Faster Cast Rate



Faster Cast Rate (FCR) causes spell based characters to attack faster. The only exception is the Assassin, as her traps benefits from Increased Attack Speed.

Cast Rate items will reduce the time it takes to cast spells. Cast Rate items stack so the more you put on, the faster you can cast spells. While you may not want to sacrifice to wear an item with Faster Cast Rate, it certainly helps to have it on any items you wear.

Faster Cast Items will not help skills with Casting Delays. A Casting Delay (or cooldown) is a period of time after a player has cast a spell during which the player cannot re-cast that spell. For example, after casting Blizzard you must wait a few seconds before you're able to cast another one. As such, the Faster Cast Rate determines how rapidly a character can make use of non-delayed spells.

Mechanics
Each character has a base casting value, this is not a base cast rate, rather is used to calculate the cast rate. The casting base of the characters are as follows:

The standard animation speed is 256 except in the case of the human-form Druid (208), Werewolf-form Druid (229), and Werebear-form Druid (228).

The calculation to find Effective Faster Cast Rate (EFCR) is:

Effective Faster Cast Rate is capped at 75, so there is no point in exceeding 200% Faster Cast Rate.

The calculation to find the cast rate frames is:

A Sorceress using or  has a unique exception to the above calculations. These two skills will use a slightly modified formula as follows:

Faster Cast Rate breakpoints
There are 25 frames per second, so as the Faster Cast Rate increases, the frames decrease.

Since frames of animation cannot be further divided into fractions, this creates "breakpoints". You will not see any change in Faster Cast Rate until you pass the next breakpoint. This means that an Amazon with 21 FCR is effectively equal to one with only 14.

As one frame is a mere .04 seconds, it may not even seem worthwhile, however in practice, even single frames can make a noticeable difference.

* Lighting and Chain Lighting are calculated differently than other skills.

Equipment
* Caster Amulet can also randomly receive the Apprentice suffix for a combined total of up to +20%.