Sumie

I used to be an ardent supporter of spell pushback when this game first came out and throughout most of pre-BC. It brought a new element to MMO PvP that previously had been neglected -- kiting. Those who claim WoW PvP is nothing more than using the right skills at the right time haven't played MMO's where features like /stick and /face dumbed down the game. Movement skills are a staple of any good PvP game, especially first person shooters, and WoW seemed to be the first MMO to understand that. Keyboard turners were at a clear disadvantage in WoW. Players who grew up in an FPS background quickly excelled. Even now, when you watch videos of the top druid healers, it becomes apparent that it's not their gear or their amazing ability to stack lifeblooms that impresses us -- it's their movement (coupled with quick reaction times and the ability to multi-task).

Fastforward to today and Blizzard has changed the scope of the game such that kiting even one melee has become a lesson in futility. Constrained arena maps, 15 second intercept, cloak of shadows/improved sprint/shadowstep/deadly throw, the inability to remove a spammable hamstring w/out a paladin's blessing, etc. Add another melee and even classes who excel at kiting (druids and mages) start running into trouble. What we're left with is a meta-game where a caster's damage is brought to a screeching halt when focused, while focusing melee does not have nearly the same effect (and in fact, the inverse is true for warriors). It's no surprise then that casters such as warlocks, druids, and priests who still have several instant-cast options can still somewhat compete in this melee oriented game. Paladins, Shaman, Mages, and Hunters on the other hand severely struggle in the lower brackets.

I propose a simple suggestion -- get rid of spell-pushback, or at least provide all spells with an innate 70% pushback resist (pushed to 100 with Concentration Aura or Earth Shield), and as a consolation to melee, take Pummel/Kick off the GCD. *edit* Or as suggested later in this thread, change it so only specials cause pushback, not white hits. Place more emphasis on quick reactions and faking casts than delaying a 1.5 second cast to 5 seconds with auto attacks alone.

Thoughts? Does spell pushback really have a place in PvP?

 

Bigfish

As a melee'er I have a real hard time noticing that push back has any effect at all in arena. I watch helplessly as I auto attack any caster in hopes that my ES timer can beat thier cast timer. The only class that I see any real effect on is priests, and I don't really see to many of the healing type in arena's so Im not sure that it really represents to much of an issue.

 

Nadagast

I love how you mention stick and face as an example of a game that doesn't have kiting. DAoC had as much or more kiting than WoW has or had.

Although I agree pushback is retarded, just removing pushback wouldn't be nearly enough to stop the current melee trends

 

Chirality

I would argue that it's not Spell Pushback but rather Line of Sight pillar-humping that has resulted in a surge of melee dps and druid healing. Paladins are helpless in large part because they cannot heal while pillar-humping a pole, unlike a druid's lifebloom.

Perhaps what needs to be introduced instead is spells that you can cast while moving--even if they're far less efficient.

 

Sumie

My fault, my reference to /stick and /face was not to kiting, but rather to how past MMO's would dumb down movement abilities. /stick and /face allowed a keyboard turner to concentrate less on movement, and more on using their specials.

Yet pillars have been around since S1. I'd argue it's simply the introduction of Armor Penetration that has established melee's dominance. And since druids are the only healer who can reliably escape from melee or CC melee off their teammates, they became more coveted in the lower brackets.

Also, the woes of paladin healing is really a separate issue (ie. LoS, no instant casts) to spell pushback, since pallies don't suffer from that.

 

Amera

A huge portion of 5v5 strategy is not letting enemy casters just tee off on people. While there are a variety of ways to do this, pushback is probably the most reliable (just sitting on someone). The problem of removing this is that casters can do so much damage in such a small window that pretty much anyone will die. Melee can certainly burst, but it's pretty rare for a warrior or rogue to just kill someone in 10 seconds assuming they have resilience, whereas an elemental shaman/mage whatever left alone to cast for 10 seconds assuredly will.

I think pushback is annoying as hell when I play a caster, but just removing it I think will cause a lot of problems without returning spam-cast damage.

 

• Mex

Yeah, a blanket removal of pushback would seem to favour casters quite highly. Pillar humping IS a defense but you can't win by doing it, eventually your melee needs to expose itself. Even temporary pushback resist is incredibly dangerous, eg mage + ice barrier (and icy veins come 2.4), spriest + PWS, ele shaman + BoP when used in a co-ordinated burst. It's only very recently that I've stopped using 2T4 in 5s on my mage for frostbolt pushback resist. Most casters are already equipped with a variety of instants and escape mechanisms to deal with pushback from melee, and leaving a caster free to cast should always be a conscious decision whereby the team is prepared to deal with whatever that caster can then unleash (lightning bolt spam, mana burn, fears, etc).

