Deadlock has a BIG problem, and it's not what you think.

[@kayaek2558]

It's me I'm the problem

[@VFX]

At tea time, everybody agrees

[@Deathy]

LOL

[@kksharm7736]

@@VFX didn get a joke

[@taibasarovadil]

huge respect for confessing

[@bizentino]

I knew it. It was you :(

[@DeadFishFactory]

It's funny that you used Pocket as an example of stacking cooldown reductions being a problem, because we went through this exact song and dance in Dota with Puck, who is Pocket's inspiration, and cooldown reduction. In past Dota, 2 neutral items were introduced that granted cooldown reduction: Quickening Charm and Spell Prism. These stacked with the buyable Octarine Core, and just this one additional source of cooldown reduction fundamentally changed the meta. For Puck, this was especially egregious, as Puck's Phase Shift/Illusory Orb combo spam mirrored that of Pocket's briefcase/cloak spam. This was even made worse as Puck has a talent where Puck attacks every target when he Phase Shifts (briefcase). If you got Spell Prism randomly from the neutral item drop, you had 100% uptime on Phase Shift, meaning you can sit at their fountain and just keep spamming Phase Shift and getting free attacks on them and they can't do shit about it. Dota solved this issue by removing those two neutral items so the sole source of cooldown reduction is again just Octarine Core. So Deadlock can probably do this by removing the cooldown talents and making Superior Cooldown the sole source of cooldown reduction, with no other item providing it as a secondary stat.

[@Deathy]

Yeah I was around for that time, I agree that the problem can be fixed by removing all the secondary sources of CD reduction IMO

[@Giadro1412-nx8ek]

Removing talents would be to much, in dota level up abilities reduce their coldown also the tree talents sometimes also give you coldown reduction, so its should be focused mostly in items

[@slavaffs]

Totally agree, cooldown reduction should not be a general stat. Making superior cooldown the only item that gives cooldown reduction (and maybe rapid recharge on charged abilities) makes sense. Just remove it from items like Spiritual Overflow etc.

[@ilianvanwaes4883]

What if we made it so Cooldown reduction is 50%(or just x number) les effective on ult? This way we can reduce how often ults are available while not impacting fun creative builds to negatively.(obvious other changes could still be made after but I think this would be a good base)

[@plusah1268]

I think this is already in the game. I can bring warden ult cooldown to 70 seconds without maxing it out. the -50 something second cooldown upgrade for my warden ult will not let my ult cooldown 20 seconds. it should, but the game wont let it. my ult will go on a 40 second cooldown. even though all cooldown reduction items I bought should make that cooldown significantly shorter. you dont even get fast cooldown until late in the game, so imo its not a problem like at all

[@Joel2Million]

@@plusah1268 the minus 56 seconds upgrade replaces the unreduced cooldown which is then reduced this is how it works for all spells not just ultimates

[@olegkazantsev6880]

​@@plusah1268I think your problem is your math, you have to look at percentages. If your ult is not maxed and has more seconds, the percentage will have more value in terms of seconds reduced. For example 25% reduction on 100s is -25s, on 50s it will become -12.5s. 100->75, 50->37.5. As you can see it doesn't get to 25s by subtracting 50 from 75. My paradox ult before nerds got to 20s cooldown just with superior cooldown

[@FrontlineFrags]

an interesting solution could be to make cooldown reduction items only reduce ultimate timers by 50% of what they reduce for regulation abilities

[@Shinyshoesz]

Maybe they could explore a CD reduction cap as well. That way that the incentive is to build in other ways other than stacking CD items. I also agree that ults should probably be more rare. Staring down tons of Bepop ults/CC ults is brutal. Agree with a lot of your points.

[@Somnolentone]

I think a CD reduction cap would be beneficial as well, but I think reducing the sources of CD reduction is simpler to implement and has the same result.

[@STie95]

I'd say a cap would still result in people getting as much of it as possible. I'm more in favor of cutting the amount of CD reduction sources. Then you'd have to make a player choice on whether or not decreasing CD is more important than making the ability stronger in other ways.

[@ShadyzReal]

thats just not true. in league a game where mages purly relied on skills they still build 30% cd(even some cassiopeia build) where they could do 45%. Couse there were more important stats to build. and there is also this equation Cooldown=fun (especialy the items part he is talking about. nobody is gonna build all 3x6200 items in one game they dont even work totherher.)

[@TheUnoptimalGuy]

Only point I really disagree with is the rapid recharge one, aside from specifically vindicta ult the cdr on that item is needed to allow the chars using those recharge abilities to farm and still have impact in fights. If they removed cdr off that there would be a ton of micro buffs needed to adjust for the fact that characters like Ivy,seven,mcginnis all of a sudden can't farm without sacrificing the ability to teamfight. As you said the item isn't even op right now, but it is core on letting those chars have freedom for those specific moves.

[@disbled]

Maybe the real problem is the friends we made along the way

[@wikkidwavy]

I think one of the strengths of deadlock’s appeal is that it incorporates hero shooter and moba aspects. Making cooldowns longer or harder to improve would lean toward how MOBAs work but I think it’d make the game slower in a less fun way for me

[@fragajjia]

I agree. It's good that it's easy to see whether or not an enemy hero has ult up, it allows anyone to make calculated decisions. As it stands, though, that's seldom important because late game you can just assume for ults to be up.

[@Mithrral]

I think the major issue is prevalence of the -cooldown talents on the first and second level upgrades for almost all the abilities across the board. It’s a no-brainer and something that everyone grabs. There’s no decision making involved at all, and almost no trade-off for other ability power.

