PLedge of Hands Won't Let Me Blink or Run Away

I recently spent most of my currency on a 5-Link PoH staff and I am using it with Archmage and Arc as my main skill.

However, when the extra Arcs go off, I cant move away from deadly mechanics at all. I also cannot Flame Dash away?
The two extra Arcs are very slow to go off so I tried socketing in Spell Echo as well, and while it gives it an extra 3rd Arc for free, all of them go off much faster so I think there is little change in overall time.

Not sure what to do now...is this a bug and intended that it freezes you in place until all casts have gone off? I keep dying to stuff that I should have moved from but could not.

I'm also using Unleash Support, and if I'm lucky, I can Flame Dash away before the extra PoH casts go off...but then what's the point of even Using PoH in the first place???

This is really annoying and I'm not sure what to do as I was hoping to run 2x 6-L eventually and really like Arc as my main nuke.

Edit: For some reason Frost Blink lets me dash away in the middle of the extra casts, but they continue to cast again when land in my new location...lol? And then I cannot move again if I have to right away.

Since Frost Blink is an Instant skill, it can indeed be used between a Multistrike or a Spell Repetition without breaking the cast/attack. It's not an Animation Cancel. From Wikia

"

Ice Nova & Frostbolt: When cast this way, makes all repeats to expand from Frostbolt along it's trajectory. Additional repeats from other sources increases Ice Nova activation rate. Casting Ice Nova this way causes "additional expansions" instead of "repeats", and therefore do not gain more damage or increased area of effect per repeat, likewise no benefit is gained from Awakened Spell Echo Support's chance to deal double damage on final repeat.[2] Casting Ice Nova this way also skips the animation chain from additional repeats.

Ice Nova is the only spell that gets a pseudo cast speed boost solely from Pledge of Hands.

It is known that Multistrike and Spell Echo "locked" the character until all of the attacks/cast ended. This changed during Legion, at least for Attacks, so that attacks/spells with long cast/attack speed could be canceled in order to prioritize kiting or dashing away from imminent danger, compensating those who kept their assault by giving the repetitions More damage, usually.
I'll quote again Wikia for some extra knowledge on how Greater Spell Echo works and how it differs from Spell Echo/Awakened Spell Echo

"

Greater Spell Echo causes supported spells to repeat twice after the initial cast with 35% more damage per Repeat and 50% increased Area of Effect per Repeat. Unlike Spell Echo Support it has no cast speed modifier.

When combined with Spell Echo Support, it adds a 3rd repeat with a total of 105% more Damage. The effective DPS multiplier (including the more cast speed) of a 20/0 is 1.53, Greater Spell Echo Support effective DPS multiplier is 1.35, and of both together is 2.33.[1] The spell damage multiplier of a 20/0 Spell Echo Support is .9, of Greater Spell Echo Support is 1.35, and of both together is 1.525. This support doesn't seem to affect certain skills that don't hit on cast, such as Blade Vortex.

Hmmm, that is kind of irritating...so I'm stuck with Frostblink I guess to get out of emergencies? What about Lightning Warp?

This game seems to be all about being efficient and speeding through maps and PoH just make me feel clunky; but it's one of the BiS items, right?

Lightning Warp has a duration, thus is not Instant, therefore will not work. only Frostblink would go, and will work quite well as long there are rare and unique monsters nearby

As for the BiS of a Pledge of Hands... Personally I don't feel it like a BiS. Yes, it's a good staff, with a unique modifier, but just that. If I think about a mage with a staff, I don't default it to a Pledge of Hand. Heck, rather I'd give them a Disintegrator if physical-based spell (not your case).

That said, I won't even use Searing Bond/Taryn/Agnerod because your spells are, respectively, fire-based, cold-based or lightning-based.
When I think about mages with staves I think about stand-alone builds like Whispering Ice, Xirgil's Crank abusers or, well, a Pledge of Hands that focus on stationary for some reason.

From passive, Staves only give some boost of Critical damage, block, AoE and Unholy Might on block. You could get the same if not better CritDamge and Block with a pair of Daggers (implicit critical chance is global, and 2 Demon Dagger gives the same critical damage boost of a Moon Staff, plus the natural +15% BlockChance because Dual Wielding).. Unholy Might and AoE do not apply to Arc so... is there a reason I am not considering on why an Arc mage should default to staves, beside aesthetic?

"

Slavpocalypse wrote:

I recently spent most of my currency on a 5-Link PoH staff and I am using it with Archmage and Arc as my main skill.

However, when the extra Arcs go off, I cant move away from deadly mechanics at all. I also cannot Flame Dash away?
The two extra Arcs are very slow to go off so I tried socketing in Spell Echo as well, and while it gives it an extra 3rd Arc for free, all of them go off much faster so I think there is little change in overall time.

Not sure what to do now...is this a bug and intended that it freezes you in place until all casts have gone off? I keep dying to stuff that I should have moved from but could not.

I'm also using Unleash Support, and if I'm lucky, I can Flame Dash away before the extra PoH casts go off...but then what's the point of even Using PoH in the first place???

This is really annoying and I'm not sure what to do as I was hoping to run 2x 6-L eventually and really like Arc as my main nuke.

Edit: For some reason Frost Blink lets me dash away in the middle of the extra casts, but they continue to cast again when land in my new location...lol? And then I cannot move again if I have to right away.

I'm not sure if I stumbled on something or this is intended, and one may have nothing to do with the other.

But I have PoH + Ball Lightning + Spell Echo + Unleash build, and then I have Phase Run slotted in my movement button (left mouse), and when I hold down my movement key and tap just once my BL cast key, I can completely bypass the spell echo and greater spell echo casts and move fluidly.

I don't know if that's because Phase Run is cancelling the echo animations or what, but it seems to work for me.

Granted, I'm only getting 1 BL + Unleashed BL's cast while doing this, but that's all I need for map clearing. I can basically run non-stop and continually move while just tapping my BL key.

When I'm killing a bigger mob pack or boss, I tend to stay stationary for a few seconds between each cast so I can get all the unleashes and echos. Yes, I'm locked down for about 3 seconds in that situation waiting for the 3 echo animations, but then I immediately flame dash to strafe and re-cast since I need those 2-3 seconds for Seals to regenerate anyway. I'm bursting 8-9 BL's every 3 seconds, pretty much.

Maybe you should consider switching from Arc to BL and supplementing projectile damage.

I also thought about this...

Someone should test if Arcanist Brand + Lightning Warp + Brand Recall would allow you to teleport around while casting Spell Echo + Greater Spell Echo spells at the same time, without interrupting the long animations that come with those echo casts.

In other words, have AB + LW + BR linked in something, and then have something like Ball Lightning or Arc + spell echo support in a Pledge of Hands. Then cast AB a bunch of times with BR to start you triggering LW and teleporting you all around. And when the teleporting starts, try casting BL and see what happens. Does it just cast 1 BL or do you get 4 BL's.

I might mess around with it later, but someone else feel free to give it a shot and report back if you care.