So one of shimmer’s main advantage is the fact that it doesn’t cancel a cast. However I am a bit confused at it’s usage in pvp. Usually if you are fighting a melee, he is going to be up in your face. So in theory you could use shimmer to move away while not cancelling your cast. But if the melee is on top of you, shimmering a way while make you turn your back to him, and will cancel the cast in the exact same way because of line of sight.
It’s usually used to secure a Crowd control which does not require you looking at the target.
Also ir doesn’t cancel the cast, the cast will fail if it finishes and your not facing the target. So you have time to shimmer turn and finish your cast. Also some casts like poly, blizzard, flamestrike don’t need you to be facing the target.
You can start casting, make a half turn, shimmer and turn back to face the target in quick succession if you’re doing that with something like fireball or so
Takes some practice. But you don’t have to do that for polymorph or ring of frost though
This is something you’ll need to learn, but a pretty basic gameplay concept for a mage is to start a cast, then use shimmer mid-cast to avoid something (mechanic, player, whatever) and then turn around (if you need to) in time to finish the cast to make sure you don’t waste the cast. I’d say that this is pretty much a necessity, especially for anyone doing PvE and wanting to be better than the average guy. Probably just as useful in PvP though.
1 Like
With PvP in mind, there is also an additional factor.
With the number of gap-closers that modern melee character have, 1x Blink is rarely enough. Double-blink when on demand is a powerful mobility tool, be it battlegrounds or arena. It can be used to be outside Interrupt range when you cast your Polymorph or what have you, as it can be used while casting. This is a grater advantage than the ability to break Stuns - and while Stuns do suck, there is a reason why most high-end PvPers prefer Orc or Human. They have stun reduction/trinket on demand. You can also Iceblock a kill attempt, but you can blink to set up your own kill attempt.
In short, Shimmer allows us to remain more mobile, and mobility is king in PvP.
The reason I like shimmer the most is not even the fact that there are two charges of it or that I can shimmer while casting, but it’s the fact that it does not put me on GCD which is a big deal, because Blink does. So, things like immediately shimmering at someone and dragon’s breathing them feels very fluid, but with Blink it’s more difficult - they have time to do something about it.
Still, I think normal Blink is a very, very underrated spell and extremely powerful in many situations, but not for the reasons players might think why. I don’t want to derail the thread so I’ll save my blink-rant for another one later =)
Of course, in most cases I run Shimmer for all the reasons summarized in the thread.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.