THE MECHANICS OF JUKING AND FAKING

THE MECHANICS OF FAKE CASTING INTRO

Okay, we got a challenge for you today. In just a few seconds, we're going to cast a polymorph and we want you to tap on your phone or press your spacebar to see if you can interrupt the cast.

Are you ready? Three, two, one.

Okay, that was relatively easy, right? Let's try again in three, two, one.

Whoa, that was different. If you kicked the cast, good for you.

But if you were caught off guard, you're not alone. Hopefully by now you watched our guide on interrupting casts.

But today we have the other side of that interaction, juking. It doesn't matter if you play healer, ranged, or melee.

You need to understand how to mind games your opponents. And today we will be showing you some proven tips on recognizing interrupt patterns and show you how and when to juke casts.

DOWNLOADING DATA

Let's start off by talking about mind games, because that's the most fun, right? No, we're not talking about that dumb priest spell.

We're talking about other human beings and how to outplay them in Arena. Mind games are part of this, and the foundation of winning the fake casting interaction involves recognizing patterns.

Winning the fake casting mind game starts by downloading data on your opponents. Not literally, of course, but instead using bait casts in order to see if there are patterns in how your opponents use their interrupts.

Some players will kick early, some will kick late, some will vary their kicks, and some will not interrupt at all. We watch hundreds of hours of user-submitted videos every month, and we've noticed interrupt patterns based on rating brackets.

Rating in Arena follows a bell curve like this, and kick patterns are fairly predictable in a few of its sections. Most players below 1700 tend to kick in the middle of a cast.

This seems to make sense, because at lower ratings, players are generally slower at reacting to plays in-game. But then at rival to duelist ratings, something happens.

In this area, most players try and kick casts instantly. At this rating, there's a focus on doing things fast, and this means using interrupts the moment they see a cast bar.

Finally, at gladiator ratings and beyond, things get a bit tricky. You see, these players don't always kick fast or slow, but instead they vary quite a bit.

Keep in mind that these are just averages of data we've seen across different brackets. So what is the best way to know when your opponent is going to kick?

It involves collecting your own data early on into the game. You can do this by doing an early fake cast on your first spell.

If they try and kick early on into the cast, you know that they're probably early kickers. If they don't fall for the bait, you can try casting later to test their reaction time.

At the start of this game, our priest is taking a bunch of damage from this melee cleave. He is now in recovery mode, and there is one huge problem.

Nobody on the enemy team has used their kicks. His first cast here will be an instant fake.

Remember, the goal is to download data on your opponents in order to figure out their kicking pattern. He will repeat this instant fake again when he is behind the pillar.

Once again, trying to get a kicking pattern out of the monk. His second cast will be another instant fake, carefully testing whether or not the monk wants to kick early.

Then finally our priest will fake instantly a third time, finally baiting the kick from the monk. It might have taken three attempts, but now our priest knows he is playing against someone who is capable of kicking fast.

WEAVE IN INSTANT GLOBALS

Okay, so now you know a thing or two about juking initial casts to download data. What if you know your opponents aren't falling for your bait?

What do you do? The first thing is to make sure you are pressing globals while you are fake casting.

Don't just fake over and over, but instead, weave in instant casts. Every class in the game has at least one instant cast spell it can use in between fakes, and at the very least, you should be changing your position while you juke.

You will be able to see our priest globals on the bottom left corner of their cast bar, right here. And as you can see, they are going for a holy fire cast.

Because he is dipping low in HP, he decides to instantly juke, but immediately uses a shadow word pain the moment his juke ends. This is optimal, since shadow word pain is on a different spell school, meaning if he were to get interrupted, it would be one of the few instant cast buttons he could press.

After a second fake cast, our priest uses angelic feather, another instant cast global. After each fake, you should try and press some instant cast ability in order to maximize global usage.

Avoid standing in one place. While juking over and over.

On top of that, make sure you are using your other spell schools if you wind up getting interrupted. Every spellcaster in the game has access to at least two spell schools, so plan on using your other schools the moment you tank a kick.

Here, our priest is going for a heal cast, but gets interrupted by the warrior. He wastes no time and immediately casts mind control, since it's on a different school.

Even though it gets reflected, it still helps maximize global usage. We will be covering the concept of tanking kicks in a follow up video, so be sure to stay on the lookout for that.

In any case, try and make the most out of your spell schools. If you get interrupted on one school, you should immediately start queuing another.

Always think about what ability you could press if your current cast gets kicked.

OBVIOUS TIMES TO FAKE

So now you know how to win the fake casting mind games, let's take it a step further and learn how to predict your opponents kicks. There are a few other factors that indicate that your opponent is more likely to use their interrupt.

The first is whether or not the opponent has used a gap closer. If the opponent uses an ability like charge, shadow step or roll to get you while you are casting, they are much more likely to use their interrupt since they think it will catch you off guard.

Here for instance our priest is kiting away from the enemy monk, but they will use flying serpent kick while we are in the middle of our cast. And then they will immediately interrupt the moment they are on top of our priest.

Because the monk committed a gap closer he had more incentive to follow it up with a kick. Paying attention to the direction of the enemy players movement is sometimes enough information to let you know if they want to kick.

Here for instance the enemy ret paladin has turned away from the rogue and is now running towards our priest in the middle of a cast. This indicates that they probably want to kick.

