While I appreciate the attempt to make it more obvious which spells were on cooldown, I feel the new effects are just making it harder to see which abilities are available. The flashing and washout effects obscure the visibility of the abilities, and the flashing occurs after it has come off cooldown (making it difficult to react quickly as you cannot quite tell if it is available or just part of the GCD flashing).

All that was needed was to add a dark blue or reddish tinge to the abilities which were on cooldown, as the old GCD effect was sufficient and didn't obscure vision.

Is anyone else not liking the new effect?

patch is fresh out and the threads are rolling in. i do hope they fix it and i feel many more will agree. please fix

Careful with your wishes. After all this "improvement" is based upon our last request to fix the toolbar.

Just saying, the new GCD animation looks amazing.

If you are too blind to see if your cooldowns are up, you need to get glasses.

making it difficult to react quickly as you cannot quite tell if it is available or just part of the GCD flashing

THe GCD 'flashing' only flashes on abilities that are available. If it flashes, it is ready.

Just saying, the new GCD animation looks amazing.

 

If you are too blind to see if your cooldowns are up, you need to get glasses.

Not the issue at all, stop spouting your ignorance.

They new cooldown indicator has taken a step back from the previous iteration, at least for my playstyle and my class.

In the previous iteration (before 1.1.2), abilities that were usable still appeared "lit up", even though they were on CD/GCD. The cooldown indicator still scrolled down the ability, but the ability itself was actually lit up, indicating it is usable the instant it comes off CD.

This was PERFECT for me. It let me actually predict the next ability I would use before I used it. Since I play rage/focus based classes, it's not as simple as knowing the next ability to press and pressing it; I had to know if I even had enough rage/focus to press it, and if I didn't I would have to change my rotation. With the previous iteration I KNEW I could use an ability because the ability was lit up, even if on GCD or CD. For other classes this might not be a big deal, but for a rage base class that needs to build our own rage through abilities, it helps immensely if we know it the split second we look at an ability if we have enough rage to use it.

Now with this new iteration, the ability goes dim (and has a white border around it) if it is on CD or GCD.

This basically means I cannot accurately predict my next ability. I absolutely stinks. Considering now 10 hours ago I was playing with the PERFECT system for my class, it really gets to me that I Have to use this new, inferior system. This means that my ability bar is constantly completely dimmed out because something is always on GCD/CD. I cannot look at an ability and tell if I can use it once the GCD is up. It really hurts my enjoyment of the game.

PLEASE give us the option of using the previous iteration of cooldown watch.

And only apply the white borders to abilities that actually have a CD longer than the GCD, thx.

THe GCD 'flashing' only flashes on abilities that are available. If it flashes, it is ready.

I tested this and you are completely wrong.

It flashes whether the ability is usable or not. As a rage using class, just because the ability is off GCD does NOT mean it is usable.

In the previous iteration (before 1.1.2), abilities that were usable still appeared "lit up", even though they were on CD/GCD. The cooldown indicator still scrolled down the ability, but the ability itself was actually lit up, indicating it is usable the instant it comes off CD.

 

This was PERFECT for me.

It wasn't perfect for me, because while an ability half though it cooldown was easy to see as being half though it, a long-CD ability (say 2 minutes) that was 5 seconds away from being available actually appeared as already available, because the scrolling cooldown indicator was already all the way to the bottom(touching the bottom of the icon) and the ability was lit up making it impossible to distinguish from an ability really ready.

Personally I would have preferred the old greyed out look plus a red number counting down the seconds in front of the center of the icon.

I understand though that this is an improvement in a different direction which makes it so you dont have to actually look down or to the side all the way to see when a CD is available. You can focus on the center of the screen better.

After what little playtime I had I think this is a solid patch. I notice FPS improvements again, and thank god for the perma sprint after death (yes, Im serious).

Just saying, the new GCD animation looks amazing.

 

If you are too blind to see if your cooldowns are up, you need to get glasses.

Agree. But it's different so let's all cry about how bad it is.

Personally I would have preferred the old greyed out look plus a red number counting down the seconds in front of the center of the icon.

