Spell pushback -- last broken mechanic of arena PvP? - Page 12

Bibdy · 07/23/08, 9:28 PM

A thought occurs. The most frustrating part of spell pushback is in how its RNG based. If you have a value of pushback resistance in the 30/50/70% area, then you're bound to have lucky streaks and bad luck streaks, only the latter of which you ever notice.

Perhaps they can change spell pushback to be much less RNG based in making 50% spell pushback resistance reduce the duration that the spell is pushed back by half. Normally, the first hit knocks a spell back 1 second, but with 50% pushback resist, what if it only knocked it back by 0.5s? Then 0.4s, then 0.3 etc.

Cwealm · 07/27/08, 8:10 PM

Originally Posted by Miaxi

Running through the caster is still a perfectly working way to avoid direct damage spells. And if you remember that melee classes do stupid amounts of damage to caster classes, you can't exactly expect a warlock to be able to stand still and shadowbolt whatever is humping his leg because he will be dead before long. Also, melee classes stun. They stun and they reduce healing taken. Sometimes they also cripple your casting speed while stunning. And then they stun some more.

I mean, as restoration shaman you don't suffer pushback but you don't see yourself standing still and tanking rogues or MS warriors, do you? No, I bet you kite them.

I think there is more than enough reasons to not stay in melee nowadays and it's time to remove that antique mechanic.

I honestly can not believe people are seriously arguing that if they remove pushback, casters will just stand there and let rogues wail on them.

Teh Moo Moo Cow · 07/28/08, 6:00 AM

Originally Posted by deadlights

I think he's saying that as it is physical damage have a snowball's chance in hell at damaging a Bear form druid or a Pally. Essentially what has been echoed quite a bit about Armor Pen.

And while Armor pen didn't increase on season 4 items you're still seeing a bump in resilience allowing people to swap out more pieces of resilience gear and stacking more pve pieces with armor pen.

I think a % based reduction is a good idea. The way things are going is backwards IMO... Intuitively speaking, lowering armor is supposed to be a way of compensating for high armor classes but in practice it's just become a way to turn low armor targets into pinatas.

afaik, there's no increase in resi from S3 to S4...

xFrancis147 · 07/28/08, 3:07 PM

I must say that I dont find pushback that much of a disadvantage. Being able to cast dots and stay behind a pillar while still doing damage is a big advantage to me, but having a CoExhaustion which slows a toon by 30% while i'm slowed by 70% due to crippling poison, that is a big disadvantage. I find that the more people, myself included, point out imbalances with other's classes, they will find imbalances with their own class. Thus, raising the point that PvP is more balanced than some people might presume it to be. One just has to clear their mind of the bias that rises when criticizing imblances.

Bibdy · 07/28/08, 3:22 PM

Originally Posted by Teh Moo Moo Cow

afaik, there's no increase in resi from S3 to S4...

The extra 25 resilience on the epic PvP trinket lets you swap out maybe 1 piece and keep the same Resilience value you had before.

Emth. · 07/29/08, 4:03 PM

Originally Posted by Cwealm

I honestly can not believe people are seriously arguing that if they remove pushback, casters will just stand there and let rogues wail on them.

Aside from the fact that Shaman often don't have a choice but to heal through a melee dpsing them, pet's are probably more what he had in mind when making the post. Stick a pet on a shaman healer and you're basically reducing his healing throughput by 30%, before we've even mentioned something like CoT (which one pet class has) or MS affects (which the other has). Just one reason that it's rare to see a shaman solo healing in arenas. Switch healing for damage and you get a similar result for Mages.

The simple fact is, the 2 classes affect most by pushback are two of the least represented, if not the least represented classes in high end arena, so I cannot see how removing pushback can be a bad thing.

Grizlor · 07/30/08, 2:36 AM

That's pretty much spot on. I lost a 2s game today against UA lock/SP because a felhunter got through healing focus on 3 consecutive hits with curse of tongues on me, making a lesser healing wave take 5+ seconds to cast. Combined with silence, spell lock, fear (and spammable tremor totem killing macros), shamans pretty much have the greatest uphill battle of the 4 healers. Having earth shield be undispellable would go great lengths towards alleviating this, but apparently that's a luxury only afforded to mage/warlock base abilities, not 41 point talents.

