Faster Casting vs Spell Echo

Is there any reason to use a Faster Casting gem "instead" of a Spell Echo gem?

From what's here http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Spell_Echo
Faster Casting seems to be the lesser of the 2 gems. The only reason i can see that anyone would use a Faster Casting gem is if he doesn't have a Spell Echo gem or he uses both of them for even more speed.

One reason to use faster casting instead of spell echo is in a Critical Hit build (especially with CoC running). Using spell echo will result in either two consecutive crits or two consecutive non-crits which is either overkill or insufficient in many scenarios.

Another reason to prefer faster casting is for better survivability with short range spells. Cast and move, cast and move - where spell echo locks you in place for a cast, cast, move sequence.

There may be other situations where faster casting might be preferable, but, like everything in PoE, its pretty situational and paper dps may not always be the most important factor in game. Except, of course, at the extreme end where you're using a broken build and obliterating everything as soon as you enter the map, lol.

[EDIT]Durr.. disregard the CoC portion of first paragraph. Severe brain fart. Argument does still hold for the criticals from the spell itself.[/EDIT]

When looking purely for cast speed for your main skill, spell echo is superior provided you can survive what Paxmilitaris mentioned: it locks you in place for two casts. With most spells this is a macroscopic time and potentially dangerous. Generally most caster builds will choose spell echo over faster casting, possibly using faster casting in a 6L setup together with spell echo.

That said, Faster Casting is generally better for any support skills due to the better control from not being forced to cast twice. For instance a standard issue movement setup would be lightning warp linked to faster casting and reduced duration. Spell echo here would ruin the entire setup, since repeating lightning warp would randomly choose a target for the second cast. The same reasoning could work for (spell) totem as well, although I'm not sure how repeating works with those (the idea: faster casting affects both how fast you get the totem up and running and how fast the totem itself casts the linked spell).

IIRC, Spell Echo also saves your mana consumption, the repeated castings cost no mana, which for some build is pretty important. DPS wise, Spell Echo reduced dmg of the repeated spells but still better than FC. In short, for FC gem, you'll run out of mana faster with less cast speed and less dmg, but better mobility.

Btw, Spell Echo doesnt work with Spell Totem so you have to use Faster Casting instead.

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againwetryagain wrote:

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Another reason to prefer faster casting is for better survivability with short range spells. Cast and move, cast and move - where spell echo locks you in place for a cast, cast, move sequence.

this alone, is entirely the reason I don't use echo.

stutter step, just like an orb sorc.

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Btw, Spell Echo doesnt work with Spell Totem so you have to use Faster Casting instead.

Not even with Ancestral bond or Soul mantle? Curious. Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah, for Totems and minions, spell echo doesn't work. But you'd want to use Faster Casting for those anyway since in addition to you casting them faster, the spells they cast are cast faster as well.

You wouldn't want to use Spell Echo for Immortal Call or any other spell where the second cast overwrites what you did in the first cast with a worse version of it.

When I had my incinerator in Ambush league, I used both. With the Life Gain on Hit from Cybil's Paw, more cast speed meant more life gained.

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Paxmilitaris wrote:

Is there any reason to use a Faster Casting gem "instead" of a Spell Echo gem?

Of course! If you have a slow cast speed, SE roots you in place and makes you a sitting duck (although using both gems helps with this). And FC would be used over SE in minion, totem, curse, and Lightning Warp links. Lightning Warp is pretty major. It's LW + FC + RD. Nobody uses SE there.