Hi Guys,
I wrote a few tips on interrupts that I thought might be helpful for some folks. This is purely based on my own experience over the years. Let me know if you find this helpful, and feel free to add to this or provide feedback! I hope there isn’t too many mistakes in there since I wrote this at like 2 am.
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Cheers friends,
Jwah/Jerry
Tip #1 - Don’t over fake cast
This is a skill that’s easy to understand but sometimes hard to master. I see a lot of shadow priest struggle with this and I don’t blame them. As a shadow priest we are often the primary target. Since we only have one spell school to do damage, so it’s important that we don’t get interrupted. Often times when we’re trying to fake cast, we over do it and it actually becomes worse than just tanking the kick. A good indicator when this is happening is when you tried fake cast like 5 times and the enemy player is just holding kick. So how do we counter this? Just cast and tank the kick. You’ll save more time by tanking the kick than wasting too much time faking.
Tip #2 - Fake unpredictably & Look for enemy player tendencies
Fake casting is a mind game. It’s important to not become predictable when you are faking casting. When you fake cast, sometimes you want to go for the instant fake, and sometimes you want to go for the later fakes. This is often dictated by the players you are facing. Every player has a way they like to kick and if you notice that the enemy player likes to instant kick, then you should mirror with an instant fake of your own. You should have a pretty good sense of the enemy player’s tendencies pretty early in the game. Against the good players however, they will adapt quickly and as a result make their kick timings unpredictable as well. This is where it gets tricky. When playing against unpredictable players, this is where making your fakes unpredictable comes in. You’ll be surprised how many times I just went for the cast and got my spells off without getting kicked because they thought I would fake cast.
Tip #3 - Get interrupted strategically
So what does this mean? In simple terms, when you know you are not at the risk of dying or getting a potential kill, just spam cast in order to get the enemy interrupts on cooldown. This is important so that when you do need to cast you won’t have to worry about any interrupts. Let’s use an example. Let’s say that your team doesn’t have any offensive cooldowns for another 10 secs but you’re planning on doing a “go” soon, this is a good time to just cast and tank the interrupts so that when you do “go”, you are for sure going to get your casts off. This is also very beneficial for your healer if done correctly. In situations where your healer is trying to heal but the enemy has their interrupts available, it’s good to just spam cast in order to bait the kicks onto yourself so your healer can heal. Casting spells like mind control and mass dispel is a good way to bait their kicks. People love to kick MC for some reason.