Please find a way to reintroduce the spell batching system that was changed/removed in 2014

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Hello everybody. To begin, for those of you who do not understand what spell batching is, here is a link to how blizzard changed the way that the servers processed spells in 2014.

I am unable to insert links into my post, but if you google “spell batching wow”, click the top reddit link, and then the bluetracker in the link, an archived blue post will be there for you.

TLDR: The server processed spells in groups of 400ms (0.4 seconds).

This affected many areas of combat, from healing your tanks in a raid, to cheap shotting an enemy rogue on his vanish, blinding a kidney, fearing a rogue cheap shot, gouging a blink, and so forth. I am sure many people in the comments will be able to provide extensive examples on different interactions that were made possible by this system.

I would also like to include that both the old spell batching system, and the current system of just processing actions as fast as possible both have their positives and negatives.

In the final note of the first dev watercooler, the team says that they want to deliver the authentic classic experience, with todays quality of life changes such as battlenet, anti-cheat, and so forth, without any core gameplay changes.

These comments can be found in the final subheading labelled “Looking Ahead” of the dev watercooler (once again, unable to post links)

Quote: "All the work we’re doing will ultimately allow us to recreate an authentic classic experience on a platform that is much more optimized and stable, helping us avoid latency and stability issues. Additional improvements will include modern anti-cheat/botting detection, customer service and Battle…net integration, and similar conveniences that do not affect the core gameplay experience.

We are looking forward to the challenges ahead and share your passion for the classic game; every code check-in data conversion we make brings WoW Classic closer to providing that authentic experience you—and we—want. Thanks for joining us on this journey."

Unfortunately, the old batching system is what made up many interactions of that core gameplay experience, and it will be sad to see it go. I have played wow extensively over the years, with and without this spell batching system, and I personally feel that the old system was superior, especially for pvp encounters, be it arena, rated bgs, or even world pvp.

I once heard a developer (I can’t remember where) say that when leaving feedback, don’t tell us what you like and how to fix it, but rather tell us how the current system makes you feel so that they can address the feeling that the system in place/being discussed creates;

I feel that the old batching system added gameplay that was interesting and engaging, whilst I felt the newer system removed interesting gameplay and interactions between players. I feel that not having the old spell batching system will affect my core gamplay experience for classic wow, and I do not like it.

Please consider this feedback and pass it on to the development team.

To conclude my post I would ask anybody discussing the spell batching system in the comments below to remain civil and constructive. This post in not an attack on the retail system, but simply a request for the classic system that many players will remember from before Warlords of Draenor. Please leave your thoughts, and hopefully a blue can see this post and relay my feedback to the team.

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there are a lot of things that should be in the game, even if their restricted to prevent blatant exploits but doubt they will and the same with batching.
Batching should be in the game as it makes the top the top and creates a new dynamic of game play.

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Please don’t, it was a horribly unintuitive and random system, and it screwed with a lot of things.

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(posted from wrong character as i had swapped to my phone, this character has been my main for the majority of wow so i chose to post on this)

This is not a discussion on whether or not it messed with a lot of things, but rather that not having it would change the core gameplay experience. On a side note though, could you please explain why you found it unintuitive? As a higher ranked player, I understood the spell batching system on a base level, even if I didn’t know why it was happening, since before my first arena achievement. It was not something that needed explaining, but more something I could look at and go “okay so if i vanish when he throws death coil i can cancel the death coil with my vanish”

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It’s quite simple having things that should be mutually exclusive happen and do in fact randomly happen because there is no way to predict or control batching is very unintuitive.

It also made it painfully obvious that it was technical limitation not an intended design.

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Why do you think it was random? A 0.4 second window is a pretty small window, but it is consistent. Sure you could hit the wrong batching window, but more often than not you would be able to consistently (if you had correctly anticipated the thing you were trying to counter) negate the enemy players spell.

I think you should at least have tried to participate in the mechanics before commenting and saying it was random. A quick armory search of your character revealed no pvp related achievements, or even any indicator that you ever participated in any kind of gameplay that would have required a skill based mind game or reaction.

I can also see (as courtesy of the new forums) that you clearly do not even understand, and have made no attempt to understand how the system works or why some people would find it desirable.

Please in future do not even participate if you’re just going to have a negative response simply because you do not understand how something works.

Thank you for not responding to my query about why you didn’t like it and why you didn’t find it intuitive, because it revealed that your responses add nothing to the conversation.

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You don’t need visibility of the window, as the window was so small that you’d hit it if you reacted in time.

The same way you could pre-kick a spell cast (or bait a pre kick by standing still for 0.5 sec or so in a bad spot to trick your opponent into thinking you’re going to cast, but you’re already moving again by the time he kicks due to latency), you can see an opponent is going to death coil you because you popped a cooldown, or because they need to create space, or whatever. Same with mage blink and gouge, it was a reliable mechanic. I can see this has been explained to you in other threads (repeatedly) and you will not even respond to what people say to you, even when provided with a video of it happening reliably.

Stop posting.

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Lol no you could not predict it at all.

Stop pretending the handful of times you actually had it work trump the many many more times it didn’t. You realize all those times it didn’t work were the system working as intended not that you messed something up with your timing right?

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You have no skill based achievements for pvp. I may not be a rank one gladiator, but I have been in the higher percentiles in multiple pvp seasons (achieving gladiator and hero of the alliance in season 14) and at least understand the mechanics. Meanwhile, you have won 100 arena matches and barely cracked 1700 in rated battlegrounds. Stop commenting on skill based gameplay when it’s not even something that you participate in. The system was live up until the Warlords of Draenor beta, and I have experienced it personally (I got destroyed by it probably 30 times in a row by the same player in rogue vs rogue) in vanilla. Stop dismissing a very good system that you don’t understand because you don’t have the foresight or intuition to make use of it. Please stop posting, I won’t be replying to you any longer.

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Oh wait you have zero vanilla pvp experience, why are you even offering an opinion?

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This is the main reason for me making this post, I felt like the game lost a lot in the transition from MoP to WoD, just based on the spell batching system.

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So you really just gambled on exploiting an old server architecture. So much for your skilled pvp.

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These are not things one can feel. You’re just stating your opinions, not feelings…

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There not going to rebuild the architecture of the game for Classic.

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Well it would be as simple as changing the refresh rate values on the servers, much like a lobby in csgo can have a 64 tick server or a 128 tick server.

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That’s not going to work cause I feel Classic “servers” are just going to be partitioned space from the existing retail servers.

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Although I understand your line of thinking, I don’t think that necessarily has to mean that changes to the way the servers operate cannot be flexible in regards to things like refresh rate, sharding, phasing, etc.

For example, RP servers do not have sharding on live (as far as im aware). Another example would be that the devs alluded to the servers being quite flexible at some point in blizzcon, when replying to a question about servers population and server cap and so forth. If you are able to disable one thing, or dynamically change the cap of online concurrent users, would it not also be feasible that they have the tech already built in for things like changing server values as far as things such as refresh/tick rates (in reference to batching)?

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Yo vael, hand me my pitchfork

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Only if you hand me a lit torch.

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Any can detail for me this system?

So every 400 ms all spells in server are processed or only your particular interaction actions individually are processed on these 400 ms?