The first shard that tried re-creating this game mechanic was Novus Opiate. However, the shard ran into problems forgetting key elements to the tactic. The "swing delay" should only elapse while your character is not moving. This replicates the "phenomenon" that was perceived from the past that traditionally thought spell casting had everything to do with it. Originally the inception of the trick was that casting spells refreshed your combat delay. For example, when your character would stop to cast an energy bolt after the target cursor came up your character would be ready for a hally swing always. Harm was another great measurement tool for a weapon cycle. Casting two harm spells back to back would allow you to have a swing ready too. This was just a huge coincidence based on the delays used at that time period from swapping to the wrestling delay after unequipping your hally. A good friend of mine by the name of Jiggo/Jiggles from the c2w and FU Chessy guilds on IPY and Div has a very good post about the misconception among this game mechanic.
Jiggo wrote: Ok, so lets go over some gameplay facts, and observations about the era:
I agree (and I think we all can) that the spirit of t2a would be lost if you could fully swing while moving. Tank mages could not refresh their hally while running full speed (this would not be a good thing, especially for dexers. 2s swing hallies on the run? I think not). You could also not endlessly dodge someones attacks to avoid losing your swing, while still getting your 2s hally swings. You had to stop moving to refresh your hally, and thats why many people assumed that the only way to refresh your hally, was to cast a 6th circle spell. It froze you in place for the 2 seconds required to refresh, thus, it was assumed that the spell caused the refresh. Years later, the spell refreshing the swing has been debunked.
Also, the patch that killed this tactic was the UOR publish when tank mages were abolished. The disarm delay in modern UO works exactly the way it did during the t2a era. When you unequip a weapon the delay shifts straight to the wrestling delay. However, the only key difference between both systems is the removal of insta hit many years before. The equip delay only occurs when you have an active delay during the t2a era. Insta hit worked by allowing you to swing instantly when you had a swing ready. The modern equip delay works exactly the same way it did before the implementation of insta hit. When you equip a weapon the weapon delay is automatically forced. This means a hally for example sitting at 5 seconds theoretically would be forced to wait out at all times after equipping it. The equip delay worked entirely differently during the t2a era and only forced the reset of the delay when there was already an active delay.
That is the main difference between t2a and now in Ultima Online.
