Suggestion The increased GCD hurt a lot of classes...

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

I think many will agree that the increase in GCD time has hurt a handful of classes. The main issue is that it destroyed a lot of go-to combos. For other classes like Disciple, who exclusively relied on many combinations to give the class full potential, it has made the gameplay frustrating and heartbreaking. This isn't a QQ post, but rather a suggestion for alternative measures to be looked at instead of raising the GCD.

The reason why the GCD was raised in the first place was to make fights longer, and to ensure that bursty classes weren't as bursty. While this has effected some classes to do less DPS because they rely on using skills instead of left click damage, it has barely made a difference in the length of a fight. If we're ready to make a 'Mission Accomplished' banner now that a wizard vs beguiler fight is a couple seconds longer because they don't left click, then I'd call that premature.

If longer, more enjoyable fights is the goal, then all classes need to take a page out Bloodmage's book in terms of BloodUnion. Every class should not be able to have all their skills available as they walk into a fight. Much like a Bloodmage's BloodBoil, high damaging skills should be unavailable until they have earned enough aura, or what ever you'd like to call it. Alternatively or additionally damaging spells should scale depending on certain implications. If a disciple walks into a fight and immediately uses Smite it should do 20% of its intended damage. If however it left-click damages his opponent 3 times and then uses Smite, it'll do 80% of its intended damage (capped at 100% after 4 left clicks). This resets once Smite is used. This will eliminate button mashing your way to victory and will require you to have a bit of a brain. Opening with Smite would be a 'mistake' due to its low damage and it could cost you the fight because you're doing LESS DAMAGE making the fight LONGER if your opponent makes a similar mistake.

Just a matter of balancing and coding it, which is easy, right? /sarcasm

 

[Ellron23]

Hey man, I told everyone this would happen. It ruins burst. Delfofthebla we understand that the melee classes had some sort of advantage without this huge CD. BUT IT HURTS CASTERS SO FUCKING MUCH GOD DAMN. HOW DO WE BURST?
The logic: Melee is too bursty -> Nerf casters!
GG server. like ough.
They won't change it STDs. It's a lost fight. Kainzo will bring up how other RPGs have global CDs and it'll just die.
Sign my petition to return the global CD to .5 seconds!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hcocd/

 

[Delfofthebla]

Hey man, I told everyone this would happen. It ruins burst. Delfofthebla we understand that the melee classes had some sort of advantage without this huge CD. BUT IT HURTS CASTERS SO FUCKING MUCH GOD DAMN. HOW DO WE BURST?
The logic: Melee is too bursty -> Nerf casters!
GG server. like ough.
They won't change it STDs. It's a lost fight. Kainzo will bring up how other RPGs have global CDs and it'll just die.
Sign my petition to return the global CD to .5 seconds!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hcocd/

I have no interest in reducing global cooldown. Spamming that petition everywhere isn't going to change that. I've discussed this with you several times. Fighting it and saying the same things over and over isn't going to change my or Kainzo's mind.

-----

I believe that the global cooldown has accomplished exactly what it intended to do. I will be addressing the "issues" that has caused in a different manner, allowing for certain abilities to combo together, but this will unlikely bring all of the old combos back, and will play a bit differently than it did before.

Ellron23 Yes, this change was primarily directed at melee, but the goal was to reduce all class burst capabilities. The "combos" that everyone is so fond of were part of the problem. Losing those is just something that you will have to come to terms with. I do not wish to negate the effect that this change has had. Maybe combat did not increase by much, but it did stop bursting by a large amount, and it paves the way for another change that is in the pipeline.

I understand that combos are an enjoyable part of combat, and I want to bring them back, but like Stds was saying, it's time to take a page out of Bloodmage's book. I won't be doing things "exactly" like BloodUnion, but similar systems will be put in place over time. As far as combos are concerned, Everyone just needs to sit tight, seriously.

 

[Ellron23]

I have no interest in reducing global cooldown. Spamming that petition everywhere isn't going to change that. I've discussed this with you several times. Fighting it and saying the same things over and over isn't going to change my or Kainzo's mind.

Speaking of the petition, have you signed it yet? http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hcocd/

 

[judgedread540]

Maybe rather than a GCD have a class specific GCD, for example a wizard would be able to cast it's skills every 0.5s whereas a samurai every 1. This would give a lot more possibilitys for balance and if the reason GCD was increased was to stop warriors then why not just reduce theirs?

 

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

Well at least I know you haven't closed the book on the 'too bursty' issue. What ever is coming in the pipeline I imagine will improve things, I just hope it doesn't surface a whole new set of issues. I don't care that the GCD is at 1sec. If everything came out fair, balanced, and didn't ruin Disciple I wouldn't be making any noise. If left click damage had a 1sec cool down, again I'd keep my mouth shut.

