No, that is never a reasonable conclusion.
Choices should be balanced. Most people will naturally choose what makes their character strongest.
If CD skills are strongest, the game has a major problem.
If non-CD skills are strongest, the game has a major problem.
nicely ripped out of context but yes
as i said, you can try to explain everything
but it can become very weird and uncomfortable
like in this scenario
Not all are… There are still some amazing skills to use that don’t require cooldowns, just as powerful as skills that do.
If you want a “logical” reason for why cooldowns make sense in the Diablo universe, I’m sure that smarter people than I am can come up something that doesn’t come across as completely retarded.
But that wasn’t really my point - what I’m trying to say is that if you have a problem with a rule, it’s better to approach it from the utilitarian angle of why and how, because those things can be debated and pros and cons can be weighted. Just putting an “unnatural” label on a rule and making that a reason for why it should be removed isn’t really conducive to any sort of constructive discourse.
well, i am debating from a standpoint of common sense and understanding, which i probably shouldnt
the unnatural aspect of it is that you are still free to spam any other powerful and magical spell and attack until your resource is depleted while some skills just have a second resource for no understandable reason
sacred plays with shared cooldowns only
which is consequent
D3s design is not
All I’m saying is that applying a “real world” common sense to a video game will not get us anywhere. Yes, there might be little in the real world that would make cooldowns look natural, but that same logic can be applied to building up stacks or even to the use of mana. Using a resource to cast skills may feel “natural” but that’s simply because it has been around for a long time as a concept. Now, why should some attacks generate mana and others use it, what’s the logic behind that? Why do the spear goats never run out of spears? Where do the succubi get their mana to endlessly cast fireballs? You can take apart any aspect of the game in this way, but what’s the point?
There may be no obvious reason for cooldowns in the sense of the lore and how the Diablo universe operates but, in the gameplay sense, it simply means that different skill have different limitations put on them - either it’s the resource cost or it’s the cooldown. I honestly don’t see why one would be more more natural than the other, or why having just one and not the other would make more sense.
But when they’re your damage dealers or require a specific cdr to get a build to ‘work’ they’re not fine.
What’s the pt of cooldowns if 50/75 percent of the skills have no cd.
CD’s are fine if they aren’t a gearing obstacle or common in the game, and when they are in the the game, they are very short cd’s like animation-cd’s, to prevent mega spam, but allow for fast paced casting.
Thats how D2 did cooldowns and it worked perfectly.
You dont rely on movement skills first of all, so, D4’s out bc no question it’s going nitro boot movement skills just like it’s study-book diablo 3.
The less cooldowns the better, and the less time they have the better, but yet having a very short animation cooldown is absolutely critical to prevent complete spam.
That’s how you cooldown, not, through gearing or affixes.
CDR should not be some gearing obstacle, that’s where mana should be, and obvi cheaply purchasing / easily collecting mana pots for fuel is not ideal either, although it is the better of the 2 incorrect solutions since it’s action paced and not blocked by a cooldown, a very, very, not diablo 1/2 thing to do.
Improve upon what d2 did, dont replace it’s core with inferior things, like cdr and long rotations. Improve upon it, by revamping the mana system or tweak it heavily w cooldowns.
Another major reason cooldowns are bad is leveling, which should be prio 1 in development along w solo play. Your first 5 hours in the game should be completely dreamy. IT should be like, fast paced, dying, not dying, rare loot, mystery, exploring, a guide but not a shock collar around your neck telling you where to go.
Mana system is action. Cooldown system is not action. Unlocking skills as u level, at the devs predetermined choice, is not action. Thats unlocking derivative skills that dont power up each level, or uwanted ‘runes’ and such. Cooldown system is 'ok i dont have cdr at level 6, dang, have to wait, this game sucks".
Mana is “ok i dont have mana, and i have a little bit of gold, and i found 5 pots, so i have like 10 pots right now, this gets me through the next 10 min, this system also sucks, but at least it’s action and fast paced”. now if those pots were balanced to not be that accessible, a not that hard and changeable thing to do, the game is action but not brainless action, and obviously not cooldown waiting till max level to get cdr action.
If cooldown were done ‘better’ in diablo 3, cdr gear would be like mana pots. Dropping, for temp use. Or, cdr would be a way higher percentage, early on, which would ruin endgame builds bc finding a want with 50 percent cdr on level 2 would be op at endgame. If they made cdr a fixed value, well, it’s mana at that pt.
so yes CDR’s are awesome IF they are like < 1 second, for spam prevention, ie animation. CDR’s are terrible if they’re something u have to wait till endgame gear to overcome.
Nobody, ever, wants to wait on a cooldown. They would always rather spend a resource, like gold, to stay in the action. They could get creative with it and have health be the tradeoff, or maybe ur weaps not adjustable durability. Just an idea.
