Why can't casters cast while moving?

[xcess]

Female toons can move and cast, only the male toons cant do two things at once

[Relapses]

MoP Elemental was boring and nearly every single one of its spells were castable on the move.

Casting and moving is nice but it doesn't really "feel" like you're playing a caster when you can do literally everything on the move. I'm partial to DoT classes for that exact reason as even today being able to stutter step movement and use globals to cast DoTs while moving is one of the few things which can separate a decent player from a mediocre one.

[Hctaz]

Why not, though? There's nothing in the design of the game stopping them from making casters more mobile. They've done it in the past, and it's not something that causes fundamental mechanical issues like a double jump. So long as it happened at the beginning of a new expansion and they designed encounters with it in mind there wouldn't be any problems, and they'd open up way more room for them to be creative with the kinds of mobility challenges they implemented.

Really though, the issue is mostly just that it's not particularly fun to have periods of dead time in the middle of an encounter where you have to interrupt WoW's core gameplay loop every time you move somewhere. The stuttery stop-and-start nature of it makes the problem even worse, completely breaking up the natural ebb and flow of the rotation. It's fine to design casters in a way that encourages more thought about movement and positioning, but having to mash one or two buttons (or worse, do nothing at all) while you move just isn't particularly fun or engaging.

I mean you're saying it isn't fun to interrupt your damage because movement but like... have you seen melee on Fallen Avatar? I don't get your point. Basically here's the other way I see it: If you do this and you give ranged the ability to cast while moving then melee dps would literally have zero mechanics to do outside of interrupting. Fallen Avatar's big AoE ability would have to ignore melee dps and that would be that. Part of the game's design is that you will not be able to dps the boss 100% of the time and that's the point for both melee and ranged.

I do split runs in my guild, my main is melee and my alt is a destro lock, so I have experience as both. There are some fights that favor melee dps and some that favor ranged in terms of downtime. When Fallen Avatar is casting his big AoE, ranged dps can stand on the edge of it and still cast while melee literally can do nothing until it ends (and if you say "dps the maiden" then you're actually an idiot). If you want ranged to have no downtime then you'd have to argue that melee should never have downtime either and ultimately raiding wouldn't be fun anymore for melee period since we'd literally have zero mechanics to do outside of an interrupt rotation.

[Coffeh]

There was a point where they were starting to let casters move while casting a few expansions back...and people found it too fun. And we all know the Blizz devs hate fun.

[Hctaz]

That's the thing though. If they kept melee how they used to be and just made ranged stationary, it wouldn't be a problem. That's not what they did though. Not only did they make ranged stationary, but they made melee hyper mobile. It should have been an either or situation, not a do both one.

Also, so? This is part of the game design. Part of being a ranged dps is that you plan your movement so you minimize it. It's an active skill that separates bad ranged from good ranged. You utilize your brain more than your brawn. Melee dps works differently because we usually are forced to move significantly more than ranged do. Think Fallen Avatar: A lot of bosses had or have things like his rupture realities AoE; the kind of AoE that does less damage to you the further away you are. Ranged dps on that fight can set up in spots where they only need to take a few steps back to be safe and then can continue to dps the boss whereas melee dps need to run away from the boss for 30-40 yds and then run back in. Of course it would be absolutely stupid to not have some form of movement cd to get in and out. Can you imagine the slow cast time that the ability would have to have in order for melee to truck it out of there without a movement CD? It would be awful.

Also also: You're making it seem like ranged dps are not mobile at all which is simply not true. They have a lot of instant cast spells nowadays and have a lot more movement options then in Vanilla WoW as well. So they increased both ranged and melee mobility levels but they did so in different ways. There will always be classes Blizzard determines as slow classes like Warlock and Death Knight and there will always be classes with insane movement options like Mages with Shimmer or demon hunter/warriors.

[Jester Joe]

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

Ret paladins says hi.

3 second sprint on a ~40 second CD does almost nothing for fights like Fallen Avatar.

That doesn't even touch upon the pain of Kiljaeden, especially the dark phase...

[Nyel]

Are you seriously claiming that 20 stacks of VF is high?

