Spell reflect change is bad (mostly PvP)

[Dorthonion1]

So in Shadowlands, warriors are getting spell reflect baseline. Makes sense, I think key class abilities like this should all be baseline. It's also getting nerfed to only reflect 1 spell though.

Why is this bad? Problem is there are so many passive effects in the game that count as 'spells' that use of this ability will be too tied to RNG. I only played TBC briefly, but when spell reflect was first in the game there were far fewer passive sources of damage counting as 'spells' (not that spell reflect was perfectly designed in the first place). This made it more skill-based to use, rather than getting wasted by, for example, someone's crucible of flame proc (or it's Shadowlands equivalent). Hell, druids are getting an ability that allows 16 casts in 4 seconds! How effective will the new spell reflect be against that? If for some reason they make the design decision to only cause it to proc from directly casted spells, it will need to be very robustly coded and you just know that with every new patch there will be procs and passives that break it.

I am someone who used to main arms warrior in PvP, as well as fought against them on my caster alts. The problem with spell reflect is that it lasts too long, with too short a cooldown. Often you only need it up for a fraction of a second, and the extra duration is unnecesary, but playing as a caster it's very tiring to face fury warriors YOLOing you and popping spell reflect to act like a divine shield while they go ham. What they should do instead is reduce the duration it is active for, as it is too strong in certain situations, acting as a mini bubble. Make it last for 2 seconds, even 1, on a 30 second cooldown, just don't make the spells it reflects finite. Making this choice (nerfing duration active and possibly increasing cooldown would increase the skill cap of the ability (and reduce its potency in certain matchups), but without making the ability RNG reliant, which is what the proposed change does.

[Bigbazz]

Back in TBC spell reflect would reflect more than one spell if it happened at the same (ish) time, our tank in MH used to spell reflect pull those caster adds/ghosts in the Horde camp. There is so much shit going on in BFA and so much visual garbage on the screen that it's hard to know what the hell is going on at the best of times, so I have no idea exactly how it works now.

[Gotural]

Spell Reflect being able to reflect more than one spell back in the days (not only TBC specific) was a byproduct of the way WoW calculates hits, miss, etc.
It is going to work the same way in Shadowlands.

When a spell is casted, the game instantly rolls a dice to know if the spell is going to be a hit, a crit, a miss, a dodge, a parry, whatever. It is determined as soon as the spell is casted, not when it lands. The only exceptions to this rule is the Elemental Shaman Lava Burst interaction with Flame Shock and Frost Mage interactions with Shatter, both of which were changed pretty recently, to make the gameplay better reflects the visual.

What I mean by that, is that for pretty much the entirety of WoW, when a Frost Mage casted Frost Bolt + Ice Lance on a target with a Frost Nova debuff with only 0.1 sec remaining, the game would calculate those spells when they were finished casted. At this moment, the foe is still considered frozen, and thus both spells would beneficiate from Shatter, even though when these spells would land, the target would not be frozen anymore. This is also what makes Shatter combo possible, when the first Frost Bolt spell hits and crits its target, even though the freeze effect usually breaks, the second spell still benefits from Shatter as the target was frozen when the spell was cast.

The same is true for Spell Reflect :

As soon as a spell is casted (or finished casting more precisely), the game looks up the target and see Spell Reflect actives, and makes it so the spell is going to be reflected 100%. But the Spell Reflect buff is only removed when the spell actually lands on a target.

Which means that if a Warrior activated (or activates in SL) Spell Reflect and that 10 casters threw Chaos Bolts, Pyroblasts and other stuff at him, they would all be reflected as long as they all finished casting when the Warrior still had the Spell Reflect buff active. In others words, the last spell that can be reflected needs to be casted no later than at the moment the first spell being reflected actually lands.

This is also why for a very long period of time, Rogues were constantly whining about spells going through Cloak of Shadows, not only did the spell only grant 90% miss chance to spells back then, but also if you used it while a spell was traveling toward you, it was too late to use CoS as the game already calculated if that the spell was going to be a hit or a miss. Nowadays Cloak of Shadows actually grants the Rogue a 1 sec spell immunity hidden buff to allow them to use CoS during spell travel time.

[docterfreeze]

Pets won't pop spell reflect, I don't know if passive procs pop it though. They shouldn't IMO.

Making spell reflect work like it did pre-legion is great as it increases the skill ceiling of the ability and the counterplay for those fighting a warrior.

[LazyCoding]

It is determined as soon as the spell is casted, not when it lands. The only exceptions to this rule is the Elemental Shaman Lava Burst interaction with Flame Shock and Frost Mage interactions with Shatter, both of which were changed pretty recently, to make the gameplay better reflects the visual.

I think they changed it for all spells that have a travel time. And they just let this mechanic work on purpose. Because once they implemented this system of calculating on receiving time (instead of casting/launching time) why wouldn't they make new design for all spells.
For example greater pyroblast chases its targets so slow that there is no way they can calculate anything at cast time. you can literally see it is coming for you so you can leap away , buy some time for heal or a CD something.

Btw this new way( processing at receiving time) is some high quality software shit. It is much harder to program. this may be the reason why it wasn't always working like now. I have played another RPG game before and it was doing everything at cast time which often looked stupid. Wow does these things very good. As you also said it makes the gameplay match the visual which is very important quality.

[Gotural]

I think they changed it for all spells that have a travel time. And they just let this mechanic work on purpose. Because once they implemented this system of calculating on receiving time (instead of casting/launching time) why wouldn't they make new design for all spells.
For example greater pyroblast chases its targets so slow that there is no way they can calculate anything at cast time. you can literally see it is coming for you so you can leap away , buy some time for heal or a CD something.