[@eebbaa5560]

i think they should just remove refresher and a majority of the incidental cooldown reduction on items that aren’t improved/superior cooldown. the only item i think actually needs to go is refresher, but i think that you should still be able to build for very low cooldowns at the cost of other stats/playstyles outside of that specific item. in general, since time is the only cost to using abilities, it makes sense that it should be a more measured resource. that being said, i think that if they make cooldowns too high the game could very quickly become less fun if they don’t strike a proper balance with it. the cooldowns are already pretty high in the early game, and while resource management with ability usage is important for making the game more dynamic, i think that you should still be able to use some basic abilities more than once per fight.

[@Kazaam1996]

This is an idea I’ve floated by my friends before because I also think ultimates are too spammy: what if all ults had some kind of “cdr resist” like even something as drastic as 50%, so if you got to 50% cdr, your ult would only have 25% cdr. I actually kind of like basic abilities being a bit spammy, as it feels like a way to main spirit instead of gun, but ults also getting that bonus feels like too much to me

[@morethanlessthan]

You're spot-on about pocket's case, the cooldown is so low that it feels impossible to actually lock them down without silence

[@pyrobite8463]

I think increasing ult cooldowns or reducing their strength is a good idea, but more than anything I think refresher is a broken item no matter what. Having 2 5 sec dynamo ults is silly, literally 1 dynamo ult is fight winning if it hits even 2 people, now you can miss your first one, or keep a team stunned for almost 10 seconds. Same with Yamato ult, ivy ult, and not to mention you get ALL your abilities back.

[@Somnolentone]

Perhaps Refresher should go on cooldown for 10-15 seconds after you cast your Ult to make sure that you can't just back-to-back ult with it, but you still get a second use of your ultimate a LOT faster than if you didn't have the item.

[@STie95]

Refresher is fine if you significantly increase the cooldown. Make it so that using a refreshed ult poorly is VERY punishing in terms of the value you get from the item. High risk, high reward!

[@pyrobite8463]

@@STie95 that could work, my only problem is that on certain heroes like yam you can’t really be punished for having a bad first ult, and you can chase anyone since you can use your 2 up to 4 times with refresher and your ult. With dynamo even if you miss your first ult you get another one the enemy has to play around, and if you hit your first one everyone in it is guaranteed dead because you’ll instantly have another one. With ivy you get 2 5 sec very big area of effect silences and and insane amount of kudzu bombs.

[@chiefinasmith]

Refresher just shouldn’t be in the game.

[@STie95]

@@pyrobite8463 I feel like this is more of an issue with Yamato ult than Refresher. It probably needs a bit of time in the startup of it where Yamato takes damage, so it's still possible to kill her when she goes low and uses ult too carelessly. They could do a similar thing for Dynamo, where there's a bit of startup to Black Hole, like with Enigma. Makes it not possible to chain them without other crowd control.

[@zrqah]

This is the most I’ve ever played a MOBA and compared to others I do feel like “lower cooldowns as much as possible so you can use combos how you like” def got me through my early “days”

[@Deathy]

I think lower cooldowns definitely makes the game more approachable, but from a balance perspective I think it's not great. I can see how as a new player lower cooldowns is a good thing to just learn your hero though, but the same reason why it's good for new players is exactly why it's a problem: you can't get punished for mistakes.

[@kevinparker5738]

coming from overwatch myself, I agree with this sentiment 100%. Overwatch has almost never had a period where ultimate cds were so low as to be unpunishable, but the GOATs meta approached that - famous plays/clips from pro play often included a player using ult at the start of a fight and again later on in the fight because they were able to charge it again so quickly. Deadlock definitely has a noticeable problem in mid-late game of ability and ult spam. Counterplay to these abilities ends up being exclusively trying to avoid getting hit by them rather than trying to bait them and punish after (because the cd will be up again while you're punishing, and it's very difficult to bait an enemy ult in deadlock without getting fucked up). I agree that cd reduction is a good answer to this, with a caveat: If we get rid of secondary cd reduction sources, then characters who rely on powerful abilities as their main sources of damage will be significantly worse. These abilities will need to be buffed or have added utility/impact, otherwise I'd imagine most characters would gravitate significantly towards favoring gun builds, which are always online.

[@Ian-sm9uv]

I partially agree. I think you're spot on with the ultimate cooldowns being too short. Ultimate abilities should be powerful and impactful, but having them up too often leads to saturation and inevitable nerfs because they're too powerful. I'd be much more inclined to have more powerful ults with long cooldowns. However, I think the way the character's abilities are designed right now is too slow without cooldown reduction. Abilities are central to each hero's identity, and if you spend most of the game waiting for abilities to come back on line so you can do something cool, that sucks. I'd much rather have faster cooldowns on weaker abilities that feel cool to use than longer cooldowns. Another part of this is that shooter combat is much more frantic than MOBAs. You have 3 dimensions, aim is more complicated then just clicking the right spot, movement is faster paced. Being heavily punished for not landing your ability perfectly in such an environment feels really bad. That's why hero shooters like Overwatch have such short cooldowns by default. In my mind, the ideal solution would be to reduce or cap how much ultimate cooldowns can be reduced. For example, if cooldown reduction items stay the same, it is half as effective on ultimate abilities. Another option would be to cap the reduction at say 25%. Either way, ultimates aren't online as often and can be punished between fights. Also, remove Refresher, or have it only take a chunk of time from ultimate cooldown. Popping two Dynamo ults one after the other is broken. Another random idea: have ults charge more like Overwatch. You need to collect so many souls to bring your ult online. That would solve the cooldown issue, and might actually encourage people to farm/push lanes more. It would tie ults back to map control, and would potentially lead to reversals since defending your base from full waves leads to farming a lot of souls.