No, I am just saying that you can deal DPS during movement (pretty good DPS though) which others in this thread deny.

This just proves that you have no idea how Shadow works. The entire point of Shadow in its current state, is to do 55-60 sec Voidform rotations that line up perfectly with your Mindbender CD. If you fall out of VF at 30-40 stacks, your MB won't be ready the next time you want to use it, which results in your next Voidform being pretty much just a waste.

Oh and yeah, feel free to list any other casters that suffer as much as SPs do from movement.

You seem to be missing the point here. Shadow doesn't suffer from movement because we can't do Dps while moving (we can infact Dps quite well while moving). Shadow suffers because any nonstutter movement between 30 and 60 VF stacks (where your actual Dps is done) will result in you falling out of VF too early, causing your MB CD to go out of sync with your VF,. This results in your having to do a "no MB/VoiT VF" to play catch up with your MB CD, to get it back in sync with your 1min VF rotations again. This is basically 1 minute of subpar Dps (if you missed it the first time, most of your Dps as a Shadow Priest is done between 30 and 60 stacks, so your Dps is obviously going to suffer if you can't keep your VF up longer than the early 30s, which is what happens when you do a VF without MB/VoiT).

We are talking about movement phases. Most casters during movement fall flat when it comes to DPS, Shadow is no exception. The difference here is that some of you say Shadow damage is literally zero during movement and that is just wrong, plain and simple.

I already told you which casters suffer from movement much worse than Shadow Priests.

You don't have to explain how SP works, I know it as I'm playing one. Shadow Priests have some issues (ST damage) but movement is none of them.
____________

I think we should stop hijacking this thread with a discussion about Shadow Priests. Casters are casters because they need to stand still and cast. That's it.

[Nyel]

In all honesty I do not see any harm to the lowest priority spell of each spec becing castable on the move. They usually don't do much damage anyway and they are still interruptible. And not every spec would need that. I don't see any problem with mobility for Balance, any Hunter or Mage spec (all have something valuable to do on the move). It is somewhat of a problem with Shadow Priests but because of Mind Flay's snare I'd expect making it castable on the move to be OP in PvP; an alternative would be to make SW:P do some more damage if spammed, similarly Affliction locks have enough mobility in that they can just refresh DoTs early for a minor dps loss. Elemental getting Lightning bolt castable on the move and Demo/Destro getting Shadowbolt and Incinerate castable on the move though would not break the game.

Tbh this "solution" sounds pretty good. Filler spells (one per caster) castable while moving.

[Velerios]

That's something i can't understand why Blizzard doesn't let casters cast while moving. Like above i don't say that every spell should be castable while moving, but at least 1 spell should be available while you move. For Healers it could be the inexpensive Heal, casters should have one spell that does a bit of damage and help them with their rotation.

Or maybe: One spell for healers and casters that does MORE heal/damage if you cast it while moving; not insane amount of it, but it should do good damage if you move 100% of the time and less if you stand still

And about PvP: sorry, but that's a lot of BS. Blizzard could easily balance the game around: Today melee has so many gap-closers and stuns/silence that it would be easy making casters move with all spells. (OK; balance in PvP was never a thing; maybe except in WotLK there was this one time; or was it end of BC... too long ago)

And balance in PvE is easily done with the bosses: We already have Legion: World of Meeleecraft.

[varren]

We had this in MoP and it didn't work out.

[Hctaz]

Ret paladins says hi.

3 second sprint on a ~40 second CD does almost nothing for fights like Fallen Avatar.

That doesn't even touch upon the pain of Kiljaeden, especially the dark phase...

Death Knights say hi-er hi. At least your movement speed ability isn't a channeled spell on the GCD LOL

[Nyel]

Death Knights say hi-er hi. At least your movement speed ability isn't a channeled spell on the GCD LOL

... that gets interrupted if you press any button lol.

[Akka]

As many have already pointed, it's about balance.
But it's also about lore and immersion : casting is supposed to be about concentration, being able to move at the same time just feels wrong.
Alternatively, it could be made that ranged can cast (or, for hunters, shoot) while moving, at the cost of a large to hit penalty.

[Hctaz]

Tbh this "solution" sounds pretty good. Filler spells (one per caster) castable while moving.

