Dev Watercooler -- Rude Interruptions
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
‘Dev Watercooler’ is a blog series that provides an inside look into the thoughts and discussions happening within the World of Warcraft development team. In our first entry, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostctrawler" Street laid down a few ground rules:


  • 1. No promises are being made in these Dev Watercooler blogs.

  • 2. Don’t read too much between the lines.

  • 3. No complaints about the topic not being what you want to see covered.

Are spellcast interrupt abilities, such as Kick, too good? It’s easy to make that argument. We think their ease of use and low cooldown has led to a whole cascade of events in PvP. Because interrupts are so good, casters without a lot of instant spells or mobility are weak. For that reason, we tend to give casters a lot of instant spells or movement abilities, and casters who excel at those (say, Frost mages) are very powerful, while those without (say, Elemental shaman) have more difficulty.

Because interrupts are good, classes without them feel uncompetitive, which has led to us giving interrupts to paladins and druids, which in turn has led to them being even more prevalent. Because casters tend to fire off lots of instant spells while jumping around, melee can be really easy to kite. Because melee can be easy to kite, melee classes without strong mobility can suffer, and we have to consider giving high mobility to all melee, which increases the amount of uptime melee have on casters, which means we have to give casters even more powerful escape mechanisms to survive... and the arms race continues.

See where I’m going with this? Because instant spells tend to be so powerful, we have to make cast time spells insanely powerful to compete or they’ll never see use in PvP. But we have to make those spells so powerful that when they do get off, we can have PvP burst issues. (Look at how much better Frostbolt has to be than Ice Lance for mages to even consider the “long” cast.)

Nerfing all of the interrupts across the board isn’t the kind of thing we can realistically do mid-expansion. Anyone working on the raid content can tell you how important interrupts are to today's encounter design. We’d have to redesign nearly all of the raid encounters and many of the dungeon encounters as well. Of course once you increase the cooldown on interrupts, then availability of stuns gains relative power, so you have that balance consideration as well.

Instant spells do have their place in the game. If you’re worried about being interrupted because someone is chasing you, or you are chasing them, that’s a great time to use an instant spell. But actual 2.5 sec cast time spells need to have their place too and, if anything, they should be the norm.

Here's one other way in which interrupts have wide-reaching effects on the game via the chain of consequences discussed above. One of the advantages melee used to have in PvE was on movement fights. If the boss has to be kited or stays in motion, the rogues and warriors can follow along and still deal damage. It will be less damage for sure, but they’ll still get a lot of auto attacks in. It used to be the case that asking the Balance druid or Fire mage to move was a huge dps loss for them, because they were always interrupting their spells. In today’s PvE environment, that role has almost flipped. Many casters can shoot on the run and take only a very minimal DPS hit to do so. For this reason (and a few others) melee classes can feel like a liability on certain encounters. We’d prefer for raids to want a fairly even distribution of ranged to melee classes and ideally groups would have a lot of flexibility in who they bring. It’s okay to have fights that are really good for casters, but there need to be at least a couple that feel great for melee as well.

