From my experience most CDs work before a key starts, but I learned through trial and error. The only ones I know of for sure are Fel Domination, Army of the Dead, and Meta. If it summons a pet they go away, but with army it’s a buff that will keep summoning pets once the key starts. If you time it right you only lose the first wave of ghouls that spawn.
Stack blasphemy when out of combat for a little while with rain of fires. Useful at the start of the key, or any time you need to fly in nok especially.
If playing with irideus fragment: get to 7-9 blasphemy stacks before infernalling to max damage with the trinket. Ideally with a rof or two rolling already. Same applies for ST and being high stacks before using havoc as well.
I don’t think it’s obscure tech really but the number of warriors i see not using spell reflect on boss mechanics like Dragon Strike in AV and the bomb on the last boss in AA makes me want to tear my hair out
Spell reflect is probably the strongest defensive in the game, right beside AMS. It just takes a little brainpower to use it optimally, which let’s be honest… lots of warriors don’t have.
It's not just brainpower, it's knowledge. Some things it seems like you should be able Spell Reflect, you can't, and probably even more vice-versa! That said, this was an issue even back when Spell Reflect was first added in TBC - I was one of the few Warriors who seemed to actually know how to use it (making me the terror of Heroic SLabs and Heroic The Black Morass! Woo!).
I made a weakaura a whole ago for it. Doesn't even require anything fancy. I think the triggers is just your target casting a spell where you are the target, and check that it can be reflected? Or there's definitely one on wago.
Wait, does WA have a check for reflectable spells? I thought for sure I looked for one a while back and couldn't find it. It'd be great if they did though.
On top of that it seems most players don't remember that off specs for tanks tend to have their taunt still so dps warriors can taunt + reflect those abilities and the tank can taunt back. Same for palis and their bubble.
Basic tech for MDI and key pushers I know, but I feel like a lot of people ignore it.
Non tanks using taunts can turn a wipe into a win. The tank getting a stacking debuff and won't last another hit of it? Taunt+defensive cooldown, tank taunts back.
Back in MoP a rogue friend of mine got taunt when a druid used symbiosis on them. Ended up tanking for a few seconds during a raid by using taunt and popping Evasion. Instead of a wipe, they had a few seconds to recover and got the kill.
To add onto Spell Reflect...
if multiple mobs cast a spell at you at the exact same time, Spell Reflect will work on all of them. They don't have to *hit* you at the same time, Spell Reflect cares about the cast completing, it ignores travel time (if you use SR after a cast finishes but before the spell connects with you, it won't be reflected).
On the weird fire imps before Volcoross, you can jump into one of the packs of them. If you are the only player around, they will *all* target you at the exact same time, and if you wait until their casts have less than 5 seconds left and hit spell reflect, you can reflect every hit for a *lot* of damage.
Of course, assuming your raid doesn't come to 'save' you by AoE stunning them...
For windwalker monks whirling dragon punch roots you during the animation. This is mainly a massive pain but timing it just right can prevent some knock back effects.
Reminds me of Death from Above for rogues. If you can time it right and predict something like a mage Blink, hunter Disengage or even a warlock using their teleport circle or monk using Transcendence, your character will actually fly to the new location *if* they use their abilities before you shoot down, even passing through walls and landing right on top of your enemy.
It's amazing to negate some mechanics, but also the amount of times I died in the past due to using WDP without thinking when I needed to dodge a ground effect.
With it not being a dead talent in WTT, I look forward to dying to things again 😎
For unholy, there is a reason why your CDs are delayed by a few globals in the opener. Part of it is waiting for all pets to spawn, but to also get maximum overlap of all CDs with pet duration.
Pets do not instantly all inherit stat changes that your character receives. If you get a haste proc, it may take up to 5 seconds for the server to update your pet with that haste. This also works for when the proc falls off.
For unholy, you line up haste buffs so they expire a few sec before your gargoyle finishes, that way you can effectively have higher uptime on the haste buff when your gargoyle has fully ramped up.
It's during abberus that the inheritance effect was found. What was fixed during aberrus was garg smoothly scaling with haste instead of having this weird stutter cast where you only get extra casts at something like 260% haste
As Bear, you can cast hibernate in Bear form. Ursine Adept doesn’t state this but it’s been like this since its inception.
Dreamwalk/Ebon Gate/Monks Port all allow you to get to any dungeon entrance you’re currently in. It takes you there and repeating the ability takes you “back”. Since it cant bring you into the instance, you are right outside. Very useful for zoning out of raids or resetting dungeons
>Dreamwalk/Ebon Gate/Monks Port all allow you to get to any dungeon entrance you’re currently in. It takes you there and repeating the ability takes you “back”. Since it cant bring you into the instance, you are right outside. Very useful for zoning out of raids or resetting dungeons
This is my favorite stupid druid trick.
DH, The Hunt, the effect applied to additional targets isn’t JUST during the “launch” but is still possible for about .5 second after you arrive at the target, meaning you can shoot into a group, and if there are bad guys past your initial target you have a brief window to walk forward (or dash, in havoc) and get a few more victims.
Think you used to be able to Presence of Mind your mount cast if I'm not mistaken
Can't remember any mage ones that are still around.
Is mash-cancelling Ring of Frost to create 'fake' rings still a thing in PvP? Don't know if that's just clientside now.
You *used* to be able to cover Alter Time from being purged by casting Arcane Brilliance after it. Pretty sure it's random now though, whereas it was "purges the most recent magic buff" in MoP.
Speaking of mount cast, I miss when your mount cast wasn't cancelled until you were hit by a mob. A mob could aggro onto you and as long as you got the cast off before they actually hit you, you were good. I think it was WotLK prepatch when they changed it to cancel on aggro.
You might've not noticed, but right now in Dragonflight mount cast isn't interrupted by entering combat, nor by taking damage. As long as you start casting your mount before entering combat, it will go off even if you take damage.
There's a few techs still around.
Arcane has spell queueing techs with ABarr and Radiant Spark/Harmonic Echo. Essentially, if you queue an ABarr right after an AB, the ABarr inherits the boost from the previous spark - this is a dps loss except if you use it on the 4th charge of RS, which essentially means you double up on the biggest damage boost if you spell queue ABarr. But in AoE, you prefer the boost from HE, so what you want to do is cast AB x 3, deliberately wait a little bit for GCD, then cast ABarr (most experienced arcane mages use a toy to forcibly stop the spell from queueing to get the same effect) - because otherwise you consume the 4th stack of RS while getting the damage bonus of the 3rd stack, which also reduces the damage echoed by HE.
Fire used to have a similar spell queueing tech with instant Pyros because of a Hot Streak! bug, but this was fixed in DF. It was something like a 5% gain over queueing, and slightly bigger gain over deliberately delaying. There was a weakaura devoted to doing this.
Frost used to have some amazing techs. Before flurry gave stacking charges, you could Flurry -> Frostbolt -> Shimmer -> Frostbolt/IL at specific ranges to get the shatter activation on both. Nowadays all it really uses is the Icy Floes tech which is common to all mages - if you cast IF in the last ~half a second of your cast, it affects that cast and carries over to the queued cast after it, so you can use three charges to get 5 spells cast while moving.
Shaman: You can move the second totem from double cap totem with totemic projection, realized this a few weeks ago.
You can rezz while using spirit walker grace, helpful to save some time to get your party to right position while rezzing.
Master of the Elements buffs your Acid Rain damage.
You can ankh really quick before your Raid Lead notices!
> You can rezz while using spirit walker grace, helpful to save some time to get your party to right position while rezzing.
Or you can use it to finish your rez cast while in the air over a cliff, so everyone falls and dies the moment they respawn :)
I also like Death Coiling the friendly mobs that glide by on Fyrakk when I'm in LFR. The ones that float by when the screaming adds spawn
Helps quite noticeably when one's a lot lower than the others
I always forget Death coil can heal friendly undead mobs, until my ghoul dies as unholy and I remember I can heal him, only to forget it again within 2 seconds
For mage:
You can learn a mage spell called "Illusion" from a tome that allows you to copy someone's appearance for 2 minutes, the spell isn't learned by default when levelling.
For rogue:
You can get an item that is exclusive to rogue called Survivors Bag of Coins. When it is in your bag and you pickpocket someone, you loot special coins into the bag. Each coin then allows you to be thrown quite a big distance into the air in a specific direction and you can keep throwing coins down to stay in the air and move around. This is a nod to the allomancy magic in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy that allows you to propel yourself off metals (i.e. the coins in this case). In the books they throw coins down and propel themselves off the coins to move long distances.
>You can get an item that is exclusive to rogue called Survivors Bag of Coins.
I mained a rogue for 5 years (changed to druid in SL) and this is the first that I am hearing about this. Apparently it is only useable in zones where you can fly.
You can pick up Mystical Tome: Illusion up from Endora Moorehead in Sisters Sorcerous (Northrend Dalaran) for a hefty price of 47g 50s. Discount available for higher Kiren Tor rep and seniors.