I mean the problem with this is that they'd have to make these abilities weak enough to not be OP but at that point like... you would be better off just using your instant casts and procs, no?. Mages actually universally had scorch before and it was castable while moving but was incredibly weak. I think it's now only a fire spell.

I just really don't understand the complaints of ranged in this thread though. Pretty much every caster spec has something to do while moving. Just because they can't nuke you while moving people are whining and it baffles me. The only spec I can understand is Shadow Priest since they do kinda need to stand still a lot of the time in Void Form... but even then they can move during the time they use Void Bolt since it's instant.

Like... MM hunters have instant cast spells, BM has their pet so they basically have free movement

Balance druids can refresh dots (not too familiar with Balance though TBH)

Shamans are a little screwed but if you time it right you can save a Lava... burst? charge for instant cast while moving and you can refresh your dot while moving

Aff has their dots and life tap, Destro has life tap, conflag, and their artifact ability, demo has life tap (and this class does need mana)

Fire mages have hotstreak procs, fireblasts, their artifact ability, and scorch. Frost mages have fingers of frost charges which they can store three of so... like they can basically just do that and move when they need to. Also can throw out their orb and get more as they're running so... boom. Arcane is more of a turret but a lot of their burst damage comes from cds. Just time your cds well. They can always time their arcane barrage and then Shimmer in between GCDs movement.

Shadow is probably the worst off with only Pain outside of Void Form and only really Void bolt inside of void form (you really wouldn't want to be using Pain) but I wouldn't argue that's necessarily a bad thing. Their spec heavily rewards proper movement management and pre-planning and if you take Surrender to Madness you can cast while moving so you aren't royally fucked in the wind down of the boss.. unless they removed that since I remember it being there in 7.0 lol.

- - - Updated - - -

... that gets interrupted if you press any button lol.

Yeah dks got fucking obliterated on the movement options. We always have been but at least in MoP we had Death's Advance which gave a baseline movement speed increase while not on CD and a lowish burst of movement when used. I mean I would rather have that than this shitty ability we have now. At least I could use Howling Blast while moving speedier.

[Annesh]

I am a shadowpriest and lean extremely far toward casters in any caster v melee balance topic, except this one.

Try playing a melee in a raid sometime. All the big armageddon shit you have to run away for while braindead ranged already sit safe and still dpsing. The swirlies you have to soak and stand there doing dick all. If you were a ranged you could still attack.

It's a fine tradeoff to make casters lose dps when they have to move. It's fine and balanced. In raids.

In PvP, it's totally fucking broken and melee are OP as balls.

[Deleted]

Being melee this expansion is tarded easy.

Source: Done LFR in 36 specs (i say LFR because consistence, i haven't done normal with all classes)

[cparle87]

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.

Why do people keep talking about the world first people as if what they do has any relevance whatsoever to what 99% of players do? It's like crying "omg Bill Gates uses qtips made of 100% pure egyptian cotton these crappy ones from my drug store obviously are defective!"

And all the immature insults at Blizz really show them. Let 'em have it with both barrels, that'll learn 'em.

[Deleted]

While I have to say that casting while moving was really fun back in MoP (warlock here), I do prefer it as it is now. It rewards clever/ good play much much more and at least requires a modicum of brain to pre-plan when to move or when there are phases where you can cast.

While I don't know Shadowpriest (never played it on 110), it's kind of counter intuitive that a dot class like the shadow priest complains about "no damage while moving".

The only time I really miss it is in PvP when you are battered by melee and have to live not only with not being able to cast while moving but also the archaic "spell push back" (increase in cast time when physically hit). I never understood the purpose of this push back and although they have already reduced it quite a bit (I remember times in TBC I think where your cast could be twice as long because of the pushback), I really don't understand why it's in the game at all.

[Soulwell]

Try playing a melee in a raid sometime. braindead ranged.

Melee mechanics LUL. Ranged being braindead?? Melee literally stand still and spam 2 buttons without interruption on 95% of the fights. Ranged have to drop everything they are casting to side step so they don't die.

[Deleted]

Because they are nowhere near as cool as hunters.