Running Behind the caster to avoid being hit

There is no problem though. It’s just an l2p issue where you’re getting danced around. Use your mouse to turn and not your keyboard.

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It’s a gimmicky, archaic mechanic that doesn’t play well in a world with high-mobility classes, and client/server latency. Where your client says the enemy is, and where the server says the enemy is, compared to even where the enemy’s client shows them being, are 3 separate places, and your client isn’t the one that makes the call if the spell lands.

There is not a universe in which it is good design to waste multiple seconds doing absolutely nothing to cast a spell that can be interrupted by a fraction of a second pressing of the forward key at no disruption to their rotation. Not when cast-times are already susceptible to being interrupted by actual abilities that take actual thought and have actual costs.

I used to live on the east coast and going from ~100 MS to ~30 made a surprising difference in my ability to land spells against chimpanzees doing the potty dance. I should lose because I got outplayed or outclassed, not outgimmicked by yet another side-effect of ancient MMO caster design that is exacerbated by client/server inconsistencies and pixel-precise positioning in a big open field.

“lol i oopsidentally felrushed at the end of your cast and ruined your kill window” isn’t good gameplay.

Destro should be nerfed and it’s skill cap raised.

It’s still a dumb mechanic. So is channeling through walls.

excuse me but lay off my big bro wooloolloooollooooo in the 2 session of 3’s ive qued this season I’ve managed to encounter him qing dk/dh as well!!! big ups making those weird wacky comps work with rdru

I didn’t say I had a problem with it. I don’t use my keyboard to turn as it is. I was saying to solve the OPs problem, and not have issues with player collision (which others suggested adding), removing direction restrictions in close combat could help

Do you play on an iPad and use your fingers to turn? That could be the issue…

Lol only he was saying they should redesign the entire engine so he can land spells

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you need to improve your footwork

this is a perfect example of when a teacher says there are no stupid questions and then someone asks a stupid question

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I am so glad I play with Drexia, oh my god.

This is one of the few remaining areas of “skill” I can think of. Sure it plays out stupidly when people spam strafe and run around like a rabbit on speed mashing their keys to interrupt casts but:
(a) the cost of shifting away from this would be immense and further reduce the skill ceiling in a game where that ceiling has drastically lowered and

(b) if it was actually that effective, you’d see casters getting wrecked with it at high levels (i.e. tournies) which simply doesn’t happen. It has counterplay, both with anticipating where a melee is going to move to and planning to face it, with abilities (i.e. coil, fear, partners stun, frost mage slows, etc.,) as well as with positioning.

How can you argue that this would be an immense shift of the skill-ceiling while also arguing that it’s not even that effective?

The fact that it’s not that effective shows that it’s overall a pretty inconsequential mechanic that is irrelevant in most situations but very frustrating when it actually does come up. It’s not adding much to general gameplay. It’s the PvP equivalent to Dazed - pointless and very annoying except the once-in-a-blue-moon scenario where it worked in their favor.

The skill ceiling should be higher for melee and casters across the board, but not by preserving stupid and outdated mechanics because “it’s all we’ve got left!”. It’s so easy to interrupt, delay, or avoid casts that you already have to have screwed up on multiple levels to even get these hard-hitting nukes to complete their cast already (CBs excluded because lol destro rn).

It just increases the margin for error for melee classes more-so than it does up the skill ceiling for casters. If they aren’t trying to flee from the cast and don’t have one of their half a million ways to stop a spell available, they probably don’t need to run behind them to dodge the cast. At worst they get hit by a non-threatening spell; at best they wasted another 2 seconds of the caster’s time and threw off their momentum even more, all without missing a single GCD. That’s the sort of gameplay you want to reward and not adequate usage of LoS, abilities, or comp synergy?

I remember when they made SW:D into holy fire i got so triggered. I figured I was going to start seeing PvP movies where rogues slow motion highlight “step behind priest -> can’t death blind.” lmfao.

To be fair are we talking about theoretical gamebuilding or actual shifts we think would be good? As a point of theorycrafting/game designing debate, I think it’s a fun one to have. It also just seems like something that would never be done.

I probably shouldn’t say it’d be an “immense” shift in skill ceiling but pretty much every instance of this game getting simpler I can think of started by people complaining about mechanics they felt highly frustrating without fully considering what continually removing frustrating mechanics would do.