Is there a design lesson to learn here? I guess it’s some variant of the butterfly effect -- apparently innocuous designs (in this case the short cooldown on interrupt abilities) can have wide-ranging effects on all aspects of the game. I’m not sure what the game would look like if Pummel and Kick and Wind Shear had 30 second cooldowns. Clearly we’d have to redesign a lot of other abilities, mechanics, and numbers to make it work. Again, this isn’t a change you’ll see anytime soon. But it might feel better in the long run if we could get to that point.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer on World of Warcraft. He knows how to get to R’lyeh.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Dev Watercooler -- Rude Interruptions started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 180 Comments
  1. AeneasBK's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by justandulas View Post
    The solution is quite simple, although would surely ruffle afew feathers. Casters are at a disadvantage because their main weapon (spells) can be interupted/silenced by every melee class and leaves them basically defenseless. The solution would be to give at least one spec of each spell casters a disarm. Demo locks could have a disarm on their felguard, fire mages could heat the handle of a hilt and force it to be disarmed, ele shammies could shock the weapons free, and Spriests have one. If all melee can take the main weapon of casters (spells) away, then casters should be able to do the same and disarm the melee's weapons for a short period of time. Yin to the Yang, and balance to the force it would bring. Right now it's a one sides battle with melee having the advantage and most casters being unable to return the favor
    Um, we can't interrupt you if we can't reach you, isn't that the Yang to your Yin?
  1. roflmfao's Avatar
    Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought this was the purpose of resiliance...to compensate for issues like this. In my opinion this situation could be easily corrected by having your resilience give you a chance to resist an interrupt. All sides would be happy since the interrupters wouldn't be losing anything, and the classes getting interrupted would be gaining the chance the interrupt would miss, and PVE would remain unchanged.
  1. mmoc3eb006e951's Avatar
    Uhh more generic dribble for the masses.. Blue posts are really good as a source of amusement and for highlighting the devs incompetence.
  1. keLston's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Baikalsan View Post
    For gods sake, just separate PvE and PvP talent trees and spells already, STOP CHANGING PVE FOR PVP!
    Don't know why PvE bads always cry about this when PvPers have suffered more because of PvE changes than the other way around.
  1. Crabby's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Baikalsan View Post
    For gods sake, just separate PvE and PvP talent trees and spells already, STOP CHANGING PVE FOR PVP!
    This
    and
    Quote Originally Posted by keLston View Post
    Try doing phase 2 nefarian on 10 man with 15 second interrupts.
    This

    ---------- Post added 2011-03-30 at 09:23 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by keLston View Post
    Don't know why PvE bads always cry about this when PvPers have suffered more because of PvE changes than the other way around.
    pve bads? lol just no.
  1. Eleraith's Avatar
    Or y'know, you could just nerf instant spells? Give instants a longer cooldown that is standardized across every class? Force people to use casts in PvP? Balance interrupt cooldowns/lockouts around that?
    Again, I think that Blizz should change the rules for PvE and PvP; PvE gets destroyed for PvP balance, and PvP gets destroyed for PvE balance, and it's a never ending joke.
  1. mmoc37672be2a3's Avatar
    I have to admit that i don't see this big difficulty or challenge in fixing that problem.
    I will write an example for balance druids (because I am one of them)

    Starfire has 2.5 seconds of cast time.
    Druids tend to never cast it in pvp because they are trained 24/7

    The solution relies in the name: starFIRE, change the spell to a channeled one like Mind Flay and use the actual starfire animation played over 2.5 sec instead of the actual brief moment when the spell cast end.

    Btw this could not be applied to every 2.5sec spell...
    How to fix it then? It's easy, one word: DEBUFF

    When a rogue, warrior, dk, hunter, etc successfully interrupt a spell cast, apply a debuff on the interrupted person with something that prevent him from being interrupted or silenced.
    This spell should be applied only on Players and not NPC (this is something you can do without too much efforts) this way the interrupt ability is still on a 10sec cooldown, but the player cannot be interrupted for 20 seconds or so, acting like a cooldown increase only in PvP, leaving PvE encounters untouched.
  1. dokilar's Avatar
    we should look at this positively rather than negatively. anyone who has been playing this game for longer than 3 years knows it takes a lot to get blizzard to admit there are things wrong with their game mechanics. while this isnt a direct admission to fault he finally has realized that there is a problem and its only goin to get worse.

    im not expecting them to fix or balance pvp better this season, next season or even this exspansion but they made the public aware that they know theres a problem. that at least gives them a +1 from me.
  1. TonyKP's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by dokilar View Post
    we should look at this positively rather than negatively. anyone who has been playing this game for longer than 3 years knows it takes a lot to get blizzard to admit there are things wrong with their game mechanics. while this isnt a direct admission to fault he finally has realized that there is a problem and its only goin to get worse.

