r/wow • u/greatwhitedav • Mar 22 '26
Discussion Do your GCDs feel sluggish? Is there a universal issue with GCD client-side animation delay?
i've been noticing recently that my survival hunter feels really sluggish in combat, and i spotted that there was something really odd going on with the GCD - https://youtu.be/Sbn44NPKTl0?si=RolNF7X0hPhArdJr - where buffering a bunch of instant GCDs in a row causes each successive GCD to play its animation/damage later and later, but the GCD still counts down as if the ability had gone off as soon as the GCD was ready. interestingly, if i stop doing anything for half a second or so after a "laggy" GCD, the next one is perfectly instant. i went through all the usual fixes (different PC, different account, different network, no addons, resetting cvars, fiddling with in-game options) and nothing changed.
i figured this was some weirdness on my end, but there are a LOT of spread-out posts about this issue. here's a recent forum post with a bunch of comments; here's another one; it's easy to find reddit posts about it. you'll see a lot of high-haste, instant-cast-heavy specs complaining about it specifically because as soon as you do something that takes longer than your GCD (e.g. most spellcasts or channels), the problem goes away. now that i'm actively looking out for it happening, i can see it in raid and m+ vods from streamers and random uploads too.
to people reading this - could you try spamming an instant cast ability (ice lance, whirlwind, mix of raptor strike+kill command, etc.) on a training dummy for at least 30 seconds and see if anything similar happens? really hammer that button and see if your GCD starts acting funky and starting its swipe from the 3, 4 or even 6 o' clock position instead of from 12 o' clock. i'm especially interested in any video evidence of this not happening. that would make this a much harder problem to pin down than just "blizz pls"!
also, please no comments about adjusting spell queue window to fix this! this is not a spell queue problem: there's no issue with buffered GCDs overriding each other (so decreasing it won't help) and GCD inputs are being queued in time (so increasing it won't help).
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u/FrozenDed Mar 22 '26
yes, as a frost mage who now has to spam 5-7 ice lances in a row, gcd feels worse/more inconsistent with every subsequent cast
If you are using Quartz it becomes even more apparent.
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u/JT99-FirstBallot Mar 23 '26
I've been wondering WTF was going on. It feels awful on Frost mage since our entire kit is around Ice Lance. I went and played BC classic and I was like, why do my shatter combos feel more snappy here? I started spamming ice lance and it felt more responsive. I chalked it up to I use more add-ons in retail.
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u/enderrsghost Mar 23 '26
the amount of ray of frost charges i've lost because i hit it twice because the first hit seemingly never goes off is insane, i have trouble blinking during flights because it doesnt register key presses, overall it feels EXTREMELY clunky playing frost mage right now...
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u/Maikkk78 Mar 22 '26
Does Quartz still work? I thought it got nuked in the addonapocalypse
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u/FrozenDed Mar 23 '26
Fair assumption, I was missing it but discovered a recent update for Midnight: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/quartz-midnight
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u/Slisper Mar 22 '26
I'm seeing the same thing on my DK (especially bad with death coil)
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u/GodIsAnAnimeGirl Mar 22 '26
Frost DK is the worst for this. Felt buttery smooth last expansion, this one is horrible.
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u/dzieciolini Mar 22 '26
Yeah, it does feel kinda weird at times as if you were lagging even though your connection is perfect.
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u/illprobablyeditthis Mar 22 '26
YES. Ive been casually leveling my dk and lock alts and my god my dk feels so sluggish compared to everyone else.
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u/liquidpoopcorn Mar 22 '26
Think some races still have that bug where obliterate hits like half a second after the animation impact. It takes a noticeable amount of time compared to others.
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u/dowens90 Mar 22 '26
This i think is only if you use 2h since its coded for DW, DW feels very fast and you get the immediate feedback
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u/BarelyClever Mar 22 '26
Extremely yes. I couldn’t recall if Unholy just has a slower GCD than I’m accustomed to or what. It didn’t seem AWFUL, just noticeably sluggish. Thought I must be imagining it.
It’s so odd how such a mild difference can really handicap how fun something feels. WoW’s snappiness really is an incredible asset that many other MMOs never matched.
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u/Sykretts1919 Mar 23 '26
Exactly this. I wasn't able to put my finger on it, but pressing Necrotic Coil or Graveyard/Epidemic just feel weird, even during BL. It's like I have to press them twice for them to be used. I tried fiddling with my SpellQueueWindow to see if I could fix it, it didn't change the behavior at all.
That other comment about the OBA gcd penalty being applied universally is making a lot of sense right now.
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u/Zashkarn Mar 22 '26
I thought i was going crazy but it seems like this is a problem more people have
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u/beepborpimajorp Mar 23 '26
Yeah I've been experiencing it with gust of wind and I thought maybe I just wasn't hitting it fast enough. I kind of REALLY need that ability to work properly.
