Hey, just wondering if someone could answer this. Tried searching/googling but not getting the best of answers.
In short: Does spell power/dmg and attack power get applied to an ability at the start of the cast or at the end when it fires off?
And is it the same for both? i.e. a hunter casting aimed shot or a mage casting fireball.
If you started a cast with a spelldmg or AP trinket up, but it ran out during the cast…would the ability benefit from the +dmg/AP or would it only apply wha tyou had at the time it launches?
Im sure a blue/blizz must of covered this at some point ^^
I have an indirect answer to this question. When you cast fishing with +fishing items, you are able to fish anything from the water landed even if you lose fishing buff after casting it. But your next fishing cast will say “you are too low level to fish in this area”.
Another way of testing this is casting immolate with a warlock with and without using ZG trinket, by timing the debuff. I do not know any other cast timed spell that drops a dot.
Fishing isn’t really the same. It’s not like it’ll cancel your wait for a fish just because the buff ran out while waiting. The only time you “cast” Fishing, is when you start it. It’s not the same as doing an actual hard cast.
Dots and hots are very different as well. In Classic, their damage or healing is based on the +damage/healing at the time of when it’s cast, while not being able to refresh the duration if you had for example a proc up at the time but don’t have it up anymore when you wish to refresh it.
This was changed in a later expansion.
Deep wounds is a typical example of an exception though, since it’ll always be replaced by the latest crit even if the crit dealt lower damage than the one before it.
I think it is when you finish the cast. Here’s how you test it:
Equip a trinket that you can activate for bonus spelldamage. Wait until you have 1 second left on the buff from that trinket. Then cast a spell.
If the spellpower got applied then it gets added at the start of the cast, if it didnt then it got added at the end of the cast.
Obviously not. When you start casting the only thing that is taken into account is your cast time. When you finish cast all necessary stats such as hit, crit, spell power are snapshoted.
no! it calculate the the entire spell at the moment you start the cast, how hard it hits etc.
Try it with a trinket? Cast, pop trinket while spell is in the air, the trinket has no effect on that spell.
Ye, but is it the start of the cast of the finish? Possible to test with a trinket/talent too, if you start casting when they’re up and finish when their buff is no longer on you.
Question asker and I did not mention anything about hot or their refreshment. All you gotta test is damage of the dot since dot damage is not randomly distributed between min and max values but fixed.
Tested it with Warlock Immolate spell. Damage is calculated according to the spell damage at the end of your spell cast. With ZG trinket, I started casting when there was 1 second of buff duration. Immolate cast takes 1.5 seconds and I made sure when my cast ended, I had no spell damage buff. My immolate dot did as much as damage as before using trinket.
This derailed so badly further up…just been face palming a little till this point
I was sure it had to of been tested elsewhere but googling it was proving difficult.
I’ll have to give it atest with my AP trinket for hunter too. Checking if it applies the same way it does for spell dmg, but would make sense for them to be identical
The answer by Sheida above is correct, I just wanted to add my own experience. After a 6 months of chaining MQG and ToEP/ZHC trinkets together as an arcane-frost mage, I can without a doubt state that haste effects are applied at the start of the cast (duh) while spell damage effects are applied at the moment the cast finished. SP effects that ran out before the cast is finished or that were applied while the spell was “in the air” flying toward the opponent will have no benefit from it. You can, however, batch a Presence of Mind Frostbolt to have Arcane Power bonus up to 399ms after it ran out. So an empowered max range FB lands a good 1,5 sec after the buff is gone. Wonders of spell batching. Thank you, failzzard.
In the past, back when servers had less computing power than phones nowadays have, these windows could be very large, with some games having up to 200ms windows of batching, including WoW. With better technology and servers, this system was improved over the years and, while it still exists, and effects from it can still be seen, the windows are much smaller, being 20ms wide for abilities in retail WoW. This means that abilities cast within 20ms of each other are considered simultaneous in the eyes of the retail WoW servers, while this window was about 200ms during Vanilla.
So you’ve confirmed the batch window is set to 400ms?
Nah, I was talking out my a.s.s. It might well be 199 ms. The number 400 just got stuck in my mind in connection with spellbatching, so I wrote it like that. All I know is there is a noticable window where a spellcast can finish with AP icon already gone and still benefit from it.
Edit: in fact this happens very frequently when you do a combo of MQG - 4 frostb - AP - 6 frostb into PoM frostb and get exactly one tick of pushback somewhere in the sequence. The last 2 frostbolts almost always gets AP benefit despite flying out well after the AP icon is gone.
I think it’s from when it’s fired, so if the trinekt runs out once the arrow has left then it counts. Same as mage novas, if the cast has gone off and the Nova runs out while the bolt flies, you still get the increased crit from shatter or whichever the talent is