While yes the hard cap on casting speed from Dex is 70, I went to 99 to really prove the point and have the best comparisons for you guys. Should have mentioned it though!

Not only is 8% casting speed helpful because you do more dps, but in certain fights, casting 8% faster can mean you actually get to cast the spell instead of getting hit and not casting the spell.

nice video, in addition to the casting speed gained from DEX, Weapon and Talisman, there is actually another way to increases the casting speed dramatically. There are 3 spells, which has in their description "can be performed without delay after another action", they are night shard, swift glintstone shard and Carian Slicer. In fact these 3 spells can be used as the first action and combo with other spells that allows you to either rapidly cast like the Adula's Moonblade, Glintstone Arc etc. Casting those Spell directly after like swift glintstone shard will skip the prepairing time of the followed spell and let it start directly at second combo position, as if you have already casted it before and doing a flow combo.

You can actually hold Azure's staff in your offhand while using Lusat's as your primary stafff for damage, and you will get the the extra cast speed but on Lusat's staff. It will however give the increased FP cost of both staffs

As a faith user and a fellow caster, I find that just the Icon alone makes spamming catch flame even more insane. Also it doesn’t seem to do much for the dragon spells so it seems to line up with your findings here. Happy casting fellow mages and priests!!

As a faith caster, I can say this is the same with incantations. We don’t get an azure staff, but having the Radagon Icon on with high Dex and using a lightning spear and not having it on, is very noticeable

This was very helpful. Now I can definitely set up my build properly. Also looking forward to the talk on staffs. Love the videos from y’all!

Just the video I've been waiting for. This really explained a lot. It's really hard to notice just how much faster you're casting with these equips.

This is a great video talking about Cast Speeds! If I may be so bold, I'm actually working on a video myself on a certain interaction with Chain Casts that allow you to cast spells and cancel them MUCH faster then if you normally cast them. Would it be possible for you guys to take a look at that video when it's out and perhaps make your own? It's a very fun PvP tech and I want to see more people use it!

Couldn’t find a good definitive test of this anywhere else. Phenomenal work and great explanation/demonstration, you got no idea how much time/frustration you saved.

The delayed Glintblade spell works extremely well with cast speed. You can charge it to the max very quickly with just Radagon. This spell is useful in many situations especially in PVP when you can trip up the opponents even more with speed cast, since they cannot predict the time the blade will fly out.

i've been wondering about casting speed, haven't checked the numbers my self but glad someone is looking at it.

A little bit of counterintuitive math here from a math teacher. You're not actually experiencing diminishing returns with a multiplicative reduction. Your damage per second actually goes up more with each successive reduction. In this particular case, it goes from roughly an 8% increase in damage to roughly a 17% increase in damage or the second reduction increases DPS by 9% instead of 8%. Think of it this way with easier numbers, let's say we have a 50% reduction in cast time, we would get twice as many casts. So if our first shot did a hundred a 50% reduction would up our damage to 200. If we reduce that 50% another 50% so we are down to 25%, we can actually cast four times in the same amount of time so instead of going from 100 to 200, we go from 100 to 400. That's a 300% increase instead of a 100% increase. So keep stacking as many things as you can find it's almost certainly worth it

I hope you guys are having a lot of fun making these videos, because DAMN are you working hard on getting them out quickly, and at high quality

Great video! Just wanted to say that having a screenshot of the talisman and staff you're showing the location of at a low opacity over the top of the footage was a good touch! Would love to see you do the same or something similar in your showcase type videos!

I think another important aspect to explore on this subject is how casting speed affects being able to chain into melee attacks, jumping, and dodges

This makes so much more sense to me now. I was working with spells the other day and wondering why Azur's Comet wasn't really affected by Azur's Glintstone Staff. I felt the speed increase for my smaller spells like Glinstone Arc and Beastial Sling but all of my larger ones felt almost like they didn't benefit at all. Edit: Some of what I learned. You can bypass spell start up with the symbol by chaining other spells with the same symbol or chaining after a spell that has "can be cast without delay after an action". Night Shard can be cast without delay and let me bypass Glinstone Arc's start up. As long as I continued casting spells with the same symbols, the startup was always ignored. Beastial Sling also has "can be cast without delay after an action". In the case of beastial sling I bypassed the start up for Lightning Strike depite the two not sharing the same symbol. I also found, chaining Sorceries into Incantations and vice versa wasn't possible. Not effectively. Even using spells with "can be cast without delay after an action". I haven't tested chaining spells with "Allows 1 follow up action after" yet though so it might still be possible. Final Note: Spells with "can be cast without delay after an action" can be cast in the air and while on Torrent's back at full sprint.