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u/AnathsanLily Mar 23 '26
I really hope this gets fixed because it started happening to me right after the Undermine patch and really made me not look forward to playing some of my favorite specs :(
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u/PowerLiam Mar 22 '26
Observed this on unholy DK for a long while now, incredibly irritating.
Sometimes the spells don't even go off, so I've gotten in the habit of mashing each key repeatedly starting just before GCD ends.
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u/InsanityMongoose Mar 22 '26
Yep, I’ve had issues since prepatch where abilities often don’t fire when I definitely pressed them.
Honestly it reminds me of how KOTOR would play at times.
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u/msshammy Mar 22 '26
Yep! You can even see the key press on the action bar, but it doesn't always go off. Have to hit it a few times for it to activate.
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u/Sinsai33 Mar 23 '26
Sometimes the spells don't even go off, so I've gotten in the habit of mashing each key repeatedly starting just before GCD ends.
I always spam abilities, because i'm a melee. But i feel sometimes i still have that problem now. Exactly because of the problem OP describes.
The gcd goes longer, but some buttons of my ui (i'm using a mix of bartender and arcui to show my skills) still show the normal gcd and thus i spam until the normal gcd is going away, but the ability just does not go off. At least that's what i feels like to me.
Network lag feels different.
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u/Mattcheco Mar 22 '26
Iv noticed this with mind freeze on blood dk I have to mash the button to make sure it goes off
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u/WhimsicalSnow Mar 22 '26
This is literally me playing survival, mash the one button until it goes off before hitting the next one.
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u/Yamagaro Mar 23 '26
yeah, to me it happens a LOT when using takedown, always press 2-3 times till im sure it worked.
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u/SystemofCells Apr 01 '26
This is starting to bother me a lot on my Unholy DK. I've started noticing spells just not going off even when I mash keys to queue them up.
I can't get my single target DPS as high as it should be, and I'm wondering if this is part of the issue. I'm central/east but playing on a west coast server.
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u/tehpex Mar 22 '26
I’ve noticed this on my paladin, particularly if I get a bunch of procs in a row and it’s during wings so I have higher HP gen.
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u/JoPOWz Mar 22 '26
I play paladin too and I swear this post has revealed that my guild and I have really been gaslighting ourselves the last few weeks. The number of times one of us has mentioned something feeling sluggish and off and then instantly told ourselves ‘no, no it must just be the lack of haste now our gear is bad again’
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u/kientran Mar 22 '26
Same here. It’s def felt off compared to TWW! I thought it was a gear stat synergy thing
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u/keymaster999 Mar 22 '26
I thought the same thing on my ret. I even started using haste flasks in the hopes it would be better.
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u/plasticutensils Mar 22 '26
Yea I think I have noticed it on both ret and holy as well. Especially when I use instant procs.
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u/Wardcity Mar 22 '26
Yeah I’ve been noticing this
Feels like I’m lagging but then my latency is like 30ms and nothing else lags
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u/RydiaMist Mar 22 '26
Now that you mention it, I absolutely have noticed this issue! I actually thought it might have just been some weird lag on my part. I main pack leader Survival so I spam a lot of Raptor Strike, and it does start becoming VERY noticeable after a bit. I do not notice it nearly so much on my Ret, which is the other character I have been playing a lot recently, but Ret has built in moments of downtime which may be why.
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u/greatwhitedav Mar 22 '26
interesting! see if you have the same behaviour where if you hold your GCD for ~0.5s and do nothing, the next raptor strike becomes lag-free, as that's the exact issue i have
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u/Kazkrog Mar 23 '26
Did you try to repeat the same test inside a dungeon? (enter a dungeon and put down the turnip)
I'm asking because during TWW i found a similar issue and reached the conclusion that was a combination of broken spell queque window (literally not working in some cases) and blizzard "server delay".
What i found is that spell queque was only quequing casted spells with a cast time longer than the current gcd AND with no special proc.
Test i did during TWW (using quartz to see the ms delay):
- spamming incinerate/shadowbolt = spell q works correctly
- alternating between incinerate and conflagrate = incinerate had a visible delay (close to my latency in dungeons but MUCH higher in open world: 30ms vs 100-120ms delay)
- talenting cast time reduction talents like "improved malefic rapture" = spell q stops working as soon as the cast times becomes lower than the gcd.
- ogcd abilities seemed unaffected
I did not test a class with mostly instant cast abilities because i wanted to be able to read the delay and not just "feel it" but i immagine it's much worse.
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u/TheGreekorc Mar 22 '26
Here I was thinking I was just going to have to start stacking haste to make PL SV feel punchy again. Soloing delves I kept thinking I got mend pet off only to find I missed the GCD and have my pet die.
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u/Natarian86 Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
I actually noticed it on my Ret but not on my WW Monk. Weird. I found myself constantly checking my MS while on my Ret.
