Upcoming Change to Skills: Global Cool-Down

[Justg]

Folks, this is a necessary and beneficial change. You have not even played with it yet and are making sweeping generalizations. Give us your level opinions and help us tweak it when it goes in. We promise we will listen (as long as the feedback is rational) and we'll keep iterating on it until it feels right.

[Cmandial]

yes some people like imp are very good enchantresses, but its the class in general

Let me rephrase. PALADINS are in no way underpowered. Over 160 armor with high dodge and 30 h/s and m/s.

[Lesrider]

Folks, this is a necessary and beneficial change. You have not even played with it yet and are making sweeping generalizations. Give us your level opinions and help us tweak it when it goes in. We promise we will listen (as long as the feedback is rational) and we'll keep iterating on it until it feels right.

Maybe we shouldn't be given this info then, until more info can be given? Hard to discuss without speculating when we don't know much about it.

[Magicalbanana]

pallys are a diff story theyve got the best of both worlds

[Ellyidol]

Maybe we shouldn't be given this info then, until more info can be given? Hard to discuss without speculating when we don't know much about it.

I agree.

Not to sound ungrateful for the early statement, warning if you may, but maybe it would be better if actual figures were given out too. It seems, for me at least, that expectations range from a split second delay only up to a much longer delay which confuses me (maybe others) on what to expect.

Thank you though, for letting us know. I suspect that reaction and comments now are MUCH more civilised than what they would be if this was just implemented without warning.

[Physiologic]

Folks, this is a necessary and beneficial change. You have not even played with it yet and are making sweeping generalizations. Give us your level opinions and help us tweak it when it goes in. We promise we will listen (as long as the feedback is rational) and we'll keep iterating on it until it feels right.

G, all of us are making generalizations because only general info has been posted (nothing in detail at all) I would imagine the thread being a whole lot different if specifics were mentioned.

[FluffNStuff]

As I am not huge into PVP, I will let those that are speak for that, but I would like to post some thoughts on PVE. I would like to start with a clip from the previous rebalance:

...
Class Skills - In the updated balance, a substantial portion of all class' damage comes from the skills. Some time ago we changed skills to use formulas - driven by statistics - instead of constant values. This change didn't mean much due to the fact that armor and weapons didn't change. Now, with this upcoming change, skills play a much bigger role and their reliance on your character statistics is much more profound.

After our most recent internal tests, we feel that we are very close to our goal of rewarding Warriors, Archers and Enchantresses who play their characters 'smartly.' It now feels much more important to use debuffs, crowd-control skills, damage skills, in the right order and for the right reasons.

Oh! Also - the cool down times for skills have been dramatically affected. Since so much of your effectiveness now comes from skills, being able to fire them off more frequently feels a lot better and makes combat more fun.
...

This appears to be a step back from the previous changes. As players we have learned to adapt play style and to become more reliant on skills. Now is this change going to be for all skills or just damage skills? Are bears going to have to use iron armor, wait, use evade, wait, use rage then attack? If so, are the durations going to increase? Is the global cool down going to replace the current cool down or just augment it?

As to character specifics, I have started playing my high level archer more lately and I believe they will suffer the most. The archer class is designed to kill quickly and that damage output comes from fast skills. Killing quickly is not a luxury to archers, it is a necessity. They are not designed for drawn out fights, so their only survival chance is to eliminate the threat in a timely manner. Are you planning on reducing the mob armor/ hp to line up better with the new average player DPS?

And of course, two hand weapon skills This change makes the 2hand skill correction even more important. I picked up the new Gem hammer to test, and it adds less to skills then Level 50 one hand weapons. Combine that with the new cool downs, and their benefit is almost entirely gone.

Now one thing I have not mentioned is the fun. I know there was a lot of complaining when the last re-balance happened that it would slow down the game and ruin the fun. That was clearly not the case, so I will reserve judgment on that until I see this in action.

[Justg]

So either we don't tell you what we have planned and surprise you with it (bad) or we tell you what is up so you know what is coming and can help us figure it out.

We would rather keep you informed, and we hang out with you guys here because we expect you to give us a good rational discussion. Don't hate on the idea of it, play it when it comes. And help us iterate on it until it fits with the overall game,

[Zeus]

So either we don't tell you what we have planned and surprise you with it (bad) or we tell you what is up so you know what is coming and can help us figure it out.

We would rather keep you informed, and we hang out with you guys here because we expect you to give us a good rational discussion. Don't hate on the idea of it, play it when it comes. And help us iterate on it until it fits with the overall game,

Can you give us in depth and detail description for the update? Would be greatly appreciated and might be the solution to calm panicking players right now. Thanks G , Have a Good One.

