Diminishing Returns and Stuns in PvP: When Crowd Control Chains Go Too Far

Hello everyone,

I’d like to open a discussion about how Diminishing Returns (DR) works in Mists of Pandaria Classic, specifically in the context of stuns and crowd control chaining in PvP. While DR is intended to prevent infinite CC from a single source, certain team compositions can still chain multiple types of CC in a way that completely denies a player control of their character for extended periods.

The Issue: DR Doesn’t Prevent CC Lockouts with Certain Comps

When multiple classes rotate crowd control from different DR categories (stuns, fears, incapacitate, silences, etc.), the result can be 15–20 seconds or more of near-total control denial. This leads to a frustrating experience, especially in 3v3 arenas, where it can feel like you’re not actually playing the game.

Examples of Common Problematic Comps:

  • RMP (Rogue + Mage + Priest):
    Sap → Polymorph → Fear → Kidney Shot → Ring of Frost
    ➤ Minimal overlap in DRs, massive control window.

  • Feral + Hunter + Priest:
    Bash → Freezing Trap → Psychic Scream → Cyclone → Scatter Shot
    ➤ 100% CC uptime if coordinated well.

  • Warlock + Warrior + Paladin:
    Shadowfury → Howl of Terror → Shockwave → HoJ → Fear
    ➤ DRs rotate perfectly across categories.

Also notice how silences like Silence (Shadow Priest) or Counterspell (Mage) are often used after a CC ends, preventing any kind of response or defensive usage. They don’t share DR with other CC types and are devastating when timed properly.

This isn’t about any one spec being broken, it’s about how multiple sources of CC stack in unhealthy ways.

DR System — Strong in Theory, Weak in Execution

The DR system reduces the duration of CC within the same category, but says nothing about rotating CC from different categories. That means players can be juggled from one CC to another with no DR penalty:

  • Stun → Fear → Incapacitate → Cyclone → Silence

  • DR resets between each category, so full durations apply.

Even defensive trinkets can’t always help if you’re baited or faked early on. A well-coordinated team can completely shut you down, regardless of your skill level.

Why It Feels So Bad

  • You’re locked out of playing your character for long stretches.

  • You can’t react, move, or press cooldowns.

  • Healers are especially punished — targeted first and perma-CC’d.

  • Burst damage can end the match before you ever interact.


Possible Solutions (Open to Feedback)

Here are a few community-driven suggestions to consider:

  1. Introduce soft DR across categories after multiple consecutive CCs.

  2. Cap the total amount of CC a player can receive over a short period (e.g., no more than 12s of total CC within 20s).

  3. Apply a debuff after a certain number of CCs, reducing further CC durations or granting temporary immunity.

  4. Revisit trinket CD or availability in certain brackets, to give players more options to break out.

These changes wouldn’t remove CC from the game , they’d just make it fairer and more interactive.

Final Thoughts

DR is an essential system in WoW PvP , but as it currently works in MoP Classic, it leaves room for abuse. Certain team comps can chain crowd control in ways that create an unfun, unplayable experience, particularly for newer players or those caught out of position.

We love the skill and coordination involved in high-end PvP, but no one wants to be stuck watching their screen for 20 seconds without input.

Thanks for reading.

No thanks. You can quit mop and play WoD where they nerfed all CC and WoW PVP never recovered post MOP. Please do not touch MOP pvp meta.

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Respectfully, I’m not asking for MoP PvP to be gutted or “modernized.”

MoP is widely considered one of the best PvP metas and I agree. It had incredible class depth, skill expression, and reactive gameplay. But even within great systems, there can be unhealthy extremes, like excessive CC chaining from multiple categories with no real counterplay.

The suggestion here isn’t to delete CC or make the game feel like WoD (which I also agree went too far in the other direction). It’s about exploring whether some minor tuning or protections could help prevent scenarios where a player is locked down for 15+ seconds with little to no agency which, in coordinated arenas, is still very possible.

If you love MoP PvP, you probably love outplays, jukes, and clutch moments. But you can’t juke or react when you’re stuck in stun → silence → fear → cyclone → disorient → silence again. That’s not competitive — that’s frustrating.

So to be clear:

No one is asking to nerf all CC.

No one wants WoD-style pruning.

It’s simply worth discussing if there are tweaks to protect the gameplay loop without gutting what made MoP great.

Appreciate the perspective though, these conversations are exactly why feedback threads matter.

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No just no change nothing to add nothing to delete. absolutely nothing…leave it as it is

I get that you want MoP left untouched, fair enough. But saying “change absolutely nothing” shuts down any meaningful discussion, even when there are clear issues.

Talking about extreme CC chains isn’t the same as asking to gut the meta. MoP PvP was great, but it wasn’t flawless. Even Blizzard adjusted things back then.

No one’s asking to ruin it, just to smooth out the worst edges. That’s what healthy feedback is.

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While i agree that cc is out of control in MoP, the thing i feel like we should draw our attention towards more in pvp is Symbiosis. I’m willing to bet that this ability will single handedly make people quit pvp in MoP all together.