Also, from the game dev perspective, the cast speed is applied to the animation playing speed of certain animation clips. And frame rate will also play a role if we dive this deep with this level of precision, since the game core logical loop is not temporally continuous, most game logics only run once per frame.

Excellent! Keep up the great videos! I run a sorcerer as well, so I’m really enjoying you hints and tips, and your great sense of humor!

Thank you so much for this video!! Im building a quick caster right now and this is insanely helpful!!

If speed doesn’t matter you can go for a strength, incantation build as their is a catalyst that scales off of strength and Faith and is nice and I’ve added some faith spells to my strength build and it helps

I love the way it was done. My thought process sees it as ranged big bang attacks always take hugh commitment. This is balance for any PVP. Which is fine, it is also the inverse of the damage calculations typically used.

Been only using the tailsman since I got. Was think at adding a few point in Dex (20). Bur great work in putting the time to do all the math and frames counts. Love all the videos.

Been loving this content from the beginning since I am a spell user. You have helped me one shot bosses with the Exodia combo video ;) and how to get the other great spells. I’m around level 230 and trying to figure out how to allocate my attribute with the understanding of soft caps. Looking forward to a future video for end game intelligence users. Best outfit, weapon, spells, and attributes.

Glad for the info, my friend and I just had a conversation about this yesterday, I'm a battle mage and he's a str faith user, we both use greatswords (I also use the Astel curved sword) so cast speed is pretty important to both of us, good to have a reasonable approach to take with it👍

The time and effort it must have taken for you to put this together has got to be ridiculous. Awesomeness! Subscribed

FUN TIP: To get to the roundtable hold faster, press Y/Triangle, then X/Square. When the map gets larger, it can take a while for the cursor to get to the bottom left.

Amazing video Was really hoping I'd find a guide that goes as in depth as this one! Thank you!

I remember someone posted a video about dex and how much it affect casting speed and they showed that at it seems that around 70 is the hard cap or at least soft being when compared to 80 and 90 it was nearly identical and even then that could be just be bias expecting a different result and my mind making it up because of it granted it was in the beta but still something to keep in mind

In the Dark Souls games the faster casting items just added "virtual dexterity" to your character, so they simply upped the dexterity for cast time calculations. That meant you didn't get any benefit from them once you hit the cap. Good to know that they actually still do something in this one.

This was useful. I brought my dex up to 25 for my prisoner. I knew I needed it up some at least for the rapier. I've been dumping everything else into intelligence lately for all the big spells, but I find myself mostly using rock sling. It does good damage, fairly cheap FP, but it can be a little slow when trying to run and gun. So I've been trying to decide if I should still keep pumping my int up to 60 or if I should put a few more levels into dex. Now I know to keep working my int, ty.

This is rad it reminds me of learning frame data in fighting games, startup recovery, and active frames etc…

Running azurs staff on my moonlight gs battlemage and it's really noticeable on all the sword spells I love it. But again I'm a more in your face mage not glass cannon mage.

Good to know that running 40 DEX and Radagon's Icon has me around a decent speed reduction

Truly great video. Exceptionally well done from an analytical perspective and Hella useful

Wow great video, I was really confused by this concept earlier as well. But it seems the rational conclusion at least for my build is to completely ignore cast speed.. as mainly using comet azure / terra magicus / adula’s blade, only found these three spells to be worth using..

It's like a fighting game. Startup. Active frames. Recovery. Cast speed affects active frames and recovery, but startup remains unchanged which makes sense from a fairness perspective. Everyone gets the same amount of time to recognize the spell. But then it might come out WAY faster. This also serves to make the sped up portion feel better and faster, because it's still being witnessed after the original startup. My assumption would be that faster casting "weaker" spells that come out quicker have less startup frames and do the cast speed increase is noticeable for more of the total cast time

For me, I found the Graven-School Talisman so much sooner than the Radagon Icon, but I tested both talismans on the vulgar militia in the Caelid region. I went with the metric of time to kill and found at my level that the Radagon icon was almost 2 seconds faster

Very useful stuff! Thank you so much for taking the time yo work this all out

I would like to see the staff comparison video you have planned. I’ve heard that the Lusat staff is bugged and does not actually increase sorcery damage past basic scaling. That means the extra 50% cost is completely wasted while using that staff.

