This brings us to a broad category of abilities that are off the GCD in Legion: Offensive burst cooldowns. These are almost always pre-planned and not generally used in response to an unexpected situation. With them off the GCD, talenting into such abilities often just becomes a matter of adding another line to a burst macro without any additional gameplay as a result. In endgame raid and dungeon situations, stacking all possible cooldowns has an outsized impact on someone’s total performance, while in PvP, the fact that major damage amplifiers can be applied simultaneously with an outgoing damage ability (e.g. Battle Cry/Recklessness -> Avatar -> Mortal Strike) heavily limits counterplay and makes worst-case burst damage more severe.
Thus, we're putting most activated offensive cooldowns, along with On Use offensive trinkets, back on the GCD. We will tune these effects around this change (see, for example, the increase to the duration of Recklessness in the latest Alpha build). Abilities like the Elemental shaman's Stormkeeper have demonstrated that an offensive cooldown that takes the place of another spell (and even has a cast time) can still feel very potent.
Do you think it's a better or worse change for PvP? Are one-shot macros hurting the game? Share your thoughts.
Well, it's being done in another effort to protect bad players from feeling bad since their numbers are low, and I strongly disagree with most of their attempts to save players from their own lack of effort.
Really not sure CD stacking's as big of a problem as Blizzard's made it out to be for the last like, 4 expacs.
Pretty sure it's gonna feel like complete garbage even once they finish adjusting skills.
Haven't really put much thought into it, but at first glance this seems to be a good idea. Instead of popping your cooldowns and instantly shredding someone you actually have downtime, which allows people to react properly to what is happening. I could be wrong.
Well, it's being done in another effort to protect bad players from feeling bad since their numbers are low, and I strongly disagree with most of their attempts to save players from their own lack of effort.
Really not sure CD stacking's as big of a problem as Blizzard's made it out to be for the last like, 4 expacs.
Pretty sure it's gonna feel like complete garbage even once they finish adjusting skills.
Agreed, its not hard to react to someones Swifty macro with a healer cd. I'm not a fan of slow paced specs and this is gonna make most of the specs slower. Seems like a pvp change and if they want people to pvp maybe make it not awful. I only do pvp to get my essences for legendaries and everytime I do I want to chop my !%*#!#!! off because I have 3 Illidans, 4 Arthasi and 2 uthers chasing me all game. Their swifty is not a problem, its just their obnoxious uptime and disruptiveness.
UH is a good example, did u ever played one before legion and now? Ill tell u why: Now Gargonoid and Dark Transformation are on GCD since legion and it made the uh rotation slow and tedious. U gotta pop apo, wait, pop gargo, wait, pop DT, wait and then strike again.
Concerned about abilities like icy veins or shadow dance being on the GCD tbh, shadowdance for obvious reasons and stuff like icy veins because it's a haste buff and by adding it to the GCD you effectively lower the haste it provides.
Some things though, I am glad they're adding a GCD to. I don't think it should be on everything, but look at situations like ascendance for enhance shaman. Bloodlust, ascendance, doomwinds and stormstrike all in the same GCD? Incarnation tiger's fury stealth rakestun in the same gcd? Reck avatar sharpen mortalstrike all in the same gcd?
These kinds of things can be very offputting for some classes, especially casters, because they can't really do the same thing. Even the closest equivalent which is probably arcane power PoM arcane blast arcane blast is 2 gcds, and purgeable, and honestly not that dangerous unless it's chained with arcane missiles or aluneth. What caster has anything even close to the immediacy of incarn TF rake or ascendance doomwinds bloodlust stormstrike? of battlecry avatar odyn's?
And look at abilities that are still on the GCD but still hugely dangerous? DH meta effectively has a GCD, ele shaman stormkeeper has a GCD and a cast time, I could be wrong, but I think infernals is on the GCD too etc. Still, would be interested to hear how the gladiators feel about this change.
Major buff to a class with 1 but strong offensive cd (Avenging Wrath), major nerf to the one with 2-3 offensive cds (Warrior, WW monk) or setup based comp that kills during stun
Seriously you need to waste a whole 5 sec stun duration to pop 3 abilities, and its way too obvious if you try to pre activate it (not to mention they already nerfed stun duration in bfa anyway)
Will have to test this out, for now i'm interested in how this could be implemented within PVP
I feel like this is gonna cripple RMP, who rely on bursting everything before you can even react to it happening. I might have time to breath again! Lol
Cd stacking was ruining the game then they removed half the cds and made trinkets useless so now were in a system where u do no damage outside of cds unless ur frost dk. And inside of cds u do far too much damage.
Remember when Warriors had to stance dance to use shield wall? When rets had to preemptively cast a bunch of trash buffs to not get wings instantly spellstolen? etc.
This seems to be just going back to that kind of gameplay where you can predict things happening and react to it, or fail to react and be potentially heavily punished.
They put some major defensives on the GCD yet left major bursts unchecked making it easy kill someone in a global with them being unable to react. It's stupid.
Now there will be a realistic time to react. I see no issue at all, but then again, I absolutely hate how melee are atm and fully believe they deserve some way to be slowed down.
Will have to test this out, for now i'm interested in how this could be implemented within PVP
I feel like this is gonna cripple RMP, who rely on bursting everything before you can even react to it happening. I might have time to breath again! Lol
Only some CDs will be on the gcd and Shadow Dance is not one of them due to previous demands to remove it.
I know Combustion is, but unsure about the other mage ones.
Put kick on the GCD, give kicks back their old lockout duration and slightly higher cooldowns. High risk high reward, high skill high reward. That is the way.
Worked great all the way up until PvE nerds cried it was too hard to land interrupts. Answer to high skill abilities is never to remove skill, its always "Get good."
What are the chances, this change is entirely being done to add more GCD's to BfA's third round of ability pruning & cover how few active buttons are left?
UH is a good example, did u ever played one before legion and now? Ill tell u why: Now Gargonoid and Dark Transformation are on GCD since legion and it made the uh rotation slow and tedious. U gotta pop apo, wait, pop gargo, wait, pop DT, wait and then strike again.
i agree with this i think the change will def be good but cds are an issue for sure but also class pacing is a huge concern
just curious but did anyone else notice the global cooldown increase for most classes going from mop > wod
then the rest of classes getting their gcd increase from wod>legion that def reduced skill cap for dps rotations since before it was fast paced and you had to be on top of things someone could have like 25 less frost strikes than you which would tell you what they were doing wrong vs this gcd where everything is slow enough to make mistakes pretty unnoticable and the game feels pretty slow for most melee
similar to how warrior has always had a longer gcd before everyone else and was a slow but heavy hitting type set up now everythings just slow