So TBC Classic has been finally announced and one of the more sweeping changes that was announced with it was the reduction of spell batching to 10ms, as is being tested on the Classic PTR atm, effectively removing it.
While I understand that a lot of people wanted it gone, I feel it’s important to point out that spell batching brought a few quirks that were more than just “cute”, as the developers described them.
Certain spell batching quirks made the PvP aspect of the game deeper, providing extra counterplay in some situations, and were loved by many people back in the day, hence spell batching was such a commonly requested feature prior to Classic’s launch.
In this thread I will attempt to list some of these interactions that I feel were healthy for the game and it would be amazing if Blizzard tried to preserve some of them through artificial means, such as the change they’re making to paladin Seals in order to facilitate Seal Twisting post 10 ms batching.
- Shadow Word: Death / Judgement of Blood
The self-damage portion of these abilities happens 1 batch after the damage part, which enables skilled PvP players to use them with good timing in order to break CC effects that break on damage, such as Sheep, Blind, Gouge, Repentance, etc.
This was a very popular trick back in the day, that increased the viability of priest significantly and was prominently done in tournament play as well. It was so popular in fact that Blizzard themselves kept it in the game after spell batching was reduced on retail, by giving the self-damage portion of SW:D (or Premonition, after SW:D was removed from disc priests) an artificial delay.
I think I speak for a lot of PvPers when I say that the game is lesser without this interaction and it’d be great if this artificial delay was instated with TBC Classic’s Shadow Word: Death and Judgement of Blood.
- Vanish / Shadowmeld
Another skill-demanding move that many players viewed as generally healthy, was the ability to Vanish (or Shadowmeld, with WotLK and beyond) in order to become immune to incoming spells for a fraction of a second.
An example of this interaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUMZ2JmvLlM
This added counterplay to many abilities in the game and made arena feel less scripted, as it introduced variance in how you avoid CC. It’s a very high risk high reward move that takes very precise timing which makes it fun to use without it being overpowered.
It would be awesome if Blizzard replicated this effect with a short (0.2 - 0.3 sec) invulnerability component to these spells, as it is next to impossible to do with 10 ms batches, your latency is higher than that.
- Double CC
Spell batching was originally explained with an example of 2 mages sheeping each other. This is more than just a “cute” interaction, I feel it actively made PvP better as it essentially serves as a buffer that equalized latency. Let me explain:
2 druids are mashing their Cyclone button while they’re running towards one another. With no spell batching, the druid with a lower latency to the server (or higher spell haste value, in case of similar latency) will ALWAYS win the CC trade.
Both players being CCed is the fair outcome in this situation, as you cannot know if your latency is lower than your opponent’s, nor should 1% spell haste make this much of a difference. Accepting the CC trade is a strategic decision, 10 ms batches make simultaneous CC situations mostly a game of chance.
This affects nearly every CC obviously, it was just a lot more common with Cyclone, Polymorph, Fear, and to a slightly lesser extent Psychic Scream.
- Shadowstep / Charge
When a rogue Shadowsteps a warrior on the same batch as that warrior used Charge, the rogue will end up behind the warrior’s starting position while the warrior will end up on the rogue’s starting position, effectively having swapped places.
This adds an element of outplaying and mind games where you can avoid a warrior’s damage without having to use a defensive cooldown, which makes PvP all around better in my opinion.
- Dispelling Nature’s Swiftness / Fel Domination
Most dedicated PvP players use a macro that casts Nature’s Swiftness + an instant cast spell (Healing Touch / Healing Wave / Cyclone etc) at the same time so the 2nd spell is always effectively instant.
With batching however, it is possible to dispel / purge the Nature’s Swiftness buff before the next spell starts casting, effectively taking away their instant cast. This applies to all spells that make other spells instant / faster, such as Fel Domination, and it adds an outplay possibility to that interaction.
I will admit this is one of the more niche applications of spell batching and I wouldn’t be too upset to see it go, but it’d be nice if it stayed nonetheless.
- Smaller niche applications
These are just some of the major interactions I could think of off the top of my head, but there’s many more smaller applications that added variance to the game and made it feel less scripted, with more opportunities to outplay an enemy or interesting mind games being involved.
For instance, a rogue being able to Cheap Shot a mage then Gouge him on the batch he uses Blink on in order to stop his Blink, making the rogue vs mage fight more interesting than just Cheap Shot → Blink → Shadowstep → Kidney Shot over and over as there’s no variance whatsoever.
It would be amazing if you spared some consideration for some of these interactions as they legitimately made the game a lot more fun to play for many players, with your spells having interesting secondary applications besides the obvious stuff that the tooltip states, and in many instances, helped improve the game’s balance by offering counterplay opportunities where there were none.
Thank you for reading!
You can press your button at the correct visual timing but a variance of 3 ms gives you a 30% chance of missing the actual timing due to latency.
