The Big 3 - Leeway, Layering, & Spell Batching

You have no idea how the game works. Static interactions where “whoever hits it first wins!” do not take skill or strategizing. We are all talking in hypotheticals until we actually play the game. The truth of the matter is, spell batching existed Vanilla - MoP. Spell batching was 99% removed WoD-BfA? Did you enjoy PvP more in the last three expansions? If so, you can log on and enjoy it right now.

1 Like

Wrong. Spell batching actually favors tactical RPG combat instead of the action FPS combat retail currently has. In retail the difference between having 20 ms and 200 ms is huge. In vanilla, not so much.

Spell batching (in its original cycles) is good for Classic.

1 Like

No it doesn’t it just adds another RNG element, which is particularly bad as it’s out of player control and can also cause things to work in very counterintuitive ways IE two abilities that should be mutually exclusive going off.

Spell batching has never been removed.

That’s why I said 99% but thanks for the research

Sure, but in retail it’s almost never noticeable, in vanilla it was kind of noticeable but not horribly so, in beta it’s painfully painfully there.

So something is definitely not tuned right.

It is only partially RNG. Some degree of RNG is good for the game, people have it in their head that RNG = Bad. Vanilla is balanced around RNG. Orc has 25% chance to resist stuns, everyone has a % chance to resist spells, hunter conc shot when specced has a 20% chance to stun, priest has % chance blackout stun, abilities will be dodged/parried some % of the time.

When any of these things happen, it is unexpected, forcing you to adapt. Fighting the same player over and over will never be exactly the same two times. This is what makes vanilla fun, it is something that makes it take skill, and you really need to know your class inside and out to successfully adapt to the unexpected, which is caused by RNG.

Back to spell batching, it is NOT completely RNG. You can absolutely predict when a player is going to do something. Say im a professional rogue. A warlock has put up Curse of agony, corruption, life drain DoT, has just used shadowburn, and im closing the gap on him. That pro rogue knows warlock globals are 1.5 seconds. He vanishes around 1.2 seconds after he gets shadowburned thinking the lock is going to use deathcoil next. The rogue successfuly vanishes the warlocks deathcoil and now has the upper hand in the duel.

This interaction is not possible on retail, the rogue would vanish and the lock would still have coil. Retail is a boring, cooldown trading meta. It is also why some classes or 3’s compositions blatantly counter others so hard, in a game of cooldown trading, if you run out of cooldowns first, you lose. This is the game since WoD.

1 Like

Take that 99% and bump it up 1 more %

While you can predict when a player might do something as you have no visibility to where in the current batch your abilities will land it is purely RNG. You can have two players who use their abilities 390 MS apart yet land in the same batch but then two players who use their abilities 10 MS apart but land in separate batches.

That’s what makes it RNG, and unlike say crit which is a built in game mechanic, there is nothing you can do to change that RNG, I can’t equip a helm with +25% favorable batching.

Yea, you can’t predict it 100% of the time. I already said spell batching is partially RNG. But a better player is going to use spell batching advantageously more often than a bad player.

Leeway is indeed terrible and should be removed, it is not authentic vanilla. It is going to make warriors stupid overpowered and they are already an easy mongoloid class.

Layering should be removed after 2 weeks - 1 month.

My oppinions on this.
Layering=it’s nto an ideal solution, hopefully populations will settle before any major economic damage is done.
Leeway= If it’s to fix retails tanking issues then sure, otherwise it doesn’t need to exist.
Spellbatching= Rather not have it in the game but will settle for it provided it actually doesn’t break things worse than not having it in does.

Leeway has to go, 100%. This has to be fixed.

The problem with spell batching is that it’s poorly replicated from what it was in the past. Interrupting someones Polymorph at the end of it should not still Polymorph you if your interrupt went off. Certain things like that need to be instant and Kevin Jordan himself said they intended to not have spell batching on interrupts and it being instant instead, but things like someone getting poly’d and other person also gets feared was intended. I do think the window is way too big though from what I’ve seen, people like Esfand and Staysafe feel like the window is too big as well and feels way too consistent when they encounter people in world PvP.

But honestly I think removing it will diminish the skill cap of Vanilla WoW. I think spell batching was a happy accident that happened for WoW PvP especially at a high level play. Making sick plays such as gouging a mage’s blink was so epic to me back then and I hope it doesn’t get removed. For high level PvP spell batching just creates opportunities for insane plays especially things we probably still haven’t even seen before. I hope it really doesn’t go it’s honestly my favorite thing from the old WoW era and it motivated me to make sick plays like that whenever I seen it on a PvP movie or whatever.

Example, you’re a mage - you get a poly off before a warrior charges. By all means you should be safe but with batching you would still be charged as spells are below other abilities.

Thank you for proving my point!

Spell batching is loved by good players and hated by bad players! If you are a mage

  1. You should never let a warrior drop combat mid-duel in order to charge you.
  2. If a warrior does charge you and you polymorph the charge you are AHEAD in the duel.