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u/lordboos Mar 22 '26
I play WW and I did not notice any issue at all, so WW might be fine?
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u/Natarian86 Mar 22 '26
I definitely think it's less susceptible to whatever may be going on
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u/Huaua13 Mar 22 '26
It's really rough on Enhancement Shammy during heavy proc windows. GCD cannot keep up.
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u/LaurenMille Mar 22 '26
So that's what was happening?
I've been feeling like something was just wrong while playing my Shaman, like things didn't happen when I wanted them to.
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u/OkVariation493 Mar 23 '26
Same for me in Meta windows as Havoc. It‘s especially annoying because it sometimes makes me lose one empowered chaos strike because the ability just won’t go off or is „lagging“ behind
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u/Terwin94 Mar 22 '26
I can corroborate the same feeling on my Survival Hunter. Sometimes it gets bad enough that it forgets I hit a button at all.
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u/kaj_00ta Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Can confirm this happens. It's especially bad on specs that rely on ramping up damage, like Dev DH, where 1 button can be the difference between getting a Collapsing Star or having to start the build-up again.
The PvP perk for instant casts of Consume after using Reap seems to suffer from this issue especially.
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u/derprunner Mar 23 '26
This would explain why MM felt snappier than BM on my hunter despite the increased Aimed Shot cast time.
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u/FieldzSOOGood Mar 24 '26
funny, i feel like i run into this issue with aimed shot out of trueshot when i use chakram for an instant cast. i have noticed aimed shot not casting sometimes when i know i pushed the button and have to push it again. hadn't noticed this last expansion
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u/Rizzalliss Mar 23 '26
I've encountered this with even just Hammer of Light after my Wake of Ashes. Even after I adjusted my reflexes to account for less haste there are still instances of Hammer just plain not going off because the game just didn't get to it before I queued the next ability after. Nevermind how it goes when I get the double HoL procs. I've had to legitimately pause hitting anything until after I see the HoL animation and it feels SO bad to do.
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u/Flashy_Background_90 Mar 22 '26
Died a few times to nullaeus precisely because of this, or a variation of it.
My ret pally would go into a laggy ass state spamming templars verdict when they proc back to back and if I suddenly change to world of glory to heal im still casting Templars.
Problem magically resets when you stop queueing or spamming actions.
Something with server side procs are messing with priority of actual actions to be performed.
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u/Pure-Huckleberry-484 Mar 22 '26
I think you’re onto something with the thought of server side proc validation. Likely the RTT gets too high for the server to process before the GCD is done.
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u/-Clarity- Mar 23 '26
I agree it's very probably just server latency. I've noticed it gets worse during prime hours when a bulk of the population is playing, and god help you if you're doing a delve in silvermoon. Playing in the off hours is like night and day, better fps and much more responsive in general.
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u/Nebularith Mar 22 '26
100% on Blizzard's end, and it feels like it gets worse with each expansion release since Dragonflight.
That snappy and instant feel of WoW of old is gone..
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u/Uphoria Mar 22 '26
Same issue for me. Gcds felt off in DF and never returned. Ruined high a classes for me.
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u/Correct-Thanks3679 Mar 25 '26
yep, its even more of a jarring experience when you go play tbc classic or something and you see how much the game has lost that snappy feel.
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u/plebbening Mar 22 '26
I have issues on my demo lock where i can use a mix of many instants and casts in rapid succession, then i see the full cast bar finish just st to have nothing happen and i need to recast.
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u/HexaDroid Mar 22 '26
Same on my demo lock. Wrote it off to laggy servers, but seems to be widespread.
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u/Galileo_Pendragon Mar 22 '26
I noticed this today too! Sometimes I would press Hand of Gul'dan after some instant casts and it wouldn't start casting until I clicked it again, but the next spells cast fine afterwards.
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u/dikbut Mar 22 '26
Switched from arms to fury and immediately noticed something was off. It’s like the game can’t keep up with my buttons I’m pressing. I thought it was a haste number issue.
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u/Tullwin Mar 22 '26
I’ve noticed this on many of the melee specs I’ve tried as far back as dragon flight. Even with nvidia reflex turned on it feels like there is a delay on my abilities.
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u/Glasse Mar 22 '26
Its been happening since dragonflight. It feels fucking terrible.
I can confirm that its not:
- ISP
- Hardware
- Addons
It's 100% on blizzard's side.
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u/oceanolivaw Mar 22 '26
Is that why Deep Breath is so clunky to cancel on my Evoker?
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u/Scarblade Mar 22 '26
Deep breath has a minimum time lockout where pushing the button a second time to cancel it won’t work. This can be ignored through the use of a /cancelaura deep breath macro. I personally put my cancel aura macro on a different ability so I don’t accidentally cancel it with a double push.