Cayl · 07/31/08, 12:55 PM

With every silence and interupt moved off the GCD it should be significantly easier to use them. Is it too much to hope that Blizz is thinking about removing spell pushback?

Source

Killmour · 08/09/08, 3:58 PM

Not sure how anyone has not posted this in this thread yet!

Its in the notes, but its worth mentioning:

Spell casting and spell channeling pushback has been changed to the following:

* When casting a spell:

o The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
o All hits after the second will have no effect.

* When channeling a spell:

o The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
o All hits after the second will have no effect.

From the beta patch and forum.

Ghando · 08/10/08, 1:59 AM

When we're talking about balancing around pushback, I think the most compelling argument for removing at least some measure of spell pushback (from pets or other fairly trivial damage) is the RNG it subjects the entire arena match to. If Blizzard is really serious about keeping arenas competitive they should consider the fact that random pushback from trivial damage was removed from the M'uru encounter pretty quickly precisely for the reason that it subjected every spell in a very finely-tuned encounter to a big RNG. If you want to minimize the role chance has on arena outcomes, removing or at least fundamentally altering spell pushback seems like an obvious choice.

Kolenzo · 08/10/08, 2:51 AM

Spell pushback resistance should be changed to "charges" of some sort. 2 points in burning soul, for example, should make a mage immune to the second hit of spell pushback, or perhaps a reduced effectiveness for the two hits. Basically, something that's consistant. You need to be able to predict when your spell is actually going to go off, otherwise you will never be able to move before it does for fear it will get pushed back (although these latest changes certainly help, an RNG factor remains).

Calantus · 08/10/08, 7:39 AM

Making each of those talents -0.1 second of pushback per talent point (or -0.1/-0.3 for the ones with 2 ranks) would make a lot of sense to me. Then just make concentration aura remove the last 0.2 seconds.

Melg · 08/11/08, 4:36 AM

I have 4 major problems with spell pushback:

1. The idea is based on being able to cast against melee classes before they enter melee range, after which the caster is at a disadvantage. This is only true against Retribution paladins and Enhancement shamans.

2. It makes interrupts and CC more powerful than it should by bridging the gap between cooldowns. Basically pushback + interrupts/CC = no casting anything that isn't instant.

3. Some classes have zero ability to escape melee.

4. AoE, pets, ranged damage, RNG and so on.

Saraya · 08/11/08, 1:26 PM

Originally Posted by Calantus

Making each of those talents -0.1 second of pushback per talent point (or -0.1/-0.3 for the ones with 2 ranks) would make a lot of sense to me. Then just make concentration aura remove the last 0.2 seconds.

This is actually pretty close to how it works. The pushback reduction talents just reduce pushback by the percentage.

Example:
My 70% pushback resist on wrath results in 0.1-0.2 pushback(according to quartz, which I assume is just 0.15).
My 40% pushback on roots results in 0.3 pushback.

Mokhtar · 08/11/08, 1:27 PM

Spell casting and spell channelling pushback has been changed to the following:
When casting a spell:

The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
All hits after the second will have no effect.

When channelling a spell:

The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
All hits after the second will have no effect.

No more 2 sec additional casting time on 1.5sec spell, seems the issue is being looked at.

Mordinm · 08/11/08, 4:39 PM

I have a question about spell push back for someone in beta. Currently I don't think spell push back can push a cast time past it's base cast time (modified by things like CoT or mind numbing poison of course.) So if I am casting a 3 second cast and 0.2 seconds in I get hit the cast time resets to 3 seconds, not 3.8.

After this change what will happen if for example you get hit twice within in 0.2 seconds of starting the cast? Will it just reset the cast timer to the base cast time, and make you immune to further push back or will it make the cast time longer then base. There are quite a few classes who can hit you more often then once every .5 seconds.

