Gcd is the biggest problem of bfa

Community General Discussion
61

Once upon a time in a long dead game there was that thing to balance your mastery/haste/crit/whatever settings with your actual class design.

Now this has all gone out of the window and people stack up haste haste haste and haste just to make their class feel somewhat playable, and stack up more haste to have some fun.

How is that an “improvement”? :thinking:

62

You seem to be implying that the reason people are stacking haste is to counter the “GCD” change. If that’s so then you seem to lack a basic understanding of the GCD in general as the two aren’t related.

The GCD change affects mainly big cd abillities, the haste is to smooth out your rotation.
We got used to a higher level of haste in previous expansions but now in BFA we’re basically lacking 3 gear pieces with traditional stats, haste being one of them.

63

Yes they are related.
GCD is not just on “big CD abilities”, it is EVERY instant ability. I assume that’s the reason why there are next to no affliction warlocks anymore, it’s so antifun to play because basically every, except for one, ability is instant.
Melees are much less affected by GCD, it is programmed so, but still you can speed up your fight by stacking haste. My rogue used to be happy with 13-14% haste for energy, now I need 20%+ to make it feel sort of smooth.
I have all 12 classes, and every single one stacks haste, and only secondary other stats that may prove useful.

This is game-design-wise not an improvement by any stretch of the imagination, it’s terrible. But it fits well into the idea that itemlvl wins over taking care of your gear. Y’know, all that reforging stuff, gems, enchants etc that once used to be there to improve your character, which have been sweeped from the game and replaced with itemlvl only, to open up the hunting field for titanforged, with no more other considerations.

64

What do you mean? All the melee abilities are instant or channeled, most ranged classes are casting, I think that’s partially the reason boomkin is so strong right now.

65

Yes lead designer doesnt matter, all that matters is you whining on the forums i guess ^^

Im playing with 6-7% haste and i enjoy this game alot while probably using alot more skills than you are but…You have to whine :wink:

66

The GCD is lower for melees than it is for casters, it is still there, however, and you can influence it with haste. Try it out, replace the non-azerite stuff with items without haste and try playing. It’s not at all the same.

A casted spell does indeed not trigger the GCD, white instant abilities do, also those that procc to become instant spells. If you dont have enough haste to counter the GCD a little, you will be interrupted in your rotation to the point it’s absolutely no fun. I played affli in Legion, and leveled in BFA as an affli, but it became increasingly annoying (because at 117+ you end up with like 8% haste only and have no chance to counter it; the regression of the leveling process that is always commented on, that you feel weaker the higher you level, comes entirely from this!), and it is in this level range that you can observe the effects of GCD the most. Once you hit max and can again optimise your character, everyone stacks haste first and foremost. It is not good class design, and overall it’s a bad idea and was from the start.

Moonkin is strong at all levels, even at 50, and on max lvl, specially with some of the very cool azerite traits, it’s beyond imba. I expect it to be nerfed soon lol (along with monk). But moonkin has a good balance of casted and instant spells as well, and you cant really be silenced because they have many different kinds of magic (nature, astral etc), when my frost mage gets silenced, he is silenced, end of story. With moonkin I just can say I dont care, I just use another kind of magic, it never hinders me. So it really is a strong specc in all aspects.

67

Yeah, as i expected, you completely misunderstood the GCD.
First of all, warlocks are fine, i played affliction in Legion, prior to GCD change, and i’ve played it this expansion aswell. Warlocks in general are the LEAST affected by the GCD change, hell if you dont’ pick Dark Soul as a talent, NOTHING is different from Legion.

Secondly, GCD has always existed and it’s necessary, the affliction instant spells like Agony, Corruption, Siphon Life, etc have been on GCD since vanilla, before haste as a stat even existed, and this never changed.
The BFA GCD change, which you don’t undetsand, yet have strong opinions about, affects mainly big cd abilities, which were stacked together in a macro, generating a huge amount of burst. Originally these abilities were on GCD, taken off at some point and now they returned on GCD in order to tone down burst damage.

