Lets take Genjis deflect and Ventures burrow.
One gives full immunity, and provides very obvious telegraphed damage based on charge, the other provides immunity to everything but beams, but can return damage and kill the attacker.
One has a cast time where you are vulnerable, the other does not.
One can be canceled early, with no indication, denying the opponent to react.
One has a 6 second CD, the other, 8 ( not counting the animation).
Both are dive heros with immune abilities.
One is far better than the other, and has a reduced cooldown. Why? How is something like this determined? If genji gets a kill, he gets a free escape with his refreshed swift strike. If Venture gets a kill, they are still vulnerable as hell to anyone around them.
Because the characters are different. It could be the exact same ability and its cooldown could still be different because the characters are different in everything else.
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Vibes initially, then they raise/lower cooldowns as necessary for balance with balance being looked at from a âis this character too strong/weakâ perspective rather than âis this ability too strong/weakâ.
They probably start with a guess. Given what we want x ability to do is probably about y strong, start out with z cooldown. Then while they continue to iterate on the ability design and test it out, they refine that number. Eventually both the ability and the cooldown will be in a state they are happy with and it goes live.
Then they look at the data they have from people playing it and decide whether to change the ability including the cooldown.
Both are 8 seconds. I would like for deflect to not be manually cancellable, since it has no start-up or recovery time which tbh makes it feel like you arenât allowed to shoot at genji
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Burrow is without a doubt MUCH stronger than Deflect, so no.
First: as others pointed out, theyâre parts of different kits. Genji doesnât gain overhealth from using abilities, for instance.
Second: even if you want to compare them 1:1, you canât. They work very differently from each other, and they have their own strengths and weaknesses. It also makes sense in a vacuum that the ability with the shorter duration has the lower cooldown.
There is no reasoning, just straight BS and no logic. Hog and Orisa can spam stuns every 6 seconds but Cassidyâs dogđ© hinder is at 12 seconds
Defence matrix and hogâs breather both under 2 seconds. Sigmas shield is 3 seconds
And then you have Soldier 76âs healing field at 18 seconds LMFAO. Bapâs shift and Kirikoâs suzu are both 15 seconds btw!!!
Again 0 reasoning. They give the most impactful cooldowns way too short of a cooldown, and then the disposable cosmetic cooldowns extra long CDâs
I would say they first guess it (on similar abilities) and then the next time they change it during playstests. Then maybe some CC and pro feedback and then we get them in the game. After that they look where the stats are and then change it depending on meta and synergies.
Because while they perform similar roles, they perform them differently. Genji deflect has a shorter window to be useful and requires Genji to aim his crosshair to effectively delfect damage into enemies, not just avoid the damage
Venture has an AoE attack which requires less aim, but it also gives them shield health and the obviousness of the ability is both good and bad. Bad because itâs telegraphed, but good because itâs a looming threat the enemy team has to put focus on which can leave them open to your team, and also good because itâs flexible with drill dash and what you combo with after you emerge
Cooldowns times are decided both by âwhat feels good for the player to use and the enemy to have a fair shot at playing against thisâ as well as the risk vs reward factor
It is not that complicated, they just spin the RNG wheel with values to determine this.