Perhaps some changes to pet pushback to go hand in hand with increases to pet survivability, but otherwise I think pushback is ok as it is.

 

Nadagast

Pushback isn't really how you stop a caster from casting on you in 5v5... You use interrupts and CC to do that

 

• Mex

Interrupts and CCs are a precious comodity, you use them to stop bursts, or make your bursts more successful, or to simply lock down the enemy team to the point where they get worn down faster than you.

Pushback is to mitigate damage that would potentially bring one of your team into range of a burst.

 

WazAg

I don't think that this would necessarily be a good way to balance things out, though I do think that pushback can end up being a bit much when you're being hit a ton -- especially by classes who dual-wield.

As it is, though, I don't find it interfering with my PvP experience that much. Arenas and PvP have always had a major focus on mobility, control, and instant abilities. I'd say it puts some classes at a relatively disadvantageous position -- but most of those classes get other advantages as recompense.

I'd be all for putting a maximum of (x) seconds on the casting of a spell, so that if you really do want to cast that frostbolt, or healing wave, you can. Right now it seems to exist, but with more than one person beating on you, spellcasts tend to be overly protracted, in my opinion.

If someone can't manage to counter you after six or so seconds, the spell should bloody well go off.

It's pretty irrelevant, though, since I find that, especially in the arena setting, sitting still tends to be a horrible idea, unless you're being left alone.

Think of how many classes are just plain overwhelming when you don't focus fire on them, at least a bit -- especially in smaller arenas, but it affects all brackets.

 

Taja

I dont really feel like casting anyway when there is a melee class on me. If they want to change anything just stop pets giving pushback to make it so easy to give every caster without pushback reduction talents a permanent CoT.

 

dakalro

While my arena experience is nil I can safely say that pushback does have an effect, a dual wielder will more than double my cast times (except maybe fear with gloves). For channeled spells each pushback is 1/3 of its duration off and anything channeled will at most get 1 tick off with melee on. It's certainly not unnoticeable.

 

• sadris

I do think that spell pushback (in addition to armor ignoring/reducing effects) are mechanics which absolutely need to be retuned, but not removed for arenas. Just removing pushback altogether would be a bad solution (hello mana burn spam) but as it currently stands there is a huge advantage melee classes (namely Hunters and Rogues) have against casters due to sub-1.0 attack speeds and virtual immunity to snares. I would think that capping added spell cast time due to pushback at +25% would be a more elegant solution.

Also regarding casters in general, it seems a bit lopsided that every class in the game now has some way to stop a spellcast but the only 1.5 classes can disarm a melee opponent.

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Nadagast

Yes and you have to be able to switch between using your interrupts and CC offensively to defensively quickly, that's a big part of what separates good teams from bad. If you're just mashing CC everywhere randomly, generally you aren't doing it right... I think this is fine

 

Amera

I agree pushback isn't the best way to stop casters, but it is A way. Sitting a felguard on a mana burning priest, or a purged mage, etc is a pretty effective way to cut down their casting. Also what Sadris said about fast-attacking pets or classes.

 

Knasen

What they could test first is just tuning the pushpack down to maybe 0.5, 0.3, 0.1 "immune" or something similiar, quite biased though since I never can get a melee of me as a warlock.
Armor penetration is apparently looked at, making it a percentage reduction in pvp would obviously be much better but dont know exactly what blizzards thoughts are, but getting 20-30% more dmg on a clothie through stacking sunders is just too effective as it is.
The fact that melee just scale so much better with their gear is another problem, which now repeats itself, and something they have to look at if they are serious about the arena imo ( and of course also how melee are relativly weaker early on in an expansion).

 

◊ Vontre

Pushback actually has very little to do with how you stop mage burst. It's the act of kiting, or having to stand still to cast. A warrior pressuring a mage may spend only 30% of his time in actual melee range, but keep a mage from casting frostbolt 90% of the time because of the pressure of potential interrupts and immense melee damage. Pushback only comes into play heavily when dealing with pets and ranged classes, removing pushback would have almost no effect on melee matchups.

And for the record, I do think pet auto-attack pushback is insanely stupid. At very least there should be a check that bases the amount of pushback on the damage of the attack, so felhunters attacking for double-digits don't rape casting bars.

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◊ manly

Well, call me insane but I believe the root of the problem of spell pushbacks is none of what was mentioned so far. Spell pushbacks will 'reset' on every new spell. For instance, if I begin to cast a fireball, and get a pushback, I will get a full 1s pushback. The next pushback on the same spell will be 0.5s. If I remember correctly it goes all the way down to 0.1s. But the crucial tidbit about this is that every new spell will 'reset' this pushback back to 1s. If they made it like diminishing returns that are time-based, then you could have something arguably more balanced.