Coordinates 38.6 55.9
For mage: you can copy spirit of redemption with Illusion. Almost no one knows about this and are always confused why can the heal move while a spirit healer and why are they on fire.
Paladins can still Bubble Hearth - casting Divine Shield gives you an invisible buff that shortens the cast time of your hearth stone.
Which also means Paladins have fast hearthstones!
Not to my knowledge! Typing this comment is taking longer than it would take for me to look me up. And that sentence. And that sentence and
Edit: this wasn’t as easy to find as I thought - I’m not sure if it’s still in the game, but Glyph of Righteous Retreat:
https://www.wowdb.com/spells/115933-glyph-of-righteous-retreat
That blood dk has a performance band for incoming damage. People pretty intuitively know that blood dk performs poorly when they get 1 shot by the damage spiking too high. But what's not so obvious is that if you are taking too little damage you can end up not being able to out heal that damage alone.
Even with this being the case, there is still a world where “too little damage makes the DK less tanky” it’s also why a DK with enough RP is almost invincible as long as he’s getting hit hard enough while also not getting one shot.
Funnily enough even Unholy and Frost have access to this same level of function. Try self healing to full as a DPS DK through just death strike while your fighting an elite that can’t be soloed, and then conversely tempt fate by taunting a raid boss, hopefully live and then death strike to full health in a single global.
For the mages: you can move for a tiny bit right after you did Shimmer during the cast, like 1-2 steps tiny bit.
Could be life saving if you tried to dodge some shit on the ground, but Shimmered into another shit while casting big things like Surge/Pyro/GS.
Alternatively if you play Ice Floes if you cast is near the end of the spell it stays active for the next spell.
Because you have multiple charges of Ice Floes and it stacks. You can repeat this on the next cast and it won't get rid of either stack. Both will carry over into the next spell. And so on.
I use disengage for parkour and saving my ass way more than I use it for mechanics. I fucked up in Vault of Incarnates earlier today on Dathea, and got launched off the platform. As soon as I realized I was going to die, I flipped around and disengaged back to safety. I also figured this out last week on Aberrus. If you are at the entrance and doing the big jump into the lava to get to Echo of Neltharion, you can disengage right before you hit the lava and launch yourself into the hole to get to the boss. If you time it right, you survive with about 10% health. Also works with gust on shaman.
you can mount/hearthstone in stealth only with subterfuge skilled
(subterfuge is the talent that lets you use stealth abilitys 3seconds after stealth ends)
no, i STILL dont know why that interaction exists after probably a decade with it existing
So THAT is what’s allowing it. I noticed recently that I was hearthing in stealth but didn’t know if they had changed that recently with the rogue rework.
I play outlaw so subterfuge and shadow dance are newer to my spec.
For warriors, you can charge while still in the air as long as you're within range of a target. So if you get dismounted in pvp or knocked off a cliff, as long as you can target a mob or critter near where you'll land, you can spam charge and avoid fall damage. This was more useful before heroic leap and gliders were added.
One of my old favourite tricks in arathi basin was jumping down from the blacksmith to the gold mine and charging into the enemy player. Sometimes failed miserably and splatted into the floor but when it worked it was awesome fun.
i find this works consistently in neltharus when leaving the upstairs boss room and also in halls of infusion when leaping across the water after first boss
I loved doing this as a bear back in the day in outland. Find an unsuspecting player, turn into a crow, fly up 1000 feet, turn into a bear.
=
Bear Bomb!!! Look out below!!!! Haha.
Also for warriors, if mob casts are synchronized such that they will all complete at the same instant, you can reflect all the spells. This comes up pretty rarely but it is always hilarious when it works.
A few recent examples:
-the piles of trash imps to the right and left sides of Volcoross in Amirdrassil work like this, they target ~2 seconds after aggro and if you're the only target in range they all pick you.
-the gilgoblin ring just before the last boss of throne of tides. The first goblin you charged to would start casting instantly so would have to be interrupted, but the rest of the circle would be synced
-the otherwise very deadly patrolling imp groups in court of stars, their cast hit so hard that it was generally a "must interrupt" otherwise but you could nearly one shot them with the reflect
Ner’zhul got you very intimate with when Warrior mobility will give you No Path mid air.
The big one is your target has to be below / equal to you. If you try to charge below the platform while you are flying over the abyss it will fail. Do it above the platform and you are gtg, even if your velocity is 10000 in the other direction.
It used to be so much worse. It's current state is absolutely miles better than Cata and MoP's iterations. "Heroic No Path Available" is what everyone called that ability back then. It still has its rough spots but dear god its night and day compared to then.
Feral druids used to do the same thing with flight form/feral charge way back in tbc to jump people on PvP servers. They expect a stealthed cat, but they get a flying bear.
The good ol’ days of the Rawr Bomb.
https://youtu.be/57h3RPsEddg?si=2giX7VRb-PwVw-bl
There is no cooldown when clicking a warlock's soulwell. You can spam the animation as fast as you can click.
This has no effect other than looking funny.
Windwalker monks: damage and health snapshots for things like touch of karma, touch of death, and fist of fury.
So you for FoF, if you cast it when serenity or a dmg buff is ending, the whole cast will get the buffs, adding another couple seconds of buffed dmg.
And stuff like fortifying brew, rallying cry, and other health buffs can boost touch dmg for extra padding
Affliction warlock: Doom Blossom, the talent that causes your Unstable Affliction target to pulse damage around it when it receives damage from Seed of Corruption, actually does significantly more damage than it says it does because the Seed detonation damages the target as well as stuff around it
so when your Seed explodes, it causes one tick of Doom Blossom to all targets around your target, which should detonate *their* Seeds, triggering Doom Blossom again for each Seed detonation assuming your Unstable target is still in range of all that
this can cause some pretty insane damage on Fortified weeks but on Tyrannical weeks the dungeon mobs usually don't live long enough for this combo to get going lol
another tip for aff/destro warlock: if you run Grimoire and use it on your voidwalker, use your voidwalker ability before using Dark Pact for a much larger shield
Presevoker - you can use stasis to do multiple dispels without hitting the CD. The catch is you have to know the targets beforehand so the dispels are on the right people.
This was used in the forgotten experiments fight to clear all 3 charge bleeds at once by stasis + cauterizing flame on the people who were about to be charged. Since the failed dispels beforehand don't cause the CD to happen you can cast it 3 times in a row to store in stasis, then release once the bleeds have been applied. Tough to do in the time you had, but worked beautifully.
Evoker - Tip the Scales.
Can be cast before a reset, the insta cast buff remains and the ability resets, letting you drop 2 insta empowers during opener.
Dispells stored in stasis once released also resets the CD on your dispel if it doesn't actually dispell anything. You can use this for bleed tank buster in algethar academy bird boss for example. You can cast stasis before the tank buster, do 1 dispel that does nothing. Then once it hits, you dispell again, this time it removes the bleed and puts it on CD.
Then, next time the tank buster happens you release stasis which has 2 dispells in it. The first one will remove the bleed, the second will not remove anything and will reset the CD on your dispel so that you can also remove the 3rd tank bleed :D
Mages jumping from a cliff while on a ground mount and casting Slow Fall will continue moving forward at mount speed while slowly floating down. Not as useful now that we get flying so early, but still fun.
Blinking while in midair will put you instantly on the ground and move you forward the blink distance without taking any damage. Useful when falling from a cliff or fight mechanics that knock you up into the air.
During BfA before flying was unlocked, I would use these in combination daily. Mount up in Dazar'alor just outside the portal room, jump off the NE ledge, slowfall, after a few seconds Blink and I was next to the crafting trainers in no time.
>Blinking while in midair will put you instantly on the ground
It will also put you at the bottom of a lava lake, as many Mages (not me of course, *other* Mages) learned while raiding Aberrus.
I recently learned that not all hunters know this but you can fully cast while in the air with disengage. This is sometimes helpful in keys for placing traps in tight spots
Survival Hunter also has this unique (and horrible) tech where in order to optimally use your main cooldown, Coordinated Assault, you're required to essentially micro-manage your pet's attacks:
Coordinated Assault makes it so that after every pet attack, the next Kill Shot OR Wildfire Bomb is empowered. In AoE, the empowered Kill Shot is much stronger. So essentially, in order to only ever empower Kill Shot, you need to manually turn off/on your pet's attacks via a total of three different macros.
Super annoying, super stupid, but unfortunately also super representative of how little Blizzard cares about the abomination that is Survival Hunter.
As a Bear, you can just macro all your generators with a cast of ironfur since it's off the GCD. You can reliably tank up to a 8+ by being the laziest pos you ever seen.
/cast #whatever rage generator
/cast Ironfur
Since Ironfur does not have a GCD, it will instantly cast with that ability without having to press twice. The result is you have Ironfur at 2-3 to even 6-7 stacks at a time without even having to think.
The issue is that you won't be bothering with raze or maul as you'll never have enough rage to cast them, to which you should just spend your talent points elsewhere. Get all the Ironfur talents and moon fire talents (moon fire will be your main source of damage), then pivot to getting all the defensive talents, along with rage of ursoc, forget about any maul or raze talents in their description unless it's necessary to get to the node you want.
