Casting and blocking at the same time

[Alonshow]

According to the Magic Overview article in the wiki (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magic_Overview#Spells):

casting while blocking [...] is invaluable for repetitive casting of ranged spells [...] Pressing the block and cast button/key at the same time is sufficient to chain-cast

I can't manage to do that. I have assigned the mouse left button to Cast and the right button to Block. Both work well on their own. But if I press both at the same time I just cast, I don't block. Am I missing something here?

[Chicken Slayer]

Casting is usually C on the keyboard (how do you swing a sword/shoot a bow and cast a spell in the same fight?), so I don't know what effect your mouse buttons are having. What normally happens is that by holding the block button down, the speed of the continual casting is noticably increased (doubled?). This is useful for ranged spells when a bad guy is running at you, and for spells 'on self' when you are trying to build points. I'm pretty sure that casting while blocking drops the shield hand. During tough toe to toe fighting, it probably is better to simply cast in between your enemie's strikes against your shield.

I use a stone/marble and book to hold down my C key, and a rubberband and object to hold down my mouse button to fast cast long-term to build points.

[FrozenWolf150]

I was about to start a new topic on this when I found this one. I have a tip for speed casting that might prove useful when it comes to custom spells.

As the wiki says, you can cast spells at almost twice the rate by casting while blocking. Of course, you will need to have something that you can actually block with, like a weapon, a shield, or your fists. A shield might seem to make the most sense, since if you're using a one-handed weapon, you can block even if you don't have your weapon readied. However, any shield worn on your arm counts as armor, and will detract from your spell effectiveness (note that this does not happen if you have a shield and a two-handed weapon equipped).

After a little testing, I found that blocking with a bow will give you the fastest possible casting rate. This is likely to balance out the fact that a bow is the worst thing to block with. On Touch spells can be cast faster than 1 / sec, so any custom On Touch spells you create only need a duration of 1. You can easily test this by making a custom damage-stacking spell with Weakness to Magic 100% for 1 sec. Blocking with a shield, your fists, or any other weapon isn't quite fast enough for the spell to stack, but switch to a bow and it will work.


BTW, to answer the OP, you're doing it exactly right. I have a 3-button mouse, so I bound the middle button to cast. You can test if the speed casting is working by first casting without holding block, then casting while holding block. There should be a noticeable difference in rate.