Why the clunk of removing the GCD cost only if you bloat your bars with cat/bear form actions instead of just removing the GCD cost outright (while retaining a GCD-length ICD into other form-shifts or form-cancellation)?
I could understand limiting it via a further hidden charge system (e.g., only 2 free swaps per 10s) or whatnot, but the present implementation feels jank as hell, especially for Cat-weave.
Why allow a free transfer on Rip, Shred, Mangle, Wrath, or Starfire but not Maim, Swipe (cat), Swipe (bear), Thrash, or Starsurge? And in any of those cases… why burn the button-space in each form from which the skill cannot normally be used instead of just using the stance/form-changes meant to allow for the relevant button efficiency?
Hell, even if we could fit every natural, moonkin, cat, and bear form skill conveniently on one bar, why have those skills available out of form to replace the feel of the actual form-changes with what would instead amount only to a lingering buff based on the category of your most recent GCD action?
It’s not as if one is getting any more Energy to cat-weave with from that QoL, nor any more responsive a Skullbash since Skullbash is an oGCD. At most it streamlines Maim and allows a slightly later swap back to Cat to not waste Energy / potential bleed uptime (which only reduces the punishment of a mistake rather than improving maximal value). Meanwhile, it’s not as if Chicken-weave is so powerful that it must lose a GCD to each form cycle. Nor does would simply replacing the GCD cost with an ICD equal to your remaining GCD allow you to shift a second time any faster; the ICD is still shared between forms anyways, locking you into it for a GCD regardless of whether it costs a GCD’s worth of uptime against other GCD actions. Is there some way this could exponentiate into OP-dom that I’m missing, especially as not already mostly doable through the clunky form we have already?
P.S.:
Again, a Form Shift not incurring the GCD (or “no longer having a GCD cost”) does not mean you can shift again any sooner or freely; it just means it doesn’t lock you out of GCD actions for the GCD interval after shifting. You’d still be locked into that form for the GCD length regardless.
But that doesn’t go away. There’d still be an ICD on each Form preventing you from using another within the same GCD, as per any shared-feature oGCDs. It’s just that, at least within reasonable constraints, you don’t lose that uptime.
Right now, if you swapped between Moonfire, Shred, Rip, and Mangle, for instance, you could cycle with no such penalty, so that much is already there. It’s just applying the constraint in as clunky and button-bloated a manner as possible. I’d rather the constraints be more intuitive – unfelt except where they’d most be exploited or lead to degenerate gameplay.
Right now:
Swapping Forms has no uptime cost if done via a certain form shifted skills, none of you would normally have or want on your natural form bars, allowing you even to swap out of a form and back without losing a single GCD of uptime (so long as your GCD would have been spent on Shred, Rip, Moonfire, Starfire, or Mangle anyways).
What I want:
Every 6 seconds, you generate a stack of Fluid Form, nullifying the GCD incurred by your next change of Form. You can hold up to 2 stacks.
Changing form still incurs a (GCD-length) internal cooldown shared across all forms. Stacks’ speed of generation affected by Haste. (This is far less abusable for PvP purposes and yet also far more intuitive.)
Anywhere from 4 to 7 seconds should do the trick nicely, tbh.
You have yet to make a point; you’ve given only an unsubstantiated claim.
Form Shift not incurring the global cooldown would not increase the rate or ease of Form Shift. It’d still be locked out during the GCD. It just wouldn’t trigger it.
The sole result would be that Fluid Form goes from effectively giving Form Shift no uptime cost if any only if you use Shred, Rip, Mangle, Moonfire, or Starfire from your natural form (thus forcing those actions to bloat your hotbars) to simply no uptime cost (thus allowing us not to bloat our action bars, as we can then swap into the Form directly and then use any such form-fit ability).
The only changes then are, essentially, if I wanted…
use Sunfire directly from Moonkin Form instead of Moonfire → Sunfire,
use Frenzied Regeneration without necessarily using Mangle first (for a whole 1s earlier HoT tick, itself inconsequential compared to the bonus Armor we already get instantly), or
to use Rake directly from Cat Form instead of Rip/Shred → Rake.
Given that…
the first is irrelevant in PvP outside of BG AoE situations against which form-shifting in general is in inconsequential,
the second is virtually irrelevant in any and all content, and
the last is gated by Energy anyways…
…yes, I fail to see how Fluid Form (which already powershifts, even if jankily) is fine as it is now but an un-jank form would not be.
I think powershifting (as that has classically been called) was removed because of PvP.
Now that they tune seperately for PvP and PvE, I could definitely see an argument for bringing it back for PvE (dont care either way for PvP).
I would say it is not SUPER needed, though, and having just a few abilities that incur no GCD (Shred, Starfire, etc.) mostly fixes the shapeshifting issue in combat where you have to waste a GCD to do things in different forms. Sure, they could add a few more abilities to the list, in my opinion, but overall I’m pretty satisfied with fluid form.
With the current way fluid form works, I can literally use a macro to “power shift” automatically every time I shred or rake, if I want to. This allows me to freely break slows and roots every shred or rake.
