But if that’s the case then why make such a big fuss about it? How exactly is losing 1 sec every 2 min ruining the game? aren’t you guys overreacting a bit?
It is a 2 edged sword. Looking at a 12 second buff on a 3 minute cooldown, and then having to wait 1.5 seconds till it works, that is pure pain. And not being able to use a defensive the moment you want it, is bad. I think the personal should be off CD.
But on the other side having to macro 6 abilities on 1 button, that is bad design.
Honestly just makes the pace of the game static, most classes now have no rotational ability or big cooldown out of the gcd, so the flow of combat for those classes is literally Always the same: press spell, 1.5 sec, press spell, 1.5 sec, press spell etcc…
It’s just not good for the game imo. While not every class has to have rotational abilities that are out of the gcd colldowns should absolutely be removed from it. If they are only meant to be used together only and end up as a macro that is a balance or design problem so they should be changed or balanced so they are not only meant to be used together.
Afaik those 12 sec buffs were 10 before, basically they got extra duration to compensate for the added GCD. Now i know it differs from class to class and as a warlock i also have a 3 min cd but this has always been on GCD and there were no complaints that it breaks the flow of the class in legion for example. (Even though surely there are warlocks who never found this as a problem in Legion yet now they claim this same GCD is making the class “boring”)
As for defensive, they aren’t on the GCD, the personal stuff IS off. There might be inconsistencies though. Like for movement abilities, the rogue sprint is not on GCD while my burning rush is (or pala steed).
That isn’t then consistently added and changed for every CD. Since i only played resto shaman in legion, in only know something big like ascendance is and was 15 seconds but has a GCD since BFA. 1.5 seconds taken from a 3 minute CD means it is 10% less efficient.
Indeed i am not allowed to say something in general.
The waiting is the worst part of it.
Lucid Dreams —> Wait —> Rune —> Wait.
I quit my warrior due to this, as a firemage you can ‘potentially’ still weave in a fireblast during your opener.
GCD changes should be reverted, it feels awful.
1 Like
How about you actually respond to the points I made in my post rather than just saying “1 shot macros 1 shot macros hurr”. You’re the only one doing the thing you’re making fun of. It just makes you look incredibly dumb.
I haven’t seen a single one of you people defending the GCD actually make a valid point yet. Literally all you guys are saying is “1 shot macros bad” while not providing any motivation for why that’s the case.
Burst is still a problem even with cooldowns on the GCD. Burst is pretty much the only time you deal substantial damage as sustained damage basically no longer exists. Again, all the GCD does is slow your actual rotation down.
A BETTER fix for this problem would be to make sustained damage higher, and burst damage lower. Not cripple the rhythm of the GCD.
Which 6 spells did you macro together? I don’t remember having to macro 6 spells together. Either you’re lying or you were doing something very wrong. But even if that was the case, they should redesign the spells, not put a GCD on them.
Besides that I don’t even understand the problem, having some macros just led to fast paced gameplay, what’s the problem with that. It feels a lot smoother than having to press them all one after one with a 1.5 second delay.
You’re not arguing anything really, the only point you’ve made is that macroing spells together is a degenerate design. Why is that even the case? If I was a developer who had designed a cool spell maybe I would care, but I’m not. I’m just a player, I only care how fun actually playing the game is.
I would much rather press 1 button off the GCD than press 2 and be locked out of my rotation for 3 seconds. I’m almost certain that if Blizzard didn’t TELL you that it was a problem, you wouldn’t think it was.
1 Like
No, it makes you look dumb because you post your opinions about topic you have no idea about. Yes one shot macros were the problem.
And that is intended. They should have never been taken off GCD.
Yet again you have no idea what are you talking about and yet you are voicing your opinions. Don’t do that if you weren’t aware it was possible.
my 2cents
simple self buffs and trinkets (they already go on 20sec cd) should be off GCD, like pilar of frost
enemy debuffs and other particular buffs and spells like engineer stuff should remain in GCD, like empowered rune weapon
this can be address spec by spec instead of hard GCD locking everything in place
For me, the GCD change showed the most that Ion doesn’t care about any PvP implications whenever he’s designing the game. It’s just boring design, and forces people into telegraphing everything. The GCD change removed a big part of PvP skill.