But mana trumps cdr any day for leveling, and leveling should be prio 1, just like solo play. Diablo should absolutley not be about “group endgame play” bc then the game is about meta builds, meta comps, and max time in that environment, meaning, play youtube play meta, and that’s not cool. The “hooks” to anyone who played D1/2 is the first hour, well the first 30 seconds bc the log in screen and matt u soundtrack off the top, omg, is solo play / leveling / rare drops / dying w penalties / exploring / and yes, group questing IF everyone’s the same power level for the content, and also talking to one other, such as asking for TP instead of a banner system and saying “here” instead of a yellow arrow already exposing that and so on. D3 is like, fine until you hit your first cooldown skill unlock, and ur like, ok how do i overcome that now? I cant? I have to rotate or straight up wait? Use a gen that doesnt matter? This is like, super not Brevik and Matt Uand such.
Make sense Shad?
Cooldowns (the spam prevention ones) are super smart. Def: < 1 second.
All other cooldowns, especially movement skill cooldowns, are trash design, dart went in the kitchen floor instead of the trip 20. it’s all related to mana system. You dont want ur mana spenders going off cooldown instead of mana. That means leveling is trash, and solo play, and any play before u get your “real endgame” gear. That’s not diablo, that’s diablo 3. They had this obsession with ‘real diablo at max level’ and the cooldown system shows that.
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Although Diablo 3 turned it up to 11 and went insane with it, cooldowns were in Diablo 2 on a number of skills of up to 6 seconds.
It was called “casting delay” and it couldn’t be changed by any means, not even FCR.
timers on skills make no sense in an arpg. you shouldn’t be sitting there waiting for a timer to tick down. you should be deciding how to resource manage and use the skill appropriate in the second by second encounters. balance the skills or don’t bother. in an mmo in order to simulate a back and forth between 1v1, sure, cooldowns make sense. an arpg is very different and this is why so many people are against it. it felt really bad in d3.
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Just chiming in after my essay quick.
JW you have to look at D2 and how it handled CD’s.
Cooldowns are there, everyone knows this, but way, way differently than D3.
Look at 2 skills that are damage dealers.
WW (The cool, diablo 2 ww that’s FAST and awesome feeling, unlike D3’s i dont even want to get into how botched WW’s look and feel is). It has a cooldown.
IDk the seconds been years, but a quick alt tab could pull it up for this post. Its prob 1/10th second or something. Blizzard (the D2 spell) need i say more? It has a cooldown everyone recalls.
Why are these important / not b… i mean complained about in diablo 2 games?
They aren’t bothersome, theyre so small it doesnt interrupt your flow, but it prevents you from casting idk 5 blizzards a second and afking the game. Well, blizz is afk but that’s besides the pt it still has a cooldown safety net. a very short one, but it serves it’s purpose.
Plus you have to factor in most the action in D2 is about progressing a quest, dungeon by dungeon, it is much less about super fast rinse repeat for endgame content. Like, playing a skill that has a cooldown ( < 1 second) is fine bc your limit is your mana, not that cooldown, and all you care about is not dying and getting through the next floor / area / boss bc your on the item hunt, the whole game. Its not about rushing to GR’s to gemup. If at endgame super fast repeated clearing is the goal, that’s fine, its had through mana negating endgame gear, yet the leveling is not negatively affected bc a cooldown is shoved on you with a gen skill forced on you that is slow and rotating combat.
Skills that have zero cooldown at all are dangerous bc you can spam the h out of them and drain your mana, without wanting to. Im not sure which skills in D2 have absolutely zero cooldown or animation cooldown, if there are any, or if there are a ton. But we all know many of the skills in D2 have a very short less than 1 sec cooldown, and well the combat speaks for itself it is much more engaging and fun and real in d2 than d3’s cooldown system. And fast paced throughout the game, not just at max level. A major, not to be overlooked, point.
because its a rule that you can understand and that you can work with and that you can manipulate and build around and consider in your build
it makes sense
lets say it would be stamina for a barb because that would make more sense
he has a rather weak skill: slice (50 stamina)
and a stronger skill: earthquake (150 stamina)
and a cooldown skill: battlejump (100 stamina, 20 sec. cooldown)
so tell me why barb can do earthquakes 5 times in a row until his stamina is depleted but he cant use battlejump even 2 times in a row
its both physical skills that require his stamina to perform it
because: “yoU sHoUlD nOt Be aBlE tO sPam MovEmeNt!” ?
is this your logical explanation? or just a poor excuse?
It is fine to require a specific CDR to get a specific build to work. Just like it is fine to require a specific crit rate, a specific mana regen, a specific runeword, a specific shield, a specific whatever. That is kinda the concept of a build imo.
It is not fine if a large amount of the top builds require CDR to work.
Skill diversity.
Adding more skill diversity is improving on what D2 did.
If cooldowns were done better in D3:
- Cooldowns would only start after the skill duration had ended. Making it imposible to have 100% uptime of buffs etc.
- Drastically reduce the amount of CDR on gear (or alternatively, have high diminishing returns on CDR)
- Aim for CDs to be between about 5-30 sec in most cases. Up to 60 sec in rare cases.
