CHAPTER 6: OFFENSIVE INTERRUPTS

OFFENSIVE INTERRUPTS INTRO

Welcome to the next course in our crowd control series, and this is truly exciting. At this point, we've taught you about defensive kicks, but now it's time to have a little bit of fun.

Landing an interrupt on the right cast at the right time can be just as effective and even better than landing a CC when it comes to scoring a kill. This is a must watch if you want to maximize pressure, as we're going to teach you all of the ways to offensively use your interrupt.

USING KICKS TO DENY DEFENSIVE COOLDOWNS

Hey, quick question. You're trying to land a kill on this warrior, but suddenly there are three cast bars and you only have one interrupt.

What do you do? This is a tough one right?

But does anyone in the class have any ideas? Alright, let's pick you.

You think it's regrowth? Well, then you will be trying to kill a warrior with a full fleshcraft and you will be stuck in a sheep.

Good luck. Oh, you think it's fleshcraft?

That makes sense right? But now the regrowth will go through and once again you will be stuck in a sheep.

Ok ok, look this was intentionally a difficult question. But using your interrupts to land kills is often quite hard.

Sometimes it's not obvious what you should be kicking. But in today's video we're going to help you out.

We will cover the three most effective ways to use your interrupts to secure kills in arena and then we will show you two more advanced kicking techniques that are used by the best players in the world.

So if you really want to know how the pros interrupt be sure to… Hey, did you just counter spell the intro to our video? That was a nice interrupt.

Good job. So to kick things off let's look at how interrupts can be used to prevent defensive cooldowns.

For many classes important defensive cooldowns are tied to specific spell schools. Here we have a short list of some major defensive CDs and their respective school.

If a cast is interrupted on these schools it will prevent the defensive cooldown for the duration of the lockout.

For instance if you kick a shadow priest on any of their damaging casts they will be unable to use their two biggest defensive cooldowns for a brief period of time and this can be used to secure a kill if you have enough damage.

This works really well for teams with lots of burst damage and is highly effective at punishing overly aggressive casters. Here the enemy shadow priest has decided to start a mind games cast at 70% hp while our rogue sits in stealth.

With a quick shadow step kick the priest is now locked out of shadow preventing them from using dispersion or greater fade. Now because of their overextension into our team the enemy will panic overlapping multiple defensive cooldowns just to recover from getting punished by an early kick.

This is not an isolated example. This is a very common situation.

This is a very common situation. This can even be used to pressure healers.

In this example our mage lands an early kick on penance locking the priest out of pain suppression for 6 seconds. Our rogue then opens on the priest, now that their biggest cooldown is temporarily denied.

And it isn't until the priest is at 30% hp that the lockout ends, finally allowing them to use pain suppression, but now putting them really far behind.

Finding kicks like this can be defensively valuable too, since landing interrupts on DPS casts will momentarily stop some damage, meaning you can get double the value if you were able to convert the lockout into offensive pressure.

Here our team has already forced dispersion from the priest, meaning that greater fade and desperate prayer are their only remaining defensive options. The priest will cancel his disperse early, then will go for an incredibly aggressive vampiric touch, despite missing a major cd and being at 40% hp.

Interrupting this cast will allow our team to keep tempo by slowing damage, and as an added bonus, it will pressure the enemy team into burning multiple major defensives. In this case it was too little too late and our team is able to finish off the priest while they are locked out of their other defensives.

Kicking casts to deny defensives can be really rewarding, but you need to make sure that you also have stops available for other important spell casts. Try and reserve your stuns or other instant cast ranged cc's if you need to stop other important casts so you don't fall behind if the enemy team reverses.

Here for instance our team will kick the polymorph on this mage. This will deny important defensives like alter time and shimmer, which will obviously be good for our tempo.

Unfortunately in this case we didn't have any additional lockdown options, and instead of being able to swing tempo in our favor, the enemy mage will be able to cast another polymorph on our healer following an intimidating shout.

Even though kicking the initial polymorph was important defensively and offensively, we still need to look out for follow up casts that can swing momentum out of our control. Now that you know the value of interrupting to deny class specific defensives, it's time for a quiz.

There is one spell cast that is always worth interrupting offensively, and it's available to every class in the game. Can you guess what it is?

It's fleshcraft. Out of all the spells you can interrupt offensively, this is by far the most common and is the most beneficial to kick as soon as possible.

To understand this lets do some math. With full gear players will have around 55k health and as we will see fleshcraft will give around 30k damage absorption.

And with the ultimate form soulbind ability, 55k hp will translate to around 12k total healing. And by default fleshcraft will give 20% damage reduction while the channel is on cooldown.

So if you're a player who wants to get a full gear, you can get a full gear with the ultimate form soulbind ability. But if you're a player who wants to get a full gear, you can't get a full gear with the ultimate form soulbind ability.

So a 30k shield with 12k healing over a 3 second channel time means that fleshcraft is effectively 14k healing per second for a fully geared target. Do you think you can deal that much damage?

The short answer is no. And the long answer is no.

There's absolutely no reason to ever let a fleshcraft channel its full duration on the kill target if you can stop it with a kick. This is why you see pro players instantly interrupt it.