    im not expecting them to fix or balance pvp better this season, next season or even this exspansion but they made the public aware that they know theres a problem. that at least gives them a +1 from me.
    Yeah, it's nice to know that they see the problem and are willing to own up to it, but it would be nicer to know that they had some way of doing something about it. You're probably right, though, in that fixing this wouldn't be possible without triggering an even worse "butterfly effect", and they seem to have learned (somewhat belatedly) that all the hotfixing was doing more harm than good. For better or worse I think that the fundamental paradigm of the game is stuck as-is for the foreseeable future.
  1. philfo's Avatar
    My idea: Make interrupts avoidable. They've said they like to consolidate pvp mechanics onto resilience, so put it there. With full pvp gear say 50% chance for the interrupt to miss. Seems to me this leaves interrupts alone for PvE, but gives casters a bit more of a chance when up against the melee.
  1. Khiva's Avatar
    God, Ghostcrawler truly sucks... The issue isn't that interrupts have too short a cooldown, it's that they're too easy to get off successfully. With 30 second or so cooldowns they'd be absolute trash.
    They're so easy to get off because the spells with cast times have such godawful looong cast times. 2.5 seconds is terrible, and they use it as the norm.
    They don't have to lengthen the cooldown on interrupts, they just have to speed up the cast time on cast spells. Roughly 1 second should be the "norm." You can't move while casting no matter how short the cast is, as long as there is one. Even a half-second cast would prevent you from being able to kite with it.

    Guild Wars was built on PvP and had much of it mastered, and this is the basic way they handled interrupts; they had a 10-15 second cooldown, and spells had an average of a 1 second cast time. Some went as low as 0.25, but on the other end even 2 second casts were extremely rare, because they were too easy to interrupt!

    If it were done this way, they wouldn't need to retool every single freakin' dungeon either.
  1. mmoc0d8e6c2903's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by hamski View Post
    You're retarded. The whole issue is you broke PVP by needing too much shit handed to you in PVE (ie Paladins and Druids getting interrupts).
    Why thank you for agreeing with me that we need separated trees and spells for both PvE and PvP.

    Don't know why PvE bads always cry about this when PvPers have suffered more because of PvE changes than the other way around.
    Thanks for agreeing with me and supporting my idea!
  1. Luckylockk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Khiva View Post
    God, Ghostcrawler truly sucks... The issue isn't that interrupts have too short a cooldown, it's that they're too easy to get off successfully. With 30 second or so cooldowns they'd be absolute trash.
    They're so easy to get off because the spells with cast times have such godawful looong cast times. 2.5 seconds is terrible, and they use it as the norm.
    They don't have to lengthen the cooldown on interrupts, they just have to speed up the cast time on cast spells. Roughly 1 second should be the "norm." You can't move while casting no matter how short the cast is, as long as there is one. Even a half-second cast would prevent you from being able to kite with it.

    Guild Wars was built on PvP and had much of it mastered, and this is the basic way they handled interrupts; they had a 10-15 second cooldown, and spells had an average of a 1 second cast time. Some went as low as 0.25, but on the other end even 2 second casts were extremely rare, because they were too easy to interrupt!

    If it were done this way, they wouldn't need to retool every single freakin' dungeon either.


    True true, too long cast time at some spells, even though I play affliction mostly with my warlock, and after all.. Affliction is a "drain" spec, I would love to fire off a shadow bolt or two now and then when we're about to kill, but then.. When I got about 1300 haste and the cast time of shadowbolt is about 3 seconds, that just pisses me off. Specs like affliction have no chance to actually go for a finishing blow on the enemy, and need to just keep dotting for ages, hoping that the teammate (usually healer) get's tired and mess up after a long long fight. Ofcourse we got drain life and drain soul, but it takes a pretty long time before the first drain soul to tick after you actually cast it, and drain life doesn't really do any dmg.. Then again we can discuss that affliction is a crappy crappy spec atm, too low dmg, and no way to punish people just dispelling everything of themselves. (We got unstable affliction, but in Cata it hits for shit, and silence for 4 secs, making them perfectly available to dispell til they get, let's say; oom, bored, or stopped)

    Wasn't really here to complain about affliction, but what I'm saying.. Too much cast time on some spells
    I wonder how it would be if Blizzard made spells cast for like 0.25 secs, I can smell a lot of damage to my keyboard while constantly hitting the buttons
  1. Beheemoth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugen View Post
    I play a warrior, I disagree with more CC, I suggest less:

    The problem with interrupts is that if a player screws up once using their main arsenal of hard cast spells, they are locked out of alot if not all of their survivability abilities (nature being their heals, barkskin, instant ghost wolf, root, cyclone.) The huge problem with interrupts is they simply lock out way too many spells, defensive or offensive. a disarmed warrior can still pop a shield or fear or leap away, a interrupted elemental shaman can...frost shock the melee to be as slow as they are? I think the best solution would be to unlink the "schools" of damaging spells from defensive ones.

