If a warrior/rogue sticks on a priest, warlock, or hunter (or any class that can be perma-snared), they can only be peeled off by CC. A mage or hunter or shaman or warlock who is nuking that warrior/rogue is doing nothing to slow them down or protect their teammate. In the case of the warrior, they're merely feeding him rage. Unless your team's combined burst is high enough to force that warrior/rogue to play defensive.
I was talking about focus firing, and in the case of focus firing there is nearly always a class on you that will slow you. Unless frostbolt, hamstring, cripling poison and concussive shot don't slow since recently, that melee class is sure as heck being kited and is sure as heck given a hard time sticking to his target. Melee aren't CC immune, FYI. Warlocks have other roles, ele shamans are just pretty bad right now.
On an other note, I saw something about armors being indispensable. Sounds like a fairly decent change I'd say, at least doesn't mean something with an enhancement shaman instant rapes anything with a mage/priest/warlock.
A warrior in zerker stance, or a rogue in pve gear is going to take a lot more than 5k dmg to a shatter combo. Add in some minor damage from other teammates and a fireblast follow-up and you can easily gib a warrior who is stuck in zerker for a short time with 1 well placed shatter.
He said that a shatter combo would leave him on 2000 HP from full with 496 resilience. That's demonstrably false. As I said, a shatter combo, on a character with resilience works out to be around ~5000 damage. If you get very lucky with crits and your target is not wearing resilience gear at all you might hit for 6k if both spells crit. If you are a warrior fighting without wearing any resilience gear though, I don't know what to tell you.
He said that a shatter combo would leave him on 2000 HP from full with 496 resilience. That's demonstrably false. As I said, a shatter combo, on a character with resilience works out to be around ~5000 damage. If you get very lucky with crits and your target is not wearing resilience gear at all you might hit for 6k if both spells crit. If you are a warrior fighting without wearing any resilience gear though, I don't know what to tell you.
Most warriors have around 300-400 resil, depending on how much pve gear they are wearing. Also berserker stance adds 10% damage. I get crit with frostbolts in berserker for 3500 all the time when mages have trinkets up. A trinketed shatter combo on a warrior in berserker, including the waterbolts and followup fireblast is roughly 8-10k damage.
Most warriors have around 300-400 resil, depending on how much pve gear they are wearing. Also berserker stance adds 10% damage. I get crit with frostbolts in berserker for 3500 all the time when mages have trinkets up. A trinketed shatter combo on a warrior in berserker, including the waterbolts and followup fireblast is roughly 8-10k damage.
How? 3500 frostbolt + a 1500 icelance adds up to ~ 5k damage, to get 5000 more damage you'd have to have a very very big fireblast crit and all the water elemental's frostbolts crit too?
EVERYTHING CRITS OMFG AND THEN THE MAGE DEATHCOILS. Seriously, a single Mage CANNOT kill a player wearing PvP in a single shatter combo. Even if the player takes no action and gets no heals. The reason you might think this is that a single well-placed shatter combo does a lot of damage and can easily swing the outcome of an arena match. It will not, however, 100-0 a character in decent PvP gear in anything close to 4 seconds. Not happening, even assuming the player does nothing to counter it (CloS, Grounding Totem, Freedom, dispel, trinket, reflect, counterspell, silence, the list goes on).
How? 3500 frostbolt + a 1500 icelance adds up to ~ 5k damage, to get 5000 more damage you'd have to have a very very big fireblast crit and all the water elemental's frostbolts crit too?
Ice lands crits for over 2k if frostbolt is critting for 3500 first of all. Second, the water bolts are around 900ish each non crit. Then the fireblast is 1.5k. That totals just under 8k.
EVERYTHING CRITS OMFG AND THEN THE MAGE DEATHCOILS. Seriously, a single Mage CANNOT kill a player wearing PvP in a single shatter combo. Even if the player takes no action and gets no heals. The reason you might think this is that a single well-placed shatter combo does a lot of damage and can easily swing the outcome of an arena match. It will not, however, 100-0 a character in decent PvP gear in anything close to 4 seconds. Not happening, even assuming the player does nothing to counter it (CloS, Grounding Totem, Freedom, dispel, trinket, reflect, counterspell, silence, the list goes on).
The shatter combo doesn't have to solo the character, it just has to do enough damage where in addition to any other burst from the rest of the team (healers/other dpsers) the target dies within 2 globals from the time the first damage actually lands.
The shatter combo doesn't have to solo the character, it just has to do enough damage where in addition to any other burst from the rest of the team (healers/other dpsers) the target dies within 2 globals from the time the first damage actually lands.