And because ultimate form provides 6 seconds of total cc immunity, it's incredibly important to interrupt on off targets if you need to land cc. You need to keep in mind that fleshcraft is on the shadow school, meaning that most classes can use their other spells even when it's kicked.

Here you can see our rogue is forcing multiple major defensives from the enemy resto shaman. And as a response, the shaman panic presses fleshcraft.

Even in dampening this will be important to interrupt since it will effectively bring the shaman to full hp. Our rogue kicks the cast, locking the shadow school, but the shaman immediately casts healing wave, which is on the nature school.

Additionally, our rogue is using a legendary that resets his kick cooldown with vanish and because of this he's able to stop the follow up healing wave cast. Even though this was a rogue specific interaction, you need to be aware that other spells can be casted even if fleshcraft is interrupted.

Use other instant cast cc's or your partner's interrupts to deny follow up casts. Kicking fleshcraft is not just important for denying its shield, it's also important for landing cc.

Here our mage needs to land a polymorph on the healer in order to reverse pressure, but there are multiple stops available. Our initial ring of frost will be wind sheared, and the shaman will cast fleshcraft during the follow up polymorph.

While this fleshcraft is being channeled, the healer has cc immunity with ultimate form. You can see this with an addon like big debuffs, but you need to be aware of this icon since it indicates the target is immune to cc.

Our mage interrupts to cast, preventing the cc immunity. Now with no stops the polymorph is finally able to land and our team is able to reverse pressure.

If it wasn't clear by now. You should always interrupt fleshcraft on your kill target and cc target as soon as possible since it gives the enemy team significantly more bulkiness and cc immunity.

You don't have to be as concerned with fleshcraft casts on off targets unless you are immediately planning to kill or cc them. In any case you should recognize that this is a high priority interrupt.

USING KICK TO DENY PEELS

Now you know how important it is to stop defensive cooldowns with interrupts, let's look at how your kicks can be used to keep your team out of CC. Hopefully by now you've watched our beginner's guide on avoiding losses with crowd control, because you would already know how effective CC can be at shutting down kills.

Classes with spammable CCs like mages with polymorph, druids with cyclone, and warlocks with fear all have massive defensive advantages in arena since any one of these spells can instantly stop damage on their own.

Because of this, it is often highly beneficial to reserve an interrupt to stop casted CC on your team when you are going for kills. This is especially true if you have cooldowns popped, since getting polymorphed on your offensives is extremely punishing.

Here our team is putting enormous pressure on this spell cleave and we have already forced multiple major defensives. The druid will try and cyclone one of the dps on our team.

If this lands, it will stop our tempo entirely and will prevent us from getting full value out of our offensive pressure. Because of this, our mage locks the clone so our team can get a full value out of our offensive pressure.

Because of this, our mage locks the clone so our team can get full value out of our offensive pressure. Because of this, our mage locks the clone so our team can get full value out of our offensive pressure.

With that in mind, you should be aware of DRs on yourself before using your kick. Here our demon hunter is in a mind control, which shares a DR with cyclone.

The feral druid will then exchange some blows with our demon hunter, eventually rooting him while casting a clone. We have CDs up, so we should kick here right?

Well not so fast. If we kick now, we are still rooted, meaning we wont be able to get much value from our interrupt.

We are also still on DR from the mind control, meaning that the clone will only be half. On top of that we have fleshcraft to worry about, if we interrupt now it wont be very valuable.

Because of this, our demon hunter decides to let the clone go through since it was only half duration and there were other important considerations we just covered. One cast many players forget about is mass dispel.

Just like spammable CC can be used to stop kill setups, mass dispel can be used to completely counter CC chains on healers. Shadow priests have a pvp talent called improved mass dispel, which makes md an incredibly quick cast.

On kill setups against teams with shadow priests, try and keep one interrupt in reserve to prevent your CC chain from being countered. Sometimes the best players in the world fail to stop mass dispel casts, even when it could win them the game.

Here for instance our hunter lands a full trap on the rest of the druid while his team pressures the shadow priest. The priest will go for a mass dispel cast with greater fade up.

Even though this will make him immune to most spells, interrupts still go through greater fade. Despite having kick up, our hunter fails to stop this cast, allowing the enemy team to recover when they clearly had momentum.

If you dont have an interrupt, you should use other CCs like stuns to prevent its cast. Here for instance our team prevents the mass dispel on trap with a full stun on the priest, and with this adaptation they were able to lock in the kill.

Even when you cant interrupt mass dispel, look for other ways to deny its cast.

USING INTERRUPTS ON HEALERS

By now, some of you may be asking, what about interrupting healers? Isn't that how you actually land kills?

One way to kick a healer for pressure is to prevent them from using their avoidance tools for your CC. Locking a priest on shadow will prevent them from using shadow where death and greater fade, making it easier to land polymorph.

Locking a shaman on nature will deny grounding totem, once again removing one blocking tool for your CC setup. You can also use your kicks on healers while training them or their partners, but this requires a bit of nuance.

You get more value out of your interrupts the lower HP the kill target is. Unless you have cooldowns up or follow up stuns available, kicking healers while the kill target is above 50% HP is often ineffective since they will be able to recover easily once the lockout ends.