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Maybe you just try using the given spell keys instead of a macro, because I dont think you really know the effects at all, because you never experience them anymore. You stuffed it all away in an automated process, press once and 5 spells are being spammed out. You dont know what you are talking about, where it affects playing and where not, you are just repeating the nonsense and arguments of the lead game designer and because he says so, it is good? Hm, maybe not.

So then tell me, why was Affli in Legion fun to play and is not anymore now? Apart from many, rather minor things, the one thing that sacked the spec for me is the now longer-by-default GCD, which just prevents smooth playing. And while the world was populated a lot by affli warlocks, I havent seen any for months. Maybe it is because you need to stack haste and never get to the point of having enough mastery to get out any damage? I wonder…

69

But with that in mind they’d hqve to design the whole next expansion that way for something not too many people are miffed about. I see ot as a preventative for button mashing. Very healthy for PvP
Makes you think a little more in PvE
Makes the game feel a little slower to give you those twp things though.

70

/facepalm
Yeah i’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I just explained a basic mechanic that works the same way since vanilla, yet you think this class ruined the very class i’m playing right now with a change from Legion to BFA.
The fact that it feels like i repeat something is probably because some else tried to tell you how GCD works yet you failed to listen, thinking you know better, classic for this forum.

72

How come they rework certain classes, remove the big cd’s (avatar and bloodbath come to mind) and then still go through with the gcd change, You pop reckless(which isn’t a huge window) and then you just wait, you can charge to alleviate some of that downtime, but my God does it get annoying after a while.

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To be fair I very likely play the game more than Ion does.

It’s just natural I’d drive my feedback towards what I’ve enjoyed previously.

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Gee I don’t know. Maybe the complete redesign of the spec that they did?

You realise they didn’t ‘increase’ the gcd at all right?

75

Ahh I can see it infront of me now… when they remove all the GCD changes;
All those topics in the PvP forum Screeching about healers able to instantly heal themselves up by popping their CD’s followed by instant heals. Or Tanks able to compeltely nullify their opponents bursts etc.

Well I don’t mind either way, keep ir or change it… Don’t matter much to me really.

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76

To be fair, exactly the same thing is what all these game-developer-wannabe’s think when they whine on forums.

Youre absolutely true, it changes alot in the game but it did a great job killing those macros spammed by non-brain-needed specs + as said again its needed because pretty soon with the amounts of haste we will have if that change wasnt being done we would be in a constant bloodlust.

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77

I feel as if the GCD change made PvP at least feel somewhat better.

Rather than everyone just having a ‘‘SUPER ULTRA MEGA DEATH POP EVERYTHING’’ macro every 3 minutes people actually have to cycle cooldowns and think about the order of how they play and the order of their burst/rotation.

But there probably is a happy medium between what we had in WoD/Legion and BFA

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78

Ah yes now you have to press 1 2 3 instead of having it macro’d such a great improvement. :joy::joy:

If they really wanted people not to tie up all their offensive CDs into macros they could just have made them unmacroable, this was just an excuse to slow the game down and cater to players who cba making macros / use their brain whatsoever.

This GCD change completely busted some specs or even spells. ie. rapture as disc.

Before, you’d press rapture, get a PWS and then you’d start healing benefiting on your atonement : 2 GCDs.

Now, you have to press rapture - GCD - pws - GCD - start healing. 3 GCDs.

As a priest what are you doing ? I have to blow up a cooldown, might pop rapture. No you can’t because you’re losing a GCD and you might just use that GCD to apply a standard PWS or to cast. You’re under pressure and in the end you will never use rapture as you can’t afford wasting a GCD that isn’t even going to heal because it is boosting another GCD-tied spell.

79

Having GCD on all spells is there just for the sake of balancing things out.
Instead of offensive oGCD used at the same time with GCD rotation you could use only GCD and it is way easier to balance it that way, especially in PVP where the game was terribly broken in legion.
Also it is easier on server.
They made game slower to make game more balanced, it is in e-sport afterall.

80

Yes we can clearly see the game is well balanced with a lot of class diversity both in M+ / arenas :joy::upside_down_face:

81

The GCD changes wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t coupled with the infernal lag during evenings.

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