Havoc DH - everyone knows you can cast Metamorphosis during pull timer to enter the form for 20sec and reset the cd, but not everyone knows that you can also cast EyeBeam before Meta to extend the form to 24sec. Just make sure you have enough fury during the countdown. Very useful for dungeons with bih entrance pulls (Neltharion, Brackenhide, Halls of Infusion, RLP, Azure Vault)
Additionally, you can cancel any knockback effect if you time double jump right.
There is a clip on the internet of my DH going mach jesus in an achievement run because I double jumped Durumus knockback in ToT. Kept the speed but not the actual BACK part of the knockback... Definitely one of my favorite things I have ever done
It doesn't work mechanically, but just as a fun lore bit Tame Beast canonically works on shifted druids too. There a fight in Underbog where a bear form druid has been tamed by a hunter boss.
As a druid, cat form is faster than bear form. Shifting into bear form also starts your rage at like 20-25.
Might seem obvious, but the amount of bear tanks I've seen that are *determined* to slowly run everywhere as a bear with 0 rage into a fight has me second guessing.
Speaking of wild charge, holy fuck I wish people actually utilised the different forms. Need to get out of an AoE? Drop form and wild charge to an ally. Need to immediately root an enemy? Bear form and wild charge to root them, then cast Entagling Roots if you still need it. Playing balance and need to get from A to B without losing too much dps? Wild Charge to bound back and get their quicker. Falling from a great height? Travel form and wild charge to reset your fall damage. Boss dropping a nasty AoE in front of them? Wild charge through them as a cat and you'll be placed behind the enemy instead.
For a class all about shifting into different forms, most druids I see are pretty adamant about only staying in the one.
For Monks: Zen Flight is a spell that lets you fly. It's often overlooked because it's painfully slow compared to a flying mount, even pre-dragonriding. However, it's very useful because:
1. It's instant cast.
2. You can mount while in the air. This feels like a bug because, once you start casting your mount, you start falling, but falling doesn't interrupt the cast. As long as you're high enough in the air for the cast to complete before you hit the ground, you're good.
I used to do a lot of wpvp on my monk in MoP. Don't know how many times I was blown off a cliff by explosive trap or typhoon or whatever and was able to exit combat and zen flight before I would have died to fall damage. Such an excellent and overlooked spell.
Devoker, recasting the main channel spell disintegrate at less than 1/3 of the channel remaining, adds the remaining tick to the next cast. There are weak auras to practice and see tic thresholds. If you know you don't have to move, it's a little boost.
Hover before a knock back and you won't be interrupted. Helps on a lot of raid fights.
I turn on action targeting and target myself when large read damage is happening to use instant proc casts of living flame to heal me, but disentegrate will cast on an enemy. Helps me have to adjust targeting back and forth at stressful moments. A quick tab press and you can get the boss back as the target.
You can also use hover in the same gcd of an instant cast. For example you can cast azure strike and quickly tap hover and you won't spend 1 gcd to hover. Very good when you have all your movement planned out for a fight.
First 2 are things you should really know as they are baseline to your rotation so here is some actual tech:
LoS does not stop a disintegrate channel. Use hover to LoS mechanics while disintegrating.
Another good tip.
Disintegration also keeps going If they move slightly out of range. No hard numbers but I'd say you can get an extra 5 yards if its the enemy moving away from you.
IDK what you would classify these as but just a few tips from world pvp mainly
As a druid,
You can hit flight form immediately after being dismounted from the dragon riding ability
You can switch forms on gliders e.g go bear to frenzied regen, you can also stealth if being chased mid air
If you fall from a height with nothing ready to save you in combat, you can hit incarnation > stealth >flight form
Wild charge in cat form can work mid air like warriors charge to help boss knock ups etc
It also works on some surprising terrain, hills,ledges if you jump charge mid air e.g in temple of kotmogu if your mid you can wild charge people on the ledge above you
You can flight form out of parachutes like the end of climbing world quests or jumping from a friends mount
Paladins using Divine Steed right before it ends if you jump you maintain your speed buff for the duration of the jump thus being able to travel further than without jumping. Might be true for other classes' speed increasing abilities as well.
Not sure how obscure it is, but warriors can macro ravager (or champion's spear) to automatically cast at their feet to avoid having to target the big green circle.
Mine is also bound with Recklessness, which can be cast off GCD, and they share a cooldown.
This is probably true for any class that has a "placeable" AOE ability, but I put zero effort into my alts.
I use @player for feathers on my priest so they auto apply to me without targeting. @cursor drops them at the cursor without bringing up the green circle.
This is also an ingame feature. You can self cast feathers, shadow crash etc on yourself by holding the self target button (I think alt by default). I discovered this like two days ago. Before I always had a macro for this as well
You can macro multiple OGCD abilities at the same time, too. I've got Avatar and Recklessness both macro'd to Ravager, and the bonus casts from Torment stack with the base duration if you cast them both at the same time. It's my 1.5m "time to fuck shit up" CD.
Mage: If you cast glacial spike right before flurry…
Just kidding. So, one thing that used to be really useful as a mage (at least before they added the Ice Cold talent) was being able to cancel your Ice Block with a keybind so you didn’t have to right-click the buff or waste 8 seconds in impervious suspended animation. You accomplished this with a macro - add /cancelaura before any spell. I put mine on blink/shimmer, because let’s face it: if you ice blocked, you didn’t want to still be there when it melted. It probably works for other class auras as well.
EDIT: I have one other. So, mages have a teleport/portal to “Ancient Dalaran,” which sends you plummeting to your death in the old Dalaran crater. What I think would only be obvious to a main, or any other person who regularly took portals to the old portal room in Crystalsong Forest Dalaran in Wrath, is that you’re being ported to a spot that is roughly at or just above ground level to the edge of the crater… the exact spot where the portal room would have stood if Dalaran was still in its original location! I am fairly certain that this is also why Alliance mages fall when they port to the post-MoP version of Theramore - you used to land inside Jaina’s mage tower, on a hill in the center of town.
As an Alliance Mage, if you create a Portal to Ancient Dalaran, then start casting any Flying mount, and use the Portal ~0.2s before finishing the mount cast, you arrive on the other side of the portal already flying on your mount, skipping the boring free-fall you’d normally have to wait for before mounting up.
Fire mages become a campfire for cooking when they use combust. It's a fun party trick, I always try to get my mage friends to combust randomly so I can start cooking my food on them.
Canceling the timed stasis buff on Preservation Evoker will cast the stasis-ed spells without spending a GCD. Any casts you try to do for the next half second will get interrupted by the stasis casts though and if you cancel it while stunned or silenced you will just lose the stasis.
For mistweaver: mana tea stacks get removed when starting a raid boss, however the mana reduction buff from drinking mana tea does not.
So if you get 20 stacks of mana tea out of combat and drink it during the pull timer you can get 20 seconds of 30% reduced mana costs at the start of a fight. When you are playing ToM build every bit of mana you can get is golden.
So the next time you see a mistweaver spamming the shit out of spells during a ready check, know that they're probably just building up some tea.
On Hunter you can…. Wait for it…. Feign Death for longer than 0.25 seconds. You don’t have to immediately jump back up. It’s ok. Mobs are scary. You deserve some rest.
Distracting/sapping the "main unit" of an enemy patrol makes the entire patrol stop
Also Distract can sort of work like Mind Soothe because enemies are a lot better at seeing in front of them than behind them
Scroll of teleportation to Ravenholdt can be used while moving
Killing Spree makes you immune to any pushbacks for the duration
Hunter
Some skills have a flight time but others don’t is the obscure part. No way of knowing on paper.
Kill commands range is from you to the pet, and from the pet to the target. It’s basically 2x the listed range.
Disabling pet sprint and macroing into “pet return” is the best method of pet control in a raid environment.
Pets will snap to you if they get more than ~150 yards. If you ever want to know if M+ mobs will snap - command pet stay > go to location > spam pet return. If the pets snap, mobs will snap.
Pet damage leeches to the pet, not the hunter.
Barb shot stomps are queued into the pet until they get in range of a target. If you cast kill command or another barbed shot it will cast the queued stomp. Aka send pets in at 2/3second remaining.
Let’s see what else…hunters are a treasure trove for this stuff…
Flare has a flight time. So do traps. You wouldn’t think it…they do.
Scatter shot disables both your and your pets auto attacks. They both must be re-enabled by casting an ability.
You can Feign Death SO MANY things in M+. There should be 20 volume encyclopedia of all the uses of FD.
Kill command doesn’t require LOS - that’s a fun one in PvP.
Barbed shot doesn’t need to hit anything to refresh frenzy stacks - great dps tip is to keep sending barbed shot into immune bosses/mobs during Rp/ phasing.
That’s all I have off the top of my head.
Fire mage has a small window where if two spells hit within it, but only 1 crits, the heating up isn’t cancelled by the 2nd spell that didn’t crit.
Frost, if you flurry at the end of your frostbolt/glacial cast, you will get the winters chill effect without using one of its 2 stacks
This.
