Why can't casters cast while moving?

[Gevoth]

It's a triple penalty. Slow skill execution, can't move, interruptible. It's a relic from early ranged/melee balance ideas in mmorpgs.

The reason I'd be hesitant to push against the idea is raid balance. I could only imagine the barrage of mechanics I'd be running from if I could cast while moving.

[Deleted]

The explanation for hunters is that they're the easy mode class meant for beginners. The rules don't need to apply to them.

[ExtremelyCrusty]

They could in EQOA - you would just only be able to walk

[Miyagie]

Hunters do ranged damage and can move while attacking yet everyone pretends they are different from casters. Really... How? Don't they make melee pointless?
Casting when standing still is an archaic idea that should be wiped.

They tried that in mop and also tried it with a pve/pvp balance that failed horrible, warriors, dks, and rogues bursted you to the ground in seconds but hey you can cast now some filler spells during walking.

[Socialhealer]

because blizzard are morons and can't balance their game.

elemental shamans had it first with lightning bolt on the move, then spiritwalkers grace, both removed, elemental is now a joke of a spec that no-one needs in raids, just look at every world first race, elemental shaman free.

and mostly because then they tried add casting and moving to the overpowered specs like mage and warlock, and that completely broke the game, who knew buffing OP specs would make them more OP?

so instead no-one gets to cast and move so the OP specs can stay OP, and the shit specs can stay shit.

good job blizzard 0/10 try again next xpac, and the next and the next, but you'll never get it, you're too stupid.

[anon5123]

You can easily fit Mind Blasts into movement phases.

Have fun stutter-stepping through the fire, then.

Void Bolt alone is a good tool to keep Void Form stacks high.

No it...isn't? Unless 25 stacks counts as "high" to you

I know exactly how Shadow Priest works and I find this high class whine amusing.

I find it amusing when LFR weekend warriors think they know better than entire communities of mythic raiders

[Niwes]

a few things:

first: "otherwise no one plays melee" is a complete BS argument. remember MoP? where every caster could cast on the move? look at wowprogress. check stats. there were exactly 0% more or less melees. ppl dont choose classes they play that way. they choose by fun and what they like.

second: the tradeoff argument of casters can dmg away from boss while melees cant is a BS argument too, because its a complete solely balance issue. blizzard also did their balancing not more or less bad while MoP.

the only thing cast-on-move or not is gaming/playstyle. the tactical point of planing ahead when/what to cast vs tunneling button smash melee gameplay is the only thing thats a real reason. its game design, nothing else.

MoP is a complete proof of that.

and the only real negative fact is that blizz isnt able or creative enough to not just have melees or nonmove casters. even hunter has got the same fukin pattern all casters have. blizz is just lazy and do 1 pattern for all caster classes, because cheap implementation and easier balancing. aka they are just lazy. and that is what really sucks.

[Glorious Leader]

Then take away the 50 million gap closers melee have if this is the trade off.

Exactly this. If ranged is supposed to have its advantage offset by a disadvantage then melee should too. Melee have been whining about shit since bc and now the game is ridiculosly friendly for them. Sit their and stand on the fucking boss all day while ranged handle everything.

[apelsinjuice]

There is already very little reason to bring meeles to raid, if casters could cast and move 24/7 you might aswell just delete meele from the game

[Glorious Leader]

It's a triple penalty. Slow skill execution, can't move, interruptible. It's a relic from early ranged/melee balance ideas in mmorpgs.

The reason I'd be hesitant to push against the idea is raid balance. I could only imagine the barrage of mechanics I'd be running from if I could cast while moving.

Thats true. It becomes an arms race. Oh so you can move now? Heres everything and the kitchen sink all at once.

[Halyon]

Explain hunters please.

They have less huge damage attacks the more mobility they get. BM has good consistant damage and barely any punishment for movement. MM has to stand still a lot. So...can it about hunters and be happy with your higher burst.

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Exactly this. If ranged is supposed to have its advantage offset by a disadvantage then melee should too. Melee have been whining about shit since bc and now the game is ridiculosly friendly for them. Sit their and stand on the fucking boss all day while ranged handle everything.

Avatar says hi. Maiden says hi. Kill'jaeden party crashes.

[trm90]

BM weirds me out, does the spec actually have any weaknesses? I'm not strictly talking about numbers here, aren't BM good at handling ST, AoE, target swapping, cheesing, mobility, on top of being ranged? idk it legit feels like you could stack a raid of just BM hunters and succeed pretty easily

[Dugna]

Do you play Elemental Shaman? I do. I have every caster at level 110 with decent raid gear and there is a huge difference between Shadow Priest damage and Elemental Shaman damage while moving.

As a Shaman your only damage while moving is a) Flame Shock (a DoT that deals 1/3 damage of a Shadow Word: Pain) or b) Lava Surge procs. That's it. If you don't have any procs your DPS are non existing as an Ele. Destruction Warlocks have Immolate DoT ticks, Conflagrate + Rifts (which have a 45 second CD) as their only damage ressource during movement. ~ 60% of Ele Shaman and Destruction Warlock damage comes from casts whereas ~ 60% of SP damage comes from DoTs or Void Bolt. That's a massive difference. By the way, Destruction Warlocks don't have any movement at all, they're the only class that need a talent to get some movement speed (Demonic Circle is a talent as well).

demonic circle and portals beats body and soul, and again it seems you don't actually play a spriest like you said, losing voidform means no dps. Unlike not casting LvB or immolate hurting not at all, while it might suck your dps isn't in one phase and thats it like spriests.

