Forum post of the day: Pushback on Pushback
by Amanda Dean 
Aug 6th 2008 at 3:10AM
I remember the day that patch 2.3 was released. I got out of work at six PM as was stoked to get home and try some of the glorious improvements. I had a 25 minute commute then, north on I-15 right past the Las Vegas Strip. Usually by six most of the traffic had cleared and it was pretty smooth sailing- except that day. Some genius decided that it was a good idea to reduce the four-lane freeway to one. My left leg aching from working the clutch and blood pressure rising from impatience and a bit of road rage, it took me about an hour and a half to get home. I should be used to pushback though; I play a caster in WoW.Debigmacca of Aman'Thul believes that Wrath would be a good time to do away with spell pushback. His argument is based on the number of stuns, fears, and assorted other of immobilization effects that abound in the current state of the game. There was some agreement with the original poster that spell pushback is unnecessary as casters often quickly fall prey to melee DPS. There's only so much a trinket can do.
The abolition of pushback could potentially make classes more balanced. Even without pushback casters are still subject to silences and school lock outs, which have little effect on melee classes. Casters also have less armor to mitigate physical damage, though this is somewhat balanced by a lack of magic resistance in melee classes.
The thread had plenty of disagreement though, and the discussion got pretty heated. Some cited a frost mage's ability to rule the playing field and kite melee enemies while beating them senselessly with spells or the explosive damage of unmitigated pyroblasts. Without pushback all casters would become more powerful.
A change to abolish pushback would be seen as a PvP balancing act. In PvE groups casters feel the burn of this mechanic much less. A good tank will keep aggro and let the casters merrily heal and DPS away. Pushback is pretty frustrating when playing solo and there's noone to hold aggro.
Do you believe the time has come to lay pushback to rest?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums, Battlegrounds, Arena, Forum Post of the Day
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Ghadz Aug 6th 2008 3:36AM
Very much so. At least give every caster a natural 35% pushback resist, then they can couple that with talents.
Ikarus Aug 6th 2008 3:27PM
Yeah, as an elemental shaman, i'd be happy with an pusback protection i could get. Yeah, we have eye of the storm which gives protection when we're crit, but leveling and farming that doesn't happen to often.
Drew Aug 6th 2008 3:38AM
"His argument is based on the number of stuns, fears, and assorted other of immobilization effects that abound in the current state of the game. There was some agreement with the original poster that spell pushback is unnecessary as casters often quickly fall prey to melee DPS. There's only so much a trinket can do."
As a moonkin, I could not agree with this more if I wanted to. I'm so incredibly sick of being stunned/silenced etc. to death in BGs. When I see a rogue come toward me I pretty much accept the fact that I'm about to die, I do my best to "pew pew" but the vast majority of the time it is to no avail. I may not be the best at PVP, but I'll be damned if you try to tell me being stunned to death over and over is "far" or "balanced."
Phohammar Aug 6th 2008 3:44AM
ah the irony, a druid complaining that another class is overpowered. seriously, if you can't kite a rogue as a druid you need to reevaluate your methods.
Faar Aug 6th 2008 6:06AM
@ Phohammar:
Dude, if you don't know what you're talking about (which you obviously do not), it's better if you STFU and don't expose your own stupidity to the world.
There's not much a druid has that allows kiting a rogue. Root can be trinketed, CloSed out of, imp-sprinted out of, shadowstepped out of or just plain break on its own or after the first spell cast on the rogue. And it's on diminished return, meaning immunity sets in after the third attempt. Druid also cannot gain distance against good rogues, whom invariably shiv crippling poison (which has NO diminishing retun) onto you after SSing/sprinting after you even by liberal use of travelform. Most a druid can hope for is escape, that the rogue has his special abilities on cooldown. Kiting? Lul! Out of the question!
So you were saying...?
On the original topic, spell pushback is complete bullshyte. As a moonkin, it's nearly impossible to get off even a wrath with its talented 70% pushback protection against dual-wielding meleers (including rogues, shammys and warrs), as well as hunters and their infernal pets. Even single-wielders cause significant mayhem, making a 1.5s wrath take almost 3s with just one interrupt; more if you get interrupted again. Even if your spellcast is almost finished it ALWAYS starts over from scratch. That's just bollocks.
...And when you get counterspelled/kicked/pummeled/etc during a wrath all you can do is either twiddle your thumbs or moonfire spam and destroy your mana, because one single starfire would take 20 seconds to get off under such an onslaught (and you'd be dead after 15 anyway).
