Too many kicks, not enough disarms

Community General Discussion
1

Modern WoW has an overabundance of kicks. Every single melee spec has a way to disrupt casters.

However, caster do not all have access to disarms or ways to disrupt Melee.

*I’m not taking hard nor soft CC(stuns, slows, roots, slows disorients, etc)into account here as those are pretty evenly dispersed and accessible to both melee and ranged.

This topic is simply about Kicks(temporarily shutting down spell casts) versus Disarms(temporarily shutting down melee attacks).

I feel this lack of consideration could potentially be an oversight brought on by the necessity of everyone having access to Kicks(need to stun da mobs) in Mythic + dungeons. It’s kinda needed in that environment and has thus created a need for an abundance of Kicks to exist.

Potential solution. Consider moderately reintroducing Disarm abilitys to a few caster classes that likely need it. Namely EleShaman, Boomie, Affliction or Demo.

I mean, there’s 372 sixty-four over 9 thousand versions of caster interrupts(garrote, pummel, windshear, muzzle, even good ole Silence to name a few), so I’m sure the creative folk at Blizz can create some variation of Disarms to dolly out to a few casters as needed.

Even if some of them are Warmode talents.

Do it Blizz. I love melee but the mongo melee train has chugged full-steam miles ahead for long enough.

32 Likes
2

Don’t most casters have broken hard ccs which lets them get off a couple hard hitting hard casts?

Chastise, Fear, Psychic scream,

13 Likes
3

Getting out of melee range is your interrupt.

19 Likes
4

Tell that to your favorite lock or priest. Priests are as slow as paladins, locks as slow as DKs.

This problem has existed for a lot longer than M+ has been around. Most disarm abilities were ripped out in… WotLK or Cata IIRC. Probably Cata when they got rid of weapon skills.

3 Likes
5

As stated in op, we are leaving hard CCs out of the equation bc both melee and casters have access to these in equal portion.

For ever Fear, Chastise and Psychic Scream there’s Stormbolt, Hammer or Asphyxiate.

1 Like
6

I think skill must be a huge factor.

I’ve gone head-to-head with every caster class; rolling some while being rolled by others.

The more skilled players I’ve encountered would be completely overpowered with a disarm in their toolkit.

:cake:

1 Like
7

Fair enough and good point.

We need more Slows and such back for casters as well. I’ll update the op.

Thanks for looking out!

This is debatable. As the point of thread.

Disarms generally didn’t last long; 2-3 seconds and actually provide more counterplay interactions.

Obviously some casters such as Mage are already equip with utility to deal very well with melee(Blinks, roots, etc), while other classes such as Elemental Shaman not so much.

Destruction Warlock is fine as well being in a place where it’s Mastery and toolkit allow it to simply face tank as counterplay.

Shadow Priest is shaping up to look similar to Destructions tankyness in SLs.

The specializations I think would be great candidates for access to Disarm are Ele. Shaman(potentially Enh. Shaman), Affliction and Demonology Lock.

*Affliction could have something cool like illusion that makes melee think their weapons are turned to snakes or whatever.

2 Likes
8

I agree. Frost Mages definitely need more ways to deal with a Paladin and Warrior…

9

Frost seems like it’s prolly okay with Blink plus it’s whole bag of Cones, Rings and Roots, Snares and Slows. I’m not expert…

I’m thinking more like Ele Shamwow and maybe Affliction/Demo Lock.

10

It feels like every melee needed ways to keep up with mages, but then that left every none mage caster unable to get away from anyone.

6 Likes
11

Personally I disagree. Most melee do not have equal access to hard or soft CC, or in order to do so have to take them as talent options that pigeon holes them into a certain build.

Most disarms were actually long in duration. 6s for most, things like Psychic Horror lasted 8s.
Most ranged didn’t have disarms though as it’s always primarily been a melee vs melee defensive.

Ele Sham actually have pretty decent ability to escape all melee, they simply lack defensives. Sure a disarm would be nice, but I’d honestly worry about it being too much.

I think the biggest issue is not casters not having disarms, but simply melee are more forgiving to stay on a target.

