How many GCDs do you need to endure before actually dealing damage?
The burn setup for Arcane is going to be extremely tedious when you throw into the mix Mirror Image, Covenant ability plus whatever else comes along. Probably cast 5+ supporting spells before even using a single damage ability.
At this rate you won’t even be able to cast them all before the first one runs out haha.
I’m guessing it’ll be something like
Charged up
Covenant
Arcane Power
Rune
Images
Presence
AB
AB
Now you can start casting. The order of those will be different depending on how abilities work (maybe use power last so you don’t waste seconds of it), but there’s just way too much going on in that opener to have it all on the GCD
It’s going to feel so awful to play
And with Arcane Power jumping to a 3 min CD, any wasted second of it will be that much more detrimental to your dps
That is an absolute joke when you actually think about it from a players perspective!
Who at Blizzard thought that was fun when they tested it?
Nothing wrong with 2-3 GCDs to make you feel like you are budding your power. Beyond that it’s tedious and pointless bloat.
Probably the same person that thinks alter time is a fair trade for shimmer 
Shimmer was the default pick so I can understand them wanting to mess with it (right or wrong).
However, adding more GCDs to buff your damage to the point it’s at now serves no purpose at all.
the whole point of alter time back in the day was snapshotting your procs. whats even the point of it anymore I’d rather just have displacement or another shimmer charge
Yep. Its going to be 5 or 6 globals before you can do any damage.
Not cool. Not cool at all
Interesting, but I doubt they intend for us to pop all those cool downs at once. They might be going for higher sustained damage where you pop one or two of those at a time. More frequent windows for buffed up damage instead of just one big one. Though you could use all the cool downs at once if you wanted to, just be harder and longer to setup.
That all comes down to what deals the most damage. Multiplying modifiers has always been effective so can’t see that changing.
It works for healing because the end game is to keep players alive. Therefore staggering Cooldowns is often superior to topping HPS meters. Dealing damage is very different as it all about doing the most in the windows provided.
For sure. Yeah that’s good feedback. We’ll see how it turns out!
It might also depend on the content and situation. Less mobile cases where you can sit still and just cast sure, vs high mobility cases where not being able to stand still and cast for a duration maybe not.
You might be right!
Normally you’d want to stack all of your damage modifiers at once but if you have like 4 or 5 gcd you have to go thru so that the first buff is already halfway dead before you even start casting a damaging spell… well then you would have to restrict how many buffs you want to use and which ones are best to combine and then with different cds perhaps the second time thru you pair up different buffs etc… or maybe they just need to rethink the GCD changes haha c:
Im curious how much more time it takes to make workarounds (ie autocasting RoP when casting Combustion) for mages, then to just take it off the GCD.
Well, the good news is that Rune of Power will now be cast by casting Arcane Power, and Mirror Images is now more of a defensive cooldown.
And Charged Up is baked into Touch of the Magi.
The argument that no one seems to bring up is that BLIZZARD is the one that designs most if not many classes and specs and furthermore the challenges in mythics and raids around in burst windows and boss mechanics that need immediate mitigation. Then, after designing classes and mechanics this way, insert GCDs, almost as an in-game debuff to feel clunky and slow as oppose to what used feel explosive and exciting. Were not deciding that our character has 5 different minor defensive or offensive buffs that operate best if their all used together, Blizzard is . In most circumstances you want them ALL for a burn phase in ALL circumstances you want the autonomy to choose which ones are cast immediately rather then have to wait though 5-6 whole seconds of cds before attacking. This is the way BLIZZARD has designed it. Now their un-pruning abilities, ADDING covenent abilites when it already feels like crap to wait 1.5 seconds after every fn button I press. And the weak as responses that they come up with are getting exausting. Ive literally lost all respect for the big wigs that can step up for interviews and spout out " We learned xyz lesson in xyz patch and have finally learned what players want so were doing xyz." And they keep singing it every expansion without being held accountable for not coming through. If they’ve learned so many lessons, why has the community had to kick and scream for every small change through Alpha and Beta to finally what feels moderately better. Can you imagine what Shadowlands would be if the Alpha and Beta were the same with BFA? It would be complete crap, so what does that say about what was learned in BFA? The real issue is they’re completely out of touch with what their players and to afraid to admit it so they design the game around how much forced game play or participation hours they can squeeze out of a player and not what is entertaining. They have no good reason that self buffs are on the GCD, so they say that they want to make each button press meaningful. Who ever complained about that? Who said, “ahh Blizz, Im making all these creative macros and its just making the game to easy to play. Can you add something to make it feel dog sht slow, so by the time I cast my last buff on an Arcane Mage the first ones almost expired? Thaaanks!” No one ever said that. And its a slap in the face to every sub to make up bs to people who pay you money. Stop being stubborn for stubborn sake and play your own game. I’m quite certain that no game designer at Blizzard has played a Frost DK or Arcane mage, through the course of BFA.
22:15- Narrowing the gaps.
This interview is what I think about every time Blizzard comes out out with new content… is this going to be another expansion where Blizzard unnecessarily digs their heels in and refuses to resolve a problem with a flagship system or a quest and makes me feel like Ive wasted the hours Ive invested in it. There’s no better or worse right Ion… just narrow the gaps on legionaries. A bubble shield neck piece is just as good as a piece of gear that can let timewarp twice in a pull. And were going to stand by that until the end of the expansion before we give you the ability to choose via a vendor. The worst part of BFA for me wasnt how monotonous the content was. It honestly doesn’t take much to get me to play this game. What kills an expansion is how stubborn and unresponsive Blizzard can be. How long will I have to wait before Blizzard moves on Master Looter, how long before I can freely swap between talents in my Azerite gear… that I earned so I dont have to carry nine different pieces for the same spec. Because in BFA, the changes never happened, no one ever listened.
That’s pretty much the vicious circle we’ve had in the Ion-led days of WOW: Make mistakes, add systems no one asked for, get negative feedback on systems, double down on mistakes, get more negative feedback, make interview where the usual “mistakes were made, but we get it now” statements issued, triple down on bad system, lose subs, make new interview announcing changes next expansion, renig on changes, issue new, questionable system that no one asked for, repeat.
Remember how many subs WotLK had without all this foolishness?
There’s so much truth in your post it’s actually sad to read.
The game, under Ion’s leadership, has become this “lather, rinse, repeat” cycle of:
Ion: We have a great idea for next expansion!
Players (after alpha): Here’s all the issues you didn’t think of.
Ion: No no trust us this is going to be great!
Players (after beta): … still has issues. Big ones.
Ion: Ok but it’s going to go live. Trust us! It’ll be great!
… 3 months into expansion
Ion: Ok we have to change major part of expansion. Not the way YOU want it, but we KNOW we can make it work.
… 3 months later
Ion: You guys are not playing the way we want you to but we’ll make more changes to try and steer you in the right direction … OUR DIRECTION!
… 6 months later
Ion: Ok we admit this system is crap. Here’s some catch-up gear and we’ll implement the stuff to fix it but you’re going to have to farm this currency until the end of expansion to get it.
Ion needs to go back to raid design. He’s in-over-his-head as lead dev.