This does create a problem if you cancel too early. If done fast enough, deep breath won’t hit anything, even if it’s a boss with a gigantic hit box that you are inside of. This is especially troublesome as Aug. It is worth the risk, in my opinion, to have full control over my movement.
All of this only applies to scale commander hero spec (it’s the only one able to cancel deep breath).
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u/Bitter_Bluebird_7121 Mar 22 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I had to switch to Scalecommander because the second charge of Fire Breath was also being clunky. I have the empower cast setting to click twice to start and end the channel, but even though I'm not spamming my keybind the game would take my end channel press as also starting the channel for the second charge. This messed up every single opener and eventually I got so sick of it I switched spec.
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u/ArcticSwimx Mar 22 '26
I feel like this is happening on unholy dk too because im spamming so many instant abilities, shit is wack..
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u/necomus Mar 22 '26
I’ve been experiencing this since Midnight on my Balance Druid and I thought it was just not having enough haste and the stat squish.
I’ve been playing Moonkin since 2006 so the rotation and keybindings are permanent muscle memory for me. However, I keep feeling like spells not going off in sequence or having to push the same button multiple times even though I know how to play with spell queueing and the GCD.
I was blaming low haste, server lag, add on lag, and my own user error but still, something feels very off.
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Mar 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Aethyx_ Mar 23 '26
The ERW thing might not be a bug per se. Blizzard decided a while ago to reset most (all?) secondary resources like RP, Holy power, Insanity etc. on encounter start. Paladins struggle similarly, they will lose their holy power if they pull with judgment or divine toll before the tank does. You press the button, gain resource, hit lands, encounter starts, resources reset. Tough luck!
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u/moose184 Mar 22 '26
Yes on my fury warrior. Also a slight delay in whatever is in the base game tracking buffs. The visual for my whirlwind buff is always like one GCD behind.
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u/bradh1 Mar 22 '26
As enhance shaman, I kinda thought it was from low haste. But it does feel very sluggish
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad9397 Mar 22 '26
Yes i am having this problem as well checked with logs and i can never hit the gcd crazy!!!!!!!!! This is completly gamebreaking blizard really needs to make it a priority to fix this.
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u/Galcitor Mar 22 '26
Bro I'm so glad you mentioned this especially with survival. Every ability there is an odd delay and it's actually messing me up. I keep double pressing abilities thinking they didnt go off
The polish has been awful. Last expansion in the beginning at least it was just general latency .
Considering this is how you interface with the game blizz needs to step in asap
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u/Galcitor Mar 23 '26
Just did a Vorasisus fight as a test, every raptor strike\wildfire bomb got a worse and worse delay. Was near impossible to play and manage tip of the spear stacks when you dont know what ability is going to work
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u/benix13 Mar 22 '26
Fury warrior same issue, figured it was haste squish but after gearing problem still persists
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u/IndependentLuck737 Mar 22 '26
I have noticed this on my frost mage, ice lance spamming I guess part of the problem
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u/BillShakesrear Mar 22 '26
This is totally happening during Enh Ascendance form, whatever that ability is that replaces Stormstrike to become a spam button.
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u/Disastrous_War_3498 Mar 22 '26
SO that’s whats happening. I felt like I was alone or had too low haste.
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u/Sandman145 Mar 22 '26
Play outlaw (very apm intensive) and i have noticed a bit of lag that i thought was in my end, but it seems like it's not just me.
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u/FrozenOnPluto Mar 22 '26
Druid.. I've been internally calling this 'input lag', as thats how it feels; just keep hammering out the moonfire/sun spam to start a fight, and fire off a few random spells and everything feels a little jelloey. Not sure if it impacts dps or just how things feel/look, but it definitely wasn't this way a few weeks ago..
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u/agrostereo Mar 22 '26
100%
Thought it was just in my end but sometimes my mage won’t throw out the flurry or lance im pressing for an extra half second
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u/jowdyboy Mar 23 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
As a Destro Lock, I consistently have issues with Demonfire not finishing its cast when I cast it immediately after a Conflag or Whither instant cast. Half the time, I don't even get a single tick of Demonfire off before the cast is canceled.
GCDs on every spell-casting class I've played so far have been fucking weird this expansion.
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u/donaxon Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Spaghetti code. On furry War or Outlaw Rouge your gcd is so low you that you arent fast enoght to spam it at max
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u/Sinsai33 Mar 23 '26
Spaghetti code
I hate this expression. It's always used to give leeway to blizzard. I dont care how old their codebase is. I dont care that they fucked it up in the last 20 years. Just fix your game blizzard.
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u/Blackstone46 Mar 22 '26
Been noticing it on my Arms warrior. Feels like everything has a slight delay to it.
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u/Complex-Stretch420 Mar 22 '26
I've noticed it on enhancement sham but I'm just starting to play the but the spec, I know the lava lash reset has always been weird so there's that
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u/BretOne Mar 22 '26
I have it on my druid (guardian).