You do realize that the existence of oneshot macros that required you to download an addon to actually be able to finish the macro started in Mists? Oneshot macros are fundamentally the fault of classes having too many buttons. My oneshot macro is literally /cast Wings /use DPS potion, and it works. Would you put a GCD on potions too?
The GCD changes not only make the game clunky, they also fundamentally remove a big PvP skill factor from the game.
2 Likes
They could just stop them from being macro’d if they were so concerned about macros. This was just intentionally to slow the game down. It made some specs/classes boring as hell to play. Like Arcane mage, you sit there in like 3 or 4 GCDs before you start doing damage.
They also put a GCD on stuff that in no way added to one shot macros. Like defensives for tanks or for healers, healing CDs. They made reactive healing even worse with the change because CDs are on the GCD now.
1 Like
Ah now I understand why they put defense CDs on GCD… to avoid people getting one shot… makes sense 
1 Like
You do realize default UI allowed this? One shot macros were made up from up to 5-7 spells.
And you are completely false about Mists because mists allowed full rotation macros. Which was broken in WoD
That is the other way around, without being able to double click or macro cooldown you actually have to think when to use it.
They put everything on GCD and slowly taken spells such as defensive cooldowns off it. Simply because its easier to do reset everything and then cherry pick skills that truly don’t need to be on GCD.
You guys can’t make a compelling argument as to why. You keep repeating the same thing over and over without actually arguing why your opinion is correct (and when you do it’s just diffuse situations that don’t even happen in the actual game, never something concrete), how do you not understand that is what I’m criticizing you for?
Again, it’s HILARIOUS that you use a fringe case like 1 shot macros that could only be used in some patches, on some specs and were only useful in LOW SKILL PvP to justify a change that negatively affects the fluidity of the WHOLE game.
As I’ve stated multiple times, making cooldowns weaker and sustained damage fixes this problem without ruining the fluidity of the game. I don’t know if you’re willfully ignoring every argument I make and cherry pick my conclusions or what, but you look ridiculous.
Again, if you were macroing 6 spells together you were doing something very wrong. As I’m not complete garbage at the game, no, I never did that.
Give me one example and I’ll explain why you’re wrong.
Yes break an entire expansion for an unnecessary change that could be fixed in 30 better ways.
Uh huh, literally just hard code cooldowns so you can’t put all of them in a macro and this issue is fixed without ruining the game.
Again, you’re literally dodging all of my actual arguments and disagreeing with my conclusions. It’s hilarious how much mental gymnastics you have to go through to even defend your opinion.
Sorry but nobody went to forums and complained that skills are not on GCD.
Sure there may be issues with it in PVP… but then fix these things without affecting PVE players.
A game should be fun and I highly doubt that the GCD change made WoW more fun.
1 Like
You make baseless assumptions based on your own feeling, like i said in previous post:
You have completely no clue about the scale of the problem. And neither do I but since blizzard took action it means they did analyse it.
Also it doesn’t affect fluidity of the game, adding one point five second each 2 minutes to rotation changes nothing.
Because that is ridiculous “solution” that just doesn’t solve anything. GCD needs to stay in order for those button to not be useless and macroed to highest frequency skill.
So you are just ignorant, as I mentioned in previous post:
Closing eyes doesn’t make problem go away.
You don’t break anything. Simple as that, 1.5s each 2 minutes is not doing actually anything
But game is not ruined, it has been fixed to proper state of having meaningful buttons.
I don’t. It’s a fact.
Uh, this is a really strange thing to say. Blizzard doesn’t know more about the problem than the playerbase does… you just need to… play the game… what?
I’m 100% certain you would never have thought the GCD was a problem unless Blizzard told you it was.
Why would the button be useless. What’s highest frequency skill? I don’t understand, can you explain your thoughts more coherently?