Also saying it’s not that effective is pretty dependent on the skill of your opponent. I used to be able to take down fire mages in BC who were 1500 rated with nothing but melee attacks because they’d stand mid trying to hard cast pyroblasts and fireballs w/ keyboard turning. I think running around players can be pretty effective against weaker players.

Also making it so you can’t run through enemy players (i.e. making them act as physical environmental barriers to the opposing team) might help fix this problem, sure, but imagine what it’d do in other respects? RMPals and WWDK teams would just run at healers from 3 separate angles and spam strafe to stop healers from running away, essentially boxing them in to be cleaved down.

Just saying I don’t think this would either be important enough to warrant a change or would have an net positive impact vs. the barriers that any system that would restrict this could bring.

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Real quick, I’d just like to note that I’m not actually in support of giving players unit collision to address this problem. I mentioned it as a hypothetical compromise if this mechanic just had to stay for some reason. My personal preference is to just have spells not check facing on spell completion. Should still check at spell-start, so you still have to actually care about turning. Least amount of effort to implement and solves the problem. Just clarifying since several people made comments directed toward it.

I do agree that generally lowering the skill ceiling is something that the devs should be mindful of - class (d)evolution over the years has made almost every spec much easier to play and much easier to do well in and that’s not very good from the PvP standpoint (and my god, I struggle to even commit to a raid guild nowadays because I can’t find a single spec in any class that’s fun in PvE). That said, it’s important to consider what the mechanics are that are contributing to a higher skill ceiling. I don’t think this is one that should stay.

You’re absolutely right that this mechanic is extremely effective in very low ratings. Honestly I don’t think this is a good thing - people who are at the 1500 area are already not good or are extremely casual. They have enough things to learn and practice, and it does not feel good to go against a monkey who can do their entire rotation without any disruption and “outplay” a keyboard-turning caster just by running in circles. Combatant bracket doesn’t need this mechanic, and that’s where it’s felt the most.

Melee already have very high uptime, great mobility, lots of instant-cast CCs and short CD interrupts. There’s tons of ways to keep a caster from getting a spell off as well as fleeing when they pop CDs and are threatening. A casual player is not going to want to play a caster when, after being interrupted and chain CC’d endlessly, the spell they finally got to cast got “interrupted” by someone who pressed “w” for half a second. That’s… not at all fun to experience. When I do it, I feel really scummy.

The removal of this mechanic wouldn’t somehow make casters insanely strong, either. It would definitely bump up Freddy the Fire Mage who only sits there and casts Gpy while keyboard turning by a hundred rating or so, but if the only thing holding someone back is their ability to beyblade their mouse, I’d argue they deserve a few extra points. It’s rarely a problem in high brackets as you said, which to me is another reason why it should be looked at. It’s not a mechanic separating the good from the best, it’s a mechanic that’s kicking people that are already down.

Overall positioning in relation to your team/arena obstacles, proper usage of CC chains and DR management, and coordination of your team should be the main factors for your progression, not pixel-perfect body grinding and twitch-reflex mouse spinning. I would love to see more risk/reward and interactive mechanics (Alter Time, when it wasn’t buggy as hell, was a great example imo) to raise the skill ceiling across the board.

apparently this was a wall of text oops

not trying to be rude but in the time you took to write these essays, you could’ve learned how to mouse turn and set up bolt windows

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I mean if we’re going back as far as TBC, wasn’t a fun strategy in mage v caster blinking through someone to interrupt the cast at the end?

I don’t struggle with this mechanic, and I’m not Destro.

Really weird how this thread is netting serious responses lmao

its GD material tbh

I contribute to indie gamedev projects and am working on a portfolio when I’m in a position to start applying to bigger studios - discussing niche systems in games is part of improving myself as a designer and gives me something to think about. I was pretty happy to see the mage’s response.

Honestly it’s more weird that people think that “l2p, move on” is an appropriate response to posts like this but everyone wants to parade over the dead horses of PvE gear and percentage-based abilities.

It’s okay to discuss the small stuff, too.

That’s still a fun strategy, especially with Shimmer because you can teleport behind them without even interrupting your cast.