Seeing this our priest simply cancels his cast the moment the paladin is in interrupt range. With this in mind you should try and juke enemy players if they are facing your direction and have already committed a gap closer.

Against the same monk as before our priest once again has some distance and is casting a mind games. But notice the direction the monk is facing.

They are angled directly towards our priest indicating that they want to close the gap and go for an interrupt. Don't blink because this juke is about to happen fast.

This time our priest immediately fakes the moment he sees the monk roll towards him. As you can see both gap closers and basic enemy movement can be used to predict kicks.

Finally, pay close attention to kick cooldowns before you go for your cast. Players are more likely to go for a kick if their interrupt cooldown comes back up in the middle of your cast.

Here for instance our priest goes for a flash heal while there is less than 1 second remaining on the hunter's interrupt. The moment it comes back up our priest instantly cancels his cast since the hunter was probably spamming while it was about to come off CD, anticipating that our priest would be caught off guard.

Just like using a gap closer to interrupt might catch players off guard, so does a kick off cooldown. Make sure you are monitoring kick cooldowns with addons like omnibar and plan to juke if you see kicks starting to rotate.

If you notice, a lot of the dragons that you can get back up are dead that way. Players are more likely to kick and rotate back.

If you're looking to cast combo on a neu and you build it, you are going to want to keep your guard up and keep your guard up as you can. You can also use an ATK to help the character rotate back.

You can also use a ULT to help his attack rotate back while his attack rotates back. You can also use the trunco to help you build up his attack as well, because you want to protect his attack when he shifts back up.

I want to say this is a good tip for your team for getting as many potions as you can buy a 600 gold tip when a book needs it. So if you want to buy gold with a 50 minute cost, you can go for a 5 minute-period drift.

MISTAKES TO AVOID AND ADVANCED TIPS

Finally, let's go over some common mistakes players make while faking and show you some simple fixes to solve them. Some healers make the mistake of fake casting too much while not actually recovering HP and in turn they wind up faking themselves to death.

As a healer you don't need to fake cast heals nearly as much if your team is already high on HP. In fact, it is often beneficial to soak and interrupt early on so you have one less kick to deal with when your teammates drop critically low.

This is something we covered in our interrupt video where we showed a shaman who tried to fake 4 casts in a row all while our demon hunter held his kick. Eventually this caused the enemy shaman to fall so far behind that he was forced to spirit link at insanely low HP.

This is obviously an extreme case and once again we will be highlighting when you should be tanking interrupts in a follow up video.

Regardless of whether you are a healer or a dps, it is a huge mistake to not juke your spell casts when you are at low HP if getting interrupted will lock you out of important defensive cooldowns. Here we have a list of major defensive cooldowns and their spell schools.

For classes like shadow priest getting kicked on shadow removes two major defensive options meaning that you should juke more often when you start to dip on HP. Other specs like fire mage are a bit more flexible with their casts since ice block only shares a lockout with ring of frost.

In this case it would be ok to cast a polymorph or fireball at low HP but a ring of frost interrupt could easily be a mistake. If you are under a lot of pressure and might need to use a defensive cooldown to recover you should focus on juking casts if getting locked out will prevent you from using your cd.

Here for instance our shadow priest goes for an aggressive vt cast despite being low on HP. This winds up being a fatal mistake as he gets interrupted at 30% and is now locked out of dispersion and greater fade, his two biggest defensive cooldowns, and to nobodies surprise he dies right before his lockout ends.

If you are low on HP and need to use a defensive be sure to juke. Its not just during defensive recovery that you need to juke your casts, on the opposite side of the spectrum your kill setups are when you should focus on juking more in order to land important cc casts.

Mages might need to bait interrupts in order to land cc setups on healers. Here for instance our mage needs to land a polymorph which will require multiple jukes.

The first juke cast is actually on the priest to avoid shadow or death. The next few jukes will be on both melee dps in order to get through both of their interrupts.

Eventually our mage will burn all three of the stops from the enemy team. This will allow them to finally secure a polymorph and start the important cc chain.

This is a good way to start a polymorph. For both healers and dps you don't need to juke nearly as much as you would if you were to land a polymorph.

The second way to start a polymorph is to juke nearly as much during the downtime in arena. We repeat this over and over in our videos but you should always remember that arena fluctuates between offensive pushes and defensive recovery.

These are the times where juking is more important since there is greater value to your casts. All the moments in between are significantly less important and are generally better times to soak interrupts and not worry as much about juking.

Finally this might seem a bit obvious to some of our viewers but you should pay close attention to enemy positioning and whether or not your opponents are controlled when deciding to fake cast. If the interrupter is out of range, out of line of sight, or in cc you probably don't need to fake.

Once again this may seem obvious but you should pay close attention to your teams cc to know when you are able to freely cast. Here for instance the entire enemy team is controlled and despite two interrupts being available our priest doesn't bother juking this cast.

Of course this will also require you to monitor trinkets as well because once the enemy team leaves cc that is when you need to think about fake casting again.

So just to recap the most important times to juke are when your team is either doing a kill setup or is in recovery mode and if you want to know when your opponent is more likely to kick be sure to monitor any gap closers, positioning, kick cooldowns, enemy cc, and los to know when is a good time to juke.