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BM weirds me out, does the spec actually have any weaknesses? I'm not strictly talking about numbers here, aren't BM good at handling ST, AoE, target swapping, cheesing, mobility, on top of being ranged? idk it legit feels like you could stack a raid of just BM hunters and succeed pretty easily

Pet frequently bugs out, pets also need to be in range and need to travel to adds, so MM is better for burst aoe and has less troubles because pet AI is horrendus most of the time.

[Kralljin]

The very top of raiding is hardly indicative of what most of the playerbase plays. Drop out of the top 10 guilds on Wowprogress and class representation becomes far more varied.

People will still look at the setup of these guilds and try to copy that.

Obviously, not every KJ kill will feature 5 rogues, but you're still going to see something like 2-3 Rogues per kill for quite some time, Gul'dan had a similiar thing.

The tier does favor immunities/soakers, just like Nighthold favored melee and BRF was a total ranged fest. These are just things that inevitably happen.

The problem is simply the recurrence of this.

Almost every single Raid tier in the last years had at least one *difficult* encounter where having an immunity was a major advantage.

It simply has a serious effect on how people build their raid, having an immunity is good to have "just in case", past has shown that those abilities can seriously reduce the difficulty of an encounter, so people want to have a lot of these as long as it doesn't cause serious gearing issues.

As for casters moving, honestly I think the MoP model where most specs could cast basic spells (Incinerate, Lightning Bolt, etc.) on the move was fine. But more than that would just hurt melee too much comparatively.

In my opinion, a big issue is also the fact that Blizzard has given a few specs the ability to deal with heavy movement, while others are just left in the dust.

Take a hybrid like Ele or SP, they aren't nearly as mobile as any Mage spec.

The ability to deal damage while moving is simply essential on difficult encounters, a spec that cannot properly work during these situations won't see much use unless it's somehow required for another mechanic.

[Gaidax]

It used to be like that in MoP, made melee pretty useless.

I remember my lock late MoP, it was literally ultimate damage dealer in part because I could do much of it on the move.

[Jastall]

People will still look at the setup of these guilds and try to copy that.

Obviously, not every KJ kill will feature 5 rogues, but you're still going to see something like 2-3 Rogues per kill for quite some time, Gul'dan had a similiar thing.



The problem is simply the recurrence of this.

Almost every single Raid tier in the last years had at least one *difficult* encounter where having an immunity was a major advantage.

It simply has a serious effect on how people build their raid, having an immunity is good to have "just in case", past has shown that those abilities can seriously reduce the difficulty of an encounter, so people want to have a lot of these as long as it doesn't cause serious gearing issues.



In my opinion, a big issue is also the fact that Blizzard has given a few specs the ability to deal with heavy movement, while others are just left in the dust.

Take a hybrid like Ele or SP, they aren't nearly as mobile as any Mage spec.

The ability to deal damage while moving is simply essential on difficult encounters, a spec that cannot properly work during these situations won't see much use unless it's somehow required for another mechanic.

True, yet Method had a Destro Warlock when they killed KJ, and that's on the low end of mobility for casters. Even so they still have 2 spells that can be cast on the move. The only caster that I'd say is truly way too immobile is Demo lock. All other specs have at least one useful spell that can be cast while moving. You also had SPs in that kill despite the fight requiring heavy movement.

So end of the day I'm not sure it has such an impact. I'd argue low mobility melee specs (DKs, Surv hunter, Paladins chief among them) are in a worse off state than low mobility casters. There's a reason the only melees in that kill were rogues (self explanatory) and Warriors (because Heroic Leap is both love and life, also Arms is broken at cleave dmg).

Also at this point Blizzard has removed so many abilities, starting to remove class specific abilities like immunities will cause further uproars in the community. It's probably too powerful a tool for its own good, but immunity is here to stay. Albeit I agree they could simply design mechanics so that more than one player has to soak them.

[vertigo12]

There is a reason why some range specs rely on DoT and instant casts. This is also a reason why certain abilities, items,talents and so forth exist in game, allowing you to move while casting.


Although certain spec lack mobility skills they have damag reduction spells as part of their toolkit.

[Awsumpossum]

I wish they had continued with the casting on the move direction they took during cata and MoP (I might be misremembering the exact time period). It was my favorite era of WoW, I loved playing Ele and being able to cast while moving around. Say what you want about Wildstar and its problems, but they nailed combat and one of the reasons was because of the high mobility and action. When classes have high mobility you can do a lot with encounter design too.

[DarthMonk79]

They used to be able to, then they realized with the power levels going the way they were that certain casters were getting way to OP with being able to cast and move, though a lot of the complaints were coming from pvp

[mingarrubia]

I guess it has to do with the current Lead Class Designer playing the game on a tablet.