The warrior is now sitting a full polymorph while you are able to safely walk away to max range and start casting again without worry of a warriors gap closer.

On the other hand, if you are the warrior your reaction and game knowledge come into play. If you see a mage casting polymorph you have around 1.7 seconds to react and charge before spell batching applies to the polymorph. If you wait for 1 second into the polymorph cast you can safely charge, if you wait longer you will be polymorphed. If you’re in zerker stance you might even be able to wait to drop combat and charge over intercept depending on how fast you react.

Thank you for another example of how spell batching benefits good players and punishes bad players!

Sure, but in retail it’s almost never noticeable, in vanilla it was kind of noticeable but not horribly so, in beta it’s painfully painfully there.

Wrong again!

As someone who is an avid arena player I can tell you that spell batching and using it correctly is CORE in BFA pvp.

Once you pass 2400 rating in arenas the majority of players are playing night elf BECAUSE OF SPELL BATCHING. Being able to shadow meld a maladict is game breaking. Being able to shadow meld chaos bolts or rogue kidney shots is amazing in this meta as well. Yet another example of good players using spell batching to their benefit, thank you!

Layering I feel is deserving of discussion, many bugs and exploits could be ironed out potentially? I am not on the beta so I don’t have any experience with it really.

And that’s been stated, by blizzard, to be working as intended. That is how it worked back then, so why shouldn’t it be the case now? Dial modems and old settings have nothing to do with the hit boxes of a Tauren, it was designed that way. Since Classic is trying to recreate Vanilla as best as it can, it should keep those designs, even if they are flawed, because that is how it was.

The idea of “No Changes” is so we can keep the things that were part of Vanilla. Even though today the game is designed differently, that doesn’t mean we should change everything about vanilla just because it is old.

Why exactly?

Who exactly determines “Bad gameplay”? And how are these things exactly negative?

What exactly is the issue though? Bad connection speeds have nothing to do with a hit box. I don’t see how it would fix any lag related problem anyway to increase a hitbox or melee range.

If Spell batching is currently poorly implemented(I haven’t heard anything about it personally) it can certainly be improved in 2 months of beta testing. And I do think that it is essentially to the authenticity of classic.

Sounds more like a bug than a game breaking issue.

How? By spell batching the seduce and the shadow bolt together? If you could provide a video of this happening it would be interesting to see just how easy it is to pull off.

If, like with the seduce on warlock pets, this is happening consistently I would imagine can be tuned properly. This I believe is the only issue here that has anything to do with the old Dial up modems. With peoples much more effective computers it may be too easy to abuse spell batching, but that can be tuned.

I may be wrong on this, but I do recall Polymorph along with Fear having a chance to break on damage.

I think you are mistaking the Tauren increased hit box and leeway friend.
Yes, the Tauren increased hit box is correct. The amount of leeway we are seeing not necessarily so.

A Tauren has an attack range of ~8yrds in Classic, standing still you will hit another player/mob at that range.
If you are moving however (side to side, not reducing distance) that attack range increases to over 10 yrds.

Comparatively a race with a normal sized hit box with hit players at ~5 yrds whilst motionless, however moving they have a range comparable to Tauren, ie ~8 yrds.

It’s this additional range that people are talking about which is a built in system to smooth out lag for range calculation between two players.

Tauren should not be able to melee other players outside of Warstomp range. Currently this is completely possible and it’s 100% because of leeway.
Why do we need a system to smooth out lag when internet connections are so much better that peer to peer communication isn’t an issue?

I understand the whole #nochanges notion and I stand behind it. However in situations like this, it makes the game not feel like Vanilla because the system is overcompensating as it used to in a situation where it doesn’t need to.

To paint the picture, in Vanilla because of latency, to your appearances your character would have been within melee range of your opponent it would make sense for you to hit him.
What the server saw however was realistically you were 8 yrds back and unable to touch them. Obviously it would feel really bad as a player if you are standing on your opponent and you are constantly getting “out of range” “out of range”.

Insert leeway, now even though the server knows you are behind your opponent, they know that you will appear to be on them, so they add this additional range bonus so that you will still hit them and visually it will look correct for you.

That is why it only works on movement. Accounting for both players individual movement and latency to develop a compromise that makes sense from both players perspectives.

1 Like

Charge is just an example of a single ability. Out of combat you might be mining or something else and not see the poly coming.

And you’re also wrong. You should be able to get the poly off without getting hit by anything else if you got the poly off first.

My point still stands. I didn’t agree with you or prove you right, lololol!

This isn’t difficult to understand. The charge should have never happened. You’re not a “better player” because you ate the charge tf is that hahaha - you’re UNLUCKY because you ate the charge because you shouldn’t have.

where are the “#nochanges” people now? you wanted leeway and spell batching…you got it! LOL!

Leeway is a retail mechanic.