The higher you go above 2.1k it’s always double caster, double caster. sometimes on a good day i’ll meet double melee a couple of times in a row, but it’s always like this every season.
Which got me thinking, do they even have a weakness anymore?
They got more burst than most melee, more self healing, more CC, more defensives, they barely cast and mostly throw out instants, it’s kinda the same for healers, no casting just instants again.
Hum melees are literally more represented than casters. And the most broken specs currently are 3 melee specs and one caster spec
I didn’t know elemental shaman and fire mage were one spec. They work so similarly (broken instant cast burst with very little counterplay) that it’s easy to mistake them for being the same thing, I guess.
Casters used to have two glaring weaknesses: they had less health than melee and armor actually mattered (before Blizzard added a plethora of irrelevant damage types like Shadowfrost and Radiant and god knows what) which meant that if a melee connected to them, they’d feel it. The other weakness was that they had to hardcast a lot and were therefore susceptible to interrupts and/or spell pushback.
Now there’s half a million different spell schools and casting is for the most part a thing of the past anyway. Meanwhile, armor is nigh irrelevant due to what I mentioned above and everyone has the exact same healthpool because god knows why.
Honestly, I think their only remaining weaknesses are somewhat overtuned melees (that, in my opinion, still have to play better than the casters) and the lack of a Mortal Wounds effect, so when they’re not CC’ing the healer with absurd simplicity, he/she actually gets to outheal them somewhat…
… assuming it’s not an elemental shaman or fire mage, of course. Then someone dies from 100% to 0% during that CC, even if it’s on the third DR.
Right, so you’re mentioning ele, even tho ele is less represented than rogues?
Ok so there’s 4 broken melee specs and 2 caster specs?
Also why do you guys care about counterplay? Melees don’t have counterplay, if casters are just ranged melees whats your problem? Distance?
Depends what you mean by “casters”. If you mean “casters” like Fire Mage, Elemental Shaman, Boomkin and to a lesser extent Shadow Priests during Void Form, AKA the “casters” that don’t cast, yeah they’re pretty solid.
Casters like Frost Mages, Destruction and Demonology Warlocks inversely don’t fare too hotly because they have to cast.
There’s a reason that Destruction only came to the forefront in the final season of BFA, following numerous buffs to their durability, in a meta where raw stats were at an all time high due to corruptions so that they could have the colossal Versatility and Mastery (further reducing their damage taken) required to facetank.
The game has moved away from its roots. Originally melee had (on average) lower damage output than casters on the basis that they couldn’t run out of mana, but were more durable to account for it. Mana also served as a limit to the amount of kiting you could be subject to.
Then mana was done away with as a limiting resource, so melee mobility increased so that they didn’t get kited indefinitely.
Then as melee uptime increased, casters slowly lost the ability to hardcast, meaning that more and more instants were required to feasibly accomplish anything.
Cut to today where, outside of the aforementioned perfect storm that was Destruction BFA S4 and people running around with 50% baseline Vers, the only viable casters are typically the ones that don’t cast.
Dude melees have completly and progressively complained themselves into the limelight of all wow pvp balancing due to the fact they massively over represent players in pure number of players.
Every caster is becoming more and more the result of contunious lack of coutnerplay and response to melees, instant cc, kicks, silences and they’ve become the only thing that becomes viable in this meta and continously more so. One shot one trick ponies.
Melees like OP find it hard to counter a caster, because casts in fact don’t matter anymore, becuase there’s so many tools and ways to disrupt casts that everything that’s casted outside of crucial CC abilities or meme things/core spells, is just an instant.
And every caster that has to hardcast or doesn’t have a one shot trick or some gimmick like convoke is functionally unviable or unplayable, like locks or certain other caster specs
Has to be said as well while we’re on the topic, whilst I don’t disagree that Elemental does far too much damage with instant casts, it’s literally 6 GCD’s of setup. If you can’t recognise it and kill the Skyfury or dispel the Flame Shock on the kill target in that time, hell even line for 15 seconds so that Stormkeeper falls off, I don’t exactly know what more I can suggest.
You get a lot more warning with Elemental than you do from the vast, vast majority of specs right now.
Casters having to cast and meeles being kited are old days of TBC -> Cataclysm. Then Blizzard gave everyone mobility to rush through M+. So now casters are very tanky and mostly deal an instant damage because then they would be unplayable. It’s not going to change since devs focus on PvE side of the game.
About caster and meelecleaves. In last AWC won two teams maining WW/Fire/H Pala with potential of playing both with Rogue and Warrior. Castercleaves won only on bigger map. Post Wednesday nerf I expect to see more variety of comps. Turbo might show up after Ret Pala nerf.
No and no…Being kited is also thing from past so…
I like how melees complain but its because of them. Players cried that they couldnt connect to frost mage so blizz made them mobility gods and had to improve casters too. Its because game becoming more simple.
Melee kicks need longer cooldowns. ATM melee can kick every cast. They see the moving thingy - they kick, no thinking involved.
Arguably LoS is a bigger issue than kiting nowadays also interupts
Let’s be real. No changes were made because of some PvP arms race. It was all because of PvE, one way or another.
Melee got so much mobility and short interupt s, that there is no more difference ranged or melee, uptime works out about same
Speaking as SP, literally everything?
My damage gets dispelled.
My every CC gets dispelled (Stun gets dispelled, Psychic Scream gets dispelled, Mind Control gets purged and even if not, I have to stop doing damage to use it)
We can get interrupted through our 4 sec immunity. It also drops if we do any offensive spell
Zero mobility / Zero gap openers / Zero snares and roots - In a world where most melee have insane mobility, many gap closers, ranged snares, ranged interrupts, ranged stuns, ranged incaps, and so on - and add now the covenant stuff like spear and abomination pulling you back endlessly for its duration, on top of the baseline abilities
One of my main CDs can get offensively dispelled~
My defensive heal can get nullified with Cyclone/Imprision
Anti-magic Shell immunes our full toolkit cuz it provides magic immunity for its duration and can’t be mass dispelled. There are other “immunities”/Semi-immunities most melee have
Most melee can reflect back our dots to us (warr reflect/intervene, monk diffuse magic, DH, etc.).
Dot dispell, interrupt, semi-interrupts/stuns, immunities (like AMS, reflects, Grounding totems) etc. in a perfect rotation makes playing a caster as SP a living hell
(and before the typical brainless chicken come in, I’m not saying SP is bad. I’m saying it’s frustrating to play as - now slightly less so than previous expansions - as our entire toolkit gets countered)
Elesham/Boomkin/Hpal is the worst comp to meet these days.
Any heal is nulified by cyclone what a stupid argument
Once the mongo-meta with hpal/double zugzug got established and hps went up to 38k+, shadow priest lost alot of its power. Still good in a very coordinated setup but nowhere near the power it held early season.
Meanwhile elemental and boomkin burst-oneshotting people left and right.
Like I said on my post, I’m not saying SPs are weak. I’ve made sure I pointed that out.
My post is about weakenesses SP as a caster has, in reply to the OPs question
yeah i know, i wrote my post in agreement with you 
So you know the absulte pain and hell! 
