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Every unit has unique cast animations for each of its abilities. The cast animation of the ability is enacted as soon as a target for the ability is chosen, if it requires one, or when pressing its Hotkey, if it does not require a target.

The length of the animations varies for each ability as each of them is unique and made for the ability which is usually in the slot the animation is bound to. Although the Cast Animation sounds like a visual part of the game, it does have a mechanical influence on the gameplay.

Definition
Every ability has a specific time frame the casting unit has to go through in order to apply its effects successfully. This time is commonly known as the Cast Point or Cast Time. Cast Point has nothing directly to do with the visual animation of the ability. However, since the cast animation starts playing immediately, it indicates the cast point of abilities.

This means when the unit gets interrupted by disables or by their own actions before reaching the cast point, the cast is canceled, the ability's effects are not applied, the ability will not go into cooldown, and will not use any mana.

The player also can manually stop the ability cast by issuing a Stop (S) or Halt (H) command. When the ability cast gets interrupted during the cast time, the visual cast animation ends as well.

In almost every case, the length of cast animations exceeds the cast point of abilities. Upon reaching the cast point, the animation does not stop immediately but continues playing. For most abilities, the unit keeps on standing still during this part of the animation, and is unable to act until the animation has been completed, if it is not canceled. This is commonly known as Cast Backswing.

Cast Point
No Target abilities with instant cast point applies their effects instantly as soon as Hotkey is pressed. Certain No Target abilities may not interrupt channeling upon cast.

For targetable abilities, its effects are applied as soon as a target is selected for the ability. However, if an ability requires a target, be it a unit, ground-targeting, or area-targeting, it will interrupt channeling, even if its cast point is instant.

Instant Cast
Most items and all toggleable abilities fall under this category, they have neither a cast point nor a backswing, and as such will never interrupt a channel. These abilities can also be cast in-between chain-disables (e.g. into ) or any disable which uses invulnerability into a periodic area disable (e.g. ) since these abilities have the highest priority of cast order after. It can also be cast after an Ancient has fallen, during the scoreboard phase.

This applies to most toggled items too, but some such as are not considered a toggle and as such can interrupt.

There are a few conditions where an ability can have an instant cast point:

The difference Between Instant Cast Point and 0 Cast Point is as follows:
 * with is affected by  and  at the same time.
 * Upon the end of Disruption's duration and while Chronosphere is still in effect, she is able to cast but not.
 * This is because Avatar has an instant cast time, but not Force.


 * In this next example, she now has equipped.
 * Marci casts, then . Force will be cast after seconds.
 * Since Force is not an instant cast ability, its cast time is equal to one server tick. At the same time, there will be one more server tick between, since there are now two different but consecutive commands.


 * Marci now casts, then.
 * Shadow Walk will be instantly cast once Force is cast.

Conditional Instant Cast
Certain abilities can be instant cast conditionally, more information can be found in the abilities' notes respectively.

Vector Targeting
For Vector Targeting abilities, the cast point starts upon pressing the Hotkey and selecting the direction.

Items
Most items with active abilities have a 0 cast point and they do not have a cast backswing, except for the following sources:

The following item abilities have an instant cast point and do not interrupt the units' animations upon cast.

Cast Backswing
The part of the animation which occurs after the ability's cast point is the ability's Cast Backswing, the caster will stand still and is unable to attack or use any other abilities until the remaining animation is played. The cast backswing has no effects on the already cast ability and is purely cosmetic.

The player can cancel the cast backswing by ordering the unit to Stop S, Move, or simply by casting another ability during the cast backswing. shiftqueue does not cancel the cast backswing, the next command in the queue will be executed after the cast backswing ends.

Cast backswing is either bound to the unit or the ability slot, and is not necessarily the same length even for abilities with the same total animation time. This affects things like acquired abilities from, or  Ability Draft.

Instant Cast Backswing
There are a few conditions where an ability can have an instant cast backswing, other than being a toggleable ability or having an instant cast time:

Channeling
Channeling abilities start their channel time after reaching its cast point. If the unit is interrupted before reaching the cast point, the ability neither starts channeling nor goes into cooldown, and consumes mana. Channeled abilities might not have cast backswings, as the channel must follow the cast point where the cast backswing otherwise would.

Modifying Cast Backswing

 * These acquired neutral abilities uses the original cast point.
 * However, the cast backswing can be defined as.
 * Certain cosmetic items also modify the cast backswing of abilities due to using different animations. These are mostly listed in the ability's respective notes.

Version History
Анимация применения 施法动作