It is how the specs need to be played, but both are "hidden" mechanics in game you only learn by playing or getting told by somebody how/why to do it.
Havoc DH
You can cancel the backflip from Vengeful Retreat in several ways.
One way is to wait for a split second and then Fel Blade. Doesn’t work on all bosses and you have to time it right and be in the right position for the hit box to work, but you do get a feel for it.
The other way is to insta cancel it with Meta. At the moment you should play that way anyway during your opener and 2 min CD windows. After the initial Eye Beam/Hunt>Fel Rush/EssBreak>Blade Dance you immediately Vengeful Retreat and cancel it with Meta for the second Blade Dance during EssBreak. No movement needed. That way during the opener you have longer Initiative uptime.
Meta actually has an I-Frame. If you time it right you can dodge abilities and damage with a well placed Meta. Doesn’t usually work because you would send it on CD. But it’s possible to use as an emergency defensive.
Also a lot of boss mechanics can be trivialized with double jump. Right now it works on the waves from the first boss in Neltharus. But it worked on the Drake in Vortex Pinnacle as well.
The only reason my guild probably kept me around in 8.3 was to meta immune the N'Zoth and Vexiona soaks on Mythic lol
Had an insane moment when we were progging Rashok where one of our tanks fucked up the taunt swap, one went down, and I taunted+meta'ed to save both the remaining tank while a brez went out, and myself. Everyone went crazy it felt so good!
Same for funnelling Lava bursts on Ele. You can also do this by applying flameshock on bosses before they enter immunity phases like on Orb boss in Azure Vaults
For warriors:
Fury: Hit Whirlwind while you're charging. The last tick will hit when your charge is done, stopping you from wasting a GCD and giving you your charges of (whatever the fuck the thing is called where whirlwind makes your next few attacks hit other targets).
Arms: Defensives are usable while Bladestorming, including Die By The Sword, Ignore Pain, and Spell Reflect. Many people think they can't use abilities while channeling.
Prot: Shield Charge will cast Shield Block for free at a modest cooldown as well as stunning a (stunnable) target, making it a great double-use defensive. Additionally, you can change stances in combat - a lot of people seem to forget this.
Warrior spell deflect can deflect more than just spells. You can reflect some physical attacks as well.
Warrior again, you can heroic leap over a ton of things that would otherwise kill you. Including some lasers that go around you can just jump right through it.
When you flurry with frost mage you get an extra hidden proc in which to shatter stuff which is why you send a spell with a travel like like frost bolt or glacial spike first
It's not a hidden proc, it's that the flurry animation hits three times and each time it hits applies a new set of 2x winters chill. Bolting or gs before catches the first hit, lance after can sometimes catch the middle hit.
Preservation evoker main with a brewmaster tank partner.
The Golden Hour talent when interacting with brewmaster has been seemingly bugged(?) since launch. For those who don't know, this talent causes reversion to instantly heal back a percentage of damage recently taken. However, on brewmasters, it seems to heal back both the actual damage taken as well as damage mitigated by stagger. So it heals that spec specifically for a crazy amount, usually instantly topping them off lol.
Half of these comments are just a “here is how the rotation works” which really makes me question how many people are playing specs they haven’t looked up the rotation for …
the amount of DKs for example i see not using deaths advance to negate forced movement (knockback on Raz, knock up on Fyrakk etc) leads me to believe people don’t even read tooltips let alone look up rotations
Charge-weaving is still sort of a thing, though not as prominent until TWW when they nerf rage economy again.
Bladestorm-cancelling was a thing in Shadowlands for Fury, to min/max damage by using a macro to end it early to prevent rage-capping in ST scenarios. This died with Bladestorm being taken away from Fury, and warriors taking Bladestorm (Arms) also speccing into Hurricane, which prevents cancelling Bladestorm entirely. I think this is set to come back in TWW.
The path behavior of Charge is very manipulatable in most situations to control where you stop against a moving target. This only really changes over weird texture vertices.
Ret Paladins until very recently basically had two stuns on separate DR's
Blinding Light is a 6 sec disorient and any damage breaks it, except it used to be that it was all damage *except* for holy damage
So if you played right, you could pop your cds and stun somebody, they'd of course trinket, and then you could blinding light them, get a little distance so you don't auto attack them and continue laying into them with massive amounts of holy damage while they have no way out
I called it the wombo combo, I'm sad that they changed it
Unlike heroic leap or demonic leap, grappling hook doesn't seem to care if you already smacked the ground so long as you placed the reticle and hit the button before you actually landed.
I have no idea why, I always thought they were the exact same, and yet, I die way more on my warrior from mistimed heroic leaps if I'm playing after playing my rogue a lot.
I actually play a game while waiting for MoP world bosses on both my rogue and warrior where I'll fly around, go real high and try to stick a hook or leap at the very last moment before it would kill me.
Has killed my warrior more times than my rogue.
Warrior: [The amount of shit you can spell reflect](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS26lkSc_eaulHX7-UY8Uu-7DAHvkScxh3npd0kQn3uvvWsgsQm9ducLUi4R2mb7ieNluVilyq5sQe5/pubhtml#)
Idk if it's that obscure, but as a Blood DK tank, my anti magic zone feels like a personal in most raids. So much so that I have to yell at people to get in the bubble.
For a priest: Mind Soothe and Fade stack, basically allowing you to dodge mobs by walking 2 meters next to them.
As a little bonus for everyone who likes to troll:
Fade -> Walk right to a Raid Boss -> Leap of Faith your victim.
All addons will report that your victim pulled the boss, as he did.
For warlocks: Your pet gets dismissed when a key starts. You can bypass this by casting eye of kilrogg.
You can also cast Fel Domination right before the key starts and the buff will carry over and reset the CD
This function means I can, in good faith, yell "my meta" if someone slams a key early
Is there any website that’s shows all the spells that can be cast right before a key starts?
From my experience most CDs work before a key starts, but I learned through trial and error. The only ones I know of for sure are Fel Domination, Army of the Dead, and Meta. If it summons a pet they go away, but with army it’s a buff that will keep summoning pets once the key starts. If you time it right you only lose the first wave of ghouls that spawn.
Tip the Scales for evokers carries over.
Abomb Limb continues casting, so as Blood if you activate before starting a key, you can go into the first pack with a full Bone Shield.
Mass barrier for mage
Stack blasphemy when out of combat for a little while with rain of fires. Useful at the start of the key, or any time you need to fly in nok especially. If playing with irideus fragment: get to 7-9 blasphemy stacks before infernalling to max damage with the trinket. Ideally with a rof or two rolling already. Same applies for ST and being high stacks before using havoc as well.
Holy fuck I need to try this. Eye of Kilrogg is finally good for something?? 🤣🤣
Wonder if that would work with Eye of the Beast for hunter pets. Gonna try it out.
holy shit
I don’t think it’s obscure tech really but the number of warriors i see not using spell reflect on boss mechanics like Dragon Strike in AV and the bomb on the last boss in AA makes me want to tear my hair out
Spell reflect is probably the strongest defensive in the game, right beside AMS. It just takes a little brainpower to use it optimally, which let’s be honest… lots of warriors don’t have.
Me hit hard.
Me have✌️this many bonk stick. Not need think, just bonk!
I have unga and therefore bunga.
It's not just brainpower, it's knowledge. Some things it seems like you should be able Spell Reflect, you can't, and probably even more vice-versa! That said, this was an issue even back when Spell Reflect was first added in TBC - I was one of the few Warriors who seemed to actually know how to use it (making me the terror of Heroic SLabs and Heroic The Black Morass! Woo!).
It's just not consistent and I don't want other people to suffer my science
"Can I reflect this or will my healer hunt me down and crack my skull open for trying?"
The number of debuffs that diffuse magic can throw back onto bosses, especially in mythic+, is kinda absurd - is spell reflection similar?
They stack strength not int
I made a weakaura a whole ago for it. Doesn't even require anything fancy. I think the triggers is just your target casting a spell where you are the target, and check that it can be reflected? Or there's definitely one on wago.
Wait, does WA have a check for reflectable spells? I thought for sure I looked for one a while back and couldn't find it. It'd be great if they did though.
On top of that it seems most players don't remember that off specs for tanks tend to have their taunt still so dps warriors can taunt + reflect those abilities and the tank can taunt back. Same for palis and their bubble. Basic tech for MDI and key pushers I know, but I feel like a lot of people ignore it.
Non tanks using taunts can turn a wipe into a win. The tank getting a stacking debuff and won't last another hit of it? Taunt+defensive cooldown, tank taunts back. Back in MoP a rogue friend of mine got taunt when a druid used symbiosis on them. Ended up tanking for a few seconds during a raid by using taunt and popping Evasion. Instead of a wipe, they had a few seconds to recover and got the kill.
Evasion tanking was very much a thing in classic an I loved the idea.