Bibdy · 08/11/08, 4:56 PM

2 words:

1) Woo
2) Hoo!

My absolute biggest gripe with Warlocks over the last 4 years is the inability to cast a damned thing when you've got a bunch of insignificant mobs beating on you. Run into Wailing Caverns, grab a bunch of mobs and try AOEing all that down. A powerful magic user with demons at his beck and call can't kill a bunch of lowly raptors? Sucks to be him.

This will help Warlock AOE in instances a hell of a lot. Not to mention not being able to be completely shut-down by white-attacks alone. Especially when their Kick/Pummel is on cooldown (and likely will always be on cooldown now that its off the GCD). Even by multiple guys. Only 1 extra second on the spell is bliss compared to the current situation.

Saraya · 08/11/08, 11:45 PM

Originally Posted by Mordinm

I have a question about spell push back for someone in beta. Currently I don't think spell push back can push a cast time past it's base cast time (modified by things like CoT or mind numbing poison of course.) So if I am casting a 3 second cast and 0.2 seconds in I get hit the cast time resets to 3 seconds, not 3.8.

After this change what will happen if for example you get hit twice within in 0.2 seconds of starting the cast? Will it just reset the cast timer to the base cast time, and make you immune to further push back or will it make the cast time longer then base. There are quite a few classes who can hit you more often then once every .5 seconds.

Same as live. If you get hit twice right when you start casting the spell, it won't push the cast time back past the base cast time. The absolute maximum time you will spend casting any spell currently is cast time + 1 second. The minimum time you can spend channeling a spell is just 50% of the duration.

In addition, if you have a spell pushback skill that protects you from the first 2 hits, any succeeding hits will do 0 pushback even if the effect wears off.
Example:
2 seconds left on my barkskin, I cast hurricane. Mob hits me twice in the 2 seconds, resulting in 0 pushback for me due to barkskin. After 2 seconds the barkskin wears off, but since I already got hit twice, the 8 seconds left in my hurricane will channel full duration.

Calantus · 08/11/08, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Saraya

This is actually pretty close to how it works. The pushback reduction talents just reduce pushback by the percentage.

Example:
My 70% pushback resist on wrath results in 0.1-0.2 pushback(according to quartz, which I assume is just 0.15).
My 40% pushback on roots results in 0.3 pushback.

That is excellent news. It means you're guaranteed to lose ~0.3 cast time on a 70% resist cast while being hit but now it's predictable. They're really coming through on reducing RNG this expansion.

Mode · 08/11/08, 11:57 PM

Originally Posted by Saraya

In addition, if you have a spell pushback skill that protects you from the first 2 hits, any succeeding hits will do 0 pushback even if the effect wears off.
Example:
2 seconds left on my barkskin, I cast hurricane. Mob hits me twice in the 2 seconds, resulting in 0 pushback for me due to barkskin. After 2 seconds the barkskin wears off, but since I already got hit twice, the 8 seconds left in my hurricane will channel full duration.

That's the exact opposite of how a blue has said it's supposed to work. Source

If you avoid pushback from the first two hits there is still a chance pushback will occur. This change is simply a guarantee that you will not get pushback more than twice during any cast or channeled spell.

With this being said, the existing talents (such as fel concentration for Warlocks) that increase the chances a player will resist pushback are in the process of being reworked in light of this change. We'll provide more information on this as development progresses.

Verilazic · 08/25/08, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Mode

That's the exact opposite of how a blue has said it's supposed to work. Source

It sounds like either a glitch, or at least an unintended consequence of special and activated pushback abilities (i.e. barkskin, icy veins, etc).

However, if you've seen the latest changes to the pushback reduction talents, maybe it makes more sense now. They reduce the amount of time lost when hit, correct? So if you use an ability that reduces the time lost when hit by 100%, then if you get your two hits while 100% reduction is in effect, you still got your two hits, because it's no longer a "resistance", it's a 100% "reduction", so while it looks like you avoided the hits, you simply had them reduced to zero pushback time.