For whatever reason spell batching was a thing in Vanilla, it became part of the game play. Spell batching is what makes double crit shatters possible for a mage. I suppose other classes have their own uses for the mechanic. So, in the interest of preserving authentic per period gameplay, Blizzard is giving us a modern day emulation.
Works fine as far as I am concerned.
It was completely a technical limitation, and there is no balancing around batching… slower batching just means you are more likely to encounter bugged interactions randomly.
Also to everyone who says it helps slower internet users it actually does the opposite…
If you have 50ms lag you have more time to land your reaction into the same batch than someone would if they had more lag.
No. Double crit shatters don’t rely on spell batching. Most things people say about spell batching is BS.
I’'m tired. Someone else can argue with you honey.
Not much of an arguement. You said something that is not true.
If I said spell batching make you fly would any one be obligated to argue with me?
If someone just flat out lies as their arguement then all I can do is say thats not true.
I mean it seems to me that they did in fact balance around spell batching.
Short primer on spell batching,
As spells hit the server, they are batched (grouped) and then executed. None of the spells in the same batch influence one another. They are all processed based on the conditions that existed at the time the batch was released.
This is why a Mage’s shatter combo can work. A Mage with shatter means any spell they cast against a frozen target has a much higher than normal crit chance. In principal, a damage spell will break the freeze. But if the Mage can get two damage spells to proc in the same batch, both can take advantage of the target’s frozen state.
If you played on private servers, you may have seen the complaints that surfaced from time to time that a Mage couldn’t get a shatter combo to actually work. This is because private servers never got spell batching right - and many didn’t even bother to try.
There is a myth that Mages have circulated forever (since spell batching was such a mystery) that a shatter combo had something to do with sneaking in an Ice Lance damage at nearly the same time as a Frost Bolt hit - and some kind of latency or other poorly understood magic let both damage spells take advantage of the frozen state. This is correct in a way, the timing was important. But it wasn’t really a mystery . . . it was spell batching.
A mage can shatter combo pretty much any spells, but the short nature of a batch means at least one of them is going to have to be instant. But you can do a Fireball / Arcane Explosion shatter combo if you want to, as example. The most frequent combo in Vanilla, if I recall correctly, was Frostbolt / Cone of Cold because they were both relatively high damage spells in the frost mage’s kit.
Correct and one of the common misconceptions about spell batching is that you can influence where your particular spell will lie in a batch. You can’t, as the batches are entirely server side and completely invisible to the players. Which is why you can perform the same sequence of actions repetitively and get different results.
Where the spell lies in a batch is of no consequence. Yes, they are executed in sequence, but the conditions under which they execute are always the conditions at the start of the batch. Then all the plusses and minuses are tallied and you end up with the conditions at batch end.
A good player understands spell batching and plays the odds - hoping at times to get a counter to land in the same batch as what they try to counter. It is odds playing - like a good poker player. To ignore the fact that batching is going on is to give up an edge.
A frost mage hopes to pull off a shatter combo - because they do more damage. But if their spells land in different batches, that’s the breaks.
Whether two spells fall into the same batch of utmost important for spell batching, as you noted it’s what makes a lot of things work including shatter combos.
And that is what you as a player can’t control, can you try to game the odds a little? Can you completely control them, no. Which is why two spells can go off say 100 MS apart and not always have the same results.
I have 5Mbps internet in 2019 in Australia… ![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
Why do you not understand. I do not need to CONTROL which spells fall into the same batch. I only need to play the odds and hope they do. That gives an edge that a brain dead player would overlook. Nobody ever claimed they could make shatter combos work everytime. But if it happens just 50% or 20% or 10% of the time - there is advantage.
you could probably make a batch rate add-on tbh… you only have to query the server at logon to know when a batch is, then it’s the same interval after that
/shrug if it makes you feel better to pretend that RNG is skill more power to you. It’s more knowledge, just like knowing how to increase your crit rate is knowledge. However actually getting a crit is not skill.
Can’t say, but seems it would be stilted game play.
A good frost mage uses an instant cast right after a timed cast into a frozen target - fishing for a combo. A brain dead mage sees a frozen target and throws one frost bolt after another - no chance ever to get a combo.
Now if blizzard would actually provide a spell batch window ticker that the scripting API could use that would be interesting and move it a lot more into the realm of skill.
it was more luck than skill in vanilla with low net speed now that latency is lower than the batching window it’s easier to manipulate and play with, watching streamer duels they are cc’ing each other alot, pally can hoj a charge, etc…
Do you think good poker players lack skill. It is not all luck you know. Apparent good luck can be made with skillful decisions.
It can to a certain degree.
If I get more crits than you because I understand the mechanic and I fish for combos and you do not, you don’t understand that my play is more skillful than yours?