Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

im in a bg as a lock

they have no priests (no shadow resist buffs)

this mage resisted 2 deathcoils in a row

i dont have hit rating or the -resist% talent, but this is nothing uncommon

its not confirmation bias, its not me feeling like this always happens to me alone.

maybe its something to do with line of sight? similarly, if i die while my deathcoil is midair en route to target, it wil get evaded. not miss resist or disjointed, it says evade like a mob would

it fucking happened again, a rogue in a game with no priests to give shadow resistance resisted my death coil. he was in the tunnel while i was in flagroom, LOSing me as the coil hit.

is this a bug?

There is a base 4% chance to resist spells in pvp, and this can never be lower than 1% even with spellhit gear or talents. Since you don't have the resist talent, this should be at least 3%.

Plus there are many other ways to get shadow resistance; a lot of the tier1/2 raid gear has shadow resist, Paladin's shadow resist aura is +60 (if you are horde), cloak enchant is +5, argent dawn shoulder enchants can be another +5, and a few talents & gear - i.e. mage could have +10 from magic absorption or +10 from the Jed wand, although those are less likely.

It's also human nature to notice more when things don't work than when they do. I'm sure Orc stun resist feels more like 50% than 25% to some of the alliance rogues out there.