Combos

Well I got to thinking about how people want combos to be similar to 1.0 with timers and the dev team wants weapon skills to not have those timers but just a general GCD.

My idea is to keep the GCD and having the ability to use those weapon skills without the longer timers in 1.0, but have combos on a seperate timer. An example would be the Warrior's combo for Steel Cyclone; Heavy Swing > Skull Sunder > Steel Cyclone. Now the weapon skills themselves would just have the GCD but being able to do the combo itself would have its own timer, lets say 30secs before being able to do get the benefits of doing the combo.

This should encourage people to do other combos instead of just one and still allowing them, to say use Steel Cyclone repeatedly if they just want to wipe out a bunch of mobs at the same time.

In my opinion this is the best of both worlds.

Feel free to add what ever you think would be best.

Hmmm, this sounds like a solution looking for a problem. More specifically, I think your solution is more complex than the problem you're solving. I too think that there needs to be some complexity added to the current system as is they want to really keep people interested. That being said, this solution sounds a little Rube Goldberg-esk to me.

Fundumentally, I think the problem stems from the reduction of effective roles. By restricting enhancement and enfeeblement to shadows of their former selves, they reduced the number of permutations you can use to affect the same amount of damage.

Global Cooldowns alone are not a problem, the problem is incentivising the use of all abilities. Your solution isn't really incentive, it's a slap on the wrist if you don't. Players respond better to the carrot than the stick - just look what happened when Blizzard rebranded rested EXP. I'm hoping that as new elements come to light, we will see more incentives to use various skills, such as cooperative damage bonuses in the form of Limit Breaks and more diverse effects from combos.

i watched the gamescon video again, and studies the skills yoshi was using. it seems pretty much every weapon skill only has GCD, so you can spam leg sweep, chaos thrust, dragonfire dive every 3-4 seconds...
Ofc that's several months ago, so we'll see ^^
it's pretty crazy if you can constantly do combos...well aside from not being able to build TP quickly. so it would be kinda burst damage.
I think you'll cycle most skills really. you'll do different combos in different circumstances. And the combos are different anyways. in 1.0 you had vorpal thrust->impulse raid. this is not a combo any longer. instead it's true thrust->vorpal/heavy thrust. In most cases you'll use vorpal, cause heavy cost more TP, but adds heavy if you wanna kite/flee.
We'll see what other combos there are. But i hope there's reason to use all combos/skills. Impulse seems like generic spam skill in party though, with low cost, and high damage; but problematic solo, cause you need to be behind target for max damage...
But anyways it depends on circumstance. If you fighting few mobs, there's no reason to cyclone. might be better combos for higher damage vs single target, or lower tp cost.
(this is info you can see in alpha party video)

I noticed Drachen gear had new stats also.
gloves +45 atk, +30 enmity! suppose it makes sense to add enmity since it adds lots of atk
boots +20str, +40 enmity, some powerful kicks right there.

Maybe they can keep the GCD timers but when you do a combo, like yoshi said only the first move will require positioning so if you engage an ability from the correct position to engage a combo, than the following two abilities that follow that combo could be initiated instantly with out suffering the GCD?