Hey Rage! I just wanted to say thank you for your awesome work here and before elden ring. I'm watching your videos now since i think 3 years, everything started on Monster Hunter. Specially at the Monster Hunter Rise release i watched your channel more and more. I really like the detailed and hard work ur putting in and like your comedy also :D Sending u much love, happynes and stay healthy from germany!

Great and informing video. This is def something I have been wondering about. Cant wait until you dive deeper on the staffs and why one is better than the other. loving the content btw

Thank you so much for this research!! I'm trying to figure out where to go now that I've made it to 70 Int, and this really helped me! Much appreciated. You earned a sub from me, dude!

This video is really nice and I can't imagine the time it took to get these numbers, since it's percentage based, it's better to test it with long cast times as the difference would be more clear.

So in order to get to 10% faster casting speed, Use Radagon's Icon and get to about 25 or so Dexterity?

Seems like the cast speed mechanics are still wonky , especially on greater spells. One would think dex and cast speed should have greater and more noticeable effect on spells that require longer wind up time.

Thank you, exactly what i was looking for. Excellent detailed video with side by side video demonstrations. Its sad that casting time doesnt reduce time of phase 1 which is what i was looking for. Meaning I cant trade againt greatbow archer with the Greatbow spell.

Damn i love your videos. Thanks so much for this in-depth explanation of our mago stats!

As a spell-swordish build i find the dex path quite appealing on top of the talisman so thanks guys for the info!

When talking about speed increases and dps, stacking cast time reductions doesn’t get diminishing returns even though it’s multiplicative because the value of each percentage point of reduction increases exponentially as you approach zero. For example, reducing time from 1 second to .5 seconds is a 100% dps increase. But then you only need to go down another .16666 seconds to get another 100% dps, then go down another .083 seconds to get another 100% dps. Using multiplicative stacking, instead of adding all sources and then multiplying, is done to compensate for that exponential increase in value, so that you get a flat dps increase.

Great videos! Keep up the great work!

Well, that I see is that with melee attak should be worth, I mean, making more hits with those stats and making the enemy have less vents to attack and roll, its really nice seeing that more attack speed should really save you in those situations

The reason for different casting speeds is because the charge time of Lorettas greatbow is not affected by casting speed, that's all

The talisman and 20 dex gets you to right around the 10% sweet spot.

Question from a 1st run faith builder: From the times, it seems like there is an unequal boost between a 'melee-based' spell casting time and the large damage spells, aoe, etc.. It seems like it would be a decent hunch that Dex buffs melee casting times more than spell casting times. That sounds like it SHOULD make sense, but its Elden Ring too idk.

THANK YOU!!! Have been waiting for this key and critical info.

There's a 3rd aspect of spell casting. Channeling speed, so for example meteors, Lazer beam will tick faster, generate rocks faster etc. Also, it might be tough to justify the talisman slot, (grave mass, equip load, charge dmg, scar seal) so thats 4. In that case the cast speed staff is very useful.

Wish it had the same kind of affect on incantations honestly

i love how logical and thorough this is. thank you!

i'm just capturing that y'all are going hard on elden ring, since i didn't watch/searched any elden ring content due to spoilers for my first playthrough (obviously) also very glad that you guys got on the souls train like that, i hope it helps the channel out a lot since souls will practicaly never realy die.

Do you happen to know if this applies to ash of war cast time in any way? And if not, does anything affect it?

Absolute beautiful testing method and explanation - Didn't even mind the long ended explanation

Honestly I find the spell that is affected the best by cast time is the carrien slicer it’s so fast as is so when you boost it makes killing invaders easy

I honestly think they have it coded so certain spells are categorized as chain spells, while others are more single use. It might be a bit of common sense and discretion on their part. Magic Sword attacks are meant to be chained as well as glintstone attacks, so they get the most benefit. The great bow spell is generally probably supposed to be used 1 and done, particularly if you charge it. There might also just be a balance to it, where they don't want certain spells to be too fast.

When using Azur’s staff in the left hand, does it buff spell-cast speed in your right hand, or does it have to be the other way around?

I don't plan to use spells until my next play through but god damn well done with this video - so much testing that could've been avoided but I won't groan too much because I know this is actually more information than they usually give in Souls games, haha

I believe the difference of benefit from cast speed is not from hidden multilicator but from ratio of opening-closing animation to casting animation, the one you can actually affect with cast speed. Spells with longer "active" stage that you can speed up will benefit more if back to back casting.