[Physiologic]

Much appreciated for keeping us informed. This is just a big change to the system so who wouldn't expect initial shocks? Anyway I hope we can see this soon so we can provide better feedback from empirical and experimental observations.

[Lesrider]

So either we don't tell you what we have planned and surprise you with it (bad) or we tell you what is up so you know what is coming and can help us figure it out.

We would rather keep you informed, and we hang out with you guys here because we expect you to give us a good rational discussion. Don't hate on the idea of it, play it when it comes. And help us iterate on it until it fits with the overall game,

Sounds like you just intended this to be a heads up, and have us discuss it when it's implemented? Without more information, I don't see what kind of discussion you would expect other than what's been said here. If that's the case, it's fine. But it sounded like you WANTED us to discuss it.

[Ellyidol]

So either we don't tell you what we have planned and surprise you with it (bad) or we tell you what is up so you know what is coming and can help us figure it out.

We would rather keep you informed, and we hang out with you guys here because we expect you to give us a good rational discussion. Don't hate on the idea of it, play it when it comes. And help us iterate on it until it fits with the overall game,

Not what I meant G, sorry if it was misleading. Again I'm not being ungrateful for the information, in fact, I am happy that you let us know.

Best to probably, as you said, just give it a try and let you know.

[FluffNStuff]

Can you give us a general idea of what kind of delay you are thinking? We were just discussing in chat that if you are talking about a .5 second delay, then that would make a lot of sense. It is long enough to stop the 'fire em all at once' skill spamming, but short enough to let the game keep its flow in PVE.

[DanielRH]

I like the idea for PVP cause right now it's just a tapping speed race.

But I do NOT like the idea for PVE, it would make the time per run alot more and would most probably mess up alot of the characters main points (healing for mages and so on...)

[Necrobane]

LOVE! I have been asking for this for ages and am extremely happen to see it finally happening, although wouldn't it be kinda wrong having such short cooldowns on spell? I mean it means that you revolve around like 3 spells, the rest of the time is global cooldown. I reckon if you do it right people will come up with rotations ect, now THAT would be good.

[superglut2]

Increase skill damage on some spell in pve and it would work.

[Royce]

I can't really even form an opinion on this without some sort of general approximation of the length of this global cooldown. Certainly it will affect archers (already the best PvP class) least and affect bears and mages more dramatically, but in general I am not opposed to the idea as long as the cooldown is pretty short. For instance, as a mage, I like to try to heal every 3 seconds. If there is a 2 secod global cooldown, I would have to quit healing or never do anything else. It seems like very short cooldown skills like heal should perhaps be made stronger and with a longer cooldown for this to work. But again it's hard to say, not knowing a ballpark figure for the length.

[Tsarra]

I was going to get all kinds of indignant on this thread, too...but if the change is needed, it's needed. I'll tell you guys right now that any more than a quarter-second delay would pretty much kill solo PvE; I realize I'm hugely in the minority here, but I speak for (probably) all 7 or 8 of us when I say that solo PvE is slow enough.

Mob health reductions across the board to account for the slower kill speeds? It sounds as though this change is being made to mitigate user hardware/lag issues more than anything, so keeping everything fair across the board might not be a bad idea.

And fix crafting, please! (I realize this is neither here nor there, but since you're all reading...)

[Kindread]

I love the idea and I think you guys are being a little dramatic. They're trying to stop the one action kill with a slight global cooldown. It will only take the briefest if delays to stop a one action kill on an iPad or whatever. Im level 56 now and my inspect page is hidden but if you could see it, it would show 0 arena battles. I came from WoW PvP and then text MUD PvP (which is really fun) and the idea of one hit kills or the iPad one button kill did not interest me at all. Without having ever tried PvP, I always assumed it was all about who knew their range the best and could fire their super secret one hit kill first. Not too interested. Now that I know I'm not at a super disadvantage for not having a iPad, I might let y'all pad your kill ratios with this PL PvP noob.

[rocket]

I am not sure what to make of this change without some more details on how exactly it will be implemented. A 0.1 sec delay would not be that bad, but if it is closer to 1 sec it will likely adversely effect PVE.

If this is mainly being implemented for PVP purposes, I would suggest a simpler solution. Just double each players hitpoints on PVP maps. (Can be implemented as an automatic elixir when joining a PVP map.) No more oneshot kills and then the natural cool down for each skill will come into play. No adverse effects on PVE play.

If a global cooldown is implemented, then I suggest that the skill cooldown times be reduced by the amount of the global cooldown.