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Rej

Part of playing in a strong Arena team is protecting your teammates when they need it. Spell pushback emphasizes how "vulnerable" caster classes are to beatdowns from melee classes - they have some abilities to get away, but also require roots/CC/snares from their buddies to help escapes and kiting. Spell pushback is annoying, there's nothing more irritating than dealing with constant pushback only to end up with a resisted cast, but it feels like a core game mechanic that highlights the differences between stronger and weaker teams.

 

◊ Vontre

Part of playing a melee is using your abilities and group support to dodge those defenses and get to the gooey, creamy spellcastery center within. I certainly don't agree that melee is "unkiteable" but you can't simply dodge the issue by saying it doesn't exist with perfect play. Personally I'm not really concerned with pushback from direct melee attackers anyway. However the current system is, without a doubt, broken in some ways and could use retuning. I bring forward these points:

1) Heavy reliance on RNG (the random number generator) in determining pushbacks. There are a great number of talents, bonuses and abilities which reduce the chance to recieve pushback by a non-trivial percentage chance. This makes the act of casting a spell while taking damage to be heavily luck reliant. Previously chances to resist a direct spell interrupt were based on chance, but were converted to roughly equivalent methods of reducing the effectiveness of the interrupt instead. Spell pushback could stand to gain consistency from a similar standard.

2) Pet cheese, or abusing sources of small damage to create pushback. Putting a pet on a player has an obvious advantage of preventing the player from leaving combat, but it also interrupts spellcasting to a degree that is often greater than a a direct melee attacker. Leaving a pet to autofollow a caster for the entire match to prevent spellcasting is trivially easy and requires no attention from the pet owner whatsoever, while at the same time often being very difficult to counter for the spellcaster being attacked.

These are the specific issues with the pushback mechanic that should be addressed in some way.

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• Mex

This is the case with pushback too. You don't put a rogue on an SL/SL lock because he's incredibly easy to burst down, you do it to prevent fears and drains. You don't stick a felguard on a mage to try and make the enemy healer spread his heals out, you do it to mitigate his overall damage output to stop him dropping a target into burstable range every 5 seconds.

 

Sumie

Here's another suggestion: Auto-attacks from players and pets no longer cause spell-pushback. This way, only specials like Sinister Strike, Mortal Strike, a Felguard's Cleave, would delay a cast.

With such a change, pets would still cause some push-back but nothing as ridiculous as it is now. It's still a huge reduction for DW rogues or 1.0 atk speed feral druids, but I'm still of the opinion that spell-pushback is just a crutch for slow interrupters, and is not necessary (to the extent currently implemented) for balance.

 

Kaber

Sorry, Hunters with sub 1s attack speeds? Shot times are generally 2.6s, and if Hunters use steady shot they have ZERO pushback protection (autoshot will not go off while steady shot is being pushed-back, so if they start taking hits they can no longer use steady shot leaving them in a similar situation as casters). If hunters actually want to do any real damage they are in the same boat as casters in terms of pushback, as using auto shot alone is only about 35% of a Hunter's total DPS output and adding in Mult/Arcane brings them up to around 50-60%. In fact most casting classes have some form of pushback protection, whether they are shields or straight up percentage based immunities while Hunters have none because of Auto Shot. Heck, Hunters cannot even maintain range on most melee classes the way most casters can (unless they choose a spec that is only really good for Dueling 1v1) and are equally screwed over when being attacked by Rogues and Warriors.

And pets are also not all that tough to kill. Warlock pets are generally much more powerful than Hunter pets, and both are low health with zero resilience. There is a reason that killing the pets results in a win, and it is an equally silly mechanic. A hunter/lock team with their pet alive is unbeatable for certain teams, while they become easy points for people that kill the pets. If you make it so pets no longer cause pushback and are instead easily killed fire'n'forget DoTs then Hunters, who are already scraping the bottom of the barrel in most arena brackets, become much weaker. Warlocks who are much healthier in terms of viability (and much more hated), but would see serious repercussions as well.

 

• sadris

Autoshot + Steady shot + Pets with Serpent's Swiftness is well, well below 1.0 attack speeds.

I think that is a much more elegant solution as it doesn't break anything in PVE either. Given that if you experience pushback from white attacks then the boss would most likely kill you in two rounds and anytime there actually is pushback in PVE it is due to a pulsating AOE (thus a yellow attack).

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Nadagast

Spell pushback doesn't effect Fear in 5s, it's only Kick/Gouge/Kidney that prevent a Warlock from casting it. You do _sort of_ get on a Warlock to prevent his abilities but pushback isn't the main thing that achieves that. Warlocks are really vulnerable to getting trained by say, euro comp, as 2346 cuz the Rogue is pretty much invulnerable (cheat death/CLoS balanced) and they have no way to peel melee off them really. And there are certain situations where a FG on a Mage is okay, but in general it's better to just have him on your assist target.