I never said it would be more punishing than it is now. I was weighing it against the obvious alternatives.
I'm saying said that it would have to be balanced around constant uptime because so many fights provide it, and, being also defendant on constant uptime, would then penalize downtime.
Let's say you have two options" You can have:(1) a 3 minute CD where every Coeurl skill reduces that CD by an amount equal to your GCD, averaging out to roughly one minute skipped per that CD or an effectively 2-minute refresh rate, orThe difference is simply that the latter still sees that buff even when you're not attacking, be it between pulls or when forced out of melee range. Option (1) cannot exceed Option (2) in maximum strength, because many fights do allow for 100% uptime, but Option (2) can outperform Option (1) in any of the fights where that is not the case, and can feel like a QoL boon during leveling or dungeons.
(2) you could just have a 2-minute refresh rate, baseline.
Simpler can often be better. Complexity where no actually additional control is offered, is not added difficulty or means for skill-gap; it's simply the opposite of convenience, and (however slightly) diminishes other areas of control.
tl;dr: We'd be better off just shaving that bonus off the actual CD, rather than via some combat-dependent mechanic.
