Shadowlands Update - Some Spells No Longer on GCD

[Lumy]

Shadowlands Update - Some Spells No Longer on GCD

Hello everyone.

In the next update to the Shadowlands Beta and PTR, we’ve taken a number of spells categorized as “burst cooldowns” off the global cooldown (GCD). Here are some more details on how we’ve come to this decision, as well as our intentions about this category of abilities.

By “burst cooldowns,” we mean spells like Avenging Wrath or Arcane Power whose primary purpose is to increase your damage or healing output every two to three minutes. The proper use of these major abilities can turn the tide of battle in your favor, and while they’re all mechanically powerful, our goal is that choosing to use them should also feel satisfying and epic. We look to abilities like Metamorphosis, Stormkeeper, and Void Eruption as successful examples of this, where animations, visual effects, and numerical payoff align to create a satisfying keypress that amply justifies incurring a global cooldown and creates a high point in the flow of combat.

Many of our burst cooldowns currently fall short of this standard. The solution for some of these has been to add an additional effect to activation (for example: Blade Flurry for rogues or Ascendance for restoration shamans), while for others it has been to combine the functionality into another active ability (for example: the recent handling of Unholy Frenzy for death knights), but there are still many abilities today that do nothing other than increase stats or resource generation.

We’ve heard clear feedback that incurring a global cooldown to do nothing but enhance subsequent button presses is unsatisfying, and we agree. While our goal remains making it so that when abilities are on the global cooldown, they feel compelling as standalone actions, in the meantime we want to avoid hindering smooth combat rotations. As such, we’re removing several abilities from the GCD and, in some cases, rolling back changes we’ve made in an attempt to make the GCD feel worthwhile. Below is a tentative list of relevant abilities that are being removed from the GCD:

Class - Abilities coming off the GCD

• Death Knight - Pillar of Frost, Empower Rune Weapon
• Druid - Berserk, Celestial Alignment, Incarnation: Chosen of Elune, Incarnation: King of the Jungle, Ravenous Frenzy
• Hunter - Aspect of the Wild
• Mage - Arcane Power, Icy Veins
• Monk - Serenity
• Paladin - Avenging Crusader, Avenging Wrath, Crusade, Holy Avenger
• Priest - Spirit Shell
• Rogue - Adrenaline Rush, Shadow Blades, Vendetta
• Shaman - Ancestral Guidance
• Warlock - Dark Soul: Instability, Dark Soul: Misery
• Warrior - Avatar, Recklessness

We appreciate your feedback on this issue, and we appreciate your patience as we work to improve these abilities in the future.

[Vampyrr]

Neat I guess

[Sorshen]

No Charge?
Finally. Now fix the legendaries that are just copy pasted extremely bad azerite traits in BfA...

[Malekius]

Oh thank jeebus! Finally some good news <3

[Soisoisoi]

Thank fuck. Empty GCDs feel crap.

[Softbottom]

SURPRISE SURPRISE. Reverting shitty GCD changes. Who would have thought???!?!!??!

[Niwes]

Whaaaat ?

Why this ???? Or better: Why burst CDs ????

The factually ONLY useful spells (to i.e. not macro them into trinket macros) ON the gcd are exactly these spells. imo NONE off all the gcd changes had should ever happened. but IF you put SOME spells on gcd, than i would take the burst 3min cd spells. instead of mobility spells, OhShit Buttons and whatever...

i mean, no one give a fuck, every 3mins when making rdy for burst phase anyway, if such a spell is on the gcd or not, when you have mobility or OhShit Buttons still on the gcd.

that devs are soooooo far away from their own product, its hillarious.

ps: this is just my oppinion. not the statemement that what i think is fact or such shit.

[Firefall]

Great change! Now how about a talent that replaces Rampage with Heroic Strike

[khorgam]

yay that is wonderful for enhance shamans

[Ielenia]

SURPRISE SURPRISE. Reverting shitty GCD changes. Who would have thought???!?!!??!

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

Whaaaat ?

Why this ???? Or better: Why burst CDs ????

The factually ONLY useful spells (to i.e. not macro them into trinket macros) ON the gcd are exactly these spells. imo NONE off all the gcd changes had should ever happened. but IF you put SOME spells on gcd, than i would take the burst 3min cd spells. instead of mobility spells, OhShit Buttons and whatever...

i mean, no one give a fuck, every 3mins when making rdy for burst phase anyway, if such a spell is on the gcd or not, when you have mobility or OhShit Buttons still on the gcd.

that devs are soooooo far away from their own product, its hillarious.

ps: this is just my oppinion. not the statemement that what i think is fact or such shit.

Just going to say this: if you're going to state an opinion, avoid using words such as "fact" or "objective".

[lasheric]

Good changes. Wish they would give guardian druid's frenzy rejuv on this list too!

[Demetrion]

Why no UH DK?

[ExtremelyCrusty]

Good changes, it's a start

[Zentail]

This is literally one of the single best changes in all of Shadowlands. When Blizzard added GCDs to these spells, it immediately started feeling bad to even use cooldowns. It is obviously, objectively, still better to use them, but it just felt bad. Especially when a class has to cast multiple, digging into your first cooldown's effective use time. I do think there's quite a few spells they left off this list, though, like Unholy DK CDs.

[Niwes]

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


Just going to say this: if you're going to state an opinion, avoid using words such as "fact" or "objective".

ok, this is fair.

not realized that i used „factually“. so, you are 100% right here.

[Unholyground]

No Charge?
Finally. Now fix the legendaries that are just copy pasted extremely bad azerite traits in BfA...

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

[Adramalech]

It was never a matter of "if". Just "when".

[Niwes]

This is literally one of the single best changes in all of Shadowlands. When Blizzard added GCDs to these spells, it immediately started feeling bad to even use cooldowns. It is obviously, objectively, still better to use them, but it just felt bad. Especially when a class has to cast multiple, digging into your first cooldown's effective use time. I do think there's quite a few spells they left off this list, though, like Unholy DK CDs.

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.

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.

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.

this is just lazy Blizzard. nothing else. imo.

[Clozer]

Mana tea?!?!??!?!?

[rogoth]

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


Just going to say this: if you're going to state an opinion, avoid using words such as "fact" or "objective".

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.