I miss my nukes...

Cooldowns are not a poor way to limit something at all.
With the right design/balance, it can definitely be something good.
Burning a CD only consumes the spell's CD you're using, not the other ones of course.
And since there are a limited amount of sockets, it should not be overused then.

I'd prefer long cast time spells though.

I wanted to write a short reply, but than I felt like elaborating a lot, so prepare for the wall.

I am hearing this cool down argument also among people I play with. I am pretty much the only one favoring to break the self placed hegemony. In general most of the people I play with, I find quite archaic in their view of PoE, occasionally a discussion can become quite fierce on Mumble. I often see veterans praising the CB trade, but also for example praising the current state of trade. The game hasn't changed and this is what PoE is! Yet the game has been changed in numerous ways. This though I feel resembles a lot how veterans and self labeled PoE fans seem to react on PoE feedback.

Enduring cry, balanced because of cool down?
Can not throw more than 3 of the same trap, there is a cool down on trap regeneration.
Cold snap, hey this also has a cool down.

At some point this movement got up against CD skills, while you can definitely create viable cool down skill, which becomes viable if you have the right passives and right gear. It can be designed perfectly into PoE and would be a step against the new release trend which is oversimplifying gameplay, through overly complex and elaborate mechanics. You pretty much always want a deep and rich gameplay using preferably simple mechanics.

Example is the DoT changes. Instead of the niche uses Viper had (in and out combat dmg) or Poison arrow for extra AoE dmg. We see a complex confusing change to DoT (so much that it confuses even the developers) for a simplified form of gameplay. Namely you either use poison arrow as a primary skill or you do not. (Going to lead out PvP decisions out of the design choices made, though they also seem to play a role).

I can also give a more simplified example why this trend is bad for PoE:

Assume that 5 of the bow skills could be used with poison arrow. That is 5 skills stand alone and 5 combination with poison arrow, hence a total number of 10 combinations. Now poison arrow needs to be skilled into, which means you got just 6 options left. So we add +1 new playstyle to lose 5 other hybrid forms.

DoT managed to fill this secondary skill gap, because they did damage over time. Meaning that for the duration of the DoT you can still use your main skill. In PoE the choice has been made that every skills stops you and does a cast animation sequence and every single skill ideally should be viable and should work with some build. In practice unfortunately many skills are far from really viable as a main skill and with lack of a DoT also do not function as secondary skills.

Every skill is put against the available gear and passive tree and the archaic philosophy in PoE is that any skill should be able to grow along this path into a viable skill. This philosophy is fine if applied to main skill and also fine if it works similarly resulting in good secondary skills. I feel this idea was around in CB, but overtime it got reduced to this: Any skill in PoE can grow through gear and passives into a powerful skill and build.

Somehow we seem to have lost the idea of actually combining skills. The need for CwdT is the result thinking in these confined boxes, with casting on the move on certain skills there would never have been the need for this support in the first place.

Now mines, trap and totems sort of add a DoT or burst to such skills, that they sometimes find use again, but their specific design and consumption of sockets only allows for a handful of real options. Also totems and traps however are now completely treated as primary skills, resulting in more needs to fix this again (more supports, more uniques needed).

PoE already has trigger skills and secondary skill, however the archaic thought that seems to linger among many PoE veterans and also designs made by GGG is brinign us further away. The more we step away from this the bigger the need will become for another CwdT solution.

With the existing mechanics there definitely is room to see these type (nuke, disable, defensive etc.) of skills being added, but generally the current mindset needs to change. It is about adding variation to the game instead of making it monotone. Has the totem or trap prevented us from going lightning arrow or discharge? The answer is NO. Would discharge disappear with a CD nuke, if it is only a nuke when you have the right gear and passives (which is what is being suggested, the right PoE style balance)... I don't think so. Discharge clearly can work as a primary skill as the nature of how the nuke (or other CD skills) as suggested in this thread is clearly secondary, thus nonviable of being a primary skill. Just keep in mind that GGG already implemented on both traps and enduring cry a shared cooldown, such that multiple firetraps share the same cool down. This nerf against traps and enduring cry is perfect ground to actually build content on.

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Ozgwald wrote:

I wanted to write a short reply, but than I felt like elaborating a lot, so prepare for the wall.

I agree with what you say, therefore it should be perfectly possible to implement such skills.

sup

You guys strayed away from the initial theme of the thread.
It was about lack of heavy-hitting or simply less spammable skills and spells with higher impact. Not about "cooldowns good or bad".

It is because these skills need a cooldown or some other unique mechanic (like discharge) to allow single uses have the impact you desire.

Not necesseraly, it could just be a ~6 seconds casting time for example.

Yeah, I guess that could fall under the category unique mechanic. People hate to stand still while casting however, so a cooldown might receive more appreciation.

"

Ozgwald wrote:

Enduring cry, balanced because of cool down?
Can not throw more than 3 of the same trap, there is a cool down on trap regeneration.
Cold snap, hey this also has a cool down.

At some point this movement got up against CD skills, while you can definitely create viable cool down skill, which becomes viable if you have the right passives and right gear. It can be designed perfectly into PoE and would be a step against the new release trend which is oversimplifying gameplay, through overly complex and elaborate mechanics. You pretty much always want a deep and rich gameplay using preferably simple mechanics.

Example is the DoT changes. Instead of the niche uses Viper had (in and out combat dmg) or Poison arrow for extra AoE dmg. We see a complex confusing change to DoT (so much that it confuses even the developers) for a simplified form of gameplay. Namely you either use poison arrow as a primary skill or you do not. (Going to lead out PvP decisions out of the design choices made, though they also seem to play a role).

Yes, cool-downs can be appropriately used to balance DoT and crowd-control skills. They are by nature used only periodically to produce a timed effect, rather than spammed as often as possible.

But with a primary attack skill like Discharge, cool-downs produce monotonous gameplay. They wind up being spammed robotically as soon as the cool-down expires, and the relentless sound effect becomes maddening. I still remember trashing my D2 Frozen Orb Sorc after that whoosh...whoosh...whoosh... finally got to me.

"

RogueMage wrote:

I still remember trashing my D2 Frozen Orb Sorc after that whoosh...whoosh...whoosh... finally got to me.

Yep, Frozen Orb was a lot more fun before minimum cooldown was introduced.

It's good to have a situational skill that you can't spam, but people need to remember this is not an MMO where a player has 20-40 different skills to use.