[@Notllamalord]

I agree, there’s something weirdly wrong with the way abilities work. Mana feels like a bad idea but right now they’re way too spammy and every fight is just 10 ults blasting. Charged ults could work

[@ShadyzReal]

lan-smuw This

[@questery]

I haven't noticed this be a specific issue... however I can say that there are certain cds that are MAD short. Yamato's, for instance. I play bebop, and it feels like literally everytime I engage her I just have to run away because she is basically immune to my entire kit. Although I see your point. I am only ritualist (somehow... 37-8 w/l since the MMR patch) so yeah, I can see how it could be an issue.

[@bigidiot5881]

I do think cooldown reduction is generally too strong, but RE the cooldown reduction perks, I think you have to invert your perspective. There's a reason so many of them are on T1 - that reduced value is intended to be the the "real" CD of the ability, and they basically sacrifice a tier to artificially increase it in the early game to keep it from coming online too fast. I think, through that lens, those instances in particular are more instances of cool down increase, ironically, than CDR.

[@fpsshotty7445]

Honestly they need to implement something league did where they have specific items/passives that reduce basic cooldowns or ultimate cooldowns. Makes it easier to balance around. Improved CD giving just basic cooldowns and then sup CD giving more basic cooldowns and then additionally giving ultimate CD make the most sense for me personally.

[@YukiYuki171]

glad to see someone talking about this. its very disappointing when 70% of my matches comes down to ult spam, hopefully valve fixes it and makes it so that they require more planning and thought to be used.

[@mrhalp2073]

I think that the fact that ultimates reload quickly late in the game is not critical in itself, although as an option, the developers can specifically for ultimates reduce the percentage of effectiveness of CD items. I think it's the items that allow instant recharge abilities, such as Refresher and Echo Shard, that are more critical. They significantly complicate character balancing and often allow you to abuse really strong, but long rechargeable abilities.

[@polecat1337]

as a trash tier player i do agree as a Geist player im just constantly spamming abilities and always seems like i have ult.

[@oleksiy6516]

As a fellow geist player I say reject grenade spam, abuse headshot damage multiplier. Trust me no one in your lobbies will expect 500+ damage headshots. It is a way to remind all other ability spammers that they are playing a shooter.

[@saucynaut]

As someone who hates laning against geist her essence bomb spam is incredibly annoying

[@madeofmandrake1748]

​@@oleksiy6516what if someone plays Geist but has shit aim? Asking for a friend of course

[@theodds9950]

@@madeofmandrake1748 They are a part of the problem that this video is discussing, Geist bomb with superior cooldown and Tier 3 makes you have nearly 100% uptime on her bomb aoe

[@Notllamalord]

Yeah it seems like every fight is just ult spam

[@fpsshotty7445]

refresher really needs to be removed from the game

[@Goz325]

refresher needs to either become more expensive, turn into a one-time consumable, or items need to be unaffected by CDR

[@JayjiNZ]

Both refresher and echo shard should be removed pure cancer.

[@Deathy]

Potentially agree, cooldown reduction also makes Refresher a much bigger issue since CDR applies to items as well in this game, which makes refresher easily

[@MrAJ437]

Dynamo ult with extended reach, superior cooldown, extended duration and refresher...AIDS.

[@onehellofameme6166]

@@JayjiNZ I think echo is fine its high cost only one ability is redied again and it costs a pretty penny. They could make it double the cooldown of the ability you used it on to balance it.

[@inkblots]

When DotA first introduced talents, everyone had filler talents until they figured out how to balance and give them better ones. I always thought of the ult CD talents as placeholders because they are not very creative. That said, removing those will make soke heroes unviable, but their ult numbers can be adjusted by themselves.

[@godarra363]

an easy fix for refresh would be that the cooldown timer that wash refresh would be added on top of the normal refresh cooldown

[@scooottbruh7849]

I'm glad you pointed this out. Tracking cooldowns is probably one of the easiest strategy to do to win laning phase. I have won just by waiting for their skills to be used. I main MK and the amount of enemies who use their movement abilities for clearing waves......(Tbf I am only archon 6 so not the highest) And just as you have said with the respawn time. All that strategy thinking goes into the shitter mid to late game, now the most effective strategy is to bait their ult to use it on wrong times or wait for them to fuckup or just sacrifice one teammate for the ult. I agree with your suggested changes because it would also make Refresher an even more tempting item in some characters rather than "just" an option

[@Midaspl]

My take as an average player would look more into the middle-ground: -Increase baseline of some abilities and/or remove lvl1 cd reduction upgrade. Add other interactions - for example for Pocket, the cooldown on Satchel could start ticking only once he's out of it. -Remove CDR from statues. -Remove from CDR from most items except "Cooldown" and "Recharge" items (leave it on recharge, because let's keep some abilities spammable and some having high impact). -Add new, expensive aghanim-like item that would add more power to your ultimate (at the fairly high cost and 1 slot, could be first white, flex-only item maybe?). It could put them on lower cds, or add other, more significant upgrades.

[@NineConsonants]

As an old Dota player, where cooldown was also a problem, I think the angle of reducing the ways to get cooldown is important. The fact that cooldown also effects active items and items that have passive triggers only makes it better. I think your angle is correct, but I'd go a bit further and say that both Improved/Superior Cooldown items should be imbues, and they should only improve the cooldown of the improved ability, and all other items (and statues) should have cooldown removed from them. Rapid Recharge is the only potential exception, since it only impacts specific moves and unless an ult is a charge move you can't stack cooldown reduction, but I don't have a big opinion one way or the other. Refresher is also fine, since now its internal cooldown won't be reduced, so it is also a several minute commitment to use. Echo Shard also seems fine. This means that only a few select abilities can actually be cooled down, limiting how much they're cooled down is balanced only by the % on superior cooldown and the ult itself, and items can now be more normalized (no weird interactions like tesla bullet's internal cooldown being reduced).

