The GCDE stun thread
12-19-2022, 12:26 PM
The thread we all knew was coming.
So this is not going to be a, this GCDE stun hurt me, please nerf it. I have a GCDE stun, nerf me, please god. The goal here is to break down what they do for the game, the pros I've heard, the counterplay I've heard, and the cons that I've seen, and my opinions on them.
I know Lightspeed is a major contender for most hated skill, however I'd argue that Lightspeed is far more necessary to fight kiting builds, and without GCDE stuns to let it be used in conjunction with any ludicrously high damage skill, Lightspeed is not the problem.
So, here we go.
GCDE Stuns, which ones exist, and what it means-
A quick primer for those not immersed in mechanics or new. GCDE is Global Cooldown Exempt, functionally meaning that it doesn't put your entire spell bar on cooldown for 2 seconds after you cast it. This lets it immediately be combod into another skill. The main skills this is talking about are Water Whip, Pyroclasm, Sancitified Flash, and Crystal Javelin. Grapple Hook is not amongst those I'm counting simply because it is a root, not a stun, which gives more option for counterplay through reaction.
At the moment, they are incredibly prevalent but in actuality, have seen some amount of play for the past several years.
(Also Tesla is still functioning as a combo linker and it'd be really great if it stopped doing that ANYWAY)
Why now?
With Lightspeed back to being an intermediate, and Sanctified Flash returning to being a real stun, it feels very heavily as if, the main way to be viable at this moment, is to go Lightspeed/GCDE Stun/High Damage Beam/ (Prism Beam or Impact Cannon sometimes)
It's safe, it's reliable, it does very high damage, and frankly, punishes anyone who doesn't have insane reaction time or very good predictive abilities, without a lot of way to return the damage.
And after seeing this for years, I find it both incredibly dull, and incredibly punishing of build variety. As of now, it feels even more like if you want to do an IC build and aren't building this way, you're setting yourself up to lose, and often lose very badly. The old ways of compensating for this were usually to build for hiddens A, B, and C to get power creep so you could stat wall it out. But in the new era of hiddens/Fates being much more sparing and even more based on impact than power level...it's harder than ever to try and work around this.
Why are they a problem?
1) As listed above they make build variety far more difficult. Because you're heavily encouraged to go into Lightspeed (or plasma leap) at minimum, that's an investment of sixty points. Then the GCDE stun, and high damage skill, and follow up, and often that's more than half a build.
2) They don't encourage a healthy relationship in combat. They encourage one party to have a specific combo that chunks someone for a quarter of their health bar at minimum, and then sit back and play defensive moves and auto hits. Some people will play a more risky game to try and eke out more damage, but the game pattern is the same. Put a timer on every match by using the same combo that's nigh on unreactable when performed properly.
3) They hurt design space for new spells. High damage spells are usually mitigated by problems of being difficult to hit, or leaving you vulnerable. As it stands, difficult to hit is no longer an issue, neither is leaving you vulnerable if you miss. This creates a system where every single high risk high damage spell is effectively only limited by its cooldown. There's been a habit in the past of, when the move is too strong within this combo, to nerf the damage spell, rather than the stun, which treats the symptom. It simply waits for another spell to be buffed into territory where its too abusable, to happen all over again.
4) It's not fun to watch. Beams I find incredibly hype to see hit, when used without setup, especially when they turn battles around. But that almost never happens anymore, because it's just not worth it. Instead of being high risk, high reward spells, they're just "ah yep, he hit that GCDE stun, expected." It breaks the high risk aspect, and turns it into just a bog standard combo.
5) It's been this way for several, years. I don't ascribe to the idea that a game should try to be Perfectly Balanced tm. I've come to believe that the healthiest games, have metas where the dominant trees and strategies change over time. It keeps things fresh, and whip beam could even return once in a while. But when it, and often by extension Explosion, remain dominant, T1 strategies for years, it's exhausting and honestly drives away my desire to play in some respects.
(Not Sustain though. I even enjoy playing sustain but a sustain meta would be the most agonizing thing in this world, it should always be fringe at best, encouraged through more DR and Shields, than actual healing)
The Counterplay Options:
I've been told if you cast cleanse in the moment before a stun hits you, the cleanse will still go off and cleanse the stun. Similarly, if one has near frame perfect dash timing, or invuln timing, they can escape the Lightspeed stun combo. All of these require high degrees of luck, usually a low ping, or your opponent to be highly predictable.
Aside from this, there's also war cry, if your war cry is already active when the combo happens. I know of no other actual options to counterplay this strategy.
The Pros:
1) Some people have said this is to try and give lower skilled people a chance, to narrow the skill gap. From what I've witnessed, this mechanic becomes far more abused in high skilled hands anyway, just creating a consistent gameplay loop for those who can use it, and not narrowing enough of the gap for those who may struggle already.
2) It keeps somewhat of a time limit on matches. This? Makes sense to me. Keeping matches shorter can help tension stay high, I don't mind this. I don't find this alone to be a sufficient reasoning.
My Suggestion:
The Minimal, absolute barebones change that won't completely gut all the builds that use it, but make them more fair? Turn all GCDE stuns into roots. This provides a chance for invulns, cleanses, or skills like phantom strike to play around them.
This has been my TED talk.
NOW DOWN VOTE ME!
