Blizzard is planning further changes to the global cooldown for some abilities in World of Warcraft. We reveal what this means.
The non-word of the month is currently “Global Cooldown” (GCD) on Reddit and various forums related to World of Warcraft. This refers to the 1.0 – 1.5 seconds (depending on the class) during which no further ability can be used after activating one.
In the current version of WoW, many abilities are not affected by the global cooldown. Short-term buffs, movement abilities, crowd control, and more are often cast within a second.
With the upcoming expansion “Battle for Azeroth,” Blizzard wants to make radical changes and reinstate a global cooldown for many abilities. This would mean that after activating each ability, the global cooldown would trigger – that is, 1.5 seconds during which no further ability can be activated. Stacking several effects would therefore be more difficult. These changes can already be tested in the beta, if one has access.
According to the Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, however, this change is not an attempt to make the game “slower.” It is merely about giving individual abilities more significance again. He explained this in the live-stream Q&A yesterday, on April 26, 2018.
Cooldowns force decisions
World of Warcraft is a rather fast game, but not an arcade game where you need 10 keystrokes per second. Instead, in WoW, it’s more about making the right decision. In intervals, you have to think about what to do with the next 1-2 seconds to achieve the best possible performance.
As an example, Hazzikostas mentioned a combat situation from the perspective of a healing druid standing in a fire area with low health, while the tank is also low on health fighting the boss.
He must now make one of many possible decisions:
- Does he cast a defensive spell on himself and run out of the fire?
- Does he endure the fire and heal the tank?
- Does he cast a weaker instant heal on the tank while running out of the fire?
Without the global cooldown, the decision is easy – because there is none. The druid activates his defensive ability and starts casting a healing spell for the tank in the same second.
A good player is recognized by the fact that he makes the correct decisions within these intervals and acts accordingly.
If that were not the case, then latency would also play a much larger role and determine success or failure.
Cooldowns should have significance
Another example is the chaining of many buffs that are triggered simultaneously. Currently, many players just press one key to activate three or four buffs at the same time. Several buffs at once mean a massive damage boost for a few seconds.
The flip side of the coin is that then all abilities are on cooldown, and you feel much weaker for a while.
By imposing the global cooldown on these abilities, individual buffs gain more significance, and they will probably be used separately. Because: Who deals 20% more damage for 10 seconds is unlikely to use 3-5 seconds of that time to activate additional effects first.
Thus, it will likely become a habit to better manage different cooldowns, and thus achieve better performance over the entire duration of a fight.
A few abilities remain without GCD
However, the developers realize that they have gone a bit overboard. A few abilities will be released from the global cooldown. These include the Heroic Leap from the warrior and Infernal Strike from the demon hunter. These abilities are often used as an “opener” to start a fight and are frequently dependent on follow-up attacks to maintain threat.
What do you think of the developers’ thoughts on the global cooldown? Do you think it’s good if individual abilities gain more significance again? Or have you already gotten used to your super macros that activate many buffs simultaneously?