[@Scrum_Master_Revolution]

I think a potential solution would be having ultimate cooldown being its own stat. So you can have items that lower the cool down on basic abilities but then perhaps more expensive tier 4 items that lower the cool down on ultimate by very small percentages. What if there was a tier 4 cooldown item that was 9500, used superior as its component and its stat was just -25% ultimate cooldown? There are probably more eloquent solutions then that, but I think the main issue cooldowns for ultimates specifically.

[@Azarthes]

I disagree with the idea that items like kevlar leach overflow etc shouldn't have cdr, they should just have less of it. There shouldn't be an item that gives 20% cdr that isn't just solely about the cdr. So if it's an issue I would rather have the values be significantly nerfed and have the value of cdr be more baked into the item. But I don't think it would be a bad idea to have cdr and 'ultimate cdr' as separate statistics. I think it would actually have roots in other games where ultimates don't follow the same cooldown logic in the fps space and just as an idea would allow for players to have cooldown based builds that don't just turn into "make it so I can press ult more often" But I will absolutely agree that there are some problematic abilities (anything that makes you invuln) that need to be reeled back in a world where so much cdr exists... Because let's be real, it's not that cdr is the problem, it's that certain abilities turn cdr into a problem. We all can agree that pockets satchel shouldn't have that much uptime, but it would be better to nerf that ability rather than nerf the entire cdr stat

[@Deathy]

Some other ppl have mentioned the idea of seperating CDR and ult CDR, interesting thought

[@thedofflin]

Agreed. Any other cooldown reduction balancing should be rolled into ability upgrades if it makes sense for that hero.

[@Tempelge1st]

I like everyone having ults in almost every late-game fight. For many heroes its part of the core identity & kit. Most ults are kind of balanced and offer options for counterplay (silence, unstoppable, debuff remover, staying away, ...)

[@CowboyGod100]

I think the main problem with CDR is it being able to work so effectively on ults and some abilities also shouldn't be able to get as low as they can. However some characters absolutely do need those cooldowns to get as low as they do, so I think they nerf CDR on items and nerf how it interacts with ultimates but then characters who need those shorter cooldowns that get hard nerfed into the ground by CDR get either buffs to compensate so it isn't as necessary or have their cooldowns adjusted. Probably not the greatest idea there is, but I just wanted to give my thoughts on this discussion

[@ProverbialDustBiter]

Especially they need to fix how veil walker restore all of your shield (even from kevlar) and you can't interrupt this. It's basically rapid free healing every 18 seconds

[@matthewbounds0]

I actually like the idea of not having cool down affect items and less sources of CDR. Also maybe have Ult require more AP of we want to keep the lower rung of CDR. It would make the Ults feel more ultimate!

[@catowarmeowson9964]

As someone that thinks gun's are far to strong in this game (Its a moba the skills SHOULD be stronger then shooting) I think CD are fine, think of it this way, Guns are ready 100% of the time. Skills have CD. If your gun took like 15 seconds to reload? sure ya fine but we dont live in that world. Skills are the fun part of this game, guns are already stronger, leave CD alone I say

[@oughguar]

If people are going to build around having consecutive ultimates with Refresher it stands to reason they’d build Superior Cooldown on top of it, make Refresher give your ult a longer cooldown to counteract a spam archetype. They can globally adjust the cdr on items by reducing percentages all around, and then removing small instances like the 8% on enchanters, put it on items that are more niche instead of for very broadly good items. Enchanters gives you absurd utility with the effective health, ability damage, and cdr; probably better if cdr stayed as it’s own stat that you build an item to obtain and not something nailed onto already good items.

[@mp2863]

I don't think CDR is broken at the moment but I do believe that specific heroes and skills need their cooldowns revisited. Also I think echo shard and refresher need a reexamination. Being able to double cast any of your abilities should be a really really big achievement.

[@aleksijuhola7071]

especially with echo shard it can be kinda nuts sometimes since in certain cases it ESSENTIALLY IS a CD reduction if it's own CD is lower than what the ability itself has is your ability 45s CD? Well echo shard lets you do the ability twice in a row, OR ALTERNATIVELY, use the CD of the shard itself to essentially ALWAYS have the ability available with over half of the natural CD shaved off by being able to just shard it into existence every 21 seconds

[@tohobookworm]

I don't usually comment but yeah, I have thought about this a few times. I'm by no means a top player, I used to go around low ascendant until very recently. I play mainly Yamato and Pocket, and I've felt this a lot. In both characters I'm currently building both enchanter's and also cooldown on pocket, and it's a bit dumb and something I've been saying for a while. Satchel is a honest to god problem with dealing against Pocket as they get away with SO much stuff in one fight (specially if you add EthShift into this), and their ult has a lot of presence against the enemy when it takes like 1 minute to have it back. Fighting Wraiths sometimes feels hopeless because they kill you during ult and by the time you've respawned they can ult again, killing you over and over and over again. And appart from that, and it even happens to me! Lately even if I die during my ult as Yamato, by the next fight I already have my ult ready, and it feels weird to have such an ability ready so often. And well, Rapid Recharge, what can I say. Vindicta's ult getting one bullet every 25ish seconds, Viscous punches that never stop coming, neverending Talon shots, all of them feel pretty stupid to fight against. Cooldowns sit definetly in a weird place right now. I don't know how it should be tackled, but definetly it needs either a hardcap, very severe diminishing returns or being exclusive to very, very few items. Cooldown reducing upgrades should be reserved to T2s or T3s that's for sure, stuff like Geist's ultimate having a 170s CD with a -38s T1 effectively means she has a 132s ult as soon as she unlocks it.