Spell pushback is crap, and it should be removed. There's enough effects that screw with spellcasting as it is, and almost none of them are on DR (shammy earth shock is particulary cheap and OP in that regard).
Dawkins Aug 6th 2008 8:02AM
@Faar
So spec something different. Go resto or feral... If a rogue HAS to go shadowstep and a warrior HAS to go arms to be effective in PvP, why should a druid be any different?
Zali Aug 6th 2008 10:24AM
@ Dawkins,
Ummm... the point is CASTER. What would be the point of going Feral as related to this article? And telling someone to go Resto is like telling someone give up any damage production at all. My resto gear ain't shabby, and I'm able to pump out about 1500 HP per second with all my HOTs rolling, and I can't out heal a decently geared rogue... and thats without casting any damage spells.
Kaphik Aug 6th 2008 11:16AM
What about your instant shapeshift ability? Shift, heal yourself, shift and run far enough away, then shift back to Moonkin? You can even drink a potion in this time.
There's no reason a druid should be standing one on one against a rogue unless the two of you are the only ones left alive.
Phohammar Aug 6th 2008 3:41AM
What most casters fail to realize is that if pushback is removed, classes/specs such as ret paladins and others will be balanced to have pure interrupts instead of having to rely on pushback to have any hope of dealing with casters.
Adorenko Aug 6th 2008 3:53AM
I'm confussed, what do we mean by pushback. Is this similar to the effect of knockback in games like Diablo 2. I have not had the experience of playing with a caster yet and as a Paladin have not experienced that in the game if thats what it is. Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Tenchan Aug 6th 2008 3:55AM
When you cast and get damaged during that cast, your cast gets pushed back back a little, making the cast time longer (up to the possibility that your cast gets pushed back so much, it gets fully interrupted and you need to start casting anew).
Memzer Aug 6th 2008 4:00AM
Whenever you're casting a spell (lets say fireball) you get a stackable cast-time penalty to that spell when you're hit. The first hit penalty is 1.0 seconds, decreasing by 0.2 seconds to a minimum of 0.2s added to cast.
So say your fireball normally takes 3.0 seconds to cast.
First hit makes your cast 4.0 seconds instead of 3.0;
Second hit makes it 4.8 seconds;
Third hit makes it 5.4s;
Fourth hit makes it 5.8s;
And every subsequent hit increases it by 0.2s.
[Hopefully I can count]
Nick S Aug 6th 2008 5:11AM
against rogues and hunters, pushback on a 2.5-second cast often puts the cast around 8 seconds. this is on a mage, though, with no pushback resistance in frost.
tehvoid Aug 6th 2008 7:00AM
and crits push your spell back entirely.
Adorenko Aug 6th 2008 3:58AM
sure if you see him coming.
mora Aug 6th 2008 4:19AM
yeah in PVP I never saw the rogues coming. :( 1st time i see them I am saped.
Sinthar Aug 6th 2008 3:59AM
Then give the pallys an interrupt and do away will pushback (if fact an interrupts something pallys have wanted and needed for a long time). Or they could make all spells reset swing timers - balance it one way or the other. They could swap with with the aura pallys do (devotion aura? - but gives 35% spell knockback resistance - maybe even make it CAUSE enemy spells to take 35% longer to cast). Oh and btw - i have NEVER seen a frost mage kiting people and pounding them with repeated Pyroblasts - ffs its a 6 sec cast. But thank god mages are at least good for a couple of classes in PVP. Lets face it they are NOT by ANY means the strongest. And EVERY class has its 'counterclass' - thats how the game works. Abolish Spell Knockback (ASK!)
Phohammar Aug 6th 2008 4:10AM
The argument on the pyroblast thing is flawed to begin with. If you have something hitting you, you don't stand there and try to cast anything with a cast time longer than 1.5 seconds unless you have, as most classes do, 70%+ pushback resistance. And really to do away with pushback ALL classes would have to have interrupts comprable to rogues and warriors and ALL talents and skills granting pushback resistance would have to be changed to something else, so that would only exacerbate the problem.
Roxton Aug 6th 2008 4:41AM
@Phohammer:
"ALL talents and skills granting pushback resistance would have to be changed to something else, so that would only exacerbate the problem."
So what you're saying is let's not fix the problem because it might take some effort. Jesus, I'm hope you're not in charge of anything.
my2cents Aug 6th 2008 12:42PM
@Roxton
No, I'm pretty sure what he was saying was...exactly what he said. Reworking entire combat mechanics and class balance is extremely difficult. A change like this could very well cause far more class imbalances than what we already have and take so much time and tweaking to fix that we could have an entire expansion of extremely bad class imbalances.