• Scorpion Wire (a hex spell with a situational Shadow Step)

No delay

These skill types do not have an aftercast delay (unless noted above):

• All skills without an activation time, including flash enchantment spells, shouts, stances, and some others;
• Attack skills with specified activation time (noticeably interrupts and some daggers skills);
• Ranger preparations from Prophecies or Core;
• Shadow steps that do not exclusively target a foe;

Animation delay

Attack skills without an activation time have an effective delay, similar to aftercast, caused by weapon animation timing:

• Bow, dagger and hammer attack skills have a 0.75¾ s animation.
• Other weapon-based attack skills are on a 0.5½ s timing.
• Melee generic skills use the current weapon equipped in term of timing.

Visual glitches

• As attack skills override the default auto-attack process and timing (based on the attack speed of the weapon), additional delay can occur when they resume the overlapsing.

• Bow attack skills with 0.5½ s activation times display in a particular way: as the projectile is fired 0.25¼ s after the initiation of the skill (still following the default length of the animation, yet allowing shorter skill chains).

• The same mechanics apply to Daggers and Hammers, but is not as noticeable, as their next swing may cut the last part of the skill animation.

Notes

• In certain cases the aftercast delay can be canceled by situational triggers, e.g. by a change of form.
• Assassin dagger attack skills with activation times that are shorter than the typical dagger animation delay can be used to hasten combo attacks.

• There are no other known mechanisms to reduce or cancel aftercast delay. In particular, the Mesmer's Fast Casting attribute has no effect on the aftercast delay of spells or signets.

Trivia

• Prior to the March 6th, 2008 update, point blank area of effect spells had an aftercast delay of 1.75 seconds.