Right now we have way too many things on GCD and it makes our openers in both pve and pvp feel super lame. Outbreak, Dark Transformation, Unholy Frenzy, Apocalypse, Soul Reaper. That’s 5 right there not including Unholy Blight if you take it, for 6, or Army of the Dead, that’s 7! (And with Azerite abilities it’s 8!) 8 globals right now before you can start doing your normal rotation is just horrible.
And then in Shadowlands we’re getting Gargoyle as baseline which is sweet for sure, but honestly is it worth another GCD slot? We’re gunna be pushing 15 seconds here just on our setup alone. Nevermind AMZ too for another GCD. Death Grip also being on a GCD doesn’t make any sense because it’s meant to be utility. Imagine having an interrupt on a GCD.
The solution to this is to take some of these off the GCD. I’ve seen some YT videos about this problem and I really hope Blizzard makes some changes here going into SL.
Don’t forget gargoyle is coming back baseline, I’ll probably run army of the damned in shadowlands over unholy frenzy unless frenzy ends up being disgustingly better, if it’s a few %, i’ll keep damned since I love magus.
of those abilities listed, the only one that shouldnt be on GCD is Dark Transformation. Since it doesnt really have anything to do with you, its your Ghoul transforming. Should be able to do it while your CC’d as well.
Deathgrip as well* should be off GCD.
yeah it’s pretty ridiculous, I came back to the game a few weeks ago. Overall unholy feels great outside of the 4-5 binds I have to use to use CDs outside of trinks etc. So what’s worse in shadowlands is that we will also get gargoyle + covenant class + covenant regular ability. So potentially it could be like a 6-7 button combo before you can even do damage.
One way I can fix is to bake unholy frenzy into apocalypse or something. Or gargoyle could just be one of the minions that gets spawned by apocalypse (tuned down ofc)
Congrats, it’s only gonna get worse. Garg has Dark Arbiter baked in as a core function, and Dark Aribiter skews the stat weights HEAVILY towards Haste. And guess what gives haste… Unholy Frenzy. So I really don’t even think Army of the Damned will be remotely considered without tuning alterations. Right now, the level 100 tier is split between Frenzy and Army, but SL will lock that tier into Frenzy and Frenzy alone, just through mechanical synergy.
Blizzard should strip out Dark Arbiter from Gargoyle, make Dark Arbiter its own talent, and keep Garg as a fire and forget cooldown baseline. Arbiter is a rotation and stat weight warping spell, that’s so powerful that it completely changes the rest of the core rotation.
All of Unholy’s damage is going into burst. The core rotation WILL feel like absolute trash in SL, and it won’t do hardly any damage at all. Blizzard should be moving to pull damage out of cooldowns, not put more into it.
The Icecap build just dies with Icy Citadel and Frostwhelp’s removal. On a baseline level, Frost is really looking like it’s gonna be locked into Breath, which is a huge issue, considering that for years the spec was all about weapon strikes and physical presence.
Baseline Frost has no way to spend RP in an AoE, and even on the beta, it’s looking like resources are coming in faster than people can spend them, which is a state that BoS heavily benefits from.
What? You can push 100% uptime with good procs, Frostwhelp makes the GCD have an impact, and Citadel makes the buff worth a damn in concert with Frozen Heart, in a world where Strength is absolutely worthless. Removing those traits will make the ability feel terrible. If it stays on GCD, gets it’s buff power stripped down to just mainstat, and loses its’ on cast damage, then it’ll be a downright boring and stupid spell.
Having to press an ability with a gcd every 15 seconds (assuming maximum uptime) feels bad.
Icecap is over capped on resources a lot of the time and having to wait on a GCD does not feel great. Whelps make it feel a bit better but still not great.
Idk, if you think keeping a buff or debuff up every 15 seconds, idk why you chose DK as your Class, all 3 specs have things to cast every 15-20 seconds. Frost has Remorseless Winter and Unholy has Outbreak, which are both cast every 15~ seconds. You have a very odd complaint for Icecap and Pillar.
The resource overcap is a major problem. So much of the baseline Frost spec is utterly warped by Breath of Sindragosa that other builds inherently run into problems.
I would not say it’s an odd complaint at all.
The majority of players want POF off the gcd.
It was a major complaint when it was first added.
It doesn’t feel as bad when playing BOS because of the longer cd. When you shorten it to the boring Icecap build it feels super bad.
I’m fine with RW on the gcd but both does not feel good.
If you ever do any challenging content where priority dps is needed and you have to wait for 2-3 gcd a before you can open up on a target it feels really bad.
I agree. It’s way too many. I wouldn’t mind it if Unholy Frenzy’s effect was added to Apocalypse. We pair those abilities together quite often anyway so it’d make sense.
If they gave Dark Transformation the Blade Flurry treatment so that it actually does some damage on cast (your ghoul charges target and explodes for damage, as it transforms) it’d be fine, but otherwise I’d like it off the GCD.
As for Soul Reaper, I really hope to see it back as an execute. Grip should really be off the GCD, but we all know that already.
Gargoyle again is another case where it’d feel better with the Blade Flurry treatment. What if using the ability would summon Gargoyle and also fire off a death coil? This way it’d do a bit of damage and also juice up the Gargoyle a bit, right off the bat.
They could/should add a Gargoyle component to AotD, to lower its CD as well. That way our major CDs would still match up.
Going to have to disagree with this. Unholy’s single target does not feel great, especially without CDs up. Popping wounds one at a time, for less damage than a resto shaman’s lava burst, is truly depressing.
You are probably just playing unholy wrong. if you have Azerite abilities in your opener. You should be using Vision of Perfection alongside three Magus of the Dead traits. I have no idea what Unholy Blight is. Is that a talent mod to D&D? If so, don’t take that talent, epidemic is so much better. Soul reaper isn’t an opener ability, it’s a resource generator. Ignore the damage it deals, it’s used mostly to generate runes. You should be using army of the dead a few seconds before the pull anyways, so the gcd for it shouldn’t be an issue. If you are using D&D for single target, you are wasting both a rune and a gcd. Unholy Frenzy can be opted out of for m+ in place of the talent that makes army and apocalypse cd faster, but should still be taken in most cases.