Right. Which means players other than the Mage are contributing substantial damage and the argument that casters would demolish everybody in the absence of pushback is dumb.
Are we really stupid enough to keep arguing ZOMG I GOT 2 SHOT BY MAGE ZOMG. I have a fairly decently geared pve mage with around 1100 + dmg and high amounts of crit. As full pve spec'd frost with trinkets up fighting a lvl 70 mob, I get a max of 6-6.5k on my shatter combos. That's with 0 resilience.
Every single class has burst, casters and melee both. You're telling me you've never been whitecrit + MS + WF, or that you've never been dropped by a stormstrike or crusader strike or a rogue popping AR? Come on guys, there are some very good and reasoned arguments in the thread. But burst that exists across the board is not a consideration in balancing pushback vs kiting, which is what IMHO this thread is really about.
Every single class has burst, casters and melee both. You're telling me you've never been whitecrit + MS + WF, or that you've never been dropped by a stormstrike or crusader strike or a rogue popping AR? Come on guys, there are some very good and reasoned arguments in the thread. But burst that exists across the board is not a consideration in balancing pushback vs kiting, which is what IMHO this thread is really about.
Well said, it's surprising that we went so long looking at the shatter combo without (easily) conjuring up any of the several devastating burst combos that the other DPS classes frequently employ.
I'd like to draw attention, and hopefully some constructive dispute and/or criticism, back to the list I made on the previous page. The currently competitive melee classes have an overwhelming array of tools to escape and/or ignore snaring, kiting, and crowd control - the only limitations to their raw (armor penetrating!) damage. On the other hand, spell pushback is considerably easier to apply to a spellcaster, and spellcasters have much more limited tools for ignoring it.
Most of my 70s, and the ones I have played in pvp extensively, are admittedly casters, so I may very well have a biased view about this. What I would really like is to see some warriors and rogues come in here and tell us if they feel the same way about kiting.
On a side note - this thread hasn't even begun to address the additional issue of simple being able to run through a caster and cancel their spell. Granted, it's really easy to compensate for this if the player attempting it is stupid. But good players can easily interrupt at least half of your spells this way - without stopping their dps, and without using a single GCD.
On a side note - this thread hasn't even begun to address the additional issue of simple being able to run through a caster and cancel their spell. Granted, it's really easy to compensate for this if the player attempting it is stupid. But good players can easily interrupt at least half of your spells this way - without stopping their dps, and without using a single GCD.
If people are pulling this off against you reliably, then they are better players than you, and I have no problem with them interrupting spells this way.
If people are pulling this off against you reliably, then they are better players than you, and I have no problem with them interrupting spells this way.
Unless you happen to be oceanic and a player's position on your screen is at best an approximation.
And you too can become a better player by moving closer to a blizzard datacenter!
Seriously though, it seems like there's some double client/server check that can sometimes make it impossible to cast when someone is running through you repeatedly; there are times when I can't even cast moonfire on a player while mouse turning. It isn't solely about being "a better player".
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Maybe spell pushback is only an issue in conjunction with LOS. In any arena map, if you draw a 36 yard circle around your character, there really aren't many places you can stand where you have full coverage of that circle. There's almost always one or more blind spots where your LOS can be broken. Basically, even if you completely ignore spell pushback, school locks, and silences, you can be prevented from ever using a spell with a cast time. Add in spell pushback, and those 1.5 second windows of opportunity are rendered useless.
Compare this with battlegrounds. It is a completely different game with a completely different focus, but without spell pushback, ranged classes would dominate even more than they already do.
In an open PVP environment where your only options(besides CC) to deal with casters are school locks, silences, and running out of range, spell pushback makes a lot of sense.
In a closed PVP environment where you can just step behind a pillar, spell pushback makes absolutely no sense.
What I would really like is to see some warriors and rogues come in here and tell us if they feel the same way about kiting.
Even though I am very hesitant of posting in this thread, with half of the posts consisting of biased comments and over-exaggerations, I can at least share my personal opinion regarding kiting.
Before the reworked shadowstep up until recently I actually quit playing my rogue in PvP, simply because it was too frustrating being kited to death by most ranged classes. Sure, I had Imp. Sprint, Vanish and Cloak in addition to my Insignia, but all those abilities are on cooldowns, some of them much longer than the snares / CC that they have to counter. If I didn't manage to kill my opponent before I ran out of cooldowns, I was done for.
Originally Posted by Saraya
In an open PVP environment where your only options(besides CC) to deal with casters are school locks, silences, and running out of range, spell pushback makes a lot of sense.
