Would shorter cast times make casters more appealing?

[Deleted]

Maybe if some casters had 50% of their rotation with instant spells, and 50% with casted spells. That could be an idea, too.

sounds like frost mage

[Pull My Finger]

It is not secret that the majority of the player base plays melee classes. And it is obvious why it's like that.

That's totally news to me. I wonder where you people always get your "facts" from. I'm a melee guy myself, but I'm seeing tons of casters in the game.

Today's caster classes already have short cast times. There are no long casts in the game any more. Vanilla had slow casting. Those days are long over.

The main reason why I don't play casters is because the whole concept of standing in the back in "combat" seems silly to me. Casting spells and holding still while you're preparing a powerful magic attack is absolutely OK and makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that you're not engaging in any kind of melee and that you're "fighting" without even touching things.

But that's just me. I'm not gonna make some general statement out of it. I'm sure tons of people enjoy casting classes exactly how they are now.

[Deleted]

i think you miss the point of why people play melee. its not because they are faster or dont have to plan their abilities (which they do have to just like ranged) people play melee for their own reasons and personal preference, and some do it because they are FOTM or rather FOTE.

This isn't correct. I play Melee on PvP Realms because of the instant damage I can do whilst you cast for 3 seconds. You don't see Melee classes raise their swords for 3 seconds before slashing it mainly instant casts.

[Deleted]

@ the OP

I don't think it would help. The reasons why players play what they play are varied. In my experience, there are just as many ranged players that would never play a melee as it too hectic or boring or whatever as there are melees who don’t want to play a ranged because long cast-times or non-movement are annoying for them.

For me personally, I don’t really care since both roles have interesting min/maxing potential in terms of movement and positioning. For melee, it is the art of maximizing uptime and staying at a 100% performance even with heavy/difficult movement. For ranged, it is about maximizing the number of casts by moving efficiently and planning where to be at certain times to minimize movement.

I personally would love to play a ranged spec in Legions raids because I would get to do more shit, but the sole reason I play melee this addon is this: I always want to be able to tank with my main class (I don’t play alts ever) and there is only one ranged class that offers this: Balance Druid. I played that all throughout WoD and it was okay. I did however foresee the problems with the class design for Legion (especially for M+ dungeons) and decided to switch – and had no other option than to play a melee DPS.

The biggest thing Blizzard could do to have more players play ranged classes would be to
a) not only add melee DPS specs (DK, Monk, DH)
b) not convert ranged specs to melee specs (Survival Hunters)
c) give more options to pure ranged classes, i.e. a heal or tank spec

[Aggrophobic]

The game has introduced so many tanks as well yet you don't see a vast number of tanks. There is a fundamental difference between the ranged and melee gameplay. It does not help that Legion has so much outdoor content with mostly weak mobs which is a very unsatisfying experience for most casters.
MoP had many players playing casters because casters were very mobile (and fairly strong in performance)

- - - Updated - - -



They sadly could not.

Just becuase they did make it happen in MoP doesn't mean they couldn't do it at all.
Besides, they more or less gave up on any kind of balance at the end of MoP with trinkets being super OP, snapshotting and all that silly stuff.

Oh, and it's not like WoD was that balanced either even though every caster was chained to the ground while doing damage.

[infinitemeridian]

They should make the basic standard spells castable on the move, but harder hitting spells should remain un-castable while moving.

For instance lightning bolt, mind flay, incinerate and demonbolt. I guess classes like mage/balance already have enough instant cast spells so they probably wouldn't be touched.

I think the main reason casters are less popular than melee is that outside of raids/dungeons, they are much less fun to play. Playing a melee class like DH or WW monk out in the open world when questing, leveling, etc. just feels more dynamic and fluid.

[Rudkobing]

I like the 12 sec cast times. I don't want to bust my balls playing this game.

[Deleted]

The only melee I don't find boring is DH

[Deleted]

It is not secret that the majority of the player base plays melee classes. And it is obvious why it's like that. Fast attacks, small ramp up time, gap closers etc. all make playing a melee fun and interactive.

I know that for the people that play casters, they like the idea of planning out your casts, and the kinda slower gameplay where you have to press buttons every cast, and not every global cooldown.

But would maybe reducing the cast times to maybe the slowest cast being 1.5sec or even 1sec make them more appealing to a broader player base? It would make the casters more moblie and solve the problem, at least for pvp, where the melee can stick on you forever.

No. I like the longer cast times.

Spamming abilities does not make the game more fun, nor any more difficult. Just gives me RSI.

[munkeyinorbit]

It is not secret that the majority of the player base plays melee classes. And it is obvious why it's like that. Fast attacks, sma...

Stop you right there. The reason why people play melee is because they are super easy to play, have no mechanics to deal with, they wreck on meters with no effort and they never get picked for the shit jobs.

[Manabomb]

It would be attractive, the problem being is game balance. Honestly they need to hurry up and separate PvP and PvE abilities and functions almost completely. Their entire argument of needing to "relearn abilities" is already currently affecting the game, especially with all the "in pvp" clarifications on abilities these days. Plus the disaster that is honor talents.