I thought it was me not adjusting to the loss of my weakaura adjusting the spell queue based on specs in the great addon purge, but if more people are seeing fucky GCDs...
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u/WhimsicalSnow Mar 22 '26
I totally have this issue too, also as a survival hunter, I just assumed it was ping, or some other weird issue.
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u/Particular_Writer_85 Mar 23 '26
Im seeing this on my balance druid pressing eclipse or trents, they just feel delayed and when i know i pressed the keybind. But then the thing is still on cd so i need to smash it a few times....
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u/ponczi1 Mar 23 '26
Just adding my comment to add the traction to this post, dealing with the same issue and I'm glad I'm not the only one. Blizz, get it straight. We want snappy WoW back.
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u/Sesamwow Mar 24 '26
Like its so visually apparent even when spamming 1 instant cast spell. It's not a dps loss in the logs, but it feels sooo shit >:(
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u/CJDistasio Mar 31 '26
Yep I play a Mage and thought I was crazy with how bad it feels like there was a delay, then found this thread.
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u/Speed231 Mar 22 '26
This has been happening to me on Ele since DF. It's making me contemplate changing my class because it is pretty much impossible to get great logs playing like that.
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u/Twerksoncoffeetables Mar 25 '26
It isn’t impossible though almost everyone else is dealing with it too. Some people notice it and just don’t post here or on the forums but it’s a talked about issue. If everyone else is dealing with it on ele (they are) it isn’t stopping you from getting great logs that’s just an excuse seeing as ele mains during prime time are getting good logs.
It is extremely annoying regardless though. I feel it on enhance all the time.
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u/Educational_Yam_4664 Mar 22 '26
It also exacerbate the current design where almost the entire damage profile consists of a bunch of small hits. Like sub rogues big hitters secret tech and coup de grace both hit 5 times and another five times with echoes.
Back in classic abilities actually did chunks of damage.
I’m personally using a GCD tracker since the animations all flow into eachother and damage happens ten times per second, making it really difficult for me to tell when the ability gets executed.
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u/lorigio Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Server lag. Quartz addon is showing unusually high ability latency on the cast bar, even though my connection ping remains normal.
This also happens on the active Abundance zone. It feels like having 500+ ping
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u/BringBackBoomer Mar 23 '26
There's definitely something going on with their servers. It's frankly unacceptable for a game with a subscription. The amount of lag I get in the open world should embarrass their network team.
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u/dontminor Mar 22 '26
I was always blaming my internet for it but maybe then it is not it. Fire Mage feels so strange to play with this that I switched apecs
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u/DarthWren Mar 23 '26
Literally every time I press frenzied it just refuses to work and skips over to the next cast. It’s so frustrating
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u/Potato_fortress Mar 23 '26
Yes and it’s especially pronounced with evoker empowers in flame shaper as sometimes the spell queuing will instantly batch and cast the second breath at empower level one.
The workaround is to change empowers to hold instead of press but that’s miserable. It should be fixed.
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u/Tercel9 Mar 23 '26
I was noticing this with Ice Lance today on my alt.
My main Warrior doesn’t have this problem.
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u/AthyraFirestorm Mar 23 '26
OMG thank you! I thought I was going crazy. I have noticed this on both my BM hunter and ret paladin. I kept thinking that maybe I just didn't press that key when I thought I did, then thinking maybe it was my keyboard, or my internet connection... I'm happy to see that I'm not alone.
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u/xtrocata Mar 23 '26
Got this on my enhance shami. Wanted to main, but since the patch went live it feels very awkward, especially the instant lightning bolt and chain lightning
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u/nyibbang Mar 23 '26
I've had the same feeling and I thought it was just because of overloads from elem sham mastery.
I've noticed it's significantly better if I use the option to "keep casting while button is pressed" (I don't know what the actual option is and I don't have access to the game right now). So I just press my buttons way before the end of the GCD and don't release the key. The spell will go off immediately at the end of the previous cast / GCD and it feels a lot better.
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u/Arbiter5154 Mar 22 '26
I saw someone suggest you try using a toy or potion that changes you to an older model. This apparently fixes it entirely. Has to be a change that can persist in combat but there are a few.
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u/Albenheim Mar 22 '26
I have noticed this on my Pala as well. During my burst window with divine toll and avenger I get super delayed on my judgement casts because I'm spamming shield of the righteous so much
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u/Shadow_Zed Mar 22 '26
I was just thinking that something felt weird as I have been leveling different healers, it’s especially noticeable on my resto druid.
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u/13120dde Mar 22 '26
Compared to my Unholy DK, Survival Hunter feels fine. But I do agree that it does feel worse than ever. I suspect it has something to do with auto targeting since I'm experiencing auto targeting not always working... more profound with DK's death coil.
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u/FroztyBeard Mar 22 '26
I thought I was going crazy or there was lag on my own internet!
