i don’t feel good about a loss incurred for the sin of playing the game during the latter 50% of a cooldown that lasts as oppressively long as meta or deathborne. it wasn’t fun vs infernals and incarn in bfa and it’s not fun now. if we look at a random smattering of three of the most popular comps of the last 2 seasons-retwar, jungle, and rmp-there’s about 3 offensive cooldowns that fit the long-duration+long-cd archetype. wings, berserk, shadow blades. none of these are the primary strength of their comps-berserk and shadow blades are just plain not good tells for when the comp is going to get a kill compared to much shorter and yet much more powerful cds like symbols, reprimand, dance, combust…disciplinary command’s pathetic 10 second downtime…while wings is powerful, but extremely available thanks to the mandatory honor talent that lets ret proc it all the time against most comps that queue
what makes a good comp in modern wow seems pretty clearly to be cooldowns(or resources that take long enough to pool that they are cooldowns in a roundabout way) that are ‘balanced’ around the duration of stuns. low duration, low cd, usable once a setup is already initiated. this motivates the question in title: in the era of playing to prevent setups and avoid the kill windows that such short cds enable within setups, does anyone on either side enjoy the ungameplay of running from deathborne for 45 seconds? if the entire playerbase switched to comps that can mercilessly control a dh for all 40 seconds of meta, would either side enjoy that?
i think it’s time for them to just axe these things. either leave them as external to actually getting kills as berserk, or cut all the durations and cds in half.
Modern pvp has the same problems as pvp dates back to original tbc arena. Some classes struggle vs pillar kiting and all teams struggle vs root and unlimited cc. In those regards the problem hasn’t changed much in sl we have the following:
Unlimited burst goes rmp thug demo caster cleaves.
And unhealable damage when melee get uptime aka sharpen wings sharpen ww cds sharpen tsg.
The problem has always been around and long cds while annoying are nowhere near the problem of unhealable one shots that require pre emptive knee jerk reactions from healers and dps. Shadowlands rewards pve burst rotations and instant cc.
Teams without instant ccs on a short cd are at a massive disadvantage regardless if they have a long offensive cd like deathborne.
i’m really not trying to find a cureall for everything at once. even if they changed nothing else, i think the game would feel better instantly if they took the teeth out of 30s+ offensive cd duration
I understand your frustration and idea however to blanket nerf duration of all big offensive cds across all the classes seems unlikelier than US invading China.
The devs would have to re tweak all pve damage numbers significantly. In a last patch of an expansion where they worked hard at the beginning and legit stopped caring 9.0.5.
oh yeah i mean it’s not gonna happen this patch, it just seems interesting that they’ve let things hit this point at all. the game has clearly been deliberately designed to favor specs with symbols of death and tiger’s fury et al, up to combust and dance and bw and kindred spirits. short offgcd buffs on strong resource pooling/base damage cooldowns or slightly less short buffs that are still much more accessible to the player and much less viably reacted to with “everybody hit the pillar until it’s over”. meta and cds like it seem like fossils in comparison-modern infernal and CA and fire ele are good examples to me. they’re decent dps buffs but they can’t singly keep threatening to end a game with no setup the way deathborne can, and i think that’s a much more fun place for the game to be
This is the first time in a long time melee have an advantage in and expansion over casters though. The amount of gap closers and defensives each class have pretty much destroy turret casters.
I’m excited to see awc and how hybrid comps dominate with a heavy stun all in such as ww fire mage rogue sp rogue mage etc.
i dont think melee have gained any gap closers really since the start of SL, p much everyone has had the same mobility toolkit since BfA (other than door of shadows or soulshape but most melee r necro or kyrian so)
I’m actually coming from the opposite end of the spectrum and wish they’d nerf low cd defensives. Stuff like gfade, outlaw evasion, feral frenzy regens, 15 sec feign death, dark pact, current parry, blur, etc. are all really bad for the game imo. A lot of times people can just waste these and not get punished as as they should for it because they rotate back up so quickly.
Yea but this is the most melee damage have done in a long time.
I’ve never been afraid for my life against necro banner and all these other disgusting covenant abilities like pre nerf toll etc before shadowlands. The conduits are also helping melee mobility massively and defenses are getting shorter cd for celebrity classes like dh warrior etc.
i think it’s possible for this to be true, but it’s balanced on some of these specs in some matchups by how easy the wielder is to kill without them(or despite them)
this is a good point, most of bfa the borrowed power was more defensively helpful than offensively, even in the corruption era. in SL the offensive addition of covenants is massive for a majority of specs
Defenses need to be never changing on cd timers as that creates massive power gaps with people with lower gear and conduits or spec. Shifting power is disgusting because it resets defensives but so is all those conduits that reduce cd of important spells.
The game optimized creates a toxic game play environment as there is too much stuff to balance and a lot of classes fall short massively in some departments.
Everyone is getting better at recognizing bis playstyle and spec is accepted which means people are optimizing like the pros. This inturn creates poor gaming experience compared to back then when people did their own thing.
I enjoy shadowlands pacing and competitive ladder however for a casual who doesn’t research of follow optimization are getting hard stomped. Thus phasing out many of the casuals altogether from wow pvp.
do you really think this could be fixed by nerfing defensive access, though? i don’t see that genie going back in the bottle, the esports scene has trickled too far down and optimization is here to stay
Nerfing things that reduce cd of defensive and offensive rewards people who position well like old days and hold defensives if they are sure they will survive. It rewards proper usage of cds versus just spamming them on cd.
I legit see people press every offensive and defensive cd together sometimes and get rewarded for it since they are counting on them coming back before their trinket is back to save them.
The combust reset pvp talent nerf was good for the game but other things need to get axed in pvp as well.
I kind of wanna go back to every actual class types mattering. Pure DPS, (Rogue, Mage, Hunter, Warlock.) couldn’t heal themselves. First Aid, Food, and outside of arena, consumables, were their only hope. Warlock being the exception as its theme was stealing life. As DPS classes that were relatively squishy, their defensives were more dramatic. Actual Immunity, target dropping, stealth, dodges, mobility. Diverse toolkits that could keep them alive and out of danger. Modest offensive cds to compliment a very strong damage dealing class.
Tank Hybrids, like Warriors, & DKs, were durable. Solid defensives, and when they connected to you they hit hard. Like their 2h weapons implied they would. They weren’t great at connecting though. They had less control. And with some access to offensive cooldowns, like Recklessness, or Gargoyle, they were scary if not more scary than a traditional DPS. But not without counterplay. (Gargoyle could be kicked, shackled. Recklessness cold get you killed lol.)
I don’t wanna get too wordy here but it just goes on and on.
Idk why we have all these damage cooldowns. IDK why we need to be popping off like it’s a moba. I always attribute it to their insane stamina bloat after they started to add difficulty tiers to pve. Needed to give pvp damage modifier windows and such to have kill windows exist or something.