Seeing as we’re rapidly approaching Shadowlands I wanted to make a post about one of the changes made to the game that I despise the most. The GCD change.
It’s intuitively obvious after 15 minutes of gameplay that these changes heavily ruin the rhythm of your rotation as you just stand AFK for 1.5 seconds after every single cooldown. It is simply not fun. The problem is exacerbated further with classes that have several cooldowns to press in a row before they can start dealing damage.
One of the reasons you made this change was to stop people from macro’ing all their CD’s into one button and blowing people up in PvP before they could react. I would say the inherent issue is not the GCD, it’s the fact that cooldowns are way too strong and sustained damage is way too low. Besides, is ruining the feel of every single cooldown in the game worth it just to fix this one thing? Even when it could be fixed in much more satisfying ways? You could also simply fix this issue by putting cooldowns on their own GCD, sort of like Final Fantasy.
One specific example I heard was that it could be an interesting choice if you had to decide between using Displacer Beast or Rejuv. First of all, for that to be a meaningful choice, it would mean that 1 of you has to die or take massive damage depending on what you choose, otherwise the decision doesn’t really matter. Secondly, that isn’t a fun decision, and is less skillful than realizing that you need to do both and actually executing both. What am I supposed to just let 1 of us die or take grievous damage because the game says so, even though I am good enough to save both?
Thirdly, one of the reasons that Resto Druid is unique is that they’re very mobile while healing, this change diminishes that class fantasy. They’re still mobile, just watered down. Funnily enough that’s basically BfA in a nutshell - it’s Legion but watered down. Fourth of all, this scenario almost never happens, and if it does happen, it’s never a meaningful choice, no matter what, as I’ve already explained.
So you basically changed it to increase the skill cap. That sounds fine on paper, but it doesn’t work in practice as I’ve already explained, but let’s discuss it some more.
There’s basically 2 types of damage that are relevant to defensive or movement based cooldown usage. One is predictable damage, the second is unpredictable damage. Predictable damage is always heavily telegraphed, either by huge spell effects or long cast times.
In PvE you’re always going to be prepared for the predictable damage beforehand (and if you’re not, your spell being on the GCD didn’t affect that), so having your cooldown on the GCD isn’t going to affect how you play at all. Its only effect will be stopping you from performing your rotation for 1.5 seconds before you want to use your cooldown. It could be (easily) argued that this requires LESS skill than having your CD off the GCD as you have fewer things to manage.
There’s no meaningful decision, there’s no intricate thought process. All of the decisions that I’m making are decisions I would make no matter if my CD was on the GCD or not, the GCD change simply slows down my ability to execute on my decisions.
In PvP there’s no such thing as inherently predictable damage as players can use CD’s at any time. Because of that you never know when to stop performing your rotation, which makes it never worth it to stop performing your rotation. What happens in-game is that you do your rotation as normal (which is the correct and more importantly, FUN play), someone pops a CD and your reaction is delayed arbitrarily because Blizzard says so.
Again, it would require MORE skill if you could pop your cooldowns as fast as possible to react to what your opponent is doing. This all applies to the damage that’s unpredictable in PvE aswell. All the GCD change does is slow the game down. Again, if you’re worried about people getting bursted, nerf cooldowns.
Let’s talk about offensive cooldowns. You press your cooldowns, and then you wait until you can play the game. This is obviously not very fun. If we compare BfA to Legion we can see that in Legion your cooldowns felt like a hero moment. It was a time where your rotation got amplified, modified and dynamic. It was a change in the rhythm and pace of your GCD that was fun and made you feel powerful. Basically a time when your APM increased.
In BfA the cooldowns do the exact opposite. They slow down your rotation, nay - they completely halt your rotation. They don’t spice up the rhythm at all and just keeps your rotation feeling monotone until the haste of your cooldown (if you get any) kicks in. The hero moment is dead. This problem would NOT be fixed simply by giving the cooldown a damage effect as it would still not mix up the pacing and rhythm of your GCD.
I know Blizzard wanted big cooldowns to feel cool and impactful with this change, but it actually does the opposite. It makes pressing my big cool buffs feel like a chore I need to get out of the way so I can keep playing the game. I don’t know, I just feel like the GCD change misses the mark on pretty much everything it set out to do.
This GCD change might sound good on paper, but it doesn’t make sense when actually implemented. Not once have I thought “wow I really hated pressing Avenging Wrath because I had it macroed with something else” nor did I feel like my cooldowns lost their identity. I seriously doubt most players have even thought about it.
If you disagree with me, feel free to let me know. But I think that the majority of players feel this way. Even if they don’t know it. Most of the playerbase never goes on reddit, they don’t watch dev interviews, they don’t visit forums. They just play the game, and if it feels worse they quit.
Restore the snappy and reactive gameplay of Legion. It’s more fun and it makes sense in the context of WoW’s design. WoW isn’t some chess game where weighing decisions is important, the game just doesn’t work that way. It’s a fast paced game, and the GCD change is counter-intuitive to the nature of the game.
I’ve played this game since I was a child. I want what’s best for it, even though that might sound stupid. I just hope someone at Blizzard sees this and takes my feedback into consideration.