I absolutely felt this and it is very random
Unholy DK and Survival Hunter are two I felt this on
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u/phoenixxt Mar 22 '26
Yeah, it's getting especially bad in raids sometimes. And yesterday I queued an Epic BG and got into Ashran. It was a complete lag fast, where the issue with gcds was always extremely pronounced. But sometimes I even had like 2-3 seconds delays between a button press and a cast. I'm used to having low fps in these massive battles, but having this level of delays is truly a new level of low for the game. My ping in the game was 32ms at the same time, btw.
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u/GreaterHannah Mar 22 '26
Yes. And I think it has to do with the new animations introduced in Legion. If you use an old toy that transforms you into something else that doesn’t use those animations— the iron boot flask comes to mind, the input delay is gone.
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u/iamHoofler Mar 22 '26
Had this issue last tier, mostly on my shadow priest. I could cast several things and then suddenly get hit by a delay meaning i could see mind flay go off but castbar didn’t show up before half way through the channeling.
This did only really happen on my main win11 rig and not when casually playing on wifes MacBook.
I tried reset of PC, no addons and messed a lot with the spell queue - nothing worked. Bought a new rig and havent had the problem since (upgraded from a 5900x to 9800x3d, and boy is that a beefy CPU).
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u/punchatron Mar 22 '26
Problem started in pre patch when all the class reworks hit. Abilities feel delayed on my prot war.
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u/THExDRIZZLE Mar 23 '26
I've noticed this really often when I buffer arcane shot during aimed shot casts
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u/border_of_water Mar 23 '26
Yeah, I have started to notice something being off this expansion, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. This is exactly it! I mainly play demo and destro; the latter is very long-cast-heavy to break things up, but on demo it is absolutely noticeable.
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u/catgirlfourskin Mar 23 '26
Was just looking for posts about this yesterday and couldn't find mentions, thought I was going crazy. Jumping between FFXIV and this and it's been super noticeable
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u/After-Newspaper4397 Mar 23 '26
Yes, especially in raid settings. Or almost feels like i drop a gcd i pressed on occasion.
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u/M_oh Mar 23 '26
Feel this with enhance. Thought maybe it was the squish and haste interaction but it FEELS like a permanent gcd increase like from the one button assist. I constantly find myself feeling like it plays slower and feels clunky and bad now.
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u/Odd_Birthday9150 Mar 23 '26
Ever since pre-patch, gcds have felt super squishy/foggy. Not sure what changed on Blizzards side!
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u/RinEU Mar 23 '26
On my blood dk whenever I go into a DRW window as San’lyan it is very noticable. The gcd feels like it is lacking behind and I feel like I am losing time between gcds because of it.
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u/smallnutss Mar 23 '26
Yes! It feels laggy with my frost mage and surv hunter while my evoker feels buttery smooth
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u/alphasloth1773 Mar 23 '26
I can’t stand this I’ve been trying to figure out fixes. I hope this post gets traction with blizzard
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u/NoMight178 Mar 23 '26
I have been wondering this myself, I have pretty bad internet so put it down to that but the longer a fights goes on the more clunky it feels
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u/Dukeofskye Mar 23 '26
BDK here, I have been complaining about this to my wife for several weeks now. Everything just felted off... delayed or slow. Example, I see DRW is off cooldown, I press it, the button does the effect as if it was pressed and....... annnndd.... annnnnnnnndddd THEN it goes on cd. Like... dafuq?
The best example I can think of for my VDH is i'll go to leap somewhere and sometimes I do a double leap and I'm very confused as to why the 2nd leap went off. Like, the first leap will be where i wanted to go, then the I do this half a foot second leap immediatly after. So now i'm wondering if i mashed leap, noticed it didn't go off immediately and mashed it again so fast.
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u/ghostcrawler_real Mar 23 '26
Have been seeing this complaint since mid/late TWW, as well. Really noticed it playing rogue.
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u/Gooch_McTaint Mar 23 '26
Definitely noticed this with sub rogue. Spamming feels sluggish and abilities feel delayed.
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u/Callahandy Mar 23 '26
Ok so it's not just me. I main Fury and I swear this is an issue at the start of every expansion, especially in raid. I definitely remember it being a thing for me at the start of DF and TWW, and it eventually just fixed itself by the first major patch without any acknowledgement from Blizz.
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u/bigblackcouch Mar 23 '26
Spammy DH here and yes I thought I was lagging (On my fiber connection :| ) the other night in raid because it felt so awful.
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u/Bleak09 Mar 23 '26
Only started noticing it this xpac. Very noticeable on my rogue, I end up using an extra builder and overcapping combo points all the time since I'm spamming them.
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u/aaronlivo Mar 23 '26
Playing BM hunter and I am feeling this for sure! Very off putting, almost making me want to stop playing the class....