[@niida4120]

I am a eternus 5 player in sa, and think the improved/superior cd and extra/rapid charge are fine, but they should remove cd from spiritual overflow, leach, kevelar, etc...

[@niida4120]

maybe make superior cd unable to imbue ultimates.

[@MaxGappmayer]

Honestly, I’d much rather have more interesting upgrades for ultimates than base cooldown reductions. For one, they make Superior Cooldown less impactful (less base=lower decrease by percentage). It would also make the balancing and scaling much more smooth, and even out some of the more powerful “ultimate builds” such as Dynamo or old Seven to be much more “Extremely Huge ability then go jungle” rather than “fairly huge ability that I cast whenever I feel like it.”

[@Whaquille]

This makes complete sense, so I hope Valve will take this feedback into account! Having Cooldown reduction as any tier of ability upgrade feels unimaginative and definitely contributes to spammy gameplay

[@ThePhillShow]

I think separating core ability cooldown and ultimate ability cooldown could be a way to handle this. Fewer, more expensive items could have the ult cooldown stat.

[@RamzaBehoulve]

In almost every game, cooldown reduction ends up being overpowered in the end or nerfed so much to the ground it becomes useless. It's too difficult to balance around it. It's best if it's removed.

[@joshbryan81]

Been playing for a long time and I’ve honestly never really thought “ cooldowns in this game are a problem” except vindicta getting charges on her ult from rapid recharge

[@zini726]

Pockets cooldowns are fucked. If he picks up Warp Stone and Ethereal Shift, he's basically unkillable. Send out a Cloak, go into suitcase, tele to the cloak. Then he can warp stone away, then if you can stil, catch up, he'll just Ethereal Shift. And by the time all that's happened, hes got his Cloak and suitcase back up. Not to mention during that time everyone has taken about 20 seconds of tick damage from his Ult.

[@ElBiebs]

Hearing youre opinion made me think " have I never had an ult for a fight" and I feel like the answer is no. While it might not have been an apparent problem to me I can see it becoming a bigger one as the player base gets better at snowballing even more. Definitely reminds me of Valorant having an ult problem to and increasing the cost of ults with seemingly every big patch until recently. Ults in any game seem hard to balance.

[@ComputerGamer2]

I agree with you. there should be a choice for players, which skill to pump. the fact that the reduction in skill cooldown goes to all skills at once is bad because it makes this parameter too effective for all champions.

[@hone-pq7pp]

i came from overwatch and i was always thinking ppl just dont think about their ult usage cause they dont care cause cds for ults are short. maybe you also change the ult to not be a cooldown aswell and you can earn it by doing dmg

[@natsumib9538]

I think it's wild the so many characters have a CD reduction as an upgrade for their ult, but Dynamo doesn't lmao. I feel like the Items that do give this buff are needed for dynamo to strive, but I wouldn't mind them getting rid of it if they make the rest of his kit better for the laneing phase.

[@FastestFourLegs]

It doesn't help that they nearly doubled sources of duration in the recent patches - Dynamo ult reaches nearly 8 seconds and with refresher that is 16 seconds, its just way to strong. Remove Duration sources as well i would say.

[@ShadyzReal]

I agree delete fun. and make this game another league of legends so players would go back to playing that

[@saucynaut]

I agree but if all Ult and ability cooldowns got extended I think some would probably need to be buffed(?) Also do you think that the extended CDs would incentivize the use of gun builds? I feel like I see them more times than not as it is.

[@aleksijuhola7071]

honestly a pretty drastic measure would be that ult cooldowns cant be toned down at ALL with items this could let the devs more deliberately balance the ults with their comparatively set-in-stone CDs in mind, without needing to take into account the possibility of "ok, but what if the Dynamo has every cooldown item in the game to make singularity 30s CD?" it would ALSO let the other abilities be free to get cooldown reductions, which is GENERALLY more fine as they often dont have nearly the same game-deciding power as ults do, which rn are indeed played into too much with how much reward you can get out of them though also get rid of CD reduction on leech atleast. Kevlar I can soooooorta get, but leech is cracked already it doesnt need allat lol

[@monkeyfoetus]

CDR on talents is good because it gives useful per-hero balance knobs for improving ults, although perhaps those knobs need to be turned a bit. I agree though that large amounts of CDR available on items is probably bad for the game overall.

[@VarskDarkness]

My only worry is that since this is a nerf to all abilities in the game, it would almost certainly create a gun meta and cause gun heroes to be too strong. Best solution might be to just make cooldown reduction not work on ultimates only.

[@Notllamalord]

Gun can be easily regulated with bullet resist on items and passively, they’ve done it before

[@Phillz91]

I think Rapid Recharge should retain it's CDR specifically on cooldown between charges, but I agree there is too much general CDR in the game in general. Anecdotally, I was playing against a Bebop yesterday that was full spirit build and his bombs were on a 7 second cooldown, whilst dealing 1,200-1,400 damage for a double hit. Even with debuff remover, he has the opportunity to bomb you 3 separate times before the cooldown on the counterplay comes back up. Things would need to be rebalanced, but as someone in the middle ranks (Emissary), I think it definitely causes the 'Overwatch' mentality in a lot of people where they are constantly looking for fights because their kit is always online.