In a closed PVP environment where you can just step behind a pillar, spell pushback makes absolutely no sense.
While stepping behind a pillar works fine for a healer (as long as his teammate(s) aren't in dire need of heals), for a melee this simply isn't a very good option. After all I'm trying to kill something, and how am I going to accomplish that hiding behind a pillar?
I believe you cannot simply take one game mechanic, spell pushback in this case, and look at it without taking into account everything else that's going on. That's like on a broader scale saying "Rogue's aren't topping the charts in raids anymore - give us more damage" - without taking into account how such a change would affect PvP (just an example).
Some posters in this thread are apparently sure that the end of all caster DDs is near, with melee totally dominating PvP, which is clearly not the case. And while I can imagine spell pushback due to pets as particulary annoying, what's stopping you from simply killing it? 2 out of 9 classes rely on pets, one of them - warlocks, requiring it as a means to survive in the arena. That's hardly the overwhelming majority.
In my opinion classes that are weaker than average in PvP should receive specific buffs addressing their specific weaknesses - a general removal of the spell pushback mechanic across the board is no solution.
Last edited by BlackCadian : 06/25/08 at 7:32 AM.
"If teh alliance had shamens, we wud win more battlegrounses" - random ally (Pre BC)
Let's say if people genualy think spell push back is as much of a handicap is to casters as being kited is to melee, I'd be glad to propose deletion of both and we'll see some proper melee domination
In all seriousness though, it's only since recently that rogues actually have good mobility past their long cooldowns and I think you caught the class in a farely biased position in some places. Honestly, if you've been kited to death by complete terribles in BGs for as long as rogues have because you were out of cooldowns, you enjoy every piece of finally having a teleport. As it currently stands though, that mobility comes at a high price, unless you're well PvE equipped. Especially with the cheat death fix.
As for warriors and enhancement shamans, we all know they're nailed to the ground if not properly supported (by dispels or his team mate interupting CC's), so they're basicly in the same boat as the caster not being able to get spells off without his team mate peeling. Some classes suffer more from either (rogues not so much from kiting as warriors, mages can avoid spell interruption better than warlocks, etc) but all in all the balance as it stands is better than it ever really was.
So basicly, yes, issues need to be addressed per class and not just an entire mechanic. And like my earlier point, it'd add more dimension, and that's what creates a fun game.
With all regards to the TS, I think there are several broken mechanics in PVP, spell push-back is only one of them when there is no way to talent out of it (Elemental Shaman, for instance).
I would tend to think that shield block not working while casting is a more "broken" PvP mechanic - one of the many reasons Paladins and Shaman are the always the least represented healers in top Arena competitions.
Ok, well realistically, if we removed spell pushback, the remaining things limiting caster dps would be interrupting them, LoSing them, and running through their 180 degree casting arc (though evidently only amateurs such as myself could ever possibly fall for such a childish tactic). To me, that still kind of seems like a lot.
That being said, I tend to agree with the voices calling for individual class tuning rather than an elimination of pushback. All casters do not suffer equally from this. Certainly SL/SL warlocks are better suited for pvp because they rely less on spells with a cast time. Mages, with their array of instant cast kites/snares and their ability to blink, are much more maneuverable than other casters, and consequently have a (somewhat) easier time at keeping melee classes away from them. A glance at some of the leaked alpha spells/talents seems to confirm that blizzard supports that trend - warlocks are getting a combat teleport, elemental shamans are getting an AoE knockback, etc.
While stepping behind a pillar works fine for a healer (as long as his teammate(s) aren't in dire need of heals), for a melee this simply isn't a very good option. After all I'm trying to kill something, and how am I going to accomplish that hiding behind a pillar?
How does a mage keep nuking his target by ducking out of LoS? Everyone (except rogues) tipically loses DPS when they play defensively for staying alive - warriors putting on a 1h, casters/meleees getting out of LoS of a hunter/nuke train, druids going into bear form, etc...
How does a mage keep nuking his target by ducking out of LoS?
The same way that a druid heals by ducking out of LoS, and the same way that a hunter continues to DPS: pet damage and instant casts. Dont discount that little water buddy . But seriously, while you make a good point about defensive maneuvers lowering DPS, for pillar humping at least ranged have an advantage because they can pop out and use instant casts.
The same way that a druid heals by ducking out of LoS, and the same way that a hunter continues to DPS: pet damage and instant casts. Dont discount that little water buddy . But seriously, while you make a good point about defensive maneuvers lowering DPS, for pillar humping at least ranged have an advantage because they can pop out and use instant casts.
Yes all those amazing insta cast dps spells that mages have, such as icelance and fireblast every 12 seconds.
