Feedback:User/Atanna Charta/Elite Skill Cooldown Too Long

As it stands, elite skills have a 12 minute cooldown. They're meant to be a game changer, and very powerful. On paper, this looks great. In reality, it makes for terrible gameplay.

What skills like this fail to take into account is the mentality of a player. In theory, you'll use it when you need it. In reality, this rarely happens. There's a few different situations that will typically happen with long cooldown skills like this:

1) Our average Joe has a good elite skill that he knows will get him out of bind. Knowing that it has a 12 minute cooldown, he doesn't want to waste it. So he doesn't use it. Things start going poorly in a fight, but he still doesn't use it. He can still recover. He might need it later, better not to waste it. Things start going even worse, but it's still possible to recover. Better to save it. If this fight is so hard, the next one will probably be even worse and then it'll REALLY be needed. Next thing you know, Joe's dead. And he never chose to activate his elite skill, or made the decision too late.

In this case, the elite is never, or very rarely used by the player. By the time they make the decision that it's worth cost of the 12 minute cooldown, it's typically too little too late. Not very good in terms of gameplay.

2) Fred spams his elite skill every time he gets the chance. It makes that fight real easy. The problem arises when he gets to the next fight which is where the designer of that level really intended for these skills to be used and the difficulty ups significantly when they're not available. Fred now dies in a fight he could have won.

You could say this is the "price" of the skill, but I don't think anyone enjoys dying... And if it's Fred's first time on that story mission/dungeon/etc, how was he supposed to know it would be needed later? Using your skill is basically a gamble. If you run into a hard fight the next 11:59, you die, and all the time inbetween is wasted. Losing 10 minutes of progress like this isn't good gameplay.

3) Billy is fighting and decides he needs his elite skill. Using it wins him the fight, but he now has a new problem. To go on, or wait for his elite to come back. Like our friend Joe, Billy has realized that the fights usually get harder over time, not easier. He's probably gonna need his elite in the next fight too. Unlike Fred, he's concerned with running into a fight and not having the elite available. So what can he do? He's forced between risking failure and waiting 12 minutes. Why not just charge in? Because if you've spent 20 minutes getting to where you are now, waiting 12 is better than spending another 20 getting back because you got wiped out. So he just stands around and waits before continuing on. He turns on the TV and finds something to watch.

This is not remotely close to good gameplay! Waiting around for cooldowns is not enjoyable for anyone. You should not succeed at the game by not playing it! I thought the Guild Wars philosophy was that you don't spend time grinding. You don't have to slog through boring garbage to get to the fun stuff. You don't have to spend hours leveling your character so you can participate in the fun things. Spending time standing around watching a cooldown timer just screams WRONG!

Having 12 minute cooldown game changers might seem like they'd make for interesting combat, but really do nothing but slow down the gameplay. When you look at human nature, it's obvious these skills will do nothing but cause grief.