this may be a really dumb question

Um what b:surrender

A skill has 5 second channel
without channel it will have 3,5 seconds channel
with 30 % channel

um .. what are you asking exactly ... b:surrender
You can notice that there 2 type of preparation stage before skill launch or active.
1st channeling 2nd casting

No channeling = skip channel and go to casting + animation

i guess an exact use of the terminology will easily resolve your confusion.
Every spell in PWI consist of 3 phases

a) the time before the spell takes effect -->channeling phase
b) the time before you can channel a new skill - -> casting time
c) the time that has to pass before you can channel the same skill again-->cooldown

2 of these phases have a fixed duration, namely cooldown and casting time.
(if you neglect some small modification from sage skills and so on)
So the only way how you can influence the speed of your spells is by wearing -chan% gear

To show you the impact of -chan% gear i will explain it with the example of mountain seize

Channel 5.0 seconds
Cast 1.4 seconds
Cooldown 30.0 seconds

In our example your wiz will stand still for 5s with a blue bar running from left to right -->channeling phase

then the numbers with the dmg will pop up and the animation of the skill will be played this takes 1.4s here -->casting time

Then you will notice that your mountain seize button is grey since 5s+1.4s=6.4s <30s --> cooldown time(you have to wait 23.6s until you can use the spell again)

so lets asume you got -25% chan on your gear then the spell will work that way
channeling phase = 5s - 1.25 ( = 0.25x5) = 3.75s
cast 1.4s
cooldown 30s ( 3.75s+1.4s= 5.15s<30 = you have to wait 24.85s until the skill can be used again)

so you see overall you can hit faster but always keep in mind that the cast time isnt reduced when you use -chan% gear. So even in a sutra which takes away chan for 6s the cast times of the spells are still there. In other words without channeling or -100%chan on gear ( -100% isnt possible because there is a cap in game with -90%) your attacks will always take the cast time. This is also the main difference between -chan and -interval gear for physical classes. While -interval reduces the total time between hits -chan only helps to reduce one part of the channeling process.

greetz harm0wnie

HarmOwnie - Dreamweaver wrote: »

2 of these phases have a fixed duration, namely cooldown and casting time.

wrong. cooldown is fixed, yes, casting is not.

when you wear -channeling gear, a small portion of cast is also removed(I don't think it was originally intentional?). for example, force of will:

○Force of Will
Range 30.0 meters
Mana 295
Channel 0.5 seconds
Cast 2.0 seconds
Cooldown 18 seconds

.5 seconds to channel and 2 seconds to cast. so why when I have 49% channeling does this skill happen in under a second? because cast isn't static. they've edited most descriptions of how things work, surely some day they'll add to channeling(if you look at older servers, where channeling is called 'chanting', items didn't say -chanting, it said -casting).

also, ontop of that: if you get -86% channeling, force of will has no animation at all and is casted instantly. b:shutup