You're Killing Me, Cooldowns!

You’re killing me, cooldowns!

No, seriously.

If I wanted to play a WoW Paladin, with the somewhat dreaded 969 rotation, or, hit one 9 second cooldown, then pick one 6 sec, and then next another 9, trading off trying to build a rotation, that’s not fun.

Diablo is more an Action RPG than anything else.
I need to ACT, or press the Correct for Me button to down the monsters.

And above all, sheesh, better item art, bring back D2 art team. Also, why can’t I do the minigame of the Inventory system? I just read in another thread, and that was awesome. I not only had to get lucky, I had to manage the items I picked up sometimes.

Above all, D4 did interest me; now, not so much.

If you taught the competitors how to ARPG with D1 and D2, why are they suddenly schooling Daddy Blizzard on D3 and D4?

Wow, how far the cookie crumbles…

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Cooldowns are fine imo.
As long as there are also a good selection of skills without cooldowns (like, 50-75% of attacks should likely have no CD. 50-75% of defensive/mobility skills likely should have a CD to prevent teleport spam and similar)
And cooldown skills should not be offensively stronger than non-cooldown skills. Just different.
Like, maybe an attack with CD deal same dmg as one without, but also adds a stun effect. Or it cost less mana to use, but then also has a short CD.
And of course, dont give us nearly free access to endless CDR, like in D3.

Cooldowns is just one more way to add diversity to skill design, which is always a good thing tbh.

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without potion spam, you also cannot teleport spam
and if you truly build for a teleport spam character that will as a logical consequence not deal any damage, people should have the freedom to do that
cooldowns take away that freedom

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So sick of the “Diablo II was PERFECT!” posts. The inventory mini-game was not fun. The charm system? not fun. The trade system was worse than not-fun. It was horrible.

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Yes, and I want to be able to spam my most powerful spenders endlessly, without any resource costs at all. Resource costs take away that freedom.

D4 needs to have 40-50 skills for the player to be able to equip, all with no resource costs or cooldowns at all. I want to be able to just put a paving stone on my keyboard so they are all firing all the time, and just be using my mouse for movement. That’s the depth and complexity a Diablo game should have.

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sounds sarcastic but failed

Invest in Cool Down Reduction?

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Sure you could invest into stats that reduce an unnatural limitation
Or you could just not have it at all

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Are you really saying it is a bad game because there are cooldown based abilities? Not that you don’t like them or anything like that, but that it is bad? Makes no sense.

And also why do people think it is logical to start criticizing Diablo 4 when it isn’t even close to done? That is just dumb in most cases.

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You do realise that those competitors also use cooldowns as balancing mechanics right?

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I love that you called blizzard daddy. That must mean something different where you live.

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Criticizing something when it is not done, is by far the best time to criticize.

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First off we called it the 6969 rotation because of course we did, and it was great. A lot better than the holy combo points that replaced it in Cataclysm.

Other than that cooldowns are not inherently bad, they just shouldn’t be on most attack spells. Cooldowns should be used to primarily balance out powerful effects like CC and other utility, not damage.

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Debating what is natural or unnatural in a video game that has demons, angels, all types of magic, and an uber-powerful super race that is the descendant of angels and demons feels a bit pointless, don’t you think?

Cooldowns are as much a part of Diablo at this point as the resource cost. Love it or hate it, saying that they take away your freedom makes no more sense than complaining that the rules of chess take away your freedom because they prohibit you from moving your rook diagonally.

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The biggest problem with cooldowns is the oops I accidently clicked on my cooldown and now I have to wait x amount of time before I can even really use it.

If it’s 20 sec or less, it’s not that big of a deal besides it being a bit disappointing. However if it’s in the minutes, especially 5-10 minute range, then it’s really frustrating.

Paying attention or not, I am sure that has happened to many a player. I know it has happened to me. Heck, it’s happened to me in this season. I wanted to do War Cry not Wrath of the Berserker. OOPS!

I try to separate skills by utility of I can. That small amount of space really makes a big difference. Unless I am really hasteful/careless, then I won’t have an issue at all.

Then there are people with really evil pets that like to jump or plop themselves on the keyboard ONLY CASTING THE LONG CD SPELLS by ‘accident’. That of course is a difficult situation all on its own.

Edit: Ultimately, if you are not a fan of cooldowns or have trouble with them, then just ignore them altogether and never use them at all. #NoCooldowns #NotInMyRotation #NotOnMySkillBar

using the rules of your own magic isnt unnatural in a fantasy setting
in diablo 2, all skills are being powered by mana
so using a certain skill costs your character a portion of their mana that they can regenerate from different sources

D3 introduced the “oh no, i just used my technique of 1000 fists and i am still full of spirit power but for no reason i have to wait 15 seconds to use it again! DANG!”
thats unnatural because it doesnt play by the rules of magic that players are used to
ofc. you can introduce new rules like, some skills will be very hard to perform for a character and they have to focus to use them again
but apparently that doesnt hinder them to use any other non cooldown skills until their resource is depleted because obviously that is still the MAIN source of power and not…time
binary resource systems are weird and not very satisfying

cooldowns annoy everyone at times. They are usually the best skills to use though. But yea i agree if you don’t like them then just don’t use them.

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If they are the best skills to use, then not using them is a really bad solution.
Cooldown skills should simply not be the best skills. They should be exactly on par with non-cooldown skills.

bad solution or not, if you personally don’t like using them then don’t.

Exactly my point - you can make anything sound natural. All you have to do is invent a backstory, and something unnatural immediately becomes natural, even though the rules haven’t change one iota.

The constructive thing to do would be to discuss what purpose does a rule serve, is it really necessary, and what are the other options, if any. Simply saying that a rule is unnatural isn’t a reason to have it changed/removed.