    edit: clarity
    Disarm is a joke. A 10 sec loss of MH weapon, with a 1 minute cooldown? Worthless. Who are you kidding, you don't play a warrior...esp if you are against interrupts.
  1. Chrysia's Avatar
    I don't know why so many people say that Feral Druids are the only ones with an interrupt. Am I the only person who remembers solar beam? An interrupt/silence stuck in the balance tree?
  1. Krugen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Beheemoth View Post
    Disarm is a joke. A 10 sec loss of MH weapon, with a 1 minute cooldown? Worthless. Who are you kidding, you don't play a warrior...esp if you are against interrupts.
    Not against interrupts, and you're either a terrible troll (disarm is worthless?) or you failed to read the post correctly. I was suggesting a temporary fix for pvp that wouldn't make it impossible for interrupting and the interrupted classes to protect themselves (the interrupt cd would be unchanged, but casters would be able to actually use some defensive skills).
  1. Luckylockk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fallenis View Post
    HEY - PVE HEROES AKA DRAGONSLAYERS - There is thing called a fake cast and or a juke cast. you FAKE the interrupt You're that bad where you have to increase the CD?!? ?!??. Oh, and 2s dont matter, bg heroes, stop talking about your bgs, and 5s?! ?!? Whaa a A?A??!?!?! !
    ?!!?!? !? !? !?! ?!? !?!? CONFUSED? !?!?! ?! !?!?

    Fake cast bros, fake cast - special messege to all those 1600 MMR kids


    ... You obviously didn't read what people said about fake cast, and we get it. Your huge letters makes you look 20 years older. Alright.
  1. good diu bro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fallenis View Post
    HEY - PVE HEROES AKA DRAGONSLAYERS - There is thing called a fake cast and or a juke cast. you FAKE the interrupt You're that bad where you have to increase the CD?!? ?!??. Oh, and 2s dont matter, bg heroes, stop talking about your bgs, and 5s?! ?!? Whaa a A?A??!?!?! !
    ?!!?!? !? !? !?! ?!? !?!? CONFUSED? !?!?! ?! !?!?

    Fake cast bros, fake cast - special messege to all those 1600 MMR kids
    Fake cast is just a guessing game, if they opponent is smart enough, you cant fool them.
    Anyways, PvP diminishing returns on interrupts is indeed the easiest solution. You can still do the cc + interupt the healer -> go for the kill thing, but it prevents a caster sitting around firing only instants when a hostile shaman or healing paladin is standing next to him
  1. ComputerNerd's Avatar
    Fake Casting is a tedious mechanism and oversuggested "solution" to overcome what is admittedly a problem in pvp.
    Blizzard are acknowledging that which you cannot.
    Spending extra time on casts which will achieve nothing vs a competant player who can then still lock you out of two simultaenous casts is not a solution.
    Diminishing Returns are not enough when the cooldowns are still short enough to allow overlapping where it can be ready to use again before the first interruption has ended. They are still chained.
  1. natslive's Avatar
    I guess I might be more forgiving if so many empty promises hadn't lapsed between Wrath and Cata, and also, if Blizzard didn't gross every year the GNP of a small third world country. As it turns out, many promises have elapsed unfulfilled, and Blizzard's profits border on the obscene.

    America is a capitalist society: if something doesn't work, you throw more money at it until it does.

    While I think many of us welcome some transparency with regards to class development, I think most people are getting a little weary of essentially paying to beta-test a game whose fundamental flaw of trying to concurrently balance PvE and PvP is doomed to failure, and has been failing, and continues to fail, to the chagrin of many.

    Instead of satisfying some kind of quorum, very valid complaints continue from folks many of whom, again based on feedback, seem to be more competent, at least at the design level, than those currently enjoying a salary to perform that very task.

    Of course it should be within the scope to fix these problems within the current expansion! Is World of Warcraft created in a sweatshop by underpaid, under-educated, understaffed laborers, or is it the aim of the company to deliver a quality product?

Site Navigation