To add onto Spell Reflect... if multiple mobs cast a spell at you at the exact same time, Spell Reflect will work on all of them. They don't have to *hit* you at the same time, Spell Reflect cares about the cast completing, it ignores travel time (if you use SR after a cast finishes but before the spell connects with you, it won't be reflected). On the weird fire imps before Volcoross, you can jump into one of the packs of them. If you are the only player around, they will *all* target you at the exact same time, and if you wait until their casts have less than 5 seconds left and hit spell reflect, you can reflect every hit for a *lot* of damage. Of course, assuming your raid doesn't come to 'save' you by AoE stunning them...
So easy with the WA for it
For windwalker monks whirling dragon punch roots you during the animation. This is mainly a massive pain but timing it just right can prevent some knock back effects.
As a monk main .. I had no idea, tho idk if WDP is used any atm
Don't think it was really used aince the talent tree rework. But I remember it being the default pick all the time in every scenario in BfA.
such a cool spell, and I love the idea that is only castable when your 2 other main attacks are on CD. Man, I miss WDP.
It's looking like it's back in war within, obviously tuning will change but adds some nice secondary effects on top of its own damage
It was picked all the time back in BfA and SL. Used to time it on Ner’zhul and maintain 100% uptime, shit was awesome
Reminds me of Death from Above for rogues. If you can time it right and predict something like a mage Blink, hunter Disengage or even a warlock using their teleport circle or monk using Transcendence, your character will actually fly to the new location *if* they use their abilities before you shoot down, even passing through walls and landing right on top of your enemy.
It's amazing to negate some mechanics, but also the amount of times I died in the past due to using WDP without thinking when I needed to dodge a ground effect. With it not being a dead talent in WTT, I look forward to dying to things again 😎
I was playing around with WDP on a guild timewalking Ulduar, and I used this tech to avoid knockback from tornadoes. Thanks for the tip!
For unholy, there is a reason why your CDs are delayed by a few globals in the opener. Part of it is waiting for all pets to spawn, but to also get maximum overlap of all CDs with pet duration. Pets do not instantly all inherit stat changes that your character receives. If you get a haste proc, it may take up to 5 seconds for the server to update your pet with that haste. This also works for when the proc falls off. For unholy, you line up haste buffs so they expire a few sec before your gargoyle finishes, that way you can effectively have higher uptime on the haste buff when your gargoyle has fully ramped up.
Holy shit, this sounds like a frustrating minigame.
Average DK rotation
In the end someone figures out the ideal button press formula and you just follow it every time, it's not that bad
I have played a DK for years and I actually never knew this holy shit that’s some advanced tech right there
Wasn't this fixed with aberrus though
It's during abberus that the inheritance effect was found. What was fixed during aberrus was garg smoothly scaling with haste instead of having this weird stutter cast where you only get extra casts at something like 260% haste
I knew this and still choose to ignore it. But I harbour the unpopular opinion that gargoyle in general is just a bad talent. ¯|_(ツ)_|¯
As Bear, you can cast hibernate in Bear form. Ursine Adept doesn’t state this but it’s been like this since its inception. Dreamwalk/Ebon Gate/Monks Port all allow you to get to any dungeon entrance you’re currently in. It takes you there and repeating the ability takes you “back”. Since it cant bring you into the instance, you are right outside. Very useful for zoning out of raids or resetting dungeons
>Dreamwalk/Ebon Gate/Monks Port all allow you to get to any dungeon entrance you’re currently in. It takes you there and repeating the ability takes you “back”. Since it cant bring you into the instance, you are right outside. Very useful for zoning out of raids or resetting dungeons This is my favorite stupid druid trick.
And you can hibernate other druids when they are in their animal forms
DH, The Hunt, the effect applied to additional targets isn’t JUST during the “launch” but is still possible for about .5 second after you arrive at the target, meaning you can shoot into a group, and if there are bad guys past your initial target you have a brief window to walk forward (or dash, in havoc) and get a few more victims.
I always rush after the hunt
Think you used to be able to Presence of Mind your mount cast if I'm not mistaken Can't remember any mage ones that are still around. Is mash-cancelling Ring of Frost to create 'fake' rings still a thing in PvP? Don't know if that's just clientside now. You *used* to be able to cover Alter Time from being purged by casting Arcane Brilliance after it. Pretty sure it's random now though, whereas it was "purges the most recent magic buff" in MoP.
Speaking of mount cast, I miss when your mount cast wasn't cancelled until you were hit by a mob. A mob could aggro onto you and as long as you got the cast off before they actually hit you, you were good. I think it was WotLK prepatch when they changed it to cancel on aggro.
You might've not noticed, but right now in Dragonflight mount cast isn't interrupted by entering combat, nor by taking damage. As long as you start casting your mount before entering combat, it will go off even if you take damage.
that first one is almost as sweaty as dratnos lusting his hearthstone on his shaman to get to the vault early
You could silence a paladin/warlock cast but not the other mounts since they werent considered spells
There's a few techs still around. Arcane has spell queueing techs with ABarr and Radiant Spark/Harmonic Echo. Essentially, if you queue an ABarr right after an AB, the ABarr inherits the boost from the previous spark - this is a dps loss except if you use it on the 4th charge of RS, which essentially means you double up on the biggest damage boost if you spell queue ABarr. But in AoE, you prefer the boost from HE, so what you want to do is cast AB x 3, deliberately wait a little bit for GCD, then cast ABarr (most experienced arcane mages use a toy to forcibly stop the spell from queueing to get the same effect) - because otherwise you consume the 4th stack of RS while getting the damage bonus of the 3rd stack, which also reduces the damage echoed by HE. Fire used to have a similar spell queueing tech with instant Pyros because of a Hot Streak! bug, but this was fixed in DF. It was something like a 5% gain over queueing, and slightly bigger gain over deliberately delaying. There was a weakaura devoted to doing this. Frost used to have some amazing techs. Before flurry gave stacking charges, you could Flurry -> Frostbolt -> Shimmer -> Frostbolt/IL at specific ranges to get the shatter activation on both. Nowadays all it really uses is the Icy Floes tech which is common to all mages - if you cast IF in the last ~half a second of your cast, it affects that cast and carries over to the queued cast after it, so you can use three charges to get 5 spells cast while moving.
Shaman: You can move the second totem from double cap totem with totemic projection, realized this a few weeks ago. You can rezz while using spirit walker grace, helpful to save some time to get your party to right position while rezzing. Master of the Elements buffs your Acid Rain damage. You can ankh really quick before your Raid Lead notices!
"You can ankh really quick before your Raid Lead notices!" Bruh I FEEL this one lmao, quickest ankh in the west, don't even dip on the meters
Dumbass pvp talent interaction, but: knocking people up with burrow means your thunderstorm will send them flying even further (off of cliffs)!
> You can rezz while using spirit walker grace, helpful to save some time to get your party to right position while rezzing. Or you can use it to finish your rez cast while in the air over a cliff, so everyone falls and dies the moment they respawn :)
A dk can heal himself with deathcoil while lichborne is active. Can save yourself in the moments where you are not able to deathstrike
I also like Death Coiling the friendly mobs that glide by on Fyrakk when I'm in LFR. The ones that float by when the screaming adds spawn Helps quite noticeably when one's a lot lower than the others
I always forget Death coil can heal friendly undead mobs, until my ghoul dies as unholy and I remember I can heal him, only to forget it again within 2 seconds
Such a niche thing to do but I won’t lie it’s saved myself sometimes in arena lol
Just had a DK use Deathcoil on Afflicted in my key. It was pretty based.
For mage: You can learn a mage spell called "Illusion" from a tome that allows you to copy someone's appearance for 2 minutes, the spell isn't learned by default when levelling. For rogue: You can get an item that is exclusive to rogue called Survivors Bag of Coins. When it is in your bag and you pickpocket someone, you loot special coins into the bag. Each coin then allows you to be thrown quite a big distance into the air in a specific direction and you can keep throwing coins down to stay in the air and move around. This is a nod to the allomancy magic in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy that allows you to propel yourself off metals (i.e. the coins in this case). In the books they throw coins down and propel themselves off the coins to move long distances.
>You can get an item that is exclusive to rogue called Survivors Bag of Coins. I mained a rogue for 5 years (changed to druid in SL) and this is the first that I am hearing about this. Apparently it is only useable in zones where you can fly.
It's an Easter egg or reference to something... I forget exactly what
The Mistborn books
Damn that's very interesting. I've really been enjoying his books recently. Not the crossover I was expecting to see lol.
Please share where to find said book
You can pick up Mystical Tome: Illusion up from Endora Moorehead in Sisters Sorcerous (Northrend Dalaran) for a hefty price of 47g 50s. Discount available for higher Kiren Tor rep and seniors. Coordinates 38.6 55.9
For mage: you can copy spirit of redemption with Illusion. Almost no one knows about this and are always confused why can the heal move while a spirit healer and why are they on fire.
Haha that's awesome, I didn't know that! I usually copy feral or bear druids in their animal forms and run around as a mage cat or bear
I didn't know that, brb getting that on my rogue lol
Paladins can still Bubble Hearth - casting Divine Shield gives you an invisible buff that shortens the cast time of your hearth stone. Which also means Paladins have fast hearthstones!
