energy cost when you cancel skill?

I made a good-faith effort to search for this and didn't find it.

Why, when I start casting a spell or using a skill, and then cancel it of my own volition (by pressing esc), do I still pay my energy cost?

I'm open to there being a very valid balance reason that I'm missing, but if there isn't one, this should be fixed, I think. It is treated differently by the game mechanics, since I do not have to wait for it to recharge, so why do I still pay the energy fee?

This is mainly just a nuisance, when I start casting resurrect right after someone else does, and I cancel it, now I have to wait to recharge, etc., but it can be a problem in battle if I hit the wrong key, for example, and spend 15e casting Shield of Regeneration on someone who's perfectly fine because hitting "esc" doesn't give me my energy back

A bit of a rant, but I'd like to see what the community thinks about this.

I agree, I think if you cancel a skill, you should get the energy back.

Is there any reason why this shouldn't happen? Can you cancel a spell that's being interrupted, for example, and sneak out of the interruption penalty?

Maybe:

You casting long-time spell
Enemy monk casts Spellbreaker
You cancel the spell as you saw him using it.

I dont think it was a mistake to make people pay for a canceled spell. It is punishing and its had me in a bind more times than Id like. The best solution...communication. Its basiclly forced if you want to make the most of your energy.
There could be a clever solution around if it the programers wanted one.

Balance reasons aside, there's a very valid flavor reason why you don't get energy back.

You're a spellcaster, you channel your concentration, magic power, and all of that (itemized as 'energy') into preparing to cast a spell. You could suddenly decide 'hey I don't want to cast that' and cancel it, but you've still focused a portion of your power into that spell, whether you finished it or not.

yep you can.. I do it (mostly in CA), when I have a ranger or mesmer on me, I start casting then cancel out as I see it coming then do the real one. it hits my energy pool, but my energy management can generally make up for it..

by taking away the energy loss for doing it I imagine you'd see it alot more, since there'd be nothing to lose.. probably not a good idea.

Makes sense to me...

/not signed

Ok, I can see this being a problem in PVP, then, I suppose. I almost exclusively play PVE, and the mobs (a) aren't smart about what they interrupt (b) react at computer speed, so it never occured to me to start - cancel - restart to avoid interrupts.

i feel that by that you'd be able to atleast save some energy i mean you didn't put all the energy you needed into doing it so there for you have some left over

i understand not making it so you get all of it back but still you shouldn't loser all of it to the void either

perhaps half the energy goes back?

How about you recover an amount of energy proportional to how far along the casting got? i.e. if you were 0.25 seconds into a 1 second spell you get 75% of the energy cost back. This would also work around the bug where you go to hit a spell, your computer hitches for a second (GW does that all the time for some reason, at least for me), causing the game to cancel the spell immediately after you start casting.

THIS doesn't sound like a bad idea though, I get that 'bug' or 'glitch' every now and then as well. good thinking. :]

what i was gonna suggest

This sounds good to me, usually I know pretty quickly if I want to cancel, but it's too late anyway. And then theres the casting-while-autorunning which cancels instantly and just drains your energy. Maybe the PVP players can comment on this in that context, as I'm speaking from a purely PVE perspective again.

The only time i say that you dont get energy back is when you get interrupted. because then clearly you were intending to use that skill. other than that u should get half back, its a pain when youre running or just plain moving and you go to cast a spell and it takes another step forward and cencels your spell and youre down 15 or so energy.....

Ok, but what about people who lag? They're getting penalized because they think they've stopped running, but in reality, they're still moving and interrupt their spell. This is extremely irritating.

/signed

i hate that lag/autorunning glitch... so frustrating.

Personally i just hate it when the exhaustion hits the pool, but no spell effect happens.

As someone who only plays casters, this is something that annoys me to no end. However, if i look at it from the amount of spells I cast and then see how many I cancel out of, not really that big of a deal.

So someone casts res just before you do, shame on you two for not communicating. Some oppenant is casting, well someone said an interupt but even if you see them doing that nothing you can do about it but lets say they cast backfire, good for them they beat you to the punch. Or maybe your target has died before you can get off your spell, dumb on your part, should have realized that they wouldn't survived that long anyways.

I run into the situations all the time and I bitch more than anyone that I lost the energy. Then I realize that if I had been sober and thinking clearly I wouldn't have gotten myself into those situations in the first place.

This can happen even if you ARE communicating, i.e. you both hit ctrl-# at the same time to call "i'm ressing bob!" Now whoever was a split second later is screwed. It's not a major issue, though, and your point is taken -- most of the time it is basically "user error."

I still think it's annoying.