Help:Style guide/announcer pack page layout

Every time a unit uses an ability, it must go through its Cast animation in order to successfully activate it. The duration of the cast animation determines how fast a unit can use abilities and recover from them. For example, a hero like Leshrac will have a hard time chaining his abilities because of his spells' enormous cast animation; at the other side, Invoker's spells, having no cast animation at all, can chain abilities as fast as his cooldowns allows (and how fast his player can press buttons). Cast animation is divided between Cast point and Cast backswing.

Cast point
When a unit starts casting a spell, the unit has to go through a certain animation. Only once this animation finishes, the spell takes effect. This part of the animation is called cast point (also known as cast frontswing or cast time). The length of the cast time can vary heavily, but usually, a unit's spells share the same cast point. However, the cast point is not set for each unit, it is rather set for each spell individually. This means that a unit or hero can have different cast points for some, or even all of its spells.

An ability only applies its effects, goes on cooldown and expends mana when the casting unit successfully reaches the cast point of the spell. This means when the unit gets interrupted by disables before reaching the cast point of the spell, the cast gets canceled, the spell's effects do not get applied, it won't go into cooldown and not draw mana. The player also can manually stop the spell cast by issuing a stop or halt command.

Every unit also has unique visual animations bound to their ability slots. This animations make it possible for players to see that the unit is currently casting a spell. This animations visually match the cast point of the spells in the slots. When the spell cast gets interrupted or canceled, this visual animations get canceled out as well.

Instant cast
Some abilities which do not require the player to target a unit, point or area have an instant (0) cast point. This means they will go off instantly once the ability key is pressed, with no way of preventing them from going off. Some of these instant cast spells can also be cast during channeling spells without interrupting them. When the Teleport requires stop setting is used, only spells which do not interrupt channeling spells can be cast while channeling or.

All toggle abilities do not use any form of cast animation and also never interrupt channeling spells. Transformation spells do not use a cast animation either, they instantly use their transformation time if they have it.

Channeled abilities
Just like other spells, a unit starts channeling a spell after having reached the spell's cast point. If the unit is interrupted before reaching the cast point, the spell does not start channeling and does not go into cooldown and use mana. Only after having reached the cast point, a channeling spell goes on cooldown and draws the mana. When a unit gets interrupted during the channeling, the channeling stops.

Item abilities
Item abilities do never use any cast time and always activate instantly once a target unit, point or area is selected. Also, just like regular instant castable abilities, some items which do not require a target do not interrupt channeling spells upon using.

Cast backswing
As soon as a unit successfully reaches a spell's cast point, a second animation starts. This animation is known as cast backswing. If a casting unit receives no new orders after a spell cast, the unit automatically resumes its previous order, or starts a new, automated order as soon as the cast backswing finishes. This also includes any shift-queued order.

Unlike the cast point, the cast backswing has only a visual purpose and has no use for the spell it follows. This means interrupting or canceling it has no negative effect on the cast spell. It is even recommended to cancel it to save some time and to make the unit able to execute orders faster. The player can cancel the backswing by issuing any order to the unit during the cast backswing. Automated orders (like auto-attacking or continuing the previous order like moving) or shift-queued orders do not cancel the backswing and wait for it to finish first, so the player has to give the unit a new order during the backswing in order to cancel it.

Just like the cast point, the length of the cast backswing can vary a lot, but unlike the cast point, the length of the backswing is set for each unit, instead for each ability individually. However, many spells ignore the cast backswing by default, means they do not use the cast backswing and the player does not have to manually cancel it. This is usually the case for many of the instant castable spells.

Another difference to cast point is, the unique visual animations of units for the cast backswing does not get canceled when canceling the cast backswing. This is to keep a smooth transition of animations, and has no gameplay impact. The animations simply continue playing during other orders.

All spells which do not interrupt channeling spells never use a cast backswing. This also goes for every toggle abilities and transformation abilities.

Channeled abilities
Channeled abilities may use cast backswing as well. Their backswing however only happens at the end of the full duration. This means they occur when the channeling is fully finished, getting interrupted earlier causes the backswing to get skipped.

Item abilities
Item abilities never use a cast backswing.

Table of heroes' cast animations
Heroes will use the following animation times, unless the ability notes on their hero pages state a different number.

List of abilities with no cast point
''Because all active items have no cast point, they will not be listed here. Also, there are many heroes with zero cast point (Dragon Knight, Ember Spirit, Techies, Invoker, Sand King and Venomancer), but only abilities that have no cast point despite the hero are going to be listed here.''


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List of abilities with no cast backswing
''Does not include abilities that also do not have a cast point. Abilities have no cast point nor cast backswing can be found in the list above.''


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List of abilities with delayed cast point
''Note that certain abilities, like Sand King's Epicenter, require a complete channeling before the effect starts. This is NOT the same as delayed cast point, and thus they will not be listed here.''