Battle Orders key seems to sometimes cast Battle Command (or to have no effect)...

Hi

I have a Call To Arms and have the skills mapped to two different keys:

Battle Orders [_-]

Battle Command [+=]

So I normally press, in a quick pace: [+=], [+=], [_-] to cast them.

But sometimes after third cast (

Battle Orders) I still have no life/mana bonus... seems to me that

Battle Orders fizzled or the game casted

Battle Command a third time instead of

Battle Orders
(the cast are visually identical, so, I cannot be sure... and when I perceive that the problem happened, I end up forgetting to verify the "aura effect" to confirm if I have one or two effects...)

This happens to me once on each 1-2 runs...

So I started to cast them as [+=], [+=], [_-], [_-] and the problem seem not happen yet with this "4

Key press method"...

I have noticed such behavior for barbs in general. The workaround that works for me is giving a 1+ second delay after switching to the next skill before applying pre-buff. Normally I do them in

Battle Command,

Shout,

Battle Orders sequence. Sometimes I still do that too fast, so I ought to re-apply

Battle Orders.

I have the same issue as you guys.
What I noticed more is that your ping and FCR seems both affecting your casting.
I usually play my sorceress, who has 120 FCR under 47 ping. But when I play my bowzon who has no FCR, she's just running. I had the same problem missing either 2nd BC or the 3rd BO with the similar casting delay like my sor.

That's fairly normal behavior.

Simply put, when you look at D2 casts/skills, they require a certain amount of time to fully complete/animate. Or more specifically, a certain number of frames (which is lowered via having higher FCR/attack speed/.. depending on what skill you're looking at). Those frames are split into pre-effect animation frames, followed by the action frame which is the one exact frame in which the skills actual effect (dmg/buff/...) is applied/triggered, followed by post-effect animation frames. Once you make it past all of those, you can then chain the next skill/cast/attack/....

As a result of that design or more specifically the "exact number of locked frames" vs. "various different animations that may not always fully align", you have some frames in which a cast may already be triggered even though it looks like it hasn't for the first frame or two and others where a cast may look like it already completed even though you're still locked out for another frame or two and so on.
Going by visuals as your clue on when to switch hence may result in missing your button change timing, resulting in a re-cast of the prior skill or skipping of the second and going immediately to 3 or whatever else, depending on how/how many you're cycling through.
And yes, lag does make it worse as you start desyncing between local visuals and server-side lock/activation.

Barb shouts feel like they've just always been the worst offenders in this, not only because their animation is a bit "fuzzy" to both ends but also because they are single casts you aim to chain back to back individually, making it blatantly obvious when you fail to do so. Typically, the same thing also happens a lot when you say play a

Nova sorc and spam novas before switching to

Teleport: you often get 1 more last

Nova that you didn't want but because you were spamming a ton of them before that anyways, you just don't notice/aren't bothered as much. Plus shouts are made worse by the fact that the animations are so nigh identical, making it inherently harder to tell which was which.

That's why for decades now, a lot of people (myself included) have gotten into the habit of just double-casting shouts intentionally everytime to make sure you don't have to bother double-checking and won't ever have missed any.

Like Schnorki said, it's a timing issue, when you try activate another skill while the skill that currently being cast is still stuck in its cast animation. You notice this also with Lightning and

Chain Lightning, which have a long cast animation length compared to other Sorceress spells (they start at 19 frames compared to the normal 13, and caps out at 11 vs the normal

Cap at 7) - when you want to

Teleport away immediately after casting, if you try to

Teleport too soon, you will just stand in place and probably cast another

Chain Lightning instead. When you're used to the normal cast length of Sorceress spells this can really catch you off-guard.

I don't play with quick-cast keys (I'm old school ), and I've gotten into the habbit of simply holding the cast button (right mouse button in this case) and cycle through my pre-buff skills while holding the cast button. I.e. first put on

Battle Command, press and hold the cast button, let it cast once or twice and switch to the next one (

Battle Orders) while still holding the cast button, etc. If you have decent cast speed (i.e., you have some FCR and you're not on an Amazon), this feels better (to me) than trying to time the button clicks with cast animation