Shadowlands Update - Some Spells No Longer on GCD

[Ashiraya]

What is wrong with covenants ?

Not necessarily anything, really. It's a lot more controversial an issue than many think.

[Sorshen]

What is wrong with covenants ?

Obscene dps/utility variance. Some useless soulbind conduits.

[Perkunas]

Uh, Trueshot, Doubletap, and Coordinated assault, dammit!!!!!

[Quaade]

Add Sweeping Strikes to the list, if Arms ever get a baseline ability to apply DW in AoE since else everyone will be Cleave.

[Zentail]

if a class has to use many 2 or 3 min gcds, to ramp up, i.e. at encounter start, the problem are not burst cds on gcd. the problem is the class design of this class. i am very interessted in the deisgn answer why any class needs more than one 2-3min burst cd.

i played moonkin, elemental, arms and enhance the last few years. i gave a fuck about gcd on my 3min burst spell, if i am honest. because i use this spell every 3mins (aka 1 or 2 times per encounter), after pooling and making rdy for a burst phase. me personally not stressed the gcd even a bit. i completely give a fuck.

This is a fair point. Having stuff split between multiple cooldowns doesn't always make sense. If you take Unholy DK, though, the reason they do it is certain CDs being stronger than others and, thus, have longer CDs than others. 1 minute vs. 8 minute CD. That said, you still want to use all 4 of them at once. Losing out on ~6 seconds of whichever you use first feels really bad. This particular one is even worse considering Blizzard didn't even list that the changes are coming to Unholy DK, but I'm not sure where tuning for it in SL is. Maybe Unholy DK lost all their CDs in the xpac.

totally in contrast to every mobility, react, def, or OhShit Button spell of all my classes. this is, where gcd sucks. not on 3min burst cds. imo.

This particular one isn't necessary at all. Oh crap situations never happen instantly and need immediate relief. Oh crap situations are, almost always, predictable. The only time they're not is because of PvP. Even in PvP, though, you have plenty of time to actually use your defensive/movement cooldown. If you are getting killed fast enough where you need an off-CD-instant-save button, then you're going to die anyway. The logic for Defensives/Mobility doesn't make nearly as much sense. For Mobility in PvE, typically it's because an enemy moved/is moving. By the time the GCD comes off from using the spell, you likely won't quite be at the target yet anyway, thus not actually losing any time at all.

imo, Blizz is just lazy here. imo this is what happened: they looked at the data for trinkets on BfA. they realized that every good used trinket is a on equip trinket. ppl use this cause theory crafters of interwebz say so. and they say so, because the result of the gcd changes was that chaining of on use trinket, burst spell and whatever (legendary or whatever) takes too much time, and in the end is not same efficient than on equip trinkets.

lazy solution for blizz to balance that problem without investing effort and using same effect generators they use since years: make on equip trinkets again same good as on use trinkets. how to achieve that the lazy way ? see bluepost.

Many specs have the best trinket being an On Use trinket right now and it's been that way for a high majority of the expansion. One Use trinkets have basically always, in the entire history of WoW, been some of the most powerful items to have in the game. People sometimes don't use them because of the maintenance, but the best players have almost always have one equipped (never two, though). There are obviously some exceptions where there happened to not be good on Use trinkets, but no content in BFA was ever one of those exceptions, so it's strange you would bring this point up and reference the one xpac where On Use was always the best.

this is just lazy Blizzard. nothing else. imo.

I wouldn't call this lazy on Blizzard's part either. There are millions of people who play WoW. There could literally be 100,000 different opinions on any given single issue. Sometimes Blizzard has to go with what the majority appear to want. Sometimes people are so split that Blizzard has to just gamble and do what they think will be best. Then there's cases where the majority want something but Blizzard knows better than people and, as such, do something they seemingly don't want in order to preserve them. Then there's the more rare situations that occur sometimes where the majority of people want something, but Blizzard's engine for the game is simply designed in a way that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to give what the player wants without some massive overhaul to a backend system.

[Biggles Worth]

Thankfully they are adding more effects throughout the expansion, hopefully it isn't just MORE of those abilities lmao.

The illusion of content. Taking away things we have and giving it to us again later.

[Wuusah]

So they took the talent Serenity off the GCD but SEF, the skill that Serenity replaces, is still on the GCD?

