Orbital78 wrote: »

Your idea of all content and mine differ. All solo content, yes.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

The animation is an instant cast, it is no different than any other instant cast. It plays and cancels the same. Just remember that secretly it is a projectile skill.

Not exactly, instant just means what's suppose to happen, happens when you press the key instead of requiring a channel or cast time first. It does not mean it instantly lands. Wrecking Blow has a 0.8s cast time, then instantly hits. Fury has a 0.0s cast time, but has a massive delay before it hits, even in melee range.

There's 2 terms important here I'll use:

1. Projectile Speed (PS) = speed at which the projectile travels through the air to your target, eg, 28 meters per second.
2. Minimum projectile travel time (MPTT) = a locked in time that the projectile must complete before landing, even if the caster is right on top of the target. This is implemented case by case, most likely as a balancing/counterplay design choice.

MPTT is the reason why some players may prefer a melee over a ranged playstyle without realizing it. Why does Impale feel less reliable than Killer's Blade for a melee player? Why does your instant Frag miss more often than not when following up Streak vs something like Executioner? Why is Mage's Fury the absolute worst feeling execute in the game outside of spamming it from a back of zerg back when it had a 5s duration? MPTT is why.

From my memory of like 2016 patch notes, a general feeling, and some light testing, the average MPTT is between 0.2s to 0.3s. This whole MPTT thing is why not all instant ranged abilites feel equally as satisifying to cast, most likely because not all ranged skills have the same travel time or animations, thus the hit detection can feel weird, and even effect your weaving. Something like Crushing Shock has historically been praised, while Swallow Soul has been complained about as a good example.



Give or take some mileseconds, human input, and ping, you can work out what's going on here. Keep in mind to -1s between each damage instance to get the actual delays due to the Global Cooldown. Also, I did not do this multiple times, nor did I use a macro, these would be required to get more accurate numbers.

• Impale has 0.3s MPTT vs the instant 0.0s hit of Killer's Blade.
• Crystal Frag has 0.5s MPTT, making it 0.2s slower than Impale, and based on the 1.1s it took to land at 28m, it travels at 25m a second.
• Mage's Fury has 0.8s MPTT, at 28m it does not change so it does not seem to have PS at all or if it does, it's insanely fast to give the appearance of the damage teleporting. My guess is it's just insanely fast so that it can still be absorbed by something like Ball of Lightning. If it actually teleported to the caster, then BOL wouldn't work, although I haven't actually tested this.

This is why Mage's Fury feels bad the closer you are to your target, because it doesn't land any easier, it just makes it easier to counter.

Imagine a situation where you Fossilze, then follow up with Executioner, Killer's Blade, or Whirling Blades, the target would have about 1.0s to react, replace that with Mage's Fury and they have 1.8s, +80% more time to break free, and roll dodge. This is why despite being conceptually a cool ability I'd love to use even though I find it very weak, I can't, it's just way too unreliable.

If I were to improve the feeling, I'd start by lowering the MPTT from 0.8s to 0.3s, then introducing a real PS so range matters. Frag's feels quite slow, and even it takes 1.1s at 28m meaning Mage's Fury only becomes beneficial at 20m or above.