Arcane Explosion is absolutely broken in classic PvP

[Nnyco]

Shouldnt've picked vanilla if you wanted to see just the slightest light of balance.

[Ange]

Anyone can advise a way to counteract the stupid 1-button spam ability except the pots? What could be done to fight that plague in BGs? I would welcome any ideas, because this is indeed very irritating to face game after game, especially playing a Paladin.

Just play more.

Its an MMO, people quit for many reasons and one of those is boring gameplay and 1-button-FOTM classes are the definition of boring gameplay. At some point the mage population will go down and you just have to outlast them.

There is no real solution for a fixed game version with balance issues other than deal with the #nochanges situation.

Classic came with a 15year prior warning with the issues it brings, please dont act surprised it makes you look ignorant at best.

[Darththeo]

Classic came with a 15year prior warning with the issues it brings, please dont act surprised it makes you look ignorant at best.

Well, given that even classic players seem confused over classic's issue ... you can't really blame anyone from being ignorant.

You have nostalgia googles and private servers that made some changes to blame for some of the ignorance.

[Ange]

Well, given that even classic players seem confused over classic's issue ... you can't really blame anyone from being ignorant.

Its no secret that the "classic community" seems to be on the far end of the casual spectrum and barely able to participate in PC-gaming, but you cant excuse with that everything. It takes seconds of searching about vanilla issues from the old forums, from the old theorycrafting sites and even less if you just look up some still playing vanilla veterans and just ask them in game about their honest opinion about the things they experienced over MONTHS of /played time.

If people decide to WATCH yt/twitch entertainers and believe everything they say without any critical thinking, there is a name for that and I allready mentioned it.

[Charge me Doctor]

Bring 3 hunters and pop them as they come. It's classic pvp, it's not rocket science, low armour magi going to drop fast to multishot spam

[Heathy]

this is what i saw when i was farming exalted, every so often the alliance would have a pre-made where the entire front line maybe 10+ mages were simply spamming arcane explosion, anyone who walks into it dies instantly. it seemed like a good tactic but a bit cheesy. I generally don't care for pvp beyond whatever rewards it has, I did av until I got exalted now I just don't do it any more. its only going to get worst and more unbalanced as the gear gets better and better. the difference between the haves and the have nots will become much more apparent. this is likely the most balanced point it'll ever be. where the gear isn't too powerful and most ppl can get it without too much commitment. later on its going to be stacked in favour of the team with the better gear. which you can't really control ofc, you aren't going to know if you are on the team with the most t2/t2.5 or you're on the team with 20 blue geared freshly dinged 60 alts.

[enigma77]

Don't stack, spread out.

[Misuteri]

Seed of Corruption was so much better for that in TBC. Just recounting personal experiences, and I wasn't playing lock myself; just could see when the seeds popped because their lines would melt.

Just sayin'

I mained a lock for most of my WoW time and do remember this as well.

Your numbers would explode (No pun intended.) if you were throwing seeds across the bridge especially. It was the greatest bottleneck for SOC to increase damage.

[jackofwind]

I don't have a problem with 1 Mage spamming Arc Explosion, but with 5-10 of them doing this simultaneously.

Take a game for example: you're on Drek, everything is cleared, you're about to win. Somehow 5-6 Mages make way to a room, before you can get them (ice barriers do hold some seconds), they Arc Explosion your entire group, GG.

This(

That tactic dies to a single fear bomb from a Priest or Lock. Plus Mages die in 1-2 globals in group PvP, you should have Hunter traps down to impede their mobility, and AE isn't hard to outrange.

Even if you had only 3 good Hunters watching Drek's door you would be able to stop all those Mages from getting in with their Blink CDs intact, and most/all of them would be dead.

[Heathy]

it might be possible with co-ordinated fearing but it doesn't really work that well, if you have 10 mages jumping around in a circle all spamming arcane explosion you won't often survive long enough to use a single instant cast, as a warrior with about 6k hp I can't often get my intimidating shout off without being stunlocked in the middle of those 10 mages spamming arcane explosion. most ppl will just die to the cumulative effect of being hit by 10 separate arcane explosions. even if you do manage to get a fear off, you're only going to fear maybe 3-4 of them, there are still 6 spamming arcane explosion and the rogues stun locking you in the middle of it.

av just goes by attrition, you have the main blob which can only be reinforced by a nearby graveyard. the only real counter is to try to focus mages and force them back to the grave yard and reduce the overall spamming of AE. the horde seem to win AV when the majority recall and push the alliance back to stone hearth.

[jackofwind]

it might be possible with co-ordinated fearing but it doesn't really work that well, if you have 10 mages jumping around in a circle all spamming arcane explosion you won't often survive long enough to use a single instant cast, as a warrior with about 6k hp I can't often get my intimidating shout off without being stunlocked in the middle of those 10 mages spamming arcane explosion. most ppl will just die to the cumulative effect of being hit by 10 separate arcane explosions. even if you do manage to get a fear off, you're only going to fear maybe 3-4 of them, there are still 6 spamming arcane explosion and the rogues stun locking you in the middle of it.

av just goes by attrition, you have the main blob which can only be reinforced by a nearby graveyard. the only real counter is to try to focus mages and force them back to the grave yard and reduce the overall spamming of AE.