[@GoingOnAStreak]

I think that valve has made it clear with the ubiquitous AP cooldown upgrades that they want to maintain AP as one of the primary ways a character can get strong AND an integral way they can balance the pace and length of games. Currently, spending AP is a permanent skill-tree investment that furthers the game's ability to let players play characters exactly how they want. I think it's a fine design philosophy, but needs tweaking and not removal. The cooldown reduction being locked behind AP means that valve understands the power of cdr to some extent (though all AP slots are often completed by the end of a game so...) I agree with many of the people in the comments that there are so many item/character combinations that generic cooldown reduction is really hard to balance. Like Deathy mentioned, on top of that, the power level of ultimates are relative to the character's kit / design / match length / counterplay.

[@TheonlyHouseCat]

i sincerely hope they don't change it in the way you are suggesting, i haven't had too much of an issue with not being able to punish bad ults and such as typically they wont get all 6 even if they do well, so the rest can be right there to stop their ult or punish them, there is already significant diminishing returns on cd scaling, if you have an 8s cd with some cdr already, then a 32% cdr might only take away 10-15% of the remaining cooldown. an example is mcginnis turrets, i had superior cooldown and rapid recharge, went from 18s to 12s cd somehow even though it should have been a good bit more

[@Cake-]

100% agree, playing around waiting for ult cooldowns every single fight is getting old

[@ANJ_gaming]

Pocket enjoyer here, I think there's good arguments being made here, I already probably don't ult enough because I tend to want to use it when I'm hitting 3+ people but Deadlock allows for me to use it even in solo fights. I think right off the bat, taking cool down reduction out of the gold statues is an easy way to lean toward some balance. My one worry is what nerfing CD drastically will do to the length of games currently. I don't want to play 1.5 hr matches or anything. Also if CD were nerfed hard Refresher will probably also become very meta and will also need a rework

[@bang3rachi]

I have a pretty big problem with refresher and echo shard (even though I use it often) alongside all the cooldown reductions, i think removing those two items would help with some of the ability/ult spam.

[@fantinorusso9044]

I agree honestly, all my characters use a lot of cooldown reduction and its pretty dumb. Since you talked about golden statues i want to complain about the variety of the buffs, i dont think they should remove the cooldown reduction buff without replacing it with something else, there are already 3 buffs that help your weapon, but not that much for spirit or health, it always annoys me a bit seeing the weapon buffs (specially ammo) since i tend to neglect it.

[@Consumpter]

Had a match against a team consisting of wraith, mo, dynamo, lash, paradox, and mcginnis. They won by trapping players then solo ulting. They rotated ults the entire match and we had no opportunity to farm or punish.

[@robinowie]

Its especially annoying when characters like viscous or yamato can pop ult every single fight and just escape. Maybe something like making "cooldown reduction" and "ult cooldown reduction" into two separate stats would be interesting. Like maybe improved/superior cooldown do not effect cooldowns on ultimates, and diviner's kevlar can lose its cd reduction but instead it gets lower cooldowns on ultimates?

[@GiffelBaby]

Maybe just make it so ults aren't affected by CDR?

[@Jazzyluvsyou100]

If they want to keep cooldown reduction, they should just keep a modifier per ability. Like this is affected by cooldown reduction by X percentage. That means they can have the best of both worlds. They already have spirit based damage scaling per ability. Just make cooldown based reduction the same. So if you have super impactful spells, not just ultimates, you can reduce how omuch cooldown reduction these have if they need to stay like once a fight spells. It gives the devs alot of control

[@jbstans]

I do think you're right and that it is a little too strong at the moment. I do think the lack of heroes at the moment isn't helping either, though. Your example of being able to build a brawling lineup to fight a wombo combo lineup was a good one, but I feel like with such a small hero pool and lack of draft stage there's very little opportunity for any kind of lineup based counterplay which is probably exacerbating things, too.

[@Notllamalord]

The problem is I can’t run it on my shitty laptop so I gotta wait until I’m home

[@davejones8462]

the community can discuss your laptop right after we talk about cooldown reductions lol

[@ottosyrjala]

Now that the ranked and "casual" games have been merged, I more frequently see better ability/ult usage and that has resulted in me buying knockdown and running around the map trying to anvil the ults. I know this has been an obvious buy for many for a long time, but I have only reached 75 games and ritualist 6 so I am a newcommer to the game :P

[@theGrassMan0305]

I think ults being 100s or less is kinda insane. It really should be a "once per fight or two" kinda thing, and not "oh boy its been 30s geist/pocket/wraith/paradox have ult again, fun"

[@danakroid7172]

It seems like they wanted short cooldowns were intended to make Deadlock more accessible and fun with constant action with casual players, but as people figured out what worked best it started working against the game. I don't think it's even remotely possible to recreate Deadlock at its peak popularity because it was fun on account of everyone's generally low skill level. It's just another MOBA now.

[@oj11san]

Counterpoint - I love pressing big buttons, especially Pocket's dirty bomb. It's neuron activation moment for me. On a serious note, I think it's to help shift game more towards fps\hero shooter side, rather then moba side. Maybe golden statue buffs is too much, max amount should be more controllable. Also nerfing CD will disproportionally buff gun heavy heroes, I love the ability to focus on spirit damage completely, and cd are very important part of it.

[@algumnomeaihehe]

Not only that, but it forces them to balance around "max cdr" or "average cdr", which makes it less of an option and more of a mandatory build, which is obviously bad; It is as if those characters have two fewer item slots and 6000 (or whatever). (Obviously not literally, they still get the stats from the items and such, but yeah). Honestly it's the same issue with items like stam, boots, armors, even healbane. A bunch of items feel mandatory rather than options.

