What a kick is in PvP

A kick is an interrupt. The word is the rogue ability of that name, and players use it for every class’s version of the same button. A mage’s Counterspell is a kick. An evoker’s Quell is a kick. A stun is not, and neither is a fear.

The button does two things, and only if a cast or a channel is actually going. It cancels that cast. Then it locks the school the cast belonged to, so another spell from that school cannot start for a few seconds. A different school still works. The Warcraft Wiki says the lock puts up no debuff you can dispel.

The longer write-up is the Evoker PvP guide. Quell is how Devastation and Augmentation do this job. Preservation does not have the button.

What you see when it lands

The wiki describes the cast bar turning red and reading Interrupted. A cast cut in the middle does not spend the caster’s resource for that spell, and their global cooldown is cancelled, so they can try again at once unless the school is the thing that stopped them.

The kick itself is instant, and it sits off the global cooldown, so it can be pressed between other buttons. It usually does no damage. That is the whole shape: a short denial, then a school that is quiet, then your cooldown.

It is not a diminishing return. You can kick every time the cooldown is ready. A silence, a stun, and a fear cannot. They get shorter, and then they stop landing.

Pick what you see. The line is what the button does.

A cast you can stopA shielded castThey are not casting

That is a kick. It stops the cast and locks that school. It does not stun them.

What the button will not cut

An instant cast has no bar. A kick cannot catch it. A silence or a stun can still keep the next instant from starting, and those are the other category of button.

The wiki marks an interruptible cast with a colored bar, and an uninterruptible one with a silver bar and a shield on the icon. Physical abilities are often in the second group. Some immunities flip a cast into that state after it has already started. A kick on a shielded cast does not stop it and does not lock the school.

If they are not casting, the press is empty. Patch 12.1.0, on August 11, 2026, added a missed-interrupt marker over the target and a separate sound, so a wasted kick is visible. The school still does not lock.

Damage that only slows a cast is pushback. The wiki split that effect off from interrupts in Cataclysm. Pushback is not a kick, and it does not lock a school.

PvP did not get the longer lock

Patch 12.0.0, on January 20, 2026, lengthened interrupt lockouts across classes and wrote, on each of them, that the increase does not affect PvP combat. Quell went from 4 seconds to 6 outside PvP. Its current tooltip still says 4 seconds, which is the PvP lock. The cooldown change, from 40 seconds to 20, was not marked as a PvE-only change. In a match, Quell is a 25-yard kick on a 20-second cooldown that locks the school for 4 seconds.

Other classes got the same kind of note. A tooltip or a chart that shows the new, longer number is showing the dungeon lock. The older published lists also disagree with each other about a few of those durations, including the interrupt wiki’s own table and the paragraph under it. Read the spell you have, in a PvP context, rather than a pre-Midnight chart.

Which cast is worth it

The wiki’s own tactics split the targets. Against a healer, the kick is worth more on the cast that would save someone than on the first heal that appears. A healer who lands an instant heal, or a shield, before the cast-time spell has already done part of the job. Cutting the cast still matters. It is not the only healing that happened.

Against a damage dealer, kicking the casts you can reach is the steady plan, and kicking just after they press a damage cooldown wastes that cooldown. Kicking the first thing you see is how a fake cast works.

A fake cast is a spell from a school they can spare, or a start on the important school that they cancel into a cheaper one. Your kick locks the wrong school, and the school you needed is open for the whole of your cooldown. Twenty seconds on Quell is a long time to watch the cast you meant to stop.

A spell that sits in two schools still casts if either school is open. Locking one of them does not lock that spell. You can also be locked out of more than one school if more than one of your casts gets kicked. When the main school is locked, cast what you have left. Standing still for the lock is the caster’s version of kicking the wrong spell.

A stop is the other call

Crowd control can break a cast too. A stun, a fear, a silence, or a knock that forces a step will cancel many casts, including some a kick cannot touch. Those stops do not apply the school lock. They do spend a diminishing-return category. In Midnight the third effect from that category does not land, and the wait after the last one ends is 20 seconds.

So a kick is the button when all you need is the cast denied. A stun is the button when you need the person held. Using the stun as a kick spends the category for a job the kick already does. When a heal gets through, the arena review is the place to see whether the kick was available and pointed at that cast.

Holy and Discipline priests are the specs the interrupt list leaves out. Shadow’s Silence is a silence, and the same list marks its interrupt as working on non-players. Asking a priest to kick is asking for a stop. A stop breaks the cast. It is not a school lock, and it does diminish.

Quell, and the spec that does not have it

Quell is a row-3 talent for Devastation and for Augmentation. The Midnight pre-patch notes moved it off the evoker class tree. On the Preservation list of removed talents, Quell is named with the note that it moved to those two trees. A Preservation evoker does not kick. They stop a cast with control, and that control is on the diminishing-return clock with everyone else’s fear, stun, or root of the same kind.

Devastation and Augmentation do kick, and 25 yards is part of the spec’s range problem. If you are past that, Quell never starts, the cast finishes, and the cooldown was not even spent. The Evoker guide’s question, whether you reached the person you named and still had a way out, includes this button. A kick you cannot reach is the same result as a kick you did not press.

Put it on a key the movement hand can find without looking. The cast bar will not wait while you click the icon.

Related: WoW guides, Best WoW PvP addons (2026), left-handed mouse, keyboard guides, Midnight 12.1.5 news.

Common questions

What is a kick in WoW PvP?

A kick is an interrupt. It stops an enemy's cast or channel and locks them out of that spell school for a few seconds. It doesn't stun them, so they can still cast spells from other schools.

Do interrupts have diminishing returns in WoW?

No. You can use your kick again as soon as its cooldown is up. Silences, stuns and fears do have diminishing returns.

Did Midnight change interrupt lockouts in PvP?

No. Patch 12.0.0 made many interrupt lockouts longer in PvE, but Blizzard said those changes don't apply to PvP. Quell still locks for 4 seconds in PvP.

Can a Discipline Priest interrupt?

No. Holy and Discipline Priests don't have an interrupt. They can still stop casts with crowd control like fear, but that's a different ability with diminishing returns.

What is Quell in WoW?

It's the Evoker's interrupt, available to Devastation and Augmentation. It has a 25-yard range, locks the spell school for 4 seconds in PvP, and has a 20-second cooldown. Preservation Evokers don't get it.