How to Skip Redraw Time (With Video!)

I submit for your consideration a method to remove redraw time. Before going into specifics, a video demonstration may be helpful.

In the following video, to establish a basis for comparison, my character first executes a chain of:
Divine Avalanche -> Boxing -> Soaring Dragon -> Boxing -> Divine Avalanche -> Boxing -> Soaring Dragon.
He makes no attempt to avoid redraw time and takes approximately 13.6 seconds.

In the same video, he then executes the exact same chain using a second type of redraw which occurs instantly:
Divine Avalanche -> Boxing -> Soaring Dragon -> Boxing -> Divine Avalanche -> Boxing -> Soaring Dragon.
He takes approximately 9.5 seconds.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOG9I1_FT_U

There is a difference of around 4.1 seconds; in both cases, he's forced to redraw 4 times, once at the beginning of the chain and once at the end of each Boxing.

Here are more videos showing some of my other weapon-based characters experimenting with dodging redraw with a wide array of powers, including a different one of my Katana Brute.

Mace/Rifle Bane Spider SOA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3ydCzcYa7A

Archery/Mental Manipulation Blaster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_kJwOV5VlM

Katana/Electric Armor Brute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6UayEqVc0Y

~

Brief Explanation:

There are two types of redraw that I'm aware of, the conventional rooting, time-consuming redraw and an instant redraw.

The instant redraw does not root you, can occur in the middle of any power's animation, and can actually remove the root from a different power's animation. Here's my Titan Weapons Brute using it to remove the root from non-momentum Arc of Destruction and Rend Armor.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Q3gqf_3BY

This is very helpful for long animating powers like Spine Burst, Psychic Scream, Fire Breath, etc., and vastly improves the mobility of those powers (even if it screws up the animation severely).

This instant redraw can occur under a few different circumstances (such as when your target is blocked or out of range), but only one is important to me:

It occurs when you have no enemy selected and you hit a non-PBAOE weapon power button.

How to do it:

In the above videos in which I perform instant redraw, all I'm doing is deselecting my target, hitting any weapon power (which causes instant-redraw and selects the nearest enemy), then activating a weapon power. After hitting any weapon power to perform instant redraw, I'm able to select any target I want and activate any weapon power I want, allowing me to target specific enemies and use PBAOE's with no redraw time.

Even though the redraw time is completely eliminated, the animation attempts to play anyway or the weapon simply appears in the hand even if the previous power's animation is not complete. As seen in the Mace/Rifle SOA video, this can cause some strangeness such as firing bullets out of an Arachnos Mace when moving from Shatter to Heavy Burst, or striking with an invisible mace when moving from Shatter to Venom Grenade.

What is it good for:

I'm not a min/maxer, but I can definitely see the appeal in being able to fit in powers like Gloom into weapon attack chains without the guilt of losing DPS to redraw (my rifle/mace SOA has recently picked up Gloom for this reason). When popping a heal or drain in the middle of a heated battle, it's nice to save an extra second that could be spent smashing/slicing/shooting your foes. The secondary effect of cancelling root can be a real life-saver for squishy characters caught in long animations; being able to burn a giant mob with Fire Breath and reposition myself in the middle of its long 2.9 second animation on my fire blaster has prevented my foes from closing into melee many a time. It's great to be able to do this on any character with a vet weapon power like the Nemesis Staff or Blackwand.

I'd love to hear if you think this method of skipping redraw time/rooting is great/neat/silly/tedious/etc., so any questions or feedback is appreciated!

Thanks for reading and watching!

~Postscript~

I had previous posted about this topic in a different thread as "Shensu," but didn't have access to this sub-forum on a premium account. I've chosen to let the other thread die seeing how this sub-forum is a more appropriate home for it; this thread also has two new videos that the old one did not.

If you do find or have read/seen the old one, it goes through my slow process of discovery and isn't quite so short and "down-to-business."

Is showing this against forum rules?

Multimedia Genius Submission

Yea I remember your other thread. And seeing as how no mod action was taken on it, this should be fine to.

The issue I have with this is that 90% of the time I use tab targeting. Your method requires you to...

1. Weapon attack
2. Non-weapon attack
3. Push Escape
4. Ready weapon attack
5. Re-target your target
6. Re-Queue Weapon attack
7. Repeat from 1.

Good for lone AV's but not much else.
TBH I'll just queu my attacks and deal with the redraw. I would even wonder if on my lag (ping of >2,000) Queuing attacks is better for my dps due to the way the server handles queued attacks.

But that is my issue. Others may find this useful if for whatever reason redraw bothers you to the point of not playing weapon sets. (Bunch of crazys you lot are!)

That is a pretty cool find, and nicely documented. Hilarious SOA video, too. Thanks!

I don't think I'll actually use it, but it's always fun to learn new things like this about the game. I never got beyond the much more cumbersome "bunnyhop and pray" method.

Very cool find. I'm actually surprised it wasn't found earlier. But considering how much extra work you have to do to use this trick, it is really only good for AVs, Bosses etc. I'm sure a Starcraft pro can do this no problem though.