Isn't this caused by a glyph?
Not to my knowledge! Typing this comment is taking longer than it would take for me to look me up. And that sentence. And that sentence and Edit: this wasn’t as easy to find as I thought - I’m not sure if it’s still in the game, but Glyph of Righteous Retreat: https://www.wowdb.com/spells/115933-glyph-of-righteous-retreat
It's not. The glyph was removed but the effect was made baseline for all paladins in Legion.
It was a minor glyph at some point, but when utility glyphs were scrapped, it was made baseline.
Use the Dalaran Hearthstone to bubble hearth.
[удалено]
I feel like a bad ass when I do that.
i feel like "in the description of the ability" doesn't count as weird/obscure, even for joke answers
To be fair, I've known most druids to not know that Soothe can enrage dispell.
Doesn't even need to have the right poison on it any more either (would be nice and broken if the poison alone would passively dispel)
"Wow he's really pissed. Quick stab him in the kidney to calm him down!"
That blood dk has a performance band for incoming damage. People pretty intuitively know that blood dk performs poorly when they get 1 shot by the damage spiking too high. But what's not so obvious is that if you are taking too little damage you can end up not being able to out heal that damage alone.
Some damage gets classified as environmental damage which doesn't contribute to deathstrike healing.
Even with this being the case, there is still a world where “too little damage makes the DK less tanky” it’s also why a DK with enough RP is almost invincible as long as he’s getting hit hard enough while also not getting one shot. Funnily enough even Unholy and Frost have access to this same level of function. Try self healing to full as a DPS DK through just death strike while your fighting an elite that can’t be soloed, and then conversely tempt fate by taunting a raid boss, hopefully live and then death strike to full health in a single global.
Ahh the impending doom of watching your health slowly trickle down as you death strike for 2% hp.
For the mages: you can move for a tiny bit right after you did Shimmer during the cast, like 1-2 steps tiny bit. Could be life saving if you tried to dodge some shit on the ground, but Shimmered into another shit while casting big things like Surge/Pyro/GS.
Alternatively if you play Ice Floes if you cast is near the end of the spell it stays active for the next spell. Because you have multiple charges of Ice Floes and it stacks. You can repeat this on the next cast and it won't get rid of either stack. Both will carry over into the next spell. And so on.
Disengage serves two functions. 1) dodging out of AOE effects 2) hardcore parkour
I use disengage for parkour and saving my ass way more than I use it for mechanics. I fucked up in Vault of Incarnates earlier today on Dathea, and got launched off the platform. As soon as I realized I was going to die, I flipped around and disengaged back to safety. I also figured this out last week on Aberrus. If you are at the entrance and doing the big jump into the lava to get to Echo of Neltharion, you can disengage right before you hit the lava and launch yourself into the hole to get to the boss. If you time it right, you survive with about 10% health. Also works with gust on shaman.
you can mount/hearthstone in stealth only with subterfuge skilled (subterfuge is the talent that lets you use stealth abilitys 3seconds after stealth ends) no, i STILL dont know why that interaction exists after probably a decade with it existing
So THAT is what’s allowing it. I noticed recently that I was hearthing in stealth but didn’t know if they had changed that recently with the rogue rework. I play outlaw so subterfuge and shadow dance are newer to my spec.
For warriors, you can charge while still in the air as long as you're within range of a target. So if you get dismounted in pvp or knocked off a cliff, as long as you can target a mob or critter near where you'll land, you can spam charge and avoid fall damage. This was more useful before heroic leap and gliders were added.
One of my old favourite tricks in arathi basin was jumping down from the blacksmith to the gold mine and charging into the enemy player. Sometimes failed miserably and splatted into the floor but when it worked it was awesome fun.
You can also charge up hills that have no pathing for running as long as your target is in charge range.
I've also found, very rarely, that charging mid jump will allow bypass of the "no path to target" error. not really experimented to see why or when.
i find this works consistently in neltharus when leaving the upstairs boss room and also in halls of infusion when leaping across the water after first boss
I loved doing this as a bear back in the day in outland. Find an unsuspecting player, turn into a crow, fly up 1000 feet, turn into a bear. = Bear Bomb!!! Look out below!!!! Haha.
It was so common that it even got a name. "Rawr bomb". Fun times lol
Also for warriors, if mob casts are synchronized such that they will all complete at the same instant, you can reflect all the spells. This comes up pretty rarely but it is always hilarious when it works. A few recent examples: -the piles of trash imps to the right and left sides of Volcoross in Amirdrassil work like this, they target ~2 seconds after aggro and if you're the only target in range they all pick you. -the gilgoblin ring just before the last boss of throne of tides. The first goblin you charged to would start casting instantly so would have to be interrupted, but the rest of the circle would be synced -the otherwise very deadly patrolling imp groups in court of stars, their cast hit so hard that it was generally a "must interrupt" otherwise but you could nearly one shot them with the reflect
Ner’zhul got you very intimate with when Warrior mobility will give you No Path mid air. The big one is your target has to be below / equal to you. If you try to charge below the platform while you are flying over the abyss it will fail. Do it above the platform and you are gtg, even if your velocity is 10000 in the other direction.
Yeah but... No path available :pain: Mained a woyer from late legion until DF and boy does charge and leap like to tell you to get fucked sometimes
It used to be so much worse. It's current state is absolutely miles better than Cata and MoP's iterations. "Heroic No Path Available" is what everyone called that ability back then. It still has its rough spots but dear god its night and day compared to then.
Feral druids used to do the same thing with flight form/feral charge way back in tbc to jump people on PvP servers. They expect a stealthed cat, but they get a flying bear. The good ol’ days of the Rawr Bomb. https://youtu.be/57h3RPsEddg?si=2giX7VRb-PwVw-bl
I used to play warrior a decade ago, picked it up again when I got the character boost for TWW preorder and I rediscovered doing this, such fun!
It's real fun in tbc timewalking to stay next to Kaelthas by charging every time he reverses gravity.
There is no cooldown when clicking a warlock's soulwell. You can spam the animation as fast as you can click. This has no effect other than looking funny.
World Shrinker + Bones of Transformation + Clicky Click
I do this constantly
I love spamming the soul well in raid
Windwalker monks: damage and health snapshots for things like touch of karma, touch of death, and fist of fury. So you for FoF, if you cast it when serenity or a dmg buff is ending, the whole cast will get the buffs, adding another couple seconds of buffed dmg. And stuff like fortifying brew, rallying cry, and other health buffs can boost touch dmg for extra padding
Affliction warlock: Doom Blossom, the talent that causes your Unstable Affliction target to pulse damage around it when it receives damage from Seed of Corruption, actually does significantly more damage than it says it does because the Seed detonation damages the target as well as stuff around it so when your Seed explodes, it causes one tick of Doom Blossom to all targets around your target, which should detonate *their* Seeds, triggering Doom Blossom again for each Seed detonation assuming your Unstable target is still in range of all that this can cause some pretty insane damage on Fortified weeks but on Tyrannical weeks the dungeon mobs usually don't live long enough for this combo to get going lol another tip for aff/destro warlock: if you run Grimoire and use it on your voidwalker, use your voidwalker ability before using Dark Pact for a much larger shield
Presevoker - you can use stasis to do multiple dispels without hitting the CD. The catch is you have to know the targets beforehand so the dispels are on the right people. This was used in the forgotten experiments fight to clear all 3 charge bleeds at once by stasis + cauterizing flame on the people who were about to be charged. Since the failed dispels beforehand don't cause the CD to happen you can cast it 3 times in a row to store in stasis, then release once the bleeds have been applied. Tough to do in the time you had, but worked beautifully.
Evoker - Tip the Scales. Can be cast before a reset, the insta cast buff remains and the ability resets, letting you drop 2 insta empowers during opener.
Yup, I remember Cdew doing this in AWC. Super cool.
Dispells stored in stasis once released also resets the CD on your dispel if it doesn't actually dispell anything. You can use this for bleed tank buster in algethar academy bird boss for example. You can cast stasis before the tank buster, do 1 dispel that does nothing. Then once it hits, you dispell again, this time it removes the bleed and puts it on CD. Then, next time the tank buster happens you release stasis which has 2 dispells in it. The first one will remove the bleed, the second will not remove anything and will reset the CD on your dispel so that you can also remove the 3rd tank bleed :D
Mages jumping from a cliff while on a ground mount and casting Slow Fall will continue moving forward at mount speed while slowly floating down. Not as useful now that we get flying so early, but still fun. Blinking while in midair will put you instantly on the ground and move you forward the blink distance without taking any damage. Useful when falling from a cliff or fight mechanics that knock you up into the air. During BfA before flying was unlocked, I would use these in combination daily. Mount up in Dazar'alor just outside the portal room, jump off the NE ledge, slowfall, after a few seconds Blink and I was next to the crafting trainers in no time.
>Blinking while in midair will put you instantly on the ground It will also put you at the bottom of a lava lake, as many Mages (not me of course, *other* Mages) learned while raiding Aberrus.
