The cooldowns in World of Warcraft are becoming more significant. With Battle for Azeroth, many macros will become useless.
The way abilities work in World of Warcraft is quite mixed, but fundamentally, all can be divided into two categories: Those affected by the global cooldown and those that ignore this cooldown.
The global cooldown (GCD) is the period between two abilities during which no new ability can be used. Normally, it lasts 1.5 seconds (reduced by haste) and becomes particularly relevant when trying to cast multiple instants in succession.
If there were no global cooldown, players could activate all instant spells within a fraction of a second. That would definitely be 2-3 times incredibly cool, but then it would get boring.
Many abilities are currently not affected by the GCD
However, there are also numerous abilities in WoW that ignore this global cooldown. For example, interrupt effects (like counterspells) can also be used within the GCD. Many buffs, like Arcane Power, can be activated without the GCD, allowing players to immediately cast the next spell that benefits from the buff.
With Battle for Azeroth, the developers of WoW want to strongly revert this. Many abilities will once again be affected by the GCD. Especially buffs (for damage and healing) are back on the list.
According to the developers, there are several reasons. On the one hand, it feels wrong to activate multiple abilities with a single key press. A new ability or item is just one more line in a macro’s code. The specific animations of the abilities would completely fade away.
This is also important for PvP. When a player has to make a clear decision: Do I activate the offensive attack or do I use self-healing? This decision is eliminated when both can simply be used at the same time – as then you activate both simultaneously.
However, there are also adjustments. Particularly short effects, like Recklessness, now last a bit longer to at least compensate for the drawback.
The community’s reaction to this is mixed so far. While some fans praise that players now have to play more tactically and abilities feel more significant (as one can see their entire animation), others perceive these adjustments as a clear nerf (even though they affect almost all classes).
What do you think of Blizzard’s approach to the global cooldown? Should abilities continue to function as they did in Legion? Or is a widespread cooldown already good and sensible?
Do you find the return of the GCD disgusting? Then you should definitely not check out these models…