Put it this way, in a world with mass disarms sure the playing field might be leveled against things like DH and Monks, and maybe Warriors.
But what about Paladin? DK? Classes that literally get one opportunity to get onto an opponent every minute.

If you’ve already used up all of your utility just to get to the target and then they are just like “bam 8s disarm” what do you do? You alt f4 and contemplate whether you are going to turn the game back on, and if you do decide to play again you are going straight to that character select screen and deleting your character and making something that can actually compete.

Trust me, most casters have ample tools for zoning and keeping distance. Those that don’t form arena teams with ones that assist them with their weakness. There is a reason why cross CC is a big thing in arena and it’s something that really only can be do effectively by caster classes.

1 Like
12

Elemental shamans have that annoying lightning lasso, which they can cast while on the move.

In fact, the more I think on it, the more I can remember getting screwed over by one caster gimmick after another.

It’s either a skill thing (where skilled casters are more slippery than an eel) or it’s my class (limited mobility). Or a combination of the two.

:cake:

1 Like
13

Yeah, even baseline they have a hard CC, soft CC, multiple snares, immunity to movement slows, and a knockback. Assuming I’m not missing anything (not including Earthquake’s knockdown)

14

It’s not an opinion though, as you can put classes side by side and look.

And being talent-able doesn’t make thrm worse though, because in the situations where you need it(PvP content) it’s the obvious choice. Also, in a lot of situations stuns and the like are on their own talent tier just competing for similar effects.

If you go thru the classes and look(not including mages bc they are pretty much fine), it’s clear that stuns and slows are pretty much even and in some notable exception even these favor the melee classes(Chains of Ice, Hamstring).

I’ll link a chart below.

I think is MoP the were at 6 seconds and subject to diminishing returns as per normal.

Ghost wolf, Frost Shock and Capacitor Totem. One of which is a time-delayed skill shot while you can attack in Ghost Sold form.

Compared to the amount of gap-closers that EVERY melee has on top of the hard and soft CCs, yeah, Disarm effect definitely had a place in the meta game.

No offence, you seem logical and we’ll educated but I’ma trust myself here. Outside of Mage this is simply not true.

Non-Destruction Warlock is exceptionally prime to wheelchairing. Demo doesn’t even have Demon Leap no more.

All I’m saying is that maybe bringing them back I a limited capacity with the standard diminishing returns clause would be healthy.

Edit: Also just noticed you guys are speaking from Pally POV. Yeah, Pally is currently as wheelchair as it gets and in need of a bit of mobility. When you look at this topic thru the perspective of versus Warrior, Rogue, DH, DK…you’ll see what I mean.

Indo agree that Ret in particular is not in the best spot mobilty-wise at the moment.

Cc ability chart:
:https://www.wowhead.com/guides/class-utility-overview-battle-for-azeroth#crowd-control-slows

15

No. We need more diversity, not more homogenization.

16

Then let’s take some interrupts away from melee? No because that would be a terrible idea…

1 Like
17

As a rogue, I can spare a few.

1 Like
18

Damnit, you beat me too it.

Also, I edited that part of my OP because after I really started looking at what hard and soft CCs are available to whom, I realized it doesn’t need to be a common thing.

Disarms could be reintroduced to a select few caster that likely need some shoring up in PvP.

Potentially EleShaman, Aff and/orDemo Lock I’m thinking.

Mage is fine. More than fine, they’re good. Destro is tanky af thru a combination of Mastery, talents and other tricks. Shadow Priest is looking like they are gonna be Uber tanky in SLs.

Who knows.

19

Gotta leave those out of the equation so your argument isn’t totally rendered null.

1 Like
20

I think disarms need a conceptual reintroduction, how or where I’m not exactly sure.

The thing that irks me about being a caster, isn’t really interrupts vs disarms, it’s more the lack of penalty from missing an interrupt in a world where everyone has short stops / ways to nullify casts. In the world of GPyro Chaos bolt, it makes sense, but it also leaves those specs without “I get this cast off you die” buttons kinda floundering, especially in less organised pvp content.

I’d like to see interrupts have an increased cooldown if you miss (Only 5 seconds or so) to better incentivise the fake casting dance that currently exists, and put some onus back on the melee to actually land their kick.

1 Like