Step 1 was raising GCD... I only hope step 2 is to make a slew of changes in order to compliment it.

 

[zencow]

If left click damage had a 1sec cool down, again I'd keep my mouth shut.

Exactly.

I do see the merit of the increased GCD. Check out Forge - it has the exact same 1 second GCD that herocraft has now (copied?) and is probably ideally the pace of combat that Kainzo is aiming towards. But it only works since even their sole melee class's "auto-attack" is affected by GCD since auto-attack itself is considered a skill, (similar to Gw2 also).

Since it's been moaned about so many times I'll try to reinforce it in a refreshing way; an exaggerated/innacurate LoL analogy: Currently the GCD turns casters into Sonas while Tryndamere(Pally)/Xin Zhao(Drag)/Darius(Sammy)/Olaf(DK)/Gangplank(Disc) still has a glitchy Sheen that doesn't have an internal cooldown and also procs upon other team-mate's skill use.

 

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

I don't play LoL so I don't get the reference. Either way its ludacris to nerf every class but not touch the bread and butter of warriors/rogues, which is breaking your finger from left clicking so fast.

A ninja simply needs to start his blackjack (well before the fight has started), open up with kick, and then left click a squishy class until the silence from kick is over. Honest to shit, by the time the silence wears off you're at about 2 hearts, and 2 clicks away from death. Ninjas (and other melee classes) can effectively kill squishy classes before their opponent can even use a single spell.

So much for longer fights, but hey, if you increased the GCD to 5 seconds then fights should last 5 times longer, right? Maybe in CasterCraft, but sword swings speak louder than global cooldowns.

 

[0xNaomi]

There's also the fact that, as I've brought up in some other threads, since left click attacking is pretty much vanilla with HC damage counts, some classes can use melee to just juggle people in the air. Once that happens, if you're not also a class that deals lotsa damage with melee you're pretty much screwed.
Melee and other combats are like their own walled gardens, except someone tore it down - it just doesn't feel like it intermixes at all.

 

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

I think auto-attack would solve a shit ton of problems if its easily coded. It would completely eliminate auto click and forcefield too since its a single target passive spell that you toggle. Why we're not going that route is beyond me. Have the auto-attack set off every second with the ability to cast spells while auto-attack is passively working in the background. Your job as a melee would be to stay within melee range, just like always, except now left click damage is controllable. Your left mouse button will thank you.

 

[Kainzo]

We don't want 1 second wins - we are stretching out combat for a more involved game. Having a relatively low global cooldown promotes lower latency players versus higher latency players. While we cannot support all facets of the world at this time, we shouldnt outright dismiss people because they may have higher connection latency.

This will make a lot more sense once you see custom-items / attributes and other things take a vital role to your character.

It's not just about PVP. This is a PVE feature as well.

 

[STDs4YouAnd4Me]

We don't want 1 second wins - we are stretching out combat for a more involved game. Having a relatively low global cooldown promotes lower latency players versus higher latency players. While we cannot support all facets of the world at this time, we shouldnt outright dismiss people because they may have higher connection latency.

This will make a lot more sense once you see custom-items / attributes and other things take a vital role to your character.

It's not just about PVP. This is a PVE feature as well.

It's very weird. Back when I was in Canada with a 70ms ping to the server but a 15 fps clunker of a laptop I was at a disadvantage because of poor fps. Now that I'm in England my ping is poor, but I'm at 150 fps constantly. Aside from the rare de-syncing, my gameplay is a hell of a lot better in Europe than it was in Canada. In fact, I'm confident that my experience is just as good as someone in the US who has no complaints what so ever.

I'm not sure what this all means, but I'm fairly certain that just because you're 8 timezones away it should barely effect your experience as long as your connection isn't horrible (I get 8.5 mb/s download speed). Those in the 1% who are constantly getting 1,000+ ms ping to the server have more to worry about, like upgrading their 56k modem (seriously, I'm pretty sure you're all still on dial-up).[DOUBLEPOST=1372531992,1372531914][/DOUBLEPOST]^ I should mention I get a low to mid 300ms ping to the server, so not TOO bad.

 

[Keache]

We don't want 1 second wins - we are stretching out combat for a more involved game. Having a relatively low global cooldown promotes lower latency players versus higher latency players. While we cannot support all facets of the world at this time, we shouldnt outright dismiss people because they may have higher connection latency.

This will make a lot more sense once you see custom-items / attributes and other things take a vital role to your character.

It's not just about PVP. This is a PVE feature as well.

Lowering GCD does not decrease the time in between left-click swings. Additionally, if you truly want to make combat last longer, increase HP/MP and decrease damage across the board. By lowering the GCD, yes you are slightly increasing combat time but you are also giving those left-clickers a substantial advantage over people who truly rely on comboing spells and abilities. Just my humble thoughts on this.