[@MrSlaughterrific]

Totally agree. I've always felt this game could have a much better ultimate economy. It feels like you can easily delay fights to have anything ready every time and it doesn't matter

[@kaleb4184]

I like this thought It feels like impossible to catch pocket with cd reduction especially with it affecting items like ethereal shift and warp stone

[@robertosantos3769]

Try stunning him, and silence hex goes hard on they

[@RylHango]

Buy silence

[@werjobs8350]

my take so far half way through the video, is i fully agree ab the ultimates, i think refresher and echo shard should be removed. I like normal abilities being on really short cooldowns though. I also just think in general ultimates should not encourage you to solo ult (wraith, mo & krill, haze) i think that overall balancing would be really hard if a lot of base abilities were raised by 100%, like lash, pocket, would be very very very underpowered if their base abilities were increased that much. however, on ults i think it should be much longer

[@mikel4172]

in my opinion the items are fine, just the ap lvlups for ults need to be reworked

[@abstract7710]

How do you feel about abilities just doing too much damage? My biggest problem right now is how oppressive spirit damage is and reducing the base damage and spirit scaling of these abilities would probably have a similar benefit as increasing the cooldown would.

[@Deathy]

I would say some spirit damage is still oppressive yes, overall it's a lot better than it was like 6-8 weeks ago, so definitely moving in the right direction. I'm fine with abilities doing a lot of damage if you itemize for them, but there def needs to be counterplay

[@ow_absol3741]

Definitely feel like this has become an issue recently. Played against a Pocket who had superior cooldown and ethereal shift. Basically became unpunishable, as they just cycled through briefcase, ethereal shift, and tp. Also, cooldown reduction affects active items if I'm not mistaken? Which I feel is also egregious with the amount of cooldown reductions in the game atm

[@63chicago6]

Agree that sometimes it can feel like some heroes ALWAYS have their ults up for every fight, sometimes even getting 2 in a single fight and that can get kinda irritating. On the other hand though... it's fun to use your abilities, and I'm not so sure that making it so everything has longer cooldown will make the game more fun to play. This is from a relatively casual POV (I'm ritualist 4) for what it's worth. Abilities are just fun to use, and the more you get to use your own abilities the more fun you get to have... Definitely seems hard to balance. One other thing i agree with though is it feels genuinely pointless to make upgrades on ults or abilities just minus cooldown. Doesn't feel fun to upgrade those & when it's the 1st upgrade then you're basically never playing without the cooldown reduction to feel the difference anyways

[@AzuuK]

I feel like cooldown reduction is a nice feature in game and most of the characters feels way smoother with it than without it, besides a few examples, like you said as Pocket's sachel (that for me should just have an increased cooldown on the ability), for me it feels like normal habilities cd reduction work fine, most of the times just making the character not feel like its stuck on the ground on a fight just shooting for the next 30~40 seconds. But then we have to talk about ultimates, as you said, Dynamo is incredibly strong since he can just cast it every single time, others examples would for me would be Mo and Krill since he can just deny the carry and same with Paradox, and for it, I feel like there should be two tipes of cd reduction, ability cooldown and ultimate cooldown. But, as you said, reducing the overall cooldown on the game should also be looked at. specially on ultimate upgrades. But overall I feel like abilities besides a few ones that definitely are way too strong, specially abilities focused on surviving and/or denying the enemy, should have their cds looked at.

[@treesauce2625]

They could make cdr more backloaded like a cdr spirutual overflow where constant fighting reward lower cooldowns instead of mashing cooldowns whenever they're up.

[@mopatop3921]

What about Refresher and Echo Shard? I feel like they are also a huge problem especially with how cheap they are. Refresher especially - it's so hard to balance ultimates around being able to be cast twice.

[@Deathy]

Yeah those items are definitely another part of the problem, but I think they are also a different problem. Refresher also benefits from all abundance of cooldown reduction since CD also affects items. I didn't touch on it in this video but it definitely has a lot of implications on Refresher.

[@taibasarovadil]

deadlock is the only moba I play so its very interesting to see how it differs from other mobas and what these differences lead to

[@JustVenom]

Wraiths Ult is def something Ive noticed since I first started playing💀 Also I just think they should remove refresher and make SCD 6,200 and make cooldowns less and if not no cooldowns on upgrades for heros and other items, having ults be more common should be an end game type of thing where fights become common and more risky.

[@steven1716]

definitely i think that more abilities need to cooldown when the effect of the ability ends, not when its used

[@cyberjeeb]

League made different sources only reduce abilities or ult independently mostly. I think long cooldowns are balanced for lane phase but it's more satisfying to have more abilities in a teamfight to use. Yeah i think ult cds are too short.

[@emctwoo]

I’m mixed. I agree that the game having a spammy feel where ability usage doesn’t matter isn’t good, but I also really like the option to build around some ults (tho not every hero has a ult that needs that probably). I also like that focusing heavily on spirit is viable, and a big part of that is how often you can rely on being able to use abilities. With the amount of movement and verticality available, it’s also quite hard to hit a lot of abilities and from a fun perspective it does kinda suck to miss something and then be useless for a long time. It seems like part of the issue is just the at some ults and abilities, particularly boring af ults like pocket and escape tools like pocket, need cooldown nerfs, since they are particularly unfun when spammed. Being unable to punish escape/movement heavy characters is really miserable and a big problem right now, but I don’t necessarily think the game as a whole would be more fun if all abilities were slower

[@yellowtitan6040]

agree, except I only really feel it's an issue with ultimate right now. Also cooldown affecting items makes this even crazier. On top of getting ult every fight, you could, for instance, get Headhunter to activate every 4 seconds and practically get permanent move speed and constant healing in fights. I often load up on items like this with builds that include cooldown reduction and it feels so strong.