Blizzard please...

[MakeMeLaugh]

WTH! Just put every DMG CD on that damn list. Ancestral Guidance for shaman? THATS IT?!?!

[Perkunas]

Shaman:

Ancestral Guidance... but what about Ascendance and Feral Spirit...

Thanks for nothing Blizzard.

Edit: Most other classes get their offensive cooldowns off-GCD, for example Warrior and Paladin. Why not Shamans? Because they are Shamans? That "additional buff" for Restoration's Ascendance is no excuse having both Ascendance and Feral Spirit on-GCD.

They hate Shaman and this is why I stopped playing the class.

[hikaritd]

Wow, they are so desperate to get players back/ keep people playing that they finally gave up their "vision" they have been doing for months. I mean thanks for it, but this and the 1 month rep thing is so obvious lmao. New world and other games scared them, dont think it was "people's will" because they could have done it waaay earlier, when people started to spit on this "change" that noone wanted.

[Khallid]

So you're saying Blizzard should never try new things because there's a chance people won't like them?

Well, they have beta testing, and the cooldown GCDs had a very negative reception during testing. No need to pretend like they didn't know we didn't like it. Ion also said something along the lines of "we know you won't like it, but it's good for the game", which is not a particularly convincing argument either.

[Unholyground]

They hate Shaman and this is why I stopped playing the class.

I am loving the new/old playstyle more than live.

[Railander]

So you're saying Blizzard should never try new things because there's a chance people won't like them?

no, he's saying people didn't like them from the get go, they didn't like them after a while, they didn't like them a year later, and they still didn't like them now. at no point before or after did people like them.
and yet, it took them all this time to finally concede on their stubbornness.

[exsanguinate]

Now add blade flurry and we're fine.

[Nerovar]

We did it, boys. Freedom.

[Lucetia]

Word of Glory for Protection Paladins. THat's all.

I'd rather they remove Holy Power from Protection instead or do something to separate your heal and mitigation move.

[Perkunas]

no, he's saying people didn't like them from the get go, they didn't like them after a while, they didn't like them a year later, and they still didn't like them now. at no point before or after did people like them.
and yet, it took them all this time to finally concede on their stubbornness.

I mean unless you take Hailstorm as Enhance on PTR it's awful. Lava Lash should spread Flameshock for Novas like it did back when the spec wasn't complete Garbagetown USA.

[shalarice]

This whole thing is so confusing. The main reason they gave us to justify this change was that they thought that stacking CDS in a macro was bad. That the CDS themselves should be meaningful. Besides that they failed to provide any substantial reasons.

2 years later they put the 3 mins cds back off the GCD. Which, I am sure a lot of players will appreciate but to me Things like Death grip, Sweeping strikes, blade flurry were wayyy more of a problem.
I tried coming back to the game but gave up on my warrior and dk after a week and then quit again cause BFA is so convoluted. I guess thats another topic though.

Such a missed opportunity to create hype and excitement it seems that instead, every new Xpac is a way to introduce unwanted changes (camera distance, Aoe Cap, GCD, Flying). I really do not understand how they mess with things that made the game successful in exchange for things like Covenants, Azerite, Titanforging. I remember taking days off for a launch... Don't think they have it in them to bring that back.

I think they just suck now. They really do not understand what is going on. too old may be.

[Softbottom]

So you're saying Blizzard should never try new things because there's a chance people won't like them?

I am all for Blizzard trying new things. The GCD changes during BFA Beta were universally hated. I don't recall anyone liking the changes because specs felt terrible with Major CD's on GCD.

[Ielenia]

i'm all for blizzard trying new things and pushing things forward, i'm actively against them doing something so moronic and regressive as to viewed as OBJECTIVELY BAD and highly questionable from a gameplay design standpoint seeing as the issue was never an issue and was yet another blizzard manufactured problem with yet another manufactured 'fix' to that 'problem', and for a long time now blizzard has been unable to tell what a real problem is, and what a screw up by themselves looks like by comparison.

I don't think you know what "objective" if you think that. There are people who liked the GCD change. And the issue wasn't "manufactured", as it was a very real thing to be absolutely destroyed in PvP when the opponent gets the drop on you after popping all his cooldowns and trinkets.