If fluid form simply removed the GCD instead, the only difference is that I could technically do this when there’s no enemy in range or when I’m out of energy, which isn’t much of a benefit in PvP, but would be a nice QoL feature.
People who think powershifting would be OP in PvP just aren’t using fluid form to its full potential in PvP.
Here’s the issue: Those posts were made before Fluid Form was added. We can already do these things — just clunkily. Removing that clunk would have infinitesimally small benefit in PvP, if any.
Is it laziness that makes you forget that difference in context, or…?
Also thinking about it more, what’s being asked here isn’t even a return to the old way.
For those who may not remember, previously, shapeshifting out of a form did not trigger a cooldown on shapeshifting back into the same form. So powershifting involved a macro (though could be done manually) to leave and re-enter the same shapeshift form within the same GCD. It would basically allow you to clear slows while remaining in cat form, but it still used a whole GCD to do it where you couldn’t use any other abilities.
Later it was changed so leaving a shapeshift form incurs a 1.5s cooldown before you can re-enter that same form again. So if you leave cat form, you cannot re-enter cat form for 1.5 seconds, but you can use any other shapeshift or ability during that time.
Casting a shapeshift form still incurs the GCD, meaning when you enter cat form, you still have to wait for the GCD before you can use an ability like shred or rake.
Now, with fluid form, using certain abilities automatically places you into that shapeshift form with no additional cooldown. Meaning that, right now, you can be in cat form and make a macro (or manually do this) to leave cat form then cast shred right away, which places you back into cat form.
What fluid form essentially does is actually better than the old powershifting, because power shifting used an entire GCD just to break a slow, whereas fluid form allows that powershift to take place while using shred or rake, essentially allowing you to do it for completely free, at the expense of triggering a 1.5s GCD for shred or rake instead of the standard 1s GCD in cat form.
Fluid form is literally better than the old power shifting except in situations where you cannot attack an enemy in melee range, but in those situations shifting from cat into bear or travel form is often better anyway.
TLDR: Fluid form is actually more powerful than the old power shifting in most ways for PvP because it doesn’t waste a GCD to shift, so arguments that “powershifting is too powerful for PvP” don’t really hold water in the current version of the game in my opinion.
Indeed, ever since the Powershift nerf it’s become far more imperative to learn how to rapidly shift between forms depending on the situation. For example, in a battleground if I’m carrying a flag and chased by melee with slows, I’ll shift travel->out->cat->out->repeat (Tireless Pursuit was nerfed though ugh – but still probably useful in that situation). My most intuitive / easiest to press button is a conditional macro that shifts into Moonkin, then between Moonkin and Bear. etc.
I agree. They could have shapeshifting incur a slightly longer 2-3s CD with itself if there are balancing concerns. Just let us use shapeshifting independently of our regular GCD when this talent is selected.
The biggest reason is because you have to setup extra keybinds or have some janky macro to use these spells. This is especially bad on resto which has a crap ton of keybinds. Most player will bind their core form spells to 1, 2, 3 etc on their main bar, but this is hard to do with resto having balance + healing spells all bound to the primary.
Also something to consider is that all other melee classes have gotten multiple buffs to their mobility over time.
“Back in the day” druids WERE the most mobile, but now that’s simply not the case anymore.
I mean outlaw rogues can literally make it to one of the enemy bases at the start of Blitz EOTS before the enemy team can even cap their base.
Even some casters have almost as much mobility as us now.
I cannot believe someone else was smart enough to think of this too. Fluid Form is a very cool concept that unfortunately is not a viable talent due to the covoluted restrictions. If it were altered to remove shifting from the GCD entirely it could really shake up the meta for Druids of all specs in a lot of interesting ways.
For example, I can have Shred be the same key no matter what form I’m in. This is useful to me.
I rarely use my actual shapeshifting key in combat, and as a result, they’re not super convenient keys that are easy to hit (they all use Ctrl modifier).
If the OP’s suggestion went through, but didn’t directly allow other-form abilities to shift you into those other forms, I would need all my form abilities to be “good” keybinds, which, at least for me, would cause a lot more keybind bloat than the current situation.
Of course, if it removed the GCD for shifting AND still kept the current functionality, well ok then. I mean that’s obviously better since you’re not losing anything.
I agree with you I like the functionality it provides, but most druids don’t like that it’s limited to specific abilities, all of them melee range abilities to boot.
Even if the talent change didn’t keep the same functionality, a macro would still provide you the same functionality, tho I don’t like the idea of having to macro every ability either. But in its current form it adds too much complexity to something that is supposed to be fluid
Agreed. I change forms a lot. Playing DotC I tried to incorporate fluid form (seemed like a great idea), but optimization is not always about rotating strikes. I drop into cat form to sprint, jump back to bear brace for a hit, cat again to leap with a stun, bear again to taunt…
Fluid form just seemed to add new macros that filled my bar. It really sounds more efficient, but ended up removing it to avoid unintentional shift and yea—button bloat. Love the intention… just needs a better implementation.