[@Salmacream]

Cd is important, and I like that you can get it from a bunch of different sources, maybe just add a cap? 30% per ability or something like that? Becuase you are suggesting making Superior Coolddown a mandatory item in all of the builds in the game. If you don't get it you would be throwing. 25% more abilities even on gun characters is way too fricken good to just not buy. So if they can get say 20% without buying SCD, (in other words 20% cd from other items,) I like that. Edit: This would be 30% total so Im not suggesting we make CD additive. I don't think it is right now at least. Also get rid of cd on ults, just make them more impactful I would be ok with that. Maybe increase the skill required to use them to compinsate. Maybe Bebop ult can only move 3 times before he's stuck. #1: like the beam shoots, #2: it sits there, #3: and you can click on your screen to move it quickly to a new spot. Stuff like that, so a buffed ult doesn't feel so insanely op. Ults should kill, but we wanna keep skill in the equation. I think its not hard to brain storm something like this for all of the characters instead of CD as an ablilty upgrade.

[@Deathy]

Superior Cooldown is already a mandatory item for any build that relies on abilities (especially ultimates). All the other items are bought for other reasons, and just have cooldown as an added stat. People aren't buying Leech, Spiritual Overflow or Diviner's Kevlar for the CD reduction; it's just an added stat on-top

[@Salmacream]

@@Deathy Which is why i said we should add a cap. I think that makes sense no? It removes the need for SCD as a mandatory item, while what you are saying just makes it even more mandatory. Not trying to be rude or offensive here, but you see what I'm saying no? Edit: Specifically they did this in smite, and it worked. Players will cap CD but anything over cap is a huge blunder and gets you flamed in chat.

[@fogofwar342]

I actually like Deadlocks take on CD and CD reduction. Not to say tuning won't be necessary. Part of why I love this game is because all the characters feel over the top. Valve hasn't taken the "water down" approach to abilities the way other games have. It's unique in that way. I personally find it very fun to build into double ulting or something similar that feels OP. Most things can be countered or mitigated in someway.

[@boots1636]

I'd hate to see improved cooldown go so disagree there, but I generally agree that having many stackable sources of CDR makes it impossible to balance longer CD spells. Since it's percentage based, any attempt to balance long CD spells by increasing their cooldown quickly turns into a mandatory tax on several of your item slots, reducing build variety. If you can only get CDR in one slot, it's more likely that you're going to buy it if you need to hit a particular useful threshold. Long term, I can see how mass CDR limits future design and balance options.

[@noahdavidson1343]

I think the issue with long cooldowns is that they can incentivise a leading team to slow the game down to a crawl. Eg, in dota if you drop black hole and win a fight and get rosh, you might decide to just farm with the aegis instead of pushing, because you don't have black hole. But of course this can be tuned like any mechanic. Maybe CD reduction should come with worse accompanying stats so it's more of a tradeoff. Maybe CD reduction should come with big negative side effects like -spirit resist, who knows. I agree that a character which is building damage like wraith, should be disincentivized from building CD reduction just like you would never make an octorine core on an anti mage or clinkz. CD reduction could be moved to 3k and 6.2k cost for instance.

[@StabbyStabber]

I'm one of the many players who quit in the last few months. I put 250 hours in and then just bailed. The patches are mostly nerfing a character only to overbuff them later, then doing this whole process again. I am so tired of it. I think the big issues come down to: Most of the cast is anti-fun. Wraith, Dynamo, Bebop, Mo & Krill, Lash, Paradox, Pocket... The list goes on a bit more. I fucking hate these characters and I NEVER want to play another match where they exist as they are. I have never played a game with so many characters who are fundamentally just anti-game, anti-fun, and miserable to play against. I agree with you 100% on ults being a huge problem, but I think that's just scratching the issue. The character designs are BAD. They are not fun to play against. How is Warden fun? He just sprints at you with slowing hex and spams all of his abilities. Get caught out? Dead. Super fun character in lane too. Booooooooo. Laning against Wraith? Go fuck yourself! Laning against Mo & Krill? Go fuck yourself twice! The games are waaaaaaaay too long. Matches should be 20-25 minutes, not 40-50 minutes. The matchmaking and MMR system is literally the worst I have ever seen in a game. Couple that with long matches and that is the main reason I quit. Insane number of cheaters who seemingly aren't punished. If I ever come back, and I'd like to, it'll be after massive reworks of like 50% of the game.

[@abuveground4934]

I mean Jesus, Geist has bomb every 2 seconds at the start of the game! It’s crazy

[@arkhanok6329]

Maybe cooldown reduction on items should scale diffrently on ulimates. And I do agree that abilities shouldn't be spamable but on the other hand the game is not very fun if you often end up in situations where you only have your gun. Its definitely something they should change as getting ulted every fight is also not very fun. Also currently you can just get away with using your ult on single targets which almost always results in a kill, but I thing they should balance it so it's more optimal to save ults for teamfights which might result in more kills.

[@wasdx3545]

I agree but also I would be sad if shiv dashgod dies (where you can spam your dashes back to back, with the correct build and in rare occasions). if they increased how much cooldown reduction slice and dice tier 3 gives you it would probably work again though

[@speedingblaze]

I think cooldown can be a bit much right now but if reduced to much it can lead to a lot of just sitting around doing nothing.

[@MultiYoshiman]

I agree that ult cooldowns are up a bit too much, but I think removing cdr from the pool more would make cooldown based heroes a bit more boring. You would only need superior cooldown as a cooldown investment item, and it would be hard to not justify buying it. I would prefer the opposite where cooldown is spread more around items but with lower numbers, so it’s more of an investment if you really want high cdr.