Simple Questions, Simple Answers - Page 1036

First, there are two relevant definitions:
Cast Point: This property is HERO SPECIFIC. This represents the hero's built in animation wind-up before casting any spell.
Cast Time: This property is SPELL SPECIFIC. This represents the spell's own time required before it's effect goes off.

In the general case, the actual time to cast a spell is Cast Point + Cast Time. However, for most spells, cast time is 0, so only the Cast Point is used.

In the Warcraft 3 engine, there are 3 relevant classes of spells that ignore the hero's cast point:
- Hex
- Fan of Knives
- Wind Walk
- Blink

Hex, Wind Walk, and Fan of Knives also have no cast time, Blink has a cast time that is built into the spell--0.33s for QoP's Blink, 0.4s for AM's Blink, and 3s for Furion's Teleport. Yes, Furion's Teleport is included because it's essentially a Blink with infinite range.

Other spells with different casting properties still use the hero's cast point, but have a non-zero cast TIME. So even in DotA 1, spells with different casting properties are possible--Doom/Naga/Panda's changes don't have to be DotA 2 only things.

Where this gets muddled is when Rubick gets involved. Originally, Rubick's stolen spells are supposed to use his cast point, but retain the cast time of the spells in question--this actually makes a lot of sense. The problem is that Valve has muddled the cast point/time concepts into a single number, and has essentially handled all the other spells as hard-coded exceptions using the DOTA_ABILITY_BEHAVIOR_NORMAL_WHEN_STOLEN flag (seemingly an attempt to simplify, but makes things more complicated to remember). As such, there are a ton of spells that don't actually respect this behavior properly, which is why stuff like both Blinks, Primal Split, and Doom have the wrong cast time when stolen by Rubick now.

For the most part, this difference in behavior makes Rubick stronger in DotA 2 than DotA 1.