Nerfing the cooldowns would certainly help with the “1 shot” part of the problem? Just hard code cooldowns so they can’t be macroed if they really think it’s an issue that players put them on the same button. That would fix the problem for you, wouldn’t it?
If you macroed 6 spells together (not counting items), you were bad.
Who cares if you macro trinkets or rings that buff you, it’s just another buff. What, would the game be more fun if you had to press all of those buttons individually and you had to spend 9 seconds AFK?
Yeah, standing AFK while popping cooldowns is really fun. Some classes are AFK for 3 seconds. Arcane mage is afk for up to 6 seconds on Shadowlands Alpha.
I’m glad you don’t mind spending 1.5s AFK, but even so, it’s worse than having it be entirely fluid. Most people, including me, absolutely hate it. It just feels awful.
Why are the buttons more meaningful? They don’t require any more thought or skill to use, they just slow you down. For most people, they don’t feel meaningful, they feel annoying. Also, you just said “Simple as that, 1.5s each 2 minutes is not doing actually anything”, so which is it?
I really don’t understand why you think it’s more fun to use 6 cooldowns in a row, being AFK for the whole time, rather than just macroing them together? Do you wake up at night going “oh my god my Avenging Wrath lost so much identity because I macroed it with 2 trinkets”?
I really do not understand it.
Yes you do, fact is you have no clue about scale of problem.
You joking right? Blizzard knows a lot more than playerbase does.
You are wrong, I was aware of this issue since MoP because I used it as well.
“Just hardcode”, do you have any idea what are you talking about? I happen to be a developer and your solution is not only impossible but also insane. Macros can be extremely complex.
Or you just knew how to exploit one shot macros while you were ignorant and had no clue.
Most people, in fact, vast majority didn’t even notice the difference.
Then you were bad if you think they don’t require more thoughts. Order of CDs matters now where previously it just didn’t since you macroed them together.
Regarding this issue and how it affects the game, why would they?
The macros are literally made by the players.
You’re joking, right?
I am not a developer, but it would be as simple as making it so Avenging Wrath (as an example) could not be put into a macro. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be complicated at all.
Blizzard, the extremely technologically advanced company which makes absurdly complicated products like World of Warcraft, now finally defeated by a… macro 
Are you sure you’re a developer?
Give me a 1 shot macro with 6 actual spells in it that isn’t awful. Go ahead and explain to me why nerfing the cooldowns themselves wouldn’t fix this issue while you’re at it.
You could also explain to why using all the same cooldowns one by one by one and standing AFK is more fun.
You inherently notice the difference just by playing the game. The niche scenarios the GCD forces you to make a choice are a lot less prominent in the game, so your own argument works against you, not for you.
Give me one example, I’ll carefully explain to you why you’re wrong. If you didn’t want to stack 2 cooldowns before, you wouldn’t want to stack them now either.
The order in which you want to use cooldowns (if it matters, which it has to for your example to make any sense) is not affected by the GCD change either. If it matters now, it mattered before. If you could use them at the same time, the order doesn’t actually matter. It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.
The GCD change does nothing, it’s completely disconnected. All it does is slow the game down. Period.
But, give me an example where you think I’m wrong.
1 Like
That is absolutely not true. There is no thought process of pressing it at the BEST time. With CDs, the biggest skill factor was always “fake telepgraphing” - meaning that you trick the enemy into thinking that you are going to press a CD soon, but you press another CD (or the same CD you are fake telegraphing,at an entirely different time) or don’t press a CD at all, or making the enemy think that you are putting yourself in a specific situation because you don’t have cooldowns, or you don’t want to pop it yet. The best retris always popped their wings whenever they could burst down someone to 20-30% HP in an instant, which creates a panic moment, causing the enemy to not only press more CDs than needed, but also starts positioning badly, and using his normal rotation poorly.
Do you even know what telegraphing is? With how many CDs every single class has access to, there is no way to properly fake Telegraph at all. You press wings, you know what the enemy does in that 0.8 seconds? Instantly run away or press a defensive.
Also, the GCD change takes away the natural busrty element of PvP, which was what made it so good in the first place, and also slows it down in the CLUNKIEST of manners.
1 Like