NPC Casting Bar

[Ukoeji]

I'm sure I know the answer to this, but thought I would just ask the question to set my mind at rest...

Is it possible to get a timer on the NPC Casting bar, or does that game data not exist?

Cheers

[lordebon]

The data does not exist to my knowledge. You have to eyeball it.

[EQAditu]

A timer? Like how long until the cast completes? There's no data for it, but that didn't stop me from adding a timer to the player's casting bar...

But... why would you want it? NPCs usually cast pretty fast with no speed variability for the same spell. (no variable casting haste stat)

[ObsidianDragon]

I'm guessing he means a timer until the same spell is cast again, in other words, ACT without ACT.

In theory one might be able to make it so you could press a button when you see a spell you want tracked to start an arbitrarily long timer, then capture the timer state when the noted spell name is cast again. There would be lots of opportunity for mistakes and inaccuracy in such a method but it could potentially be a quick and dirty timer generator if you somehow can't run ACT.

[Ukoeji]

Thanks for the replies, confirms my suspicions.

The thinking behind it was, if you can see how long an NPC's ability takes to cast, it's easier to time a cure.

So GroupCure takes 1 second to cast, cast it 1 second before the end of the NPC's casting of 'A spell', cure as soon as the NPC's ability hits. (handy for those stifle/stun aoes).

At the moment I just do it by eye, can nearly see its finished casting, hit cure... etc etc

So was just curious more than anything, a more 'reliable' way than by eye and best guess.

[EQAditu]

The same information is available there as with the player casting bar. So it's possible to do as a target window or a custom UI piece using the same sort of code I made already.

It's somewhat problematic if your casting haste isn't constantly over the cap, though.

But if it were a custom window, you could put rescaled bars next to eachother to see if your casting and the mob's casting will match up during the last second. I don't know if that would make it easy to cancel, though... as it's only a second and human reaction times kinda suck.

I understand your dilemma though. I usually have immunity to stun/stifle, but it's nice to land a group cure just as a KB AE goes off and you cure while in mid-air. (before the game interrupts you)

[lordebon]

Originally Posted by EQAditu

I understand your dilemma though. I usually have immunity to stun/stifle, but it's nice to land a group cure just as a KB AE goes off and you cure while in mid-air. (before the game interrupts you)

Yeah, I see the advantage of it there, but not sure if it'd matter too much just because of human reaction times. I've done that a lot (Eirreen EM was a great place to train to land the cure just as the AE lands) and even knowing the exact point to cast (I usually use the words in the cast bar as reference) its still within the range of reaction time and can go awry.