So this is not going to be a, this GCDE stun hurt me, please nerf it. I have a GCDE stun, nerf me, please god. The goal here is to break down what they do for the game, the pros I've heard, the counterplay I've heard, and the cons that I've seen, and my opinions on them.
I know Lightspeed is a major contender for most hated skill, however I'd argue that Lightspeed is far more necessary to fight kiting builds, and without GCDE stuns to let it be used in conjunction with any ludicrously high damage skill, Lightspeed is not the problem.
So, here we go.
GCDE Stuns, which ones exist, and what it means-
A quick primer for those not immersed in mechanics or new. GCDE is Global Cooldown Exempt, functionally meaning that it doesn't put your entire spell bar on cooldown for 2 seconds after you cast it. This lets it immediately be combod into another skill. The main skills this is talking about are Water Whip, Pyroclasm, Sancitified Flash, and Crystal Javelin. Grapple Hook is not amongst those I'm counting simply because it is a root, not a stun, which gives more option for counterplay through reaction.
At the moment, they are incredibly prevalent but in actuality, have seen some amount of play for the past several years.
(Also Tesla is still functioning as a combo linker and it'd be really great if it stopped doing that ANYWAY)
Why now?
With Lightspeed back to being an intermediate, and Sanctified Flash returning to being a real stun, it feels very heavily as if, the main way to be viable at this moment, is to go Lightspeed/GCDE Stun/High Damage Beam/ (Prism Beam or Impact Cannon sometimes)
It's safe, it's reliable, it does very high damage, and frankly, punishes anyone who doesn't have insane reaction time or very good predictive abilities, without a lot of way to return the damage.
And after seeing this for years, I find it both incredibly dull, and incredibly punishing of build variety. As of now, it feels even more like if you want to do an IC build and aren't building this way, you're setting yourself up to lose, and often lose very badly. The old ways of compensating for this were usually to build for hiddens A, B, and C to get power creep so you could stat wall it out. But in the new era of hiddens/Fates being much more sparing and even more based on impact than power level...it's harder than ever to try and work around this.
Why are they a problem?
1) As listed above they make build variety far more difficult. Because you're heavily encouraged to go into Lightspeed (or plasma leap) at minimum, that's an investment of sixty points. Then the GCDE stun, and high damage skill, and follow up, and often that's more than half a build.
2) They don't encourage a healthy relationship in combat. They encourage one party to have a specific combo that chunks someone for a quarter of their health bar at minimum, and then sit back and play defensive moves and auto hits. Some people will play a more risky game to try and eke out more damage, but the game pattern is the same. Put a timer on every match by using the same combo that's nigh on unreactable when performed properly.
3) They hurt design space for new spells. High damage spells are usually mitigated by problems of being difficult to hit, or leaving you vulnerable. As it stands, difficult to hit is no longer an issue, neither is leaving you vulnerable if you miss. This creates a system where every single high risk high damage spell is effectively only limited by its cooldown. There's been a habit in the past of, when the move is too strong within this combo, to nerf the damage spell, rather than the stun, which treats the symptom. It simply waits for another spell to be buffed into territory where its too abusable, to happen all over again.
4) It's not fun to watch. Beams I find incredibly hype to see hit, when used without setup, especially when they turn battles around. But that almost never happens anymore, because it's just not worth it. Instead of being high risk, high reward spells, they're just "ah yep, he hit that GCDE stun, expected." It breaks the high risk aspect, and turns it into just a bog standard combo.
5) It's been this way for several, years. I don't ascribe to the idea that a game should try to be Perfectly Balanced tm. I've come to believe that the healthiest games, have metas where the dominant trees and strategies change over time. It keeps things fresh, and whip beam could even return once in a while. But when it, and often by extension Explosion, remain dominant, T1 strategies for years, it's exhausting and honestly drives away my desire to play in some respects.
(Not Sustain though. I even enjoy playing sustain but a sustain meta would be the most agonizing thing in this world, it should always be fringe at best, encouraged through more DR and Shields, than actual healing)
The Counterplay Options:
I've been told if you cast cleanse in the moment before a stun hits you, the cleanse will still go off and cleanse the stun. Similarly, if one has near frame perfect dash timing, or invuln timing, they can escape the Lightspeed stun combo. All of these require high degrees of luck, usually a low ping, or your opponent to be highly predictable.
Aside from this, there's also war cry, if your war cry is already active when the combo happens. I know of no other actual options to counterplay this strategy.
The Pros:
1) Some people have said this is to try and give lower skilled people a chance, to narrow the skill gap. From what I've witnessed, this mechanic becomes far more abused in high skilled hands anyway, just creating a consistent gameplay loop for those who can use it, and not narrowing enough of the gap for those who may struggle already.
2) It keeps somewhat of a time limit on matches. This? Makes sense to me. Keeping matches shorter can help tension stay high, I don't mind this. I don't find this alone to be a sufficient reasoning.
My Suggestion:
The Minimal, absolute barebones change that won't completely gut all the builds that use it, but make them more fair? Turn all GCDE stuns into roots. This provides a chance for invulns, cleanses, or skills like phantom strike to play around them.
This has been my TED talk.
NOW DOWN VOTE ME!
![[Image: OzJetPV.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/OzJetPV.jpg)
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