Fundamentally speaking as long as the developers are being serious with their desire to balance both aspects of PvE and PvP at the same time, the game simply cannot move on from it's current state gameplay wise and hasn't been able to advance since Cata-MoP redesigns.

- - - Updated - - -

Stop you right there. The reason why people play melee is because they are super easy to play, have no mechanics to deal with, they wreck on meters with no effort and they never get picked for the shit jobs.

Also this. I mean, everyone shits on "huntards" but hunters have been stuck with the shit jobs since kiting the last boss of UBRS was a strategy. As opposed to Warrior "smash".

[tuesday the paladin]

That would likely cause a pretty large balancing issue, vastly favoring ranged even more so than before.

In pvp, ranged would likely just be too strong because of it, and could kite melee way too easy.

And in pve, well if they aren't losing much dps from moving, they suddenly become much more valuable than melee once again, and we go back to every raid team needing ranged and not wanting any melee.

Definitely would be a mess, but could be done. The game would probably be worse because of it. Imagining a situation where casters have a fair amount more mobility than now, but melee would do 15-30% more damage than they do now as well. Win as ranged is to never let them hit you, win as a melee is if you can hit them they'll fall over dead in seconds. Additionally you'd see melee have a fair amount more utility than they do now (or likely ranged would lose most of their current utility). Only melee have stuns, threat transfers, combat drops, crowd control spells, battle rez, etc. Could you imagine the amount of crying? A frost mage kited me to death and I couldn't do anything. Or a rogue got the jump on me and I died during the initial cheap shot. Why bring ranged class X when you need Y CCs/stuns/interrupts to defeat encounter Z!

[Alvito]

that would mean the majority of players didnt play casters in vanilla-wod, however for once melee is better than ranged, that is why you see more melee than ranged atm

people just play whats best, not whats most appealing

Some of that is class design, a lot of it is raid design right now. Melees time on target is so much higher in most cases, so of course they will do more damage. They just get the best of both worlds right now.

[Grimnakh]

Ya I prefer instant casts myself.

[Wyviner]

The problem is melee can still attack while moving, with pretty much all of their abilities. The moment a caster has to move, they mess up their rotation, their DPS stops completely. I think it almost boils down to running vs chasing. Melee almost fits the mold of the hunter who is chasing down their prey, and have the tools to do so. Ranged are like the prey, trying to stay ahead of those chasing them down. If you asked the simple question, "Would you rather be the hunter or the prey?", most people would probably choose the hunter.

[wombinator04]

"No, pruning more abilities and making the rotation even simpler will make them more appealing" is what the devs are thinking right now I am sure.

[Fkiolaris]

Destro in MoP (5.4) is the ultimate caster spec to ever have in this game IMO and it had 2-3 of spells it could use on the move (each with their own pros and cons and conditions to use), but in order to get their damage properly rolling they had to plant themselves and cast. What added extra fun was the fact they had the tools to create opportunities and adjust to changes in order to get those casts out. What makes them shite in Legion is that they lost everything, the same as practically all the casters.

So no, just reducing the cast time of all spells won't cut it. You need a complete reverse of the toolkits across the board to (almost) MoP levels to make them fun again, since with such naked specs (melee and casters) in terms of utility and toolkits in general, one of the two segments is bound to roll over the other. You can't have casters being in effect melee with cast times and expect them to be any good when that's all they have to offer.

[Swalload]

Cast while moving, on every single ability, no exception.

We're in 2017, the old boring model of taking roots in the ground for doing the action you do the most in the game should be long gone.

I used to love range dps but I just can't handle it anymore, it's too boring/annoying, while melees dont lost any dps while moving (unless forced to get out of range of the target, which is understandable) but being able to follow mobs around and do 100% dps instead of bullshit dmg from the few instant cast range dps gets.

Maybe range could have like a big nuke that you plan and use at the right moment that you can't do while moving, to appeal to the player who like the planning of skills, etc (but you'll still have people who complain that in some situation they can't use it, and if they dont use it on cooldown it feels less than optimal so they are "gimped" by this).

I just think everything should be doable while moving, why the fuck not?

Oh I almost forgot, casting a spell is TECHNICALLY saying some words that invoke a fire ball or whatever, it's logically and physically easier to do than swinging a huge ass weapon while moving. Realistically speaking, fury warriors should barely be able to move when attacking, so no, casters aren't forced to stand still because of logic.

[Fyresparxx]

I personally would be a lot more likely to play a caster if I could move while casting. I like BM because I get to play at range and have no penalty for moving around. I like WoD MM for the same reason. Other games allow people to cast and move, so I'd think it's doable balance wise. Of course, those other games also often seem to have cast bars for heavy hitting melee abilities too. I feel like more people would play ranged classes if they didn't have a movement penalty and the encounters were designed around not having a movement penalty.

[Riistov]

I have more fun playing ranged, plus melee is almost never in demand when looking for a raid group.