This is a common mistake we see even at high ratings. Kicking a healer for pressure while HP is still high isn't really productive since they can usually recover afterwards.

Here for instance our monk kicks the paladin while they are at 90% HP. As a result the paladin simply waits for the kill target to come back.

This is a common mistake we see. The only time you should kick a healer for a kill while the target is on high HP is when you have enough offensive cooldowns or follow up CCs and stuns to chain together with your lockout.

Here our monk has the chance to kick the priest on flash heal, but if we look at their HP it's at 60% which is on the threshold of being unproductive, but if we look at our action bar we can see that leg sweep is about to come off cooldown, meaning if we kick the priest now our stun will be up for the kill.

Here our monk has a stun soon and damage is already rolling, he decides to commit his kick, and it's a good thing he does since he is able to chain it together with leg sweep which will also interrupt the off heal from the feral druid. And this combo of kicking into stuns will be lights out for the enemy priest.

Of course interrupting healers is also effective while killing their partners, and once again you get more value out of your interrupts the lower HP your kill target has and how many follow ups are available. Here our rogue is pressuring the hunter.

As you can see he has his focus set to the priest. As the hunter dips below 70% HP our rogue step kicks the priest on their flash heal.

He then looks for a way to extend the value of this kick and will use a full kidney shot to lock down the healer while turning his attention to the hunter for the kill. This effectively doubles the value of both his interrupt and his CC.

By kicking the heal and chaining it with CC he was able to get more value out of his interrupt than if he had just used kick by itself. So by now you've probably noticed something being repeated.

I'm not sure if it's because of the interrupts or the flash heal. I'm just saying that the interrupts are repeated over and over.

That kicks get more value when they are chained together with CC. You should think of your interrupt like a form of crowd control.

For some classes getting interrupted on casts limits most of their toolkit in the same way a stun would. Of course kicking a target isn't the same as a stun but they are very similar.

Following up your CCs with kicks or vice versa extends the amount of control you have over the enemy team and in turn makes your kill setups incredibly deadly when they are chained together.

HOLDING KICK

Okay, so we promised you some advanced strategies, and the first one is something you might not expect, because it involves not kicking at all. It sounds like a paradox, but sometimes it's more effective to hold your kick than to use it.

Hear us out. At a certain rating, players become much better at juking your kicks.

If you notice a healer spam fake casting over and over, you can use this to your advantage. What these healers don't realize is that they can usually afford to tank your kick at high HP in order to recover when kick is off cooldown when they are critically low.

And sometimes by holding your kick while dealing damage, the enemy healer will literally juke themselves to death. At the start of this clip, notice how the enemy shaman is casting a heal on his warrior, who is already pretty high on HP.

Our dh then turns his character to the shaman, not to kick, but to pretend to kick, and this in turn makes the shaman stop casting. Our dh continues to deal damage to the warrior, all while standing in line of sight of the shaman, and once again the shaman will interrupt their own cast to try and juke.

This is the second cast that the shaman has decided to cancel themselves out of the game. Even when our dh gets cc'd, the shaman fails to actually commit a cast, and after wind shearing our druid, he will go for a hex.

But once again, because our dh still has kick, the shaman will interrupt their own cast for the threat of getting interrupted. And now over the course of the past 13 seconds, the shaman has effectively interrupted their own cast 3 separate times because they were worried about getting kicked.

By holding his interrupt long enough, our dh was able to put the enemy team incredibly far behind. Since the very presence of kick is a big threat to the enemy team.

The fact that the enemy team has a kick was enough to juke the enemy team to near death. If you find yourself playing against someone who spam fakes, try holding your kick until the point of no return.

NOT KICKING INTO IMMUNITIES

Now that you know some mind games on how to kick, there is one final part of offensive kicking you need to be aware of, and that is not kicking into immunities. Here we have a short list of some of the most common spells that grant complete immunity to interrupt effects for their duration.

Some of these you probably already know about, and it should be obvious why you shouldn't interrupt into divine shield. But there is one melee specific interrupt immunity that many players often forget about, and guess what it is?

It's intervene. Since intervene redirects all physical attacks, it will also redirect physical interrupts.

Rogues, warriors, paladins, monks, and feral druids should check for intervene before committing their kick. Enhancement shamans, demon hunters, and death knights don't need to worry about this however since their interrupts are magic.

This is something that tricks even the best players. Here for instance our rogue needs to interrupt this fleshcraft, but the enemy warrior has covered the cast with intervene.

Our rogue doesn't notice and kicks anyway, redirecting the interrupt to the warrior. This can be hard to avoid.

But if you're playing this game, you can do it. If you're playing against a warrior, make sure there isn't an intervene buff on the target while using your interrupt.

And always check for the buffs we listed before to make sure you don't use your interrupt into an immunity. Alright guys, thanks so much for sticking around.

This was a long one for sure. Knowing how to use your kicks offensively is definitely an art of its own.

And if you missed our last video on interrupting defensively, be sure to check it out since it's an essential pairing to this guide. As always though, thanks for watching.

See you soon.