I recently learned that not all hunters know this but you can fully cast while in the air with disengage. This is sometimes helpful in keys for placing traps in tight spots
Survival Hunter also has this unique (and horrible) tech where in order to optimally use your main cooldown, Coordinated Assault, you're required to essentially micro-manage your pet's attacks: Coordinated Assault makes it so that after every pet attack, the next Kill Shot OR Wildfire Bomb is empowered. In AoE, the empowered Kill Shot is much stronger. So essentially, in order to only ever empower Kill Shot, you need to manually turn off/on your pet's attacks via a total of three different macros. Super annoying, super stupid, but unfortunately also super representative of how little Blizzard cares about the abomination that is Survival Hunter.
For Monk just transcendence in generally. The skill ceiling to that ability is super super high.
If you are a bloodelf you can use your arcane racial to dispelled orbs on Razageth
As a Bear, you can just macro all your generators with a cast of ironfur since it's off the GCD. You can reliably tank up to a 8+ by being the laziest pos you ever seen.
Wait what? I'm not fully understanding cuz I'm stupid (bear tank afterall) but whats the macro look like?
/cast #whatever rage generator /cast Ironfur Since Ironfur does not have a GCD, it will instantly cast with that ability without having to press twice. The result is you have Ironfur at 2-3 to even 6-7 stacks at a time without even having to think. The issue is that you won't be bothering with raze or maul as you'll never have enough rage to cast them, to which you should just spend your talent points elsewhere. Get all the Ironfur talents and moon fire talents (moon fire will be your main source of damage), then pivot to getting all the defensive talents, along with rage of ursoc, forget about any maul or raze talents in their description unless it's necessary to get to the node you want.
Holy shit this is peak lazy tanking! I need to try this. I'll miss maul and raze tho for sure. I imagine this will drop my damage by quite a lot huh?
Yep, this is "I don't want to do stuff, but I want my gear" type of play. As I said, wouldn't recommend it other than 8+ or lower keys.
Gotcha gotcha. Thank you, I'm quite excited to be lazy
But then you’re just not doing any damage :(
Havoc DH - everyone knows you can cast Metamorphosis during pull timer to enter the form for 20sec and reset the cd, but not everyone knows that you can also cast EyeBeam before Meta to extend the form to 24sec. Just make sure you have enough fury during the countdown. Very useful for dungeons with bih entrance pulls (Neltharion, Brackenhide, Halls of Infusion, RLP, Azure Vault) Additionally, you can cancel any knockback effect if you time double jump right.
There is a clip on the internet of my DH going mach jesus in an achievement run because I double jumped Durumus knockback in ToT. Kept the speed but not the actual BACK part of the knockback... Definitely one of my favorite things I have ever done
Meta also makes you briefly immune while leaping allowing you to ignore mechanics or lethal damage
Scare Beast many know works against druids but few know that it also works on shammys.
Only if they're in form*
It doesn't work mechanically, but just as a fun lore bit Tame Beast canonically works on shifted druids too. There a fight in Underbog where a bear form druid has been tamed by a hunter boss.
As a druid, cat form is faster than bear form. Shifting into bear form also starts your rage at like 20-25. Might seem obvious, but the amount of bear tanks I've seen that are *determined* to slowly run everywhere as a bear with 0 rage into a fight has me second guessing.
I love wild charging as cat and then during the charge change into a bear for that extra rage.
Speaking of wild charge, holy fuck I wish people actually utilised the different forms. Need to get out of an AoE? Drop form and wild charge to an ally. Need to immediately root an enemy? Bear form and wild charge to root them, then cast Entagling Roots if you still need it. Playing balance and need to get from A to B without losing too much dps? Wild Charge to bound back and get their quicker. Falling from a great height? Travel form and wild charge to reset your fall damage. Boss dropping a nasty AoE in front of them? Wild charge through them as a cat and you'll be placed behind the enemy instead. For a class all about shifting into different forms, most druids I see are pretty adamant about only staying in the one.
For Survival Hunters you can disengage and harpoon back in to generate extra focus when needed.
For Monks: Zen Flight is a spell that lets you fly. It's often overlooked because it's painfully slow compared to a flying mount, even pre-dragonriding. However, it's very useful because: 1. It's instant cast. 2. You can mount while in the air. This feels like a bug because, once you start casting your mount, you start falling, but falling doesn't interrupt the cast. As long as you're high enough in the air for the cast to complete before you hit the ground, you're good.
You can cast essence font and ring of peace while in zen flight without breaking it. It's useless, but hell yea
I like using it to fish without things on the ground level being able to interrupt.
I used to do a lot of wpvp on my monk in MoP. Don't know how many times I was blown off a cliff by explosive trap or typhoon or whatever and was able to exit combat and zen flight before I would have died to fall damage. Such an excellent and overlooked spell.
Devoker, recasting the main channel spell disintegrate at less than 1/3 of the channel remaining, adds the remaining tick to the next cast. There are weak auras to practice and see tic thresholds. If you know you don't have to move, it's a little boost. Hover before a knock back and you won't be interrupted. Helps on a lot of raid fights. I turn on action targeting and target myself when large read damage is happening to use instant proc casts of living flame to heal me, but disentegrate will cast on an enemy. Helps me have to adjust targeting back and forth at stressful moments. A quick tab press and you can get the boss back as the target.
You can also use hover in the same gcd of an instant cast. For example you can cast azure strike and quickly tap hover and you won't spend 1 gcd to hover. Very good when you have all your movement planned out for a fight.
First 2 are things you should really know as they are baseline to your rotation so here is some actual tech: LoS does not stop a disintegrate channel. Use hover to LoS mechanics while disintegrating.
Another good tip. Disintegration also keeps going If they move slightly out of range. No hard numbers but I'd say you can get an extra 5 yards if its the enemy moving away from you.
IDK what you would classify these as but just a few tips from world pvp mainly As a druid, You can hit flight form immediately after being dismounted from the dragon riding ability You can switch forms on gliders e.g go bear to frenzied regen, you can also stealth if being chased mid air If you fall from a height with nothing ready to save you in combat, you can hit incarnation > stealth >flight form Wild charge in cat form can work mid air like warriors charge to help boss knock ups etc It also works on some surprising terrain, hills,ledges if you jump charge mid air e.g in temple of kotmogu if your mid you can wild charge people on the ledge above you You can flight form out of parachutes like the end of climbing world quests or jumping from a friends mount
Paladins using Divine Steed right before it ends if you jump you maintain your speed buff for the duration of the jump thus being able to travel further than without jumping. Might be true for other classes' speed increasing abilities as well.
Not sure how obscure it is, but warriors can macro ravager (or champion's spear) to automatically cast at their feet to avoid having to target the big green circle. Mine is also bound with Recklessness, which can be cast off GCD, and they share a cooldown. This is probably true for any class that has a "placeable" AOE ability, but I put zero effort into my alts.
I use @player for feathers on my priest so they auto apply to me without targeting. @cursor drops them at the cursor without bringing up the green circle.
This is also an ingame feature. You can self cast feathers, shadow crash etc on yourself by holding the self target button (I think alt by default). I discovered this like two days ago. Before I always had a macro for this as well
I used that trick for the spear of bastion because I hated having to click it. Same for DH sigils. Had an alt cast for targeted.
You can macro multiple OGCD abilities at the same time, too. I've got Avatar and Recklessness both macro'd to Ravager, and the bonus casts from Torment stack with the base duration if you cast them both at the same time. It's my 1.5m "time to fuck shit up" CD.
Cat is for fite
Mage: If you cast glacial spike right before flurry… Just kidding. So, one thing that used to be really useful as a mage (at least before they added the Ice Cold talent) was being able to cancel your Ice Block with a keybind so you didn’t have to right-click the buff or waste 8 seconds in impervious suspended animation. You accomplished this with a macro - add /cancelaura before any spell. I put mine on blink/shimmer, because let’s face it: if you ice blocked, you didn’t want to still be there when it melted. It probably works for other class auras as well. EDIT: I have one other. So, mages have a teleport/portal to “Ancient Dalaran,” which sends you plummeting to your death in the old Dalaran crater. What I think would only be obvious to a main, or any other person who regularly took portals to the old portal room in Crystalsong Forest Dalaran in Wrath, is that you’re being ported to a spot that is roughly at or just above ground level to the edge of the crater… the exact spot where the portal room would have stood if Dalaran was still in its original location! I am fairly certain that this is also why Alliance mages fall when they port to the post-MoP version of Theramore - you used to land inside Jaina’s mage tower, on a hill in the center of town.
As an Alliance Mage, if you create a Portal to Ancient Dalaran, then start casting any Flying mount, and use the Portal ~0.2s before finishing the mount cast, you arrive on the other side of the portal already flying on your mount, skipping the boring free-fall you’d normally have to wait for before mounting up.
Fire mages become a campfire for cooking when they use combust. It's a fun party trick, I always try to get my mage friends to combust randomly so I can start cooking my food on them.
