#1: Can’t tell if a skill or ability will have the cooldown start immediately, or after the duration is finished.
(examples: soldiers overguard (cd starts immediately) and menhirs will (cd starts after the duration is finished)
#2: It is highly irritating to have THE SAME ICONS for both the effects duration and its cooldown!
(example: soldiers fighting spirit, menhirs will)
For me as a new player, and probably for some others as well,
the problem is that, without testing, it is impossible to tell if an ability will have its cooldown triggered before or after the duration is finished.
This is not just true for soldier but for many other classes and also devotions.
=> There needs to be a distinction (some smart, short wording) that marks the difference between things that have the cooldown start after something is finished, and those that start the cooldown immediately.
=> For the love of god, please use different icons (or at least tint them in VISIBLY DIFFERENT colours if you insist on using the same icon) for an effect and its cooldown.
i overall agree with the tooltips complaint/it’s part of the tooltip unclarity annoyance some skills have (wps/secondary effects/internal or missing cooldowns/DARs/debuff class) - the orange text is already there, might aswell use it to distinguish the mechanic/activation+cd interaction difference or giving it some label “auto trigger”/“auto buff” people can then atleast directly look up
they are, cooldown “version”(still same icon) gets red coloured/swipe, while the active/duration gets grey/black + countdown numbers
Thank you, I will pay very close attention to it next time and see how well they are differentiable.
Though the fact that I immediately overlooked the difference, suggests it could be more visibly distinct.
…or …you know …one could add a tiny text “cooldown” under or above the icon to avoid anything like this entirely.
You are right, the background is black-ish and red-ish depending on it being the duration or the cooldown.
I had to literally pause the game and screenshot both and put them next to each other to see what you meant.
Needless to say that his is not sufficient, and very easily mixed up or overlooked.
that’s why i’m agreeing, since it’s not even just a beginner thing
we have had people with many play hours that still think ex fighting spirit and deadly aim is a 100% uptime buff because it’s not clear enough, or atleast not clear enough to all
if not differentiating the tooltip/label, or the cooldown icon, one suggestion that’s been mentioned to me was ex changing the skill icon shape to a triangle so they stand out differently, and then maybe people can look that up/ask why is it different shape and then “it’s because different proc/CD mechanic” answer to easily find
(likewise with other effects ofc/aforementioned wps or ex secondary effects)
I don’t think it should just be cooldowns, but rather auras as well when it comes to icons. especially when it comes to Arcanist’s Iskandra Exhange. It looks too similar to the other ones that function as item skills.
They’d also have the option of switching some of the icons for those skills around instead such as the overload skill that supports Iskandra Exchange.
The cooldown icons for Arcane Will and such are really terrible. Make it hexagonal when it’s on cooldown or something.
Also agree with the first point. Some skills should say “this skill’s cooldown does not recover during it’s effect”. Those are the words they use in PoE.
Besides the useful ideas I’ve heard so far and how it’s done in other games,
the simplest solution is pretty much always the best when it comes to general things like this.
Suggestion:
make ALL skills and abilities start their cooldown immediately upon activation => removes all possible confusion about it, removes need for explanations and such
adjust cooldowns of current “cd after duration”-abilities to accommodate for this, yes there is CDR but that’s fine-tune balancing and not something that makes this solution impossible by default
