Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General No Cooldown Reduction for skills in D:OS 2, please

http://larian.uservoice.com/forums/...wn-reduction-for-skills-based-on-your-st

In D:OS, As your Intelligence increased, it decreased the cooldown time of spells. (There was no equivalent for DEX or STR-based skills, although I believe that is coming in D:OS EE.)

Not only did that make the already-powerful mages even more powerful, but it also reduced the importance of tactical choice. Once some cooldowns decreased to 1 turn, you could just use the ability again the next turn. The decisions about what the best spell to use in the particular situation became less important. Should I use spell X now, or save it for a better time?

It also complicated the design of the skill balance, because a character with the same skill-set at Int 8, int 14, and Int 20 played quite a bit differently because of the cooldown times.

The EE's change to add cooldown reduction for all kinds was the right one for D:OS 1 to help fix some of the imbalance, but I do not think it should be the way to go in D:OS 2.

If there was a hard design rule of No Cooldown Reduction (based on your stats - I see a role for certain Talents and Skills to alter cooldown), then the game and skills would have to be balanced around that.

It would remove the complexity-adding factor of the wildly variable cooldowns, helping encounter/skill balance, because now you have a certain number of skills available and are not able to spam mid-high level skills each turn.

That's not to say that skill spam should be entirely removed. On the contrary, I think that fixed cooldown reduction could open up tactical choices. There could be some low-level spells which had a 0 or 1 turn cooldown, some mid-level spells which had cooldowns of 3-6, and higher-level spells with a 7-turn cooldown. That would work even better if you had to store AP for 2-3 turns to be able to even cast some high-level spells. The player would have to decide if they wanted to keep up a constant stream of weaker attacks, or if now was the time to unleash a high-powered attack, knowing it would be some time before it could be done again.

I think that by insisting that stats can't lower cooldown, it will make design easier and increase the importance of tactical choice in combat.

That and the fact that they are reducing the amount of AP that you receive in combat to around 3-4 pips.

Agreed, a cooldown shouldn't be a variabile but a costant.

I wasn't aware of the changes to EE, I'd preferred no scale down in turns there either, way to spammy of the same needed powers over and over. I agree with OP.

I don't see any objection of a certain level of a what-ya-call-it-again (the points stuff like the schools, melee, ranged etc.) giving a boost in how often you can cast something, besides just being pure +damage, as verified per spell. As those couldn't go higher than 6 or 7 anyway, it's very controllable in that manner unlike the larger fluctuation Intelligence had.

You mean Ability points, like in Bow/Crafting/Lockpicking?

Well, my disagreement with variable cooldown reduction doesn't change just because it's a smaller variation. But that's just my personal opinion.

Yes, that's what I mean.
It doesn't always have to be pure +damage. As we learned from D:OS, that could get rather boring.