To put it simply… it’s painful beyond belief. Every single time I have to use a cooldown it genuinely feels like im lagging. I’m gonna give some examples of how bad the gcd change is… frost dk lets say I’m using blood of the enemy and I want to pop cds… I then have to stand still pop rune weapon… wait… pop pillar of frost… wait… pop blood of the enemy… pop sindragosa’s breath… wait… pop remorseless winter wait… then I can finally start doing my rotation. It’s genuinely terrible its like 4 to 5 seconds of standing there waiting to play the game. Try spamming arcane explosion as a mage it’s the most boring thing I’ve done in WoW in years… Feels like you’re waiting for the gcd more than your hitting things.
I genuinely do not understand how this change has not been reverted mid expansion. I could stand the azerite system being bad… I could stand class design being off but when the game play is slow and clunky for virtually every spec but extremely high haste specs then it’s just not fun. This game used to be the pinnacle of smooth and quick gameplay but as long as this GCD change plagues the game this game is not deserving of that title. If you’re so incredibly hell bent on keeping this GCD at the very least remove all cooldowns from the gcd because as it is right now is just not fun.
58 Likes
Doesn’t bother me, BM Hunter / Affliction Warlock ftw!!!
2 Likes
DKs used to have a 1.0 second GCD that could speed up to 0.8 with haste from gear.
Now it’s like 1.5 and feels slow.
14 Likes
I still don’t understand the reasoning behind the GCD change. I almost feel like the reason everyone agrees classes are the worst they have ever been is because the GCD change makes everything feel so clunky. If blizzard thinks that bringing back old abilities will solve the pitiful state classes are in right now then they are delusional. GCD change needs to be removed.
35 Likes
It was unwarranted, unwanted and totally random. I honestly still can’t believe they are keeping it in the game.
39 Likes
This combat actually feels slower than FFXIV now.
One of the things FFXIV does to counteract the long global is make very precise safe zones during bosses.
The boss mechanics in FF move so fast, that you end up feeling as if their GCD is actually kind of short because you’re constantly avoiding something while weaving your rotation.
The most that can be said now is that FFXIV boss fights are still the undisputed mix “merry-go-round” or “Twister” of AAA MMOs.
Because, you’re constantly running in circles obeying the mechanics, and putting “right hand on red, left leg on blue” etc. just to stay alive.
6 Likes
From my perspective, GCD is part of it.
Ability pruning is also part of it. My character is less versatile at level 120 than he was at level 90 in MoP. Not only taking away abilities, but taking away utility from abilities we kept (such as removing the passive armor bonus from Veteran of the Third War…we can’t use shields!)
Part of the problem is class mechanics. They’ve nerfed the rune system twice. They’ve nerfed how Mastery interacts with Blood Shield at least twice.
My point is that GCD is a problem, but it’s not the only problem. It might not even be the biggest problem for some specs.
Blood’s slower GCD would hurt a lot less if we had our old tools back.
7 Likes
Azhara’s font of power>prepot+Azhara’s razor coral(NO gcd)>Empowered rune weapon>Remorseless winter>Pillar of frost>howling blast>Blood of the enemy>You may finally start actually playing your class
Let’s see, 4 seconds for font of power, 1.3 seconds each gcd= 10.5 seconds before you can actually play your class.
Some classes are desperately in need to GCD changes
12 Likes
It was about pvp and some classes being able to stack cooldowns, trinkets in an instant and doing ridiculous damage that couldnt be countered due to how fast it happened.
There were a ton of ways to fix this but instead they decided they wanted to slow down the entire game which made certain highly reliant to cd classes feel really bad
12 Likes
The main reason why I shelved my DK. Blood got hit hard on the GCD change, made the entire spec feel like total garbage
4 Likes
Nah, it really doesn’t. Nothing can feel slower than FFXIV’s horrendous combat system.
3 Likes
Yeah but they still do Off-GCD weaving.
2 Likes
There is another issue with it, that goes like this:
Arms is in a terrible place right now. But if there are a lot of mobs, and I’m given the time to actually stack all my CDs, I’ll be #1 in DPS by about 8-12%. A decent enough amount to really annoy epeen kings.
Even on smaller pulls, I’ll still top meters, just by smaller margins.
The problem is that I can only do that once every 2 freaking minutes! So you start the pull, I top the meter… epeen tools get annoyed… and then I fall off into oblivion because Arms is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING when our CDs aren’t up.
And like @Ralph said, in PvP situations, this situation is even worse because it’s not uncommon to be killed outright before I can even finish stacking CDs! By the time I’m ready to start doing any kind of appreciable damage, I’m at 10%.
I understand WHY Blizzard made the change. But it’s the wrong solution to a problem that mostly wasn’t there.
5 Likes
They added it to counter critics who say WoW is a casual action rpg
I quite like it; I don’t know what to tell you.
Don’t forget DPS and healers in FFXIV get quite a few abilities to weave between their GCDs. Sometimes, they even receive a detrimental amount.
1 Like
The bfa prepatch was the day the game died. Not only going from 2 million dps to 4k, but just so much slower than legion and its still awful.
6 Likes
Did it? I started maining blood about halfway through legion, and it didn’t feel different at all going into bfa, where I’m still maining it.
2 Likes
It was to counter an issue they noted in PvP (at least that’s what they said), where people would pop one-shot macro’s and annihilate others. The idea was to give other players a chance to react to your CD being popped, hence why most of the offensive buffs also got graphical updates.
Why it was leaked over into PvE? That I have no idea… It’s one of the reasons why I enjoy playing my fire mage though, as combustion is still off the GCD.
1 Like
That’s not the Frost Opener at all. Howling Blast ? What ? You need to get runic going for Breath of Sindragosa my man!
Azshara’s font of power and prepot are pre-combat. Why are you counting those ? If you’re not using Font at -6/-5, you’re wasting combat time.
Also, you’re popping Empowered Rune Weapon way too early, and Remorseless Winter too.
Actual frost opener :
- pre-combat actions.
- Obliterate
- Obliterate
- Obliterate
- Empowered Rune weapon
- Pillar of Frost
- Breath of Sindragosa.
So your very first combat GCD is an actual damaging spell. You only “lose” 2 GCDs after you’ve casted 3 attacks. Once breath is going, you can start weaving in your Howling Blast for Frost Fever, and your Remorseless Winter.
I mean, if you go out of your way to do it wrong on purpose. In actuallity, for Frost :
- 0 seconds before you can actually play your class.
That is if you don’t count empowering yourself as playing, which it is.
6 Likes