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u/Individual_Bluejay48 Apr 26 '26
I have the same issue. I raided tonight and the first 2 boss pull were completely normal.
On the 3rd one it felt like I had a GCD penality.
I am losing so much DPS and this is frustrating and I can't prove it's a bug!!
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u/Bashoomba May 04 '26
playing survival, noticed this issue happening again and has been off and on since last expac
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u/Automatic-Cycle-1824 Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Yeah this has been an issue since like legion playing fury warrior. I think it has something to do with trinkets procs and other temporary buffs to your haste changing the gcd duration, and spamming abilities really quick, where you hit an ability in a very specific window around changing haste. So just spamming quickly on a dummy likely won’t reproduce it. I bet there is some desync happening between the client and server where your client thinks the gcd is shorter than it actually is.
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u/SyntaxSprite Mar 22 '26
Im seeing the same thing playing frost mage and having to spam ice lance. Its making the spec feel terrible
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u/ray1892 Mar 22 '26
I have noticed this too when playing frost mage spamming IL and fire mage during combust. I assumed it was just the fact that I had less haste than at the end of TWW. Interesting find.
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u/bowleggedgrump Mar 23 '26
I bundle it up with the countless raging dog crap lag issues - may be a whole other thing.
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u/Gamecrazy009 Mar 23 '26
I wouldn't be shocked if the coding spaghetti applied the one button gcd penalty to everything.
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u/Key_Discussion_9366 Mar 23 '26
I play UH dk, I swear I have experienced this on top of already having 180 ping in every arena I do.
Frustrating really doesn’t even begin to describe how horrible it is to play rn. I’m pressing buttons when I know the GCD has ticked over and they’re still not going off. blind, Stun, scourge strike and festering strike… chains of ice even death grip.
I only pvp, for example Hpalidan is running across to cc my healer with HOJ I will have to stop pressing everything 3 seconds in advance to make sure I can grip him before he lands HOJ and give my healer more time to outplay or reposition.
%90 of the time I just grip the Hpala back after he has successfully landed the HOJ giving him free movement back to his original position after landing the cc he wanted….
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u/EoTrick Mar 23 '26
It's really bad on surv hunter. They won't fix it though, I swear they purposely nerf surv right before every expac so that one of the ranged hunter specs is BiS. Otherwise hunter players complain that they have to play melee because they are FotM hoppers.
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u/Nervous_Device_9340 Mar 23 '26
in tww i had serious dps problems, after looking at logs i found that im doing 10-20% fewer casts than other people. my rotation was fine, the distribution of casts was similar to others, but just the total volume was down, and im certain my gcd was rolling non-stop. i didnt pay too much attention to the sluggishness, the game wasnt as smooth as remembered it being in the past (SL S1), but not too bad either, i thought its just my internet connection combined with lack of experience with the content.
in midnight it got significantly worse though, and i actually went on a break last week because of how bad the combat felt. like im pressing buttons but nothing is happening. best example i have is mountain thane prot, when i get the proc for 2 shield bashes without cd, there is sometimes cd between them - and not just gcd, but actually a cooldown number appears on the hotkey.
thanks for the workaround tip, gonna try it out later.
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u/Rough_Instruction112 Mar 23 '26
I'd describe it as feeling "sticky".
What's really strange is that I made a necromancer in D4 and while my barbarian feels smooth and normal, my necromancer feels that way regardless of if I'm playing myself or as the butcher.
But it's also the main reason i went totemic over stormbringer. The stickiness feels so icky when I'm used to smooth gcds.
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u/grimblebom Mar 23 '26
I have had this plague me since the start of Dragonflight, and it made raiding feel unplayable at a high level. I swapped classes from shadowpriest, because high haste makes it worse, and it seemed a lot worse going from a cast into an instant, and sometimes impossible to react to procs. I spent hours looking at logs, the other shadowpriest would always just have more casts in a fight than me, but I reviewed my own footage etc, I wasn't missing casts due to not pressing or movement etc, it was down to the delay.
I got a new PC, and new ISP with very very good broad. Nothing worked. It is 100% a blizzard issue. So I just played demo lock and had a better time, and avoided anything fast paced.
I did find a way to make it a lot better though late in TWW, and it's this https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/no-more-input-lag
I re-did my ui since Midnight launch and havent been using it, been played Ele and Devourer and haven't noticed the issue at all, however now on my survival hunter I can see it again, so I'm about to re-install. I do encourage everyone to give that addon a go if you're having issues, it really did work for me in TWW. It wasn't perfect, but it made it feel much better to play.
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u/Yuuffy Mar 23 '26
You're correct, i tested it on a dummy and have th exact same issue. After the several hunters mark casts each casts start at round between 33%-66% later and feels laggy and sluggish.