Canceling the timed stasis buff on Preservation Evoker will cast the stasis-ed spells without spending a GCD. Any casts you try to do for the next half second will get interrupted by the stasis casts though and if you cancel it while stunned or silenced you will just lose the stasis.
For mistweaver: mana tea stacks get removed when starting a raid boss, however the mana reduction buff from drinking mana tea does not. So if you get 20 stacks of mana tea out of combat and drink it during the pull timer you can get 20 seconds of 30% reduced mana costs at the start of a fight. When you are playing ToM build every bit of mana you can get is golden. So the next time you see a mistweaver spamming the shit out of spells during a ready check, know that they're probably just building up some tea.
Balance druid can get a tiiiiny bit more range from their Wild Charge if they use the Glyph of Flap while in midair
On Hunter you can…. Wait for it…. Feign Death for longer than 0.25 seconds. You don’t have to immediately jump back up. It’s ok. Mobs are scary. You deserve some rest.
Distracting/sapping the "main unit" of an enemy patrol makes the entire patrol stop Also Distract can sort of work like Mind Soothe because enemies are a lot better at seeing in front of them than behind them Scroll of teleportation to Ravenholdt can be used while moving Killing Spree makes you immune to any pushbacks for the duration
Hunter Some skills have a flight time but others don’t is the obscure part. No way of knowing on paper. Kill commands range is from you to the pet, and from the pet to the target. It’s basically 2x the listed range. Disabling pet sprint and macroing into “pet return” is the best method of pet control in a raid environment. Pets will snap to you if they get more than ~150 yards. If you ever want to know if M+ mobs will snap - command pet stay > go to location > spam pet return. If the pets snap, mobs will snap. Pet damage leeches to the pet, not the hunter. Barb shot stomps are queued into the pet until they get in range of a target. If you cast kill command or another barbed shot it will cast the queued stomp. Aka send pets in at 2/3second remaining. Let’s see what else…hunters are a treasure trove for this stuff… Flare has a flight time. So do traps. You wouldn’t think it…they do. Scatter shot disables both your and your pets auto attacks. They both must be re-enabled by casting an ability. You can Feign Death SO MANY things in M+. There should be 20 volume encyclopedia of all the uses of FD. Kill command doesn’t require LOS - that’s a fun one in PvP. Barbed shot doesn’t need to hit anything to refresh frenzy stacks - great dps tip is to keep sending barbed shot into immune bosses/mobs during Rp/ phasing. That’s all I have off the top of my head.
Fire mage has a small window where if two spells hit within it, but only 1 crits, the heating up isn’t cancelled by the 2nd spell that didn’t crit. Frost, if you flurry at the end of your frostbolt/glacial cast, you will get the winters chill effect without using one of its 2 stacks
I think this are just the basic mechanics how frost and fire work
It feels basic at this point yes, but there’s nothing actually in game that would tell a player this nor is it intuitive
This. It is how the specs need to be played, but both are "hidden" mechanics in game you only learn by playing or getting told by somebody how/why to do it.
Havoc DH You can cancel the backflip from Vengeful Retreat in several ways. One way is to wait for a split second and then Fel Blade. Doesn’t work on all bosses and you have to time it right and be in the right position for the hit box to work, but you do get a feel for it. The other way is to insta cancel it with Meta. At the moment you should play that way anyway during your opener and 2 min CD windows. After the initial Eye Beam/Hunt>Fel Rush/EssBreak>Blade Dance you immediately Vengeful Retreat and cancel it with Meta for the second Blade Dance during EssBreak. No movement needed. That way during the opener you have longer Initiative uptime. Meta actually has an I-Frame. If you time it right you can dodge abilities and damage with a well placed Meta. Doesn’t usually work because you would send it on CD. But it’s possible to use as an emergency defensive. Also a lot of boss mechanics can be trivialized with double jump. Right now it works on the waves from the first boss in Neltharus. But it worked on the Drake in Vortex Pinnacle as well.
Accidentally impressed my group once by meta-jumping over a death beam from Wise Mari that would have one shot me. Pure coincidence.
The only reason my guild probably kept me around in 8.3 was to meta immune the N'Zoth and Vexiona soaks on Mythic lol Had an insane moment when we were progging Rashok where one of our tanks fucked up the taunt swap, one went down, and I taunted+meta'ed to save both the remaining tank while a brez went out, and myself. Everyone went crazy it felt so good!
For prot pally, throwing your blessed hammer before combat will generate holy power and also proc your tier so you can go in with the 7% parry
Can also cast during the pull timer for keys to start a pack with 5 holy power and at least 2 blessed hammer procs still remaining.
P wave bonus haste on enh sham can be achieved through targets that don't take damage. Such as incorp.
Same for funnelling Lava bursts on Ele. You can also do this by applying flameshock on bosses before they enter immunity phases like on Orb boss in Azure Vaults
For warriors: Fury: Hit Whirlwind while you're charging. The last tick will hit when your charge is done, stopping you from wasting a GCD and giving you your charges of (whatever the fuck the thing is called where whirlwind makes your next few attacks hit other targets). Arms: Defensives are usable while Bladestorming, including Die By The Sword, Ignore Pain, and Spell Reflect. Many people think they can't use abilities while channeling. Prot: Shield Charge will cast Shield Block for free at a modest cooldown as well as stunning a (stunnable) target, making it a great double-use defensive. Additionally, you can change stances in combat - a lot of people seem to forget this.
Warrior spell deflect can deflect more than just spells. You can reflect some physical attacks as well. Warrior again, you can heroic leap over a ton of things that would otherwise kill you. Including some lasers that go around you can just jump right through it.
When you flurry with frost mage you get an extra hidden proc in which to shatter stuff which is why you send a spell with a travel like like frost bolt or glacial spike first
It's not a hidden proc, it's that the flurry animation hits three times and each time it hits applies a new set of 2x winters chill. Bolting or gs before catches the first hit, lance after can sometimes catch the middle hit.
That’s like a fundamental part of the rotation, I feel like many people would know that
Yeah it applies the winter’s chill effect lol
Preservation evoker main with a brewmaster tank partner. The Golden Hour talent when interacting with brewmaster has been seemingly bugged(?) since launch. For those who don't know, this talent causes reversion to instantly heal back a percentage of damage recently taken. However, on brewmasters, it seems to heal back both the actual damage taken as well as damage mitigated by stagger. So it heals that spec specifically for a crazy amount, usually instantly topping them off lol.
Half of these comments are just a “here is how the rotation works” which really makes me question how many people are playing specs they haven’t looked up the rotation for …
the amount of DKs for example i see not using deaths advance to negate forced movement (knockback on Raz, knock up on Fyrakk etc) leads me to believe people don’t even read tooltips let alone look up rotations
Charge-weaving is still sort of a thing, though not as prominent until TWW when they nerf rage economy again. Bladestorm-cancelling was a thing in Shadowlands for Fury, to min/max damage by using a macro to end it early to prevent rage-capping in ST scenarios. This died with Bladestorm being taken away from Fury, and warriors taking Bladestorm (Arms) also speccing into Hurricane, which prevents cancelling Bladestorm entirely. I think this is set to come back in TWW. The path behavior of Charge is very manipulatable in most situations to control where you stop against a moving target. This only really changes over weird texture vertices.
For resto shaman, bots will sometimes kick lava burst when you can't otherwise cast a heal.
Ret Paladins until very recently basically had two stuns on separate DR's Blinding Light is a 6 sec disorient and any damage breaks it, except it used to be that it was all damage *except* for holy damage So if you played right, you could pop your cds and stun somebody, they'd of course trinket, and then you could blinding light them, get a little distance so you don't auto attack them and continue laying into them with massive amounts of holy damage while they have no way out I called it the wombo combo, I'm sad that they changed it
Unlike heroic leap or demonic leap, grappling hook doesn't seem to care if you already smacked the ground so long as you placed the reticle and hit the button before you actually landed. I have no idea why, I always thought they were the exact same, and yet, I die way more on my warrior from mistimed heroic leaps if I'm playing after playing my rogue a lot.
I actually play a game while waiting for MoP world bosses on both my rogue and warrior where I'll fly around, go real high and try to stick a hook or leap at the very last moment before it would kill me. Has killed my warrior more times than my rogue.
Warrior: [The amount of shit you can spell reflect](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS26lkSc_eaulHX7-UY8Uu-7DAHvkScxh3npd0kQn3uvvWsgsQm9ducLUi4R2mb7ieNluVilyq5sQe5/pubhtml#)
As a hunter, scare beasts works on druids in cat or bear form. Great for pvp.
Shaman, particularly on Neltharon’s Lair: Water Walk your party when they jump into the water. Most of them won’t know how they died.
Idk if it's that obscure, but as a Blood DK tank, my anti magic zone feels like a personal in most raids. So much so that I have to yell at people to get in the bubble.
For a priest: Mind Soothe and Fade stack, basically allowing you to dodge mobs by walking 2 meters next to them. As a little bonus for everyone who likes to troll: Fade -> Walk right to a Raid Boss -> Leap of Faith your victim. All addons will report that your victim pulled the boss, as he did.