Btw this new way( processing at receiving time) is some high quality software shit. It is much harder to program. this may be the reason why it wasn't always working like now. I have played another RPG game before and it was doing everything at cast time which often looked stupid. Wow does these things very good. As you also said it makes the gameplay match the visual which is very important quality.

I'm not sure but it should be easy enough to test. Wait for a spell to travel towards you, only then activate Spell Reflect. I think it won't reflect it but I could be wrong, I found this on the Frost Mage Icy Veins page, updated Jan 12th 2020, leading me to think that only Frost Mages and Elemental Shamans are affected by this change.

"What is not obvious, is that you can actually Shatter Icon Shatter the spell cast before the Flurry Icon Flurry as well. Unlike every other spec in the game, Frost's spells calculate Critical Strike on impact, rather than on leaving your hand at cast time."

[ff50dccd-a222-42f3-a786]

What I mean by that, is that for pretty much the entirety of WoW, when a Frost Mage casted Frost Bolt + Ice Lance on a target with a Frost Nova debuff with only 0.1 sec remaining, the game would calculate those spells when they were finished casted. At this moment, the foe is still considered frozen, and thus both spells would beneficiate from Shatter, even though when these spells would land, the target would not be frozen anymore. This is also what makes Shatter combo possible, when the first Frost Bolt spell hits and crits its target, even though the freeze effect usually breaks, the second spell still benefits from Shatter as the target was frozen when the spell was cast.

Dumb melee, you have no idea what are you talking about. fb-coc, fb+il, fb+2xil and frost bomb shenanigans, shatter combos were courtesy of travel time and a reward for correct timing, setup and execution.

[LazyCoding]

I'm not sure but it should be easy enough to test. Wait for a spell to travel towards you, only then activate Spell Reflect. I think it won't reflect it but I could be wrong, I found this on the Frost Mage Icy Veins page, updated Jan 12th 2020, leading me to think that only Frost Mages and Elemental Shamans are affected by this change.

"What is not obvious, is that you can actually Shatter Icon Shatter the spell cast before the Flurry Icon Flurry as well. Unlike every other spec in the game, Frost's spells calculate Critical Strike on impact, rather than on leaving your hand at cast time."

Well it says Critical Strike and there is no reason for other spells' Crit chance to be calculated on impact. That is something almost always relevant to the source of the spell. Except some Fire mage passive trait that reduces your chance to suffer a critically strike. But that doesn't change anything since the target stays the same during travel time so you can still calculate at cast time.

You can easily test it with Greater Pyroblast because it travels too slow and a Prot warrior on live(bfa). I remember leaping away from an aprouching greater pyro and healing myself in that duration. So I can't think why it wouldn't work on spell reflect since it would kill me if my hp stayed the same at moment pyro was launched.

[Zylos]

I mean in TBC it also required you to wear a shield and be in defensive stance so this change is still easier than that.

[Gotural]

Dumb melee, you have no idea what are you talking about. fb-coc, fb+il, fb+2xil and frost bomb shenanigans, shatter combos were courtesy of travel time and a reward for correct timing, setup and execution.

Yeah that's actually what I wrote more or less. But thank you for being so agressive for no reason mister weird username.

[Brostin]

I'm not understanding how it's getting nerfed when all through BFA at least it's only reflected one spell?

[melzas]

So it's pretty much personal grounding totem.

Grounding totem isn't bad. It's actually really strong PvP spell. Sure, you can't just mindlessly pop it when you feel like it, you gotta bait casts and be fast. Which means higher skill cap.

Anything that raises skill cap in this game's PvP is good for it. So it's a good change.

[enigma77]

It's better that way.

Right now Spell Reflect is basically a several second immunity to spells with little thought involved.

[Gotural]

Well it says Critical Strike and there is no reason for other spells' Crit chance to be calculated on impact. That is something almost always relevant to the source of the spell. Except some Fire mage passive trait that reduces your chance to suffer a critically strike. But that doesn't change anything since the target stays the same during travel time so you can still calculate at cast time.

You can easily test it with Greater Pyroblast because it travels too slow and a Prot warrior on live(bfa). I remember leaping away from an aprouching greater pyro and healing myself in that duration. So I can't think why it wouldn't work on spell reflect since it would kill me if my hp stayed the same at moment pyro was launched.

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I only meant hit/miss/crit calculations. If you have 20% hp and a Greater Pyroblast is finished casting but only reach you 3 secs later and you are healed to 50% at that point, yes sure you are going to survive with about 15% hp.

But on the contrary, before they gave Cloak of Shadows a 1 sec hidden immunity to spell baked in, in was very frequent for a Rogue to use it while a Frost Bolt or whatever was flying in his direction. Cloak used to increase chances to miss by 90% for spells, but the spell already calculated that it was going to hit the Rogue the moment it finished casting and thus the CoS was pretty much wasted. The same went for Spell Reflect, I'm 100% sure that previously if you hit Spell Reflect while a Chaos Bolt was going your way, it was too late and the Chaos Bolt would hit you (and not consume Spell Reflect).

[LazyCoding]

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I only meant hit/miss/crit calculations. If you have 20% hp and a Greater Pyroblast is finished casting but only reach you 3 secs later and you are healed to 50% at that point, yes sure you are going to survive with about 15% hp.

Yeah you are right , HP and crit/hit are different things. For some reason I was thinking about all calculations there. But HP thing is always about the target regardless of which system they use.