After a bit of playing about last night (faking afk and trying to get mages to jump me in WSG) it seems that using distract to spin a caster around before their spell cast completes is both doable and fun . In ‘real’ combat, I didn’t get an opportunity since everyone was constantly in combat and not distractable, but in an arena* it’s something that’s worth remembering and probably worth binding to a key if you have any left.

* I’ve been slacking with arenas since 3.2 came out as my 2v2 partner has been on holiday, but will be playing rated games as of tonight. After killing Death Knights in Wintergrasp with 2 tenacity buffs 1v1 I’m feeling hopeful that they’ve been hit hard enough to stop the bad ones beating us in arenas, but knowing my luck those were probably bots or something.

After four years of playing rogues, I realised last month that you can use distract without being stealthed. I’d only ever used it before to spin mounted enemies around for sapping, so the spell had only been on my stealthed actionbar. Luckily, (and about time!) I’ve since found that distract can be used in several more ways, and definately deserves a place on my regular actionbar. It’s worth getting a Glyph of Improved Distract for the extra range this gives.

Distract interrupts drinking

It doesn’t put players in combat, but if a drinking player is affected they will turn around and stand up, stopping the drinking from affecting their mana.

Distract works around corners

The effect from distract doesn’t require LoS so if a healer has ran around a pillar to drink, this can save valuable time. It can be cast whilst moving, so no need to pause like you would if you were using a throw to interrupt.

Distract can help against rogues

This needs a fair bit of luck, but using distract on an area where you believe there’s a rogue could spin them around and stop their movement (depending on the skill of the other rogue, if he’s mouse-strafing and doing 360° jumps while spamming sap, the advantage you get will only be momentarily, but hey, every little helps). A stationary target is easier to sap since you’re not relying on their computer to upload their current location to the server.

Distract can seperate players from their pets

I guess this one is pretty situational, but a well placed distract will stop a pet’s movement for 10 seconds. Could be useful for setting up for a pet-kill, perhaps, maybe, possibly.

Distract can interrupt spellcasts…

… theoretically I’ve not tried this yet, but since it’s possible to sap a priest who has left combat and is starting to cast again, it makes sense that distract would work on them as well. I’ll test this out tonight, but I’m guessing that you should be able to spin the caster around and make their spell fail. I play a priest casually, and if someone span me on my holyfire cast, I’d certainly be confused as hell.