Pillars are amazingly more useful for melees than for casters. To be honest, this thread has featured some pretty dumb arguments, but the rogue above me just about takes the cake - pillars are unfair towards melees because I cannot keep dpsing casters while I am line of sighting a burst? If I didn't know better I would be almost sure you were ironic.
I must admit though I haven't ever seen anyone actually articulate how it is completely unfair that rogues must stop dpsing their target if they run out of line of sight.
Pillars are amazingly more useful for melees than for casters. To be honest, this thread has featured some pretty dumb arguments, but the rogue above me just about takes the cake - pillars are unfair towards melees because I cannot keep dpsing casters while I am line of sighting a burst? If I didn't know better I would be almost sure you were ironic.
Pillars are there for healers and warlocks. No DPS class (bar a DoT based one) can take an offensive advantage by being behind a pillar ("amazingly more useful for melee"? Yea, because a pillar next to me makes me happy in the pants just because), every class can (depending on their mobility) use them for defensive measures. The defensive properties that pillars give clearly cater towards priests', druids' an dwarlocks' needs due to their instant-over-time spells, and only go to harm casters and melee. Only if the melee's teleport is up and he's not rooted he has a chance to continue DPS, and only of the caster has a root up and is rooted he can continue DPS.
Now it's all nice that you have a vendetta against rogues (as a dwarf priest), but who exactly claimed what you just said? And on the subject of "dumb arguments", what made you think saying "Pillars are amazingly more useful for melee than for casters" without any explanation or clarification would not make you a hypocrite?
Now it's all nice that you have a vendetta against rogues (as a dwarf priest), but who exactly claimed what you just said? And on the subject of "dumb arguments", what made you think saying "Pillars are amazingly more useful for melee than for casters" without any explanation or clarification would not make you a hypocrite?
While stepping behind a pillar works fine for a healer (as long as his teammate(s) aren't in dire need of heals), for a melee this simply isn't a very good option. After all I'm trying to kill something, and how am I going to accomplish that hiding behind a pillar?
Stepping behind a pillar isn't a good option because it means I stop dpsing. I should be able to withstand an assist train while remaining on target and taking no measures to restrain my own DPS.
Pillars are amazingly more useful for melees than for casters. To be honest, this thread has featured some pretty dumb arguments, but the rogue above me just about takes the cake - pillars are unfair towards melees because I cannot keep dpsing casters while I am line of sighting a burst? If I didn't know better I would be almost sure you were ironic.
I must admit though I haven't ever seen anyone actually articulate how it is completely unfair that rogues must stop dpsing their target if they run out of line of sight.
... as well as the post just above:
Errrr... you did read the content of the little grey box in my post where I quoted Saraya, right? Right? I think you just misread my post so just take a deep breath and relax. I wasn't suggesting what you think I did, because obviously that's just wrong.
Originally Posted by ofancow
With all regards to the TS, I think there are several broken mechanics in PVP, spell push-back is only one of them when there is no way to talent out of it (Elemental Shaman, for instance).
Doesn't the Elemental tree have this focused casting talent thing? Can't remember what it's called though, but I remember using it when I tried out some silly Elemental / Resto hybrid spec in 2v2
Last edited by BlackCadian : 06/26/08 at 7:19 AM.
"If teh alliance had shamens, we wud win more battlegrounses" - random ally (Pre BC)
Pillars are amazingly more useful for melees than for casters.
Whenever you hide behind a pillar to try to avoid whatever, a caster still can pop out for a quick instant or 1.5s cast.
If melee gets back there and caster gets distance, its like being under siege, whenever melee decides to come out hes gonna have to go all the way thru the arena while under fire, taking lots of damage before even touching the caster.
And I hate it when I'm trying to LOS any CC and keep myself on someone, and he starts to move away from one pillar to another and I either stick to the pillar and stop DPS or stick to him risking getting CC'ed in the open.
I know caster has worst problems than melee with LOS, keeping DPS thru it is one of them, using it defensively is not.
Errrr... you did read the content of the little grey box in my post where I quoted someone, right? Right? I think you just misread my post so just take a deep breath an relax. I wasn't proposing what you think I did, because obviously that's just rediculous.
Ok - what did you mean then?
The way I read your post, it sounds like you are saying that it is unreasonable or carries way too harsh a penalty for a melee to use los to avoid caster spells because that involves him stopping actively dpsing his target.
06/21/08, 4:24 PM
. But seriously, while you make a good point about defensive maneuvers lowering DPS, for pillar humping at least ranged have an advantage because they can pop out and use instant casts.
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