LoL Cast Time Guide: Lockouts, Channels and Casting Through Flash

Nothing interrupts a cast time except dying, most of them are a quarter of a second, and Flash usually still works during one. That quarter second costs you more than the wait, and the bar tells you which kind you're watching.

League of Legends Guide

Cast Times

Lockouts and Channels

A cast time is a lockout rather than a delay. While you're in one you can't move, can't declare a basic attack, can't use most item actives, and your other abilities are sealed shut. Nothing you press is thrown away, though: the game buffers it and issues it the moment the cast finishes.

So the cost isn't the wait. It's everything you couldn't do during it, so three quarters of a second on a squishy champion is a genuine liability (and a lot more than a rounding error).

How Long They Are What Interrupts One When the Cooldown Starts Flash During a Cast Reading the Bar FAQ

0.25sThe standard cast time

0.1sThe shortest

1.25sThe longest

DeathThe only interrupt

UsuallyFlash still works

Right to leftHow a channel bar reads

Most are a quarter of a second, and the longest is five times that

The standard is 0.25 seconds. Plenty sit between that and a full second, a few drop as low as 0.1 (barely there at all), and the longest in the game runs to 1.25.

Against a champion with one of those long ones, punishing the cast is a plan rather than a reaction-speed contest. You have over a second in which they can't move, attack or cast anything else.

Nothing interrupts a cast time except dying

Stuns, knockups and silences don't stop a cast time once it's started. The only thing that cancels one is the caster's death, and the one other case is a bit of an oddity: many cast times are special-cased to cancel when the caster enters a resurrection instead.

So crowd controlling somebody mid-cast hasn't stopped the spell. It's only stopped what they do next, and the spell is still landing on whoever it was aimed at.

The cooldown usually starts at the end

For most abilities the cooldown and the resource cost (mana, energy, whatever it spends) both apply after the cast time finishes rather than when you press the key. A specific list of about a dozen charge you up front instead.

Which decides what dying mid-cast costs you. On the up-front group you pay the cooldown anyway. On everything else you don't.

Flash still works during most of them

Flash is usable during a cast time by default, and only certain abilities seal it. That single exception is the mechanical basis of every cast-then-flash trick in the game.

The reason it works is the rule above: the spell was committed the instant the cast began, so moving yourself afterward changes where it comes from without changing whether it happens.

The bar tells you which one you're watching

The cast bar at the bottom of the screen fills left to right. A channel, it turns out, uses the same bar but empties right to left, counting down instead.

That direction is the fastest way to tell whether what you're looking at can be interrupted, because most channels can be and cast times never are. One glance at which way the bar is moving is the difference between a wasted stun and a saved teammate.

Knowing which crowd control does it saves the other half of the wasted casts. Every channel breaks to airborne, forced action, silence, sleep, stasis, stun, suspension and suppression, and to the disrupt effects built specifically for the job. Roots and grounds only break the channels that move the caster, and a slow breaks nothing at all. A handful of channels are flagged uninterruptible outright and hand the caster crowd control immunity while they run, so the stun you save for those is spent either way.

---

Frequently asked questions

Can you interrupt a cast time?

Only by killing the caster. Crowd control doesn't stop it.

Can you Flash during a cast time?

Usually yes. A limited set of abilities block it, and that exception is what every cast-then-flash trick relies on.

How long is a normal cast time?

0.25 seconds. The range runs from 0.1 up to 1.25.

Does dying mid-cast still cost the cooldown?

Only on the dozen or so abilities that charge up front. Most apply the cost at the end.

How do you tell a channel from a cast?

The bar. Casts fill left to right, channels empty right to left, and cast times are never interruptible while most channels are. A few channels are flagged uninterruptible and grant the caster crowd control immunity for the duration.

The short version

Watch the direction of the bar before you spend a stun, remember that your own long casts are seconds of standing still, and keep Flash available for the ones you can move out of.

For the attack version of the same problem, our attack speed guide covers windup, and our recall guide covers the one channel everybody tries to interrupt.

Which cast time have you been punished for most? Let us know in the comments below.