User:Irismus/SandboxPage

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:

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

Cast Backswing
sets backswing to 0.