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After player backlash, World of Warcraft’s global cooldown changes will be reverted

WoW Battle for Azeroth

Blizzard are reverting some unpopular cooldown changes planned for the Battle for Azeroth beta. The announcement was made in a Q&A posted yesterday.

Battle for Azeroth will blur the lines between Alliance and Horde.

Last month, the Battle for Azeroth alpha saw a new patch which added several abilities to the global cooldown system. Global cooldown prevents players from being able to spam the majority of WoW’s abilities as fast as they can, but up until now, those abilities haven’t applied to offensive cooldowns – those that allow players to temporarily buff themselves. Changes to the alpha meant that almost all of those abilities joined the GCD roster, removing many interesting decisions from the game by allowing players to simply activate all of their abilities with the press of a single button.

That change proved unpopular, and many players took to forums to make clear their displeasure. The major grievance seemed to be that the changes made the game feel significantly slower than before, and as such Blizzard have reverted some of the abilities to their previous state. In the Q&A, game director Ion Hazzikostas said that “players will see abilities like Heroic Leap and Infernal Strike back off the GCD,” as well as abilities like Hunters’ Disengage and some other changes to Fury Warrior Blood Bath.

There are plenty of abilities that aren’t changing, however, as Hazzikostas says the team wanted to “pull back the importance and power of multiple, stacked cooldowns.” More changes to the system could be on the way, and Blizzard are asking for more detailed feedback on the system going forward.

World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth expansion will be available on August 14. If you can’t wait that long, you’re in luck – the Battle for Azeroth beta went live earlier this week.