Behind the Curtain Elements To Good PVP Combat
Often times for an MMO especially PVP oriented ones the combat must be near perfect for the rest of the game to be good, and i just wanted to point out a few features that would literally make or break a good combat system. People might disagree on me with this but WOW by far has their combat down to a Tee, it's very easy to read probably has the fastest style of gameplay (if you play Fire Mage you're literally slinging spells at godspeed) and it's spell Queuing systems makes for perfect timing on the next ability or spell cast. Keep in mind that WOW isn't the only MMO I've played just from experience by playing other MMOs Wow has nearly no jank in it's combat system.
GCD
Global CoolDowns, first of all is a must have into any mmorpg, but what i want to bring up specifically with GCDs, that in WOW they are only applied on SUCCESSFUL spell casts, This in particular was a huge problem for Archeage. What this means that the moment you cast a spell a GCD will begin alongside the casting, but it's important that if the player chooses to cancel the initial spell the GCD is also cancelled as well, allowing the player to cast the new intended spell immediately. This was a huge issue for Archeage, when you began starting to cast a spell such as Arc Lightning you were committing to that spell, if you wanted to interrupt your cast and use a different spell, you will still be required to wait for the full GCD from Arc Lightning.
No Static abilities
The player must be at all times in control of their character and the only time they shouldn't be in control is when they are stunned, CCed, or using a charge ability.
Directional Orientation
This is one of the few underappreciated mechanics to wow, but half the time there is no orientation requirements to specific abilities. This mechanic is strictly isolated to AOE abilities, most Healing abilities, and most Crowd Control abilities. For the rest of the abilities such as single target damage abilities the character is required to be facing their opponent.
Spell Queuing
Pretty simple, while casting spells in the last 0.5 seconds of the cast you can begin pressing your next spell and when the inital cast is complete the next spell will begin immediately effectively eliminating any delay between two abilities, this effect is also applied for GCDs on a melee class. However it is important that if you happened to press two different spells in that 0.5 second window that it will instead used the most recent spell you pressed.
CCs
Crowd Control, as i mentioned earlier 9 times out of 10 they do not require any player orientation to be casted. but it's crucial that most of those CCs also DO NOT have a projectile, the amount of jank that can happen while your CC ability is traveling to it's foe is infuriating and extremely difficult to figure out how the CC was broken early. an optional bonus to CCs, is once casted they get rid of any dots already on the target, effectively preventing those dots from breaking the CC.
Good enemy UI
important things to think about when making enemy nameplates, that it includes a clear and concise casting bar for spell interrupts, as well as a good Boon/Condition bar.
Arenas
since Arenas will most likely be the players true test of skill and the fact that there wont be any addons it's important to have a really good arena specific UI a format i would consider looking into is the "Gladius" addon from wow it shows what classes your opponents are, displays there mana and health at all times, but also shows you what spells they are casting when you don't have them targeted and sometimes what Cooldowns they've used.
Personally i still don't know exactly what the combat will look exactly like but if any of these mechanics could be implemented within the game i would strongly consider thinking about applying them to the game, I cannot stress that an MMO with Jank combat is just a jank MMO.