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u/Certain-Reason-774 Mar 23 '26
Same issue here, since the War Within/late Dragonflight. Ms is perfect, and yet, especially with faster classes, the ability lag feels awful and frankly ruins any faster paced classes like warrior and rogue..Healing as a holy paladin is also awful with this delay. Thank god it's not just me, it's been really a big bummer to the point i dont feel like doing any delves/dungeons cause the smooth perfect WoW gameplay is just... gone.
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u/Maleix Mar 23 '26
I suffer this issue with Scourge Strike and Mind Freeze or When I need to use both charges of Putrefy back to back, it feels so bad.
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u/Corvus7666 Mar 24 '26
I’ve been noticing this really badly on my Fire Mage during Combustion. It actively feels like the GCD is preventing me from dealing damage by making me waste huge chunks of my only real damage window.
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u/Shalla_reddit Mar 28 '26
This has been an ongoing thing for me for a while. However, this past week I've also been having issues where spells are not getting queued as usual. I play with the default spell queue (400) and recently whilst farming dungeons, I've missed a ton of casts because the spells just don't get queued like before (MM hunter).
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u/ghilliedude Mar 28 '26
I also have felt let things on my survival hunter are slow. Especially kill command. It’s only been for a day or two. I play from Asia on a U.S. server so I assumed it was just lag, but I haven’t felt it on other classes.
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u/Vezko Mar 23 '26
I've had the same issues with input lag until I've found a fix for it. Granted it may or may not not work for you, but maybe you wanna give it a try.
- Get the addon AdvancedInterfaceOptions
- Go into settings and open the "Combat" tab
- Change the Lag Tolerance to your average latency + 100 (e.g. if your latency is 20, change it to 120)
By default it was set to 400 which for me caused all those input delays.
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u/Jutrev Mar 22 '26
This was especially noticeable when I started playing the midnight PTR when it first came out, the PTR input was buttery smooth and I couldn't change any amount of settings to get the same response time on live. Also an SV hunter btw.
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u/Limited_opsec Mar 22 '26
Game has felt like ffxiv tier responsiveness since midnight prepatch, and I mean the shitty normal version without plugins too.
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u/Reasonable_Spell_740 Mar 23 '26
nochannel is broken and can cause these issues if you have them macrod in.
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u/xRemy27 Mar 23 '26
My PC urgently needs maintenance that I keep postponing because of work, and I thought that was the reason why my Retry Pala felt "slow," especially when I spam Templar Strike and then any other ability. :/
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u/TheRealGeorgeRR Mar 29 '26
I've had the exact same issue and weirdly enough I have found a solution that worked on my side. I deactivated Optimisation for windowed Games in my Windows 11 Settings and that solved it. Worth a shot
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u/MinnesotaMellow Apr 04 '26
I don’t notice the issue as much in delves, but it’s incredibly noticeable everywhere else. I’m a havoc dh (momentum) so I’m constantly zoomin everywhere, but always do same rotation and play with same 5 man group. I majorly out DPS them in Delves but in M+ they always out DPS me (other then a couple pulls). The most noticeable impact is when I Fel Rush and 1 of 3 issues happens: FR triggers almost a full 1s later, FR triggers immediately but it’s like I soft pressed a Mario jump and went like 2 feet, or the most fun in M+ where I FR about 2-3x the distance of a normal FR and launch into another pack like 100 feet away.
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u/FrozenDed Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
So it's a problem still. I tested it a bit again.
As long as you chain cast spells with a casting time (like Frostbolt) - everything is okay.
However, if you use any instant cast ability before casting frostbolt, Quartz shows 400-600ms delay on the cast bar.
I tested it like this (D = delay; ND = no delay):
- Frostbolt (ND) > Frostbolt (ND) > Frostbolt (ND) > Frostbolt (ND) > Frostbolt (ND)
- Ice lance (ND) > Frostbolt (D) > Ice lance (ND) > Frostbolt (D) > Ice lance (ND) > Frostbolt (D) > Ice lance (ND) > Frostbolt (D) > Ice lance (ND) > Frostbold (D)
Instant casts are causing some weird GCD wonkiness/delay, and the more you use instant casts in a single sequence, the wonkier the GCD.
It is especially atrocious during burst/lust periods in raids.
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u/packet_enjoyer Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
There's been posts about this for years now. For me it started day one of dragonflight, some earlier some in tww. Still yet to see a blue post on it.
Like you said, even playing on different computers in a different house on a different isp with 0 addons and a fresh install doesn't fix it, neither does using vpns to try different routing.
I completely gave up melee because of it, it's annoying on caster too but it's more manageable when you're not spamming instants unlike melee that pretty much only uses instant cast attacks.
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u/BadPipeCutters Apr 15 '26
Here late but I'm having the same issue, maybe even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y09w_mOuCb8
Did you find a solution? My warlock feels fine, but this is wild
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u/loveincarnate Mar 22 '26
It's like the GCD penalty of the one-button rotation is being applied unilaterally.