- Make damn sure CD skills are not overpowered with the amount of CDR you can get
- Have enough skill diversity that there is a resource cost route, and a CD route for most build archetypes you can think of. A good skill modification system could help a lot here. Allowing you to increase/lower CD vs. resource cost on most skills. Teleport with 15 sec cd/10% mana cost vs. 5 sec cd and 50% mana cost. Your choice. Another mod might add 2 charges etc.
Actually, that is my main issue with Blizzards cooldown design on skills. That they make it cooldowns instead of mana. It should be both! Let many of these skills cost mana and have a cooldown. Just less mana than if it do not have a CD. Most skills should really have some resource cost however, so using them still impact your other skill usage.
The either/or mentality is a bad one.
Yes, CD is there to prevent you from spamming things. With all the RCR and resource regen, resource cost can become a non-issue (think HoTA Barb in the way of an example). CD is a failsafe that will prevent you from spamming what would otherwise be an OP skill.
Is it the best design choice? Maybe not. But it has a purpose, and if you want to have CD removed, you need to come up with an alternative to it that will fulfill the same purpose. Simply calling on what you feel is an inherent logic, declaring that CD makes no sense from that perspective, and asking for it to be removed on those grounds is not going to work.
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its an easy way to limit gameplay if you dont have a good resource system which D3 obviously does not have
i dont see any issue with a character using teleport 10 times just to quick move into a battle and then being OOM and getting punded
but when you start to design games for people that cannot even comprehend such actions and consequences, you have to insert artificial limitations
to be clear
diablo 2 LoD probably has the worst resource system of them all and teleport spam IS an issue there
I think a lot of people would argue that teleport spamming specifically is not that great but I will, for once, agree with you. If you want to teleport-spam, be my guest, as long as there is a price that you have to pay for it.
That said, limitations need to be placed on how you can spam things, and CD is one way of creating a hard limit that there will be no workaround for. I mean, for as long as there are OP skills like necro’s LoTD, there is no way around it - get rid of CD and you will have 100% uptime of fighting frozen statues.
In other words, dropping CD won’t do in itself - it will need to be coupled with design choices throughout that will make it unnecessary. Which is what I’ve been trying to get across this whole time. Natural or unnatural, logical or illogical, ultimately it boils down to the purpose that CD serves in the game, and what other options of achieving the same thing there are.
Thing is, I dont think people arguing against CDs want to pay that price.
Like what if teleport costs 100% of your mana. Or 25% of your mana but prevents mana regen for 10 sec.
I’d be ine with these options. But that doesnt mean CD shouldnt be an option too.
Skill modification, come on Blizzard!
A skill like that should not exist with or without CD tbh. It smells of “Ultimate” skill design which is just bad. All skills in an A-RPG should be impactful (sometimes alone, sometimes together with other skills), it should not be DOTA/Overwatch where you have one OP ability that the whole gameplay orbits around.
well
when you have 100% CC skills like insta freeze or insta stun
these skills would HAVE to suffer from a high resource cost and damage penalty to balance them in the first place
and then it would simply not be possible to kill enemies without running out of mana in the first place
I see what he is saying. I have a Frenzy Barb and 4/6 of my skills are CDs. THAT would probably drive him crazy. Me? I am used to it from other games.
- Furious Charge (3 uses, it works well enough for me, I will usually have 1 in to use) 10 seconds a charge.
- War Cry is 20 seconds. It lasts 2 minutes, so I am okay with it. Only time it’s a bummer is if I die w/in the 20 seconds after I cast it. Sometimes that happens.
- Wrath of the Berseker is 120 seconds Its a “that spell” so I can see it taking a while before you can use it again. Passive knocks off 30 seconds and there are items that will help with that as well. That’s fine, even with a Frenzy build.
- Threatening Shout is 10 seconds. That doesn’t seem that long when you are in the heat of battle. I pop it on large groups and big baddies.
I don’t have a really high CDR so it is what it is. I try to use Wrath early on for that initial boost and then I cherry pick the best times hoping that I didn’t over do it so I have a cast at the end boss. I take full advantage of the CD pylon too. More often than not, its a free cast. Works for me.
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I don’t mind the CD’s in the way it is set up in this game. They can’t reduce all the structures so it is what it is until D4 comes out.
As stated above, I too play frenzy and the barbs main damage/toughness buff wrath of the berserker has a huge cool down. Doesn’t bother me, it’s intended to be used strategically on that build. If I had 100% uptime on wrath…I would be very high on the GR levels.
I have no issues with the CD in D3 the way it’s set up to prevent even more power creep.
Couldn’t agree more.
Yup, that’s been my point all along. It’s all about resource management, and CD is one way of going about it. It might not be the best way, but in order to have that discussion, you have to suggest an alternative option, like the one you just did. It’s only relevant to a specific problem connected to a specific OP skill but it could be a start of a productive conversation.