 

I understand though that this is an improvement in a different direction which makes it so you dont have to actually look down or to the side all the way to see when a CD is available. You can focus on the center of the screen better.

 

After what little playtime I had I think this is a solid patch. I notice FPS improvements again, and thank god for the perma sprint after death (yes, Im serious).

As a class that does not use a rotation, but a reactive based priority system, I HAVE to be looking at my bars basically all the time.

This new version does not make me have to look at the bars any less, it just makes it 10x worse to have to do it.

it flashes for everything in battle even for things like your verhicle, battel stance, ect.

because of the quickbars al corners of me screen keep constantly flasing, cant focus on anything anymore and only causes confusion.

Personally I would have preferred the old greyed out look plus a red number counting down the seconds in front of the center of the icon.

^^This^^ All we need is a greyed out button with a timer on it. Does not get any easier than that.

They need to not completely grey out abilities that are ONLY on the GCD.

Situations where abilities should be completely greyed out:

CD is longer than the GCD at that very moment.

Not enough resources to use said ability

out of range to use ability

Situations where they don't need to be greyed out, but only need a GCD indicator:

Ability is on the GCD and you have enough resources to use it.

It wasn't perfect for me, because while an ability half though it cooldown was easy to see as being half though it, a long-CD ability (say 2 minutes) that was 5 seconds away from being available actually appeared as already available, because the scrolling cooldown indicator was already all the way to the bottom(touching the bottom of the icon) and the ability was lit up making it impossible to distinguish from an ability really ready.

This was the issue they were trying to fix. They added in a flashing effect that wasn't needed, however. All they needed to do was make it so that abilities that were on CD were blue'd/grey'd out. This new effect is obscuring vision. It gets in the way if you are trying to check what is up while you are using other abilities. If you have ever played a Carnage marauder, your rotation isn't set, it's based off a priority order. The new effect just makes it harder to see what's up.

I don't need glasses and I don't need to get any better, those have nothing to do with it. I'm saying the new system is worse than the old one, and the problem being addressed could have been fixed without obscuring vision with flashing and heavy shadow during GCD. It looks cool, but its not as practical.

Edit: It's possible the problems I am experiencing are specific to Rage users... It's simply harder to see what will be available to use once the GCD is over.

okay, this newest one is redicilous, instead of making the stuff on CD "dark" they made it light so you see it better?.. wth

the easiest AND BEST solution would be put in as it was in the beginning and add a TIMER on the slots which are CD, geez, it's not hard

also, you do all these changes but you don't add options in interface to choose which one you want... how come?

I prefer the old bar CD effect.

This one is..err...

Now that I've finally seen it, it's absolutely terrible. Hell, the previous was better, and I disliked it even more than the original version.

I don't even know what to say.

Bioware needs to understand that things on CD and things only on GCD should not be treated the same.

^ This.

Easy solution: Make this an option in preferences, if people want to old one, allow them to disable the new effect. That way everyone's happy.

Previously one could, out of the corner of their eye, keep track of cooldowns finishing etc. With this graphical effect, it's near impossible. Throw multiple abilities on cooldown and continue spamming your attacks? Yeah, good luck.

3 of the 4 corners of my screen now visually annoy me out of the corner of my eye since I have to utilize all 4 bars anyway. I hope I don't have a seizure before the end of the day with all of the brightness!

I didn't think this UI could get worse, but amazingly it continues to do so.

I'm a healer, and every time I use an instant heal I dont need every move on my action bar "flashing" because the GCD just finished. I personally think that it is retarded that everything flashes when your just waiting on the GCD.

The "flashing" would be good on actual cool-downs that are two min. long ect, ect, and then it flashes when that is ready. But I seriously don't need every single move to do that after the GCD is done. That is overkill and If you cant realize when a GCD is done then I don't know what to tell you.

Just from a healer standpoint where you are using abilities with no real CD's ( such as healing spells ) It gets rather annoying when I have a light show on the bottom, left, and right of my screen.

I didn't think this UI could get worse, but amazingly it continues to do so.

This.

If they don't lose more subs after this...