Looking at the toolkit from this spell (druids getting deterrence, divine shield, dispersion, ice block etc.) and some other stupid sh*t like priest healers getting cyclone, basically making any comp that has a a druid (mostly resto druid) incredibelly frustrating and hard to deal with. Resto druids in MoP would still be very strong/viable without it.

If you want to make pvp a better experience we need to lobby the devs to delete this spell, it will objectively be good for the game. But we know that wont happen, cause some people think the pvp is ‘‘perfect’’ in MoP.

Oh and since 2v2 will have titles, the bracket will be infested by (resto) druids, so enjoy.

MoP is known for being very CC heavy… yhea that’s nothing new.

It rewards set up comps and skillful coordination of 2-3 players, you should create 3 on 1 situations as often as possible. It makes Godcomp and WMD completely unbeatable when done right… that’s MoP in a nutshell, why do you want to change it ?

I think classic is classic, you shouldn’t change profound game mechanics like that on a whim. Learn to play with it instead.

History has remembered, that removing CC, and nerfing cc away was a bad idea after MoP. Instead, nerfing ‘micro CCs’ should have been the smart game design move.
But then WoD came… the game design philosophy got it wrong completely and it ended up in a fiasco…
It still is wrong and badly designed today on retail. :frowning:

MoP is about chaining cc and setups and breaking cc chains to stop setup. Strategy, patience and burst/setup.

let atleast the first season roll off and see if the majority is fine with it.

So you’re complaining over the fact that an arena team, if they have the know-how, strategy and insight to do so can effectively co-ordinate and align their ability and spell usage in order to have a higher chance of winning a battle?

That’s not an issue with CC, that’s just solid use of synchronising each of your teams abilities and uniforming them together - which is the entire point of teamed based pvp - not just each of you going in, battling it out and doing your own thing hoping for the best.

I get that MoP rewards setup comps that’s part of the fun. But not all CC chains require skillful casting or big commitment.

A lot of them don’t even require a single cast:
Stun → Silence → Fear → Clone, etc. most of it is instant, and stopping it usually forces your team to blow interrupts, disarms, or stuns defensively.
That means you’re using your offensive tools just to survive, and then you’ve got nothing left for your own go.

Meanwhile, the other team just has to wait 15 seconds and do it all over again with almost zero cost or risk.

That’s the issue:
The burden is entirely on the team being CC’d, while the team doing the CC pays nothing. That’s not skillful it’s just lopsided.

You have retail where cc duration is nerfed and most of them share dr (compared to mop). And you can enjoy high quality pve m+ arena gameplay with 100 pvp players left there

Long cc chains, setup based comps and opportunity to outplay this on majority of specs = peak wow pvp. But to understand this it requires some kind of knowledge of how arena works and should work

I don’t have to play retail just because I’m pointing out issues in MoP. I’m here because I enjoy MoP, its pacing, class design, and skill-based comps. That’s exactly why I care about addressing things that can break the experience.

Pointing out that some CC chains are too forgiving, too repeatable, and too punishing isn’t the same as asking for retail-style pruning. It’s about keeping MoP’s depth, while reducing uninteractive gameplay that even top players admit feels frustrating when you’re on the receiving end.

I’m not asking for a different game.
I’m asking for the best version of MoP, not one where PvP becomes a CC simulator unless you play one of the three meta comps.

No, it’s actually retail like changes. Casual players cried how long cc is and now where are these players? Blizzard did everything they asked

No, they are not

You asking for pve simulator. Btw, you already have one. It’s retail. FYI, mop doesnt have three meta comps, everything is playable, every single spec (may be frost dk is unplayable, because never seen one even in og mop).

However, on retail with implemented cc changes asked only by casuals who never ever play arena or play 20 games per season, there are actually only 3 meta comps per season. Wonder why

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People who haven’t lived the change from Mop to Wod will never understand why good crowd controls are important in this game.
When I was there 11 years ago, I too thought like popular belief that " much fewer cc would be good for the game ". Little did I know that Bliz² would end up gutting it completely, and wow-pvp stepped one foot in its grave. I admit woefully that I was wrong. This evolution was totally misguide by low quality feedback.

This is so true !
The sheer comp diversity in MOP obliterates anything you can say about cowd controls. Different classes and specs can play together, because they bring good abilities to the table and they can complement each other’s controls or utility. This is a core mechanic of Classic-Mop and I wouldn’t mind if it came back to retail seriously…

Ever since the CC nerfs ( especially fear and cyclone ) the game isn’t the same anymore.

Retail should honestly take a few pages from MoP’s playbook :

  • put fear and cyclone on different DRs
  • put horrifies and scatter effects on their own DRs
  • bring back blanket silnces for pure dps casters like mages and warlocks
  • bring back deep freeze stun for mages

Then it would be fine to decrease the frequency and prevalence of current micro CCs on retail servers, so they wouldn’t get abused as much. We should have more Cc, but not available all the time :wink: to favor teamplay/coordination, cross-cc to create 3 on 1 situations, and positional plays.