Now we've added Rogues to the equation here, that wasn't part of the original example. We're discussing Mages on their own spamming AE. If you add Rogues stunlocking along with the Mages we might as well add a bunch of healers healing the mages too, or Paladins giving them BoP.

Or on the other side, maybe those Mages ran in and were immediately hit with 10x Multishots from all the Hunters lining the back wall behind Drek that were set up and waiting for them. Now they're all dead and Mages aren't an issue

[Heathy]

its a team right you have a mixed bag, there aren't just teams of 40 mages but you have the ppl who can stun anyone who gets close inside the AE.

me as a warrior for example I can charge one mage, but i can also be counter charged at the same time and die before i can press intimidating shout.

[jackofwind]

its a team right you have a mixed bag, there aren't just teams of 40 mages but you have the ppl who can stun anyone who gets close inside the AE.

That's not this discussion though. You're just saying that a balanced and coordinated team defense will beat a scrambly uncoordinated offense that's already engaging a boss. That's not a shocking revelation.

This entire thread is about a group of Mages, on their own, being essentially unstoppable due to AE spam.

[Heathy]

the part that is broken is how you can just use a large group of mages to create an instant kill wall. you can survive one or two or 3 mages spamming arcane explosion, but when you have maybe 10 or even more, you just get one tapped by it.

you just need enough mages so that every time they press arcane explosion its doing about 4-5k damage, anyone who runs into it is dead.

[Rampant Rabbit]

I didn't ask about changes, I asked about a way to deal with that with legit in-game means.

What can be done / how BG should be played in order to deal with Mages crowd spamming Arc Explosion? Items / etc / strategy

A legit way would be cc or disengaging. Quite simple.

- - - Updated - - -

Y, they die in few sec, but still manage to do huge amount of damage, since its instant cast. Don't forget blink mate, it's hard to completely prevent Mages to enter anything, especially when so few people play Hunter.

You can force blinks ahead of time, use abilities to move the opposite direction as fast as possible, or force an IB by focussing all your damage.

[jackofwind]

the part that is broken is how you can just use a large group of mages to create an instant kill wall. you can survive one or two or 3 mages spamming arcane explosion, but when you have maybe 10 or even more, you just get one tapped by it.

you just need enough mages so that every time they press arcane explosion its doing about 4-5k damage, anyone who runs into it is dead.

Don't run into it? It's not hard, like choosing to not engage in melee with a Warrior that has Recklessness popped. Those Mages are also only a threat while they have mana, and max rank AE is a mana hog.

Plus We're talking about a wall of Mages. Get 5 Hunters standing at max range and they can safely 1 shot a Mage in that wall with every Aimed shot crit, and multiple Mages at once with MS spam. The idea of a "kill wall" only works against people who don't understand basic tactics in Vanilla PvP.

[Utrrabbit]

Asking if it was a thing in real vanilla or perhaps is a bug in classic is not the same thing.

[lukkoth]

Are you seriously complaining about one of the most mana intense low damage spells mages have?

Mages survive almost entirely off instant casts because if we try to cast a frostbolt, we die.

[Heathy]

Don't run into it? It's not hard, like choosing to not engage in melee with a Warrior that has Recklessness popped. Those Mages are also only a threat while they have mana, and max rank AE is a mana hog.

Plus We're talking about a wall of Mages. Get 5 Hunters standing at max range and they can safely 1 shot a Mage in that wall with every Aimed shot crit, and multiple Mages at once with MS spam. The idea of a "kill wall" only works against people who don't understand basic tactics in Vanilla PvP.

ok so assuming all hypothetical scenarios aren't going to go your way, you have 5 pocket hunters, you will still get steam rolled by the bait mages, perhaps it isn't as bad as it was with the 40 man premades, although each battle usually plays out the same way, the alliance rush for drek, they either kill galv or they don't, they either take towers or they don't, once the blob reaches drek they then proceed to either nuke it with mass aoe, or take out guards.

as horde if you were attempting to defend galv, you are now dead. you didn't attack the mages, they rushed you. the way i've won AV most times is taking towers and rushing to the north to tank the boss, because the alliance is usually 90% focused in the horde base by the time I get to the alliance base. if there are a couple healers and 5-6 dps, I can pull the remaining guards 1 by 1 and ultimately the boss. depending on how many ppl recalled, i've usually won a lot of the games i've done. there have been some close calls, and a fair amount of losses against the full premades. this is due to their better cohesion, mana i don't think is much of a problem you have evocate, bg mana pots, innervate.

all i came to say is that i've seen that wall of mages tactic used to great effect. it wasn't something I remember from the old days, perhaps some groups did it, but I don't remember many games where you'd have that initial wave of mages followed by the rest of the blob. usually the blob is just the blob right it destroys anything in its path with overwhelming numbers. this tactic makes it somewhat diffcult to fully counter. not to mention its totally possible to just nuke down drek with that much aoe without bothering with the towers or just glitching the adds out of the room. I don't do much pvp so it doesn't really bother me all that much, all i would say is that it contributes to the overall steamroll tactic.

[clevin]

If you allow 10+ mages to form a wall and rush into, say, Drek's room, you've simply lost to a better strategy and set of players. Also... how often does this really happen?