6:19 it really seems like the start up is faster though with higher cast speed. if they go off at the same time its pretty clear.

Have you thought that instead of % reduction that cast speed is reduced in raw milliseconds? This would explain why the weaker spells that already cast quickly are affected more by cast speed

Little confused here about the recommended 10% casting speed sweet spot. Since if the talisman + staff = about 8% each but 14% together. Then with dex at 48 being 10% why would you factor in 48 dex + talisman at that point? Wouldn't that make the 48 dex + Talisman = around 15-16%? So in that case without running the numbers my guess is just for the 2% increase from dex with the talisman to get 10% wouldn't at most about 20-25 dex be enough? Great vid and info overall though

Nice, this is a level of spreadsheet crafting I haven't seen since I was into MMOs. 👍🏼

I’m loving this channel bro keep the ER content 😍

Seems like using the slot for another damage increasing talisman would be better than having slightly faster cast speed.

Start as a wretch. 70 dex puts you at 61 60 intelligence puts you at 111 (kama hama ha spell ftw) Then you have 39 to 49 points to put into mind, health or what not and everything will be at 10 atleast. You'll easily be a very fast somewhat strong level 150 to 159 wizard Harry.

Does the casting talisman reduce casting time for the weapon art stuff on the sword of night and flame or only proper spells?

Awesome info thankx a mil bro, looking foward for the staff talk and also, would it be possible to make a video talking about the best mage build for PVP? Maybe going over the dex/int build with moon veil would be so nice.

General rule for you fellow Tarnishers.... I just hit level 204 in my NG first run ( Only killed 4 Demi-Gods so far , so i did a spare time on Boosting my character ). Generally what you want to do as a Mage Build , me personally i was a Mage Build untill exactly level 180... And my Tips are : 1- Dont use Azur's Staff its Pointless ( You are Likely to loose Damage for just a mere Casting speed and the 25% Extra FP Cost is Bullocks its meaningless literally ). What you should do is Carian Regal Scepter untill you get a Massive FP Pool ratio later on , in which where Lusat's staff gets Handy for Better damage which is Worth it later on on the Long-Run. ( Basically any character Level 200+ use Lusat's Staff so long as your Mind is atleast 40+ ). 2- This is the most important Part here... ( Stick Radagons Icon in a Talisman Slot untill you Hit up a very High Level Cap of 180+ *Which is atleast 48 Dexterity* , in doing so your Dex at 48 exactly its already a Natural 10% Casting Speed which then later you Could/Can Sacrifice Radagon's Icon since at this Point your pretty much a Dex/INT Hybrid Class like what i'm doing ). Taking Radagon's Icon out is not a big Lose , since its just a 8% Cast Speed compared to the 10% Cast Speed from the 48 Dex Attribute.... This means you Sacrifice Radagon's Icon Slot for the Mass Graven Talisman of a 8% Sorcery Damage Increase. ( With Carian Regal Scepter at +10 you should be Hitting as Hard as Lusat's Staff +10 within the Same Casting Speed at Dex 48 ). This also means you could Negate the Extra FP consumption from Lusat's Staff aswell for a Casual Sorcerer not a Nuke Sorcerer , but eitherway you should Prioritize 70 INT atleast hitting Level 140 and at Level 180+ you also pump Dex upto 48 for the Extra 10% Cast Speed. ( Do note that Spells like Carian Slicer and Swift Glintstone Staff gets a much Higher DPS with this Cast Boost of 10% from 48 Dex , and you could always switch up Radagon's icon or put something else entirely even not equipping Azur's Staff as by this Point his staff is useless ). 3- Here's an Overall look of my Character at Level 180 exactly ( Vigor 52 , Mind 30 , Endurance 30 , Strength 20 , Dexterity 48 , Intelligence 70 , Faith 18 , Arcane 10 ). Decently great HP at 52 Vigor you are at 1750 HP exactly , 30 Mind is 160 FP , 30 Endurance is 125 Stamina and also decent enough Equip Load that you dont need any Equip Load Talisman , 48 Dex is a nice Cast Speed and a Huge great Keen buff for my Nagakiba Main Katana weapon , at 70 INT you access all Sorcery Spells and 18 Faith is a great Baseline of Faith.... ( For now i got upto level 204 i also put more Mind level and Faith with abit of Vigor at a Hardcap of 60 ). at 70 INT your Carian Regal Scepter should be at a 330 Sorcery Scaling which is pretty nice , whatever comes Extra later put into 80 INT for the Hardcap. ( Talisman Slots are Radagon's Soreseal , Dragoncrest Shield Talisman +2 , Turtle Neck Talisman and Graven-Mass Talisman for a extra 8% Sorcery Damage ). My Final Tips are , i ended up Respecing my first initial Build where i thought Strength and INT would go well... But it turns out the Best Magic Hybrid Build is definitely Dex with INT while also having great Vigor HP , Mind FP and Endurance for Stamina and Equip Load. And most likely this Build shines really well at Exactly level 180+ being a Hybrid Dex Assassin or Samurai with a Katana , Shield , Bow and with Magical Staff and also an Incantation Seal. ( Basically at Level 180 my character is Fully strong in Melee weapon range , Ranged Spells and Incantations , with a Decent good Physical Shield and a Bow aswell ). So i'm technically a 2 Class Build character with this Build , and Casting Spells are very fast... Naturally having 10% from the 48 Dex is insane , and even if you want more you could always switch Talisman for Radagon Icon making the Casting Speed being very Swift at an increase of 18% Cast Speed this is without having Azur's Staff aswell since its not that great. ( Carian Regal Scepter and Lusat's Staff are the Best in the Game imo and best Scaling aswell... It just depends wether you want to be FP Efficient with Regal Scepter , or a strong Caster at the Cost of more FP with Lusat's Staff ). And now with the New Patch 1.03 , most Spells got Reduced FP Cost so having Lusat is Viable and unlike before... So its pretty worth it to have as Alternative Nuke option for a Mage indeed. Goodluck hope this Helps 😅💯

