Ability Cast Phases

When designing an ability, the designer has the option to assign times for the phases Prepare, Channel and Finish. When setting all these values to zero, the ability will be instantly cast.

Only stages with time > 0 have their animation (if any is configured) played.

Prepare

This gives the designer the possibility to add additional time which the caster has to "sacrifice" in order to cast the Ability.

After the prepare stage, the unit must pay the cast cost.

Channel

Abilities that make use of the channel phase are meant to be used together with Effects of type "Create Persistent" because this is the effect type that has periods (ticks)

Finish

The Finish stage is mostly for abilities with a high gameplay value. The advice is to use this sparingly. Like with Prepare, this is additional time that has to be sacrificed and must be considered in overall balancing considerations.

Phases and Actor Messages

These are the 4 Actor Messages concerning ability cast timing:

  • Start Prepare

  • Start Channel

  • Start Finish

  • Finished

These 2 rules apply for emitting actor messages:

  • If prepare time is zero, no Start Prepare message will be emitted.

  • If finish time is zero, no Start Finish message will be emitted.

This also means that:

  • Start Channel and Finished will always be emitted.