Let me just save you 10 min and 30 sec. Use the Radagon Icon Talisman with the best staff , nothing else makes a considerable difference

This is very well done. Thank you for this. Subbed

Thanks for the video! Will ditch the extra DEX I was going for and put it into Vigor as running icon talisman anyway (was aiming for 30 dex, but will drop it back to 22).

Sweet jesus just give me the data and spare me the bad humor

Stop talking, start informing please

Well done my friend! Testing builds like this and seeing the maximum potential of each weapon/item is what I live for. Very much look forward to a comparison of the staffs. Don't sleep on the Carian Regal Scepter though. Yes Lusat does more damage per hit but taking fp cost into account, Regal actually does more for nearly the same fp cost. So if you don't have a lot of mind, Regal is a very viable option to those players. Of course you could also use Lusat and sacrifice Radagon for Primal Glintstone Blade and even out the fp cost.

I was actually just thinking about this, thank you!

This makes me feel good about using my samurai as a mage since I don’t want to start another class.

The sheer quality of your videos sets you apart from 90% of the other youtubers covering elden ring, add 45 DeX and it would be 95%. Keep up these top quality videos. By the way has anyone ever told you you sound a bit like Eddie izzard Haha.

Omg,great video and really,really helpfull explanation. Thanks for your effort,making these tests sure took a lot of time.

That's nice to know! thanks for testing and explanation about this🥰

Thanks for that spot and Talisman - I'd missed it. Power and accuracy have their place but 'Rate of Fire' is often the key to winning.

Very informative video! I didn’t know den influenced casting spread. now what is the Faith equivalent? That I would like to see also haha.

This is great information, very well presented

Thank you for the amazing information!

Absolutely brilliant video, everything I wanted to know and more, thank you for your work

Really appreciate this vid. Working on a Alucard looking Battle Mage. Currently lv 94 Wretch with 22Vig/30Mnd/16End/12str/14Dex/45Int/24Fth Just beat the first two main Stormveil bosses (I got out the tutorial and just hit the open world then grinded lol). About to go training some more so I go just play the game through with the vision I have for my character. Been thinking about raising Dex, but this vid shows I can just put those points somewhere else. I'll be looking forward to the staff vid. Story/build wise I'm going Prince of Dark staff, but I'm open to changing that depending on your results

You have officially become my favorite person for this!

And videos like this are why i subscribed. These are the answers we players need and you answer them. Great job and great video

Glintblade really helped me early game with bosses. The enemies dodge the cast rather than the projectile.

Thank you so much must have took a ton of time to experiment on this

My guy here doing the lord's work for the Mages guild of Elden ring! thanks